Making Time for the Important

Someone told me once that "we make time what what's important to us." This phrase jumps into my head every time I tell myself or someone else that "I don't have time for that." I guess, if we were completely honest, we would more often say, "I'm not making time for that." This is because if we break our standard modern weekday schedule down, it would go something like the following:

• 8 hours sleeping
• 8 hours working
• 8 hours for the other things that are most important to us
  

If I've got 8 hours per day for the things other than working and sleeping, how should I spend it? Too often we let the immediate things replace the important things. If we were to plan the extra 8 hours per day for the important things, it might look something like this:

• 1 hour with God, who granted me the grace of life and forgiveness
• 1 hour ensuring I am fully available to anyone in my family
• 2 hours eating, and especially among family and friends with the purpose of community
• 1 hour serving the vulnerable and needy
• 1 hour reading to improve my mental health and life discovery
  
• 1 hour exercising my physical body to care for the temple that God has granted to me
• 1 hour in daily chores, errands and tasks to maintain my existence
  

Now that would be a satisfying weekday, and fully aligned with what's important. This is a weekday that I would not regret having wasted.

I'm wondering whether a wasted life is the culmination of wasting the extra 8 every day. Maybe a wasted life is attending perpetually to the immediate without regard for the important. What would it look like if we all began to schedule the important into our lives, not letting them get pushed out by the immediate things? I"m up for trying.