How exciting! We got an ‘extra’ hour on Sunday morning as the clocks went back this weekend. There was much tweeted about being able to sleep in longer - suggesting we may be short-changing ourselves in our rest & relaxation time.
I’d had a particularly full-on week so was also looking forward to a lie-in on Sunday. In the event I went to bed early on Saturday evening, half-watched some television (yes I know it isn’t the done thing to have a TV in the bedroom, but that’s the only place I watch television) and had fallen asleep by 10pm.
As a result I was wide awake by 5am on Sunday morning (having changed my bedside clock the night before). What to do? Should I get up or try to doze off again? The sensation of having that choice, not feeling rushed or needing to spring into action was absolute bliss....
When I did get up (about 30 minutes later), I decided to do some batch-cooking so I’d have a meal for that day & be able to put the extra in the freezer. All finished (well, in the oven) by 8.15am!
Next, I had a leisurely breakfast and caught up with some online reading. This was followed by a bit of end of month admin, a few relaxed tweets & Facebook updates.
Even the washing up generated by my earlier cooking spree didn’t dampen my mood too much, although by now I’d definitely more than used up that extra hour.
As I write this at approaching 2pm, I’m feeling a complete lack of stress or urgency. (If you work for yourself you’ll know that, even on a Sunday that can be an unusual state of affairs.) I still have most of the afternoon and a relaxing evening stretching ahead of me. I really have got full value from those 60 minutes this year!
For me, having that extra hour was about having a choice of what to do with those precious minutes. I was also very conscious of having that additional time and of making every minute of it count. Perhaps I need to become more aware of how I use the ‘normal’ hours too? I wonder how they might be different if I did? Wouldn’t it be lovely to have an ‘extra’ hour every week?
So, how about if you were to allocate one hour each week to be totally aware of how each minute of that hour was spent - what would you do with your hour?

