It’s Thursday evening. You finally have one free hour. No meetings, no looming deadlines, no chores to close or planned catchups.
You tell yourself — I will just sit quietly and relax.
But an hour later, you don’t feel refreshed. Not even close.
You feel oddly restless — as if your mind never really took that break.
What happened? You didn’t waste the hour — you just lived it in fragments.
You replied to a few messages, checked an email “just for a minute,” scrolled through a few reels, ordered something online, and mentally reviewed tomorrow’s to-do list.
Somewhere between all that, your quiet hour vanished.
That’s time confetti — a term coined by author Brigid Schulte. It’s what happens when our time gets shredded into tiny, scattered pieces. Each small interruption — a ping, a thought, a quick scroll — chips away at what could have been real rest or deep focus.
Same applies to work as well, fragments of time taken away from focused work – a quick email, short chat with a colleague and couple of WhatsApp messages.
You may have had 60 minutes, but not a single stretch of uninterrupted time. And that’s the real loss — not of hours, but of wholeness.
Feeling refreshed isn’t about having time, it’s about protecting it — from distractions, from notifications, even from your own urge to multitask.
Here’s what I try to do. When I get an hour, I try to do just one thing. Sit quietly. Go for a walk. Read. Think… whatever, but I allow my mind to settle.
Honestly, I was surprised at how full one hour can feel — when it isn’t scattered.
When was the last time you spent an hour — not in fragments, but whole?
#attention #timeconfetti #mindfulness
Perspectives 