If you have been feeling like life is getting a little too messy, and everything is just slipping out of hand, you are at the right place. Doom Scrolling makes us all feel like we are in a hurry, every single day, every moment, living in fast-forward. With endless hours of work hustle, commuting in heavy traffic, and melting in bed, it becomes difficult to even understand where your day went away and before you can make a list, you are doing it all over again.

If you are relating heavily to this, it might be time to meet the age-old time management rule: The 8-8-8 trick.

It’s simple, and it is effective. Here are the 3 steps you have to take care of:

8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest/sleep, 8 hours of everything else (basically, to live life)

There go your 24 hours, neatly sliced into 3 purpose-driven chunks. It is simple to understand on paper and easier to follow as well. But is it really practical when it comes to today’s world of endless reels and time blindness? We will find out!

This concept gained popularity because it is relatively easy to understand and doesn’t overcomplicate your day. You get your work done, get 8 hours of sleep and still have time left to be human for the rest of the day? Who wouldn’t want to swipe right on that? 8 hours of free time/ leisure sounds perfect. You can go to the gym, hang out with friends, cook meals or simply stare into the void having floor time. Whatever makes you feel alive. Giving clear time brackets to each of the major tasks in the day helps prevent burnout, reduces fatigue and also keeps your mental health in check.

In a world where some of us still work from our beds, shoot reels at midnight or scroll through them at an odd hour, where emails ping at midnight and me-time just means consuming more content to produce more content, sticking to a rigid 8-8-8 structure can feel a bit impossible to achieve. Most of us have blurred lines of when work ends; we are sleeping too little or letting days just pass us by when we don’t have the energy to plan.

That’s okay because that is the goal. You have to be aware of dividing your life in different brackets, so it doesn’t feel like you are constantly at home when you are working from home. You need to have the awareness that perfection will find its way.

Even if your current ratio looks more like 10-6-8 or even 12-5-7, the 8-8-8 rule acts as a checkpoint. It reminds you that you deserve time outside of work. That rest isn’t a luxury—it’s part of the equation. That life should have space for more than just “productivity.”

All you have to do is focus on creating a balance that feels more like you and suits your life in the best way!