How do you make time for self-care?
How do you make time for self-care? I tried answering that honestly and realised the question itself was part of the problem. Every time I “scheduled” rest, it became one more task on the list. So I turned it around and asked what I could take away instead. Less noise. Less pressure to reply at once. Less guilt about an hour that produces nothing. What was left surprised me: a quiet morning, a good conversation, a few pages of a book.
In today’s post I explore this idea, drawing on the Sabbath, Buddhist and Sufi traditions, and an old Tamil classic. I would love to hear what you have removed from your own day.
The Wrong Verb: Why Self-Care Is Found by Subtraction
The question asks how I make time for self-care. I want to begin by quarrelling with the verb.
Nobody makes time. Each day arrives with the same twenty-four hours, most of them already claimed before we wake. To “make time” for self-care is to treat it as one more appointment, one more box to tick. And once care becomes a task, it quietly becomes another source of pressure. The wellness industry understands this well. It sells schedules, subscriptions, retreats and routines, and it calls the purchase rest.
So I have stopped thinking of self-care as something I have to fit into my day. Instead, I ask a different question: what should I remove from my day so that I can hear myself again?
- Remove the noise. Much of what fills our hours is not work or duty but sound: notifications, background television, the scroll that begins as a glance and ends as an hour. None of it asks much of us, and that is exactly why it takes so much. Silence is not empty. It is the room in which our own thoughts finally become audible.
- Remove the pressure to respond immediately. Not every message needs an answer within minutes. The expectation of instant reply is a modern habit, not a moral obligation. A thoughtful answer given tomorrow is usually worth more than a hurried one given now. Delay, rightly used, is a form of respect for the question and for ourselves.
- Remove the belief that every minute must be productive. This is the hardest removal, because the belief feels like virtue. We measure our worth in output and feel guilty for an idle hour. But a walk without an agenda produces nothing you can count, and it can still restore the whole person who does the counting.
- Remove borrowed urgency. Many of our emergencies belong to other people. Their deadlines become our anxieties, and their haste becomes our pace. Learning to tell a real obligation from an imported urgency is itself an act of care.
- Notice what remains. When these things are removed, what is left is modest: a quiet morning, a thoughtful conversation, a few pages of a book, a walk, or simply sitting still. None of these needs to be scheduled. They were always there, crowded out.
- The old traditions knew this before we did. The Hebrew Sabbath is rooted in the idea of ceasing. It is not a holiday filled with leisure but a day marked by what is not done. Buddhist teaching speaks of renunciation, the letting go of what binds the mind, as the path to clarity. In the Sufi tradition, khalwa, a period of withdrawal and seclusion, is undertaken so that the seeker can hear what the world drowns out. The Naladiyar[1], the classical Tamil collection of quatrains, returns again and again to the passing nature of wealth, youth and worldly striving, and reminds its readers that clinging to them only deepens the unrest. Across faiths and languages, the pattern is the same: the self is recovered by subtraction, not accumulation.
- A necessary concession. Subtraction is not equally available to everyone. A daily-wage labourer, a single parent working two jobs, or someone caring for an ailing relative cannot simply remove duties from the day. To preach stillness to the overburdened can sound like privilege dressed as wisdom. Yet even in the fullest life, some small removal is usually possible: one message left unanswered for an hour, five minutes left unaccounted for, one worry set down before sleep. And those of us who can subtract more have a quiet duty not to load our own noise and urgency onto those who cannot.
Perhaps self-care is not always about doing something for ourselves.
Sometimes, it is about stopping long enough to remember who we are.
Note [1] The Naladiyar is a collection of four hundred quatrains in classical Tamil, traditionally attributed to Jain ascetics. It belongs to the Pathinenkilkanakku, the Eighteen Minor Classics of Tamil literature, and is known for its ethical and didactic verse.
John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 22 September 2026
© 2026 Rise&Inspire. All Rights Reserved.
Website: Home | Blog | About Us | Contact| Resources
Word Count:838