"Don't read so many emails when you're on vacation - you need a little me-time." I'm very serious, but my boss bursts out laughing anyway. "Neenee, I don't need me-time," he says. It's typical millennial again, we both think that I come up with such a stupid idea as Me-Time. I have only just learned about me-time myself, and it happened like this: A friend told me one evening that she couldn't meet the next day because she needed the evening for herself. "How, for you?" I asked. “Well, I just need time for myself every now and then.” - “What are you doing during that time?” - “Anything. Cooking, watching series, reading, cleaning up, thinking. ”Hm. Time for me, to think? Or worse: clean up? Better not, I thought.But then came the lockdown, and with it all the ups and downs of times when people were even asked by the federal government to simply do nothing. Nothing, nada, niente.

Johanna Dürrholz

Editor in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin

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So I sat around at home reading my books, watching my movies, yes, I even cooked (a rare occurrence).

We often did these things in pairs, but sometimes I did them alone.

And the more me-time I had, the more addicted I got to her.

Don't get me wrong, I've always enjoyed reading books and watching series before.

If you label time that you spend alone, not as a lonely evening, but as self-effective me-time, it immediately feels much better.

"And what about us?"

Me-time is actually just an expression with which we want to disguise the fact that we have to function constantly: If you have to relax, want to spend time at home, i.e. you are no longer able to work properly in our world that is calibrated for usability, you have to optimize your weaknesses immediately into a very, very important, quasi meditative, definitely body and mind strengthening me-time. To counteract this trend, my friend and I have now introduced something new: "Us-Time". When I told you about my newly flared need for me-time, he said: “What about us? We also need us-time. ”Since then, in addition to me-time, I have also spent us-time, sometimes also we-time or you-time, depending on with whom, when and where.

And where are the boundaries between me and you and us time?

Isn't it also somehow important for me to have us and you time, self-effective and psychologically highly valuable?

Is that still we-time or already me-time when I do sports in a group, which is also somehow good for me?

Sometimes I think it's pretty stressful to arrange so much me and us and we and you time.

Leisure stress to the power of ten.

It's high time I got off this meeting marathon, from these labeled time accounts, I think then.

High time for some me-time!