Free time gives you a break from some of the pressures of everyday life so you can get stuck into doing the things you love the most, but it's easy to use it to lounge around not doing very much at all. This guide will show you how to make the most of your free time and use it well.

Why is free time important?

As tempting as it can be to work without stopping, scheduling breaks in between studying, school or work gives you much-needed time to breathe! If you don’t give yourself time to rest and recuperate, you could suffer from increased stress levels, lack of concentration, and a sense of overwhelm. 

Breaks mean you can focus on something other than your academic or work schedule and spend your time as you wish. If you have any hobbies, interests or passions that don’t fall neatly into your everyday schedule, free time could be the opportunity you need to pursue them. 

You can also use some of your free time to brush up on a new skill or learn something new. To do that, you'll need to plan out your time carefully.

How to plan out your free time

Find out exactly how much free time you have 

If you know how much time you have, you'll be able to figure out what kind of activities you can fit into it.

Make a note of your current commitments. If you haven’t already, use your school and/or work timetable and your extracurricular activities schedule to help you work out how much time you have left over each week for activities.

Be aware of how your free time might change. You may have lots of free time at the beginning of the school year, but that might change if you have mock exams, coursework, or exams coming up. If you have a job, busy periods, like during the holidays, can leave you with less free time than at any other point in the year. Make sure you take that into account when you think about starting a new hobby.

Set clear intentions for your free time 

You might already know what you want to try out, or you might not. Either way, you should have a plan for what you want to try so you don't spend your free time thinking about what to do with it!

Figure out the type of activities you want to do. Do you want to revise or improve your grades in a subject you find challenging? Maybe you want to spend more time doing the things you already love like your favourite sport or hanging out with your friends? Maybe you want to try something new like learning an instrument or how to rollerblade? You could even do multiple things at the same time, like learning to rollerblade with your friends. Make a plan of what you're going to do with your free time before you start.

Prioritise your activities. Choose the activities that are most important to you at a given time. For example, you may find that having as much fun as possible in your free time is a priority, which means the majority of your free time will be spent doing fun activities you enjoy. Or, you may want to prioritise learning and productivity during your free time. Getting a sense of which activities mean the most to you will help you spend your free time as efficiently as possible. Your priorities might also change at different points in the year; you might want to spend your time relaxing at the beginning of the school year, and learning in the middle of the school year.

Be flexible 

Although you can plan how you intend to spend your free time down to the minute details, life always throws curveballs, and you need to adapt when this happens. 

For example, if you find that a new deadline or priority at school has been thrown your way, you may have to cut down on some of your free time in order to accommodate it. Or, you may have to spend your free time actively preparing for it. 

Another example is when you’re given more free time than you initially thought you had. You might find that one of your essays or some of your workload has been rescheduled to a later date, or some of your commitments for a particular week have been cancelled. This will give you more free time, so have some activities in mind just in case.

Enjoy your free time

Free time is all about resting and doing things you genuinely enjoy. Make sure to find a balance between doing activities that are not related to school or work, and spend some time just enjoying yourself when you can.