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Life by the numbers Part 2 - Time

Welcome back! In part 1 of our life by the numbers series we talked about money, how to determine what you need, what you have and how to make the best of it. Now let’s take our money methodology and apply it to the most precious of all resources we have. Time. Consider this for a moment:

1. You cannot buy more time
2. You cannot make more time
3. You have a fixed amount of time to budget and spend in your lifetime

At this point you may be feeling downhearted, depressed, anxious and possibly a host of other feelings, I know I feel this way even as I write. There is good news however, we can make sure we use our time effectively to achieve what we want and it is entirely within our control!

Mindset

As we did with our money we need to set some realistic expectations and approach this topic with a fresh mindset. Forget about finding massive swathes of free time you didn’t know you had, in this case we want to find at least a spare 30 minutes per day. This does not sound like much but think about how quickly 30 minutes per day compounds:

• 30 minutes per day is 2.5 hours per working week
• 30 minutes per day is 3.5 hours per seven days
• 30 minutes per day is 10–12 hours per month, more than the average working day

The second mindset change I was to convey is that free time is in fact free time. There are no rules for how you want to use it…not yet anyway. Let’s set a few ground rules:

1. Time spent on something which did not work is not time wasted, you just found another way which didn’t work so do not let this deter you from your goals
2. Choosing to change direction, topics or activities in your free time does not result in time wasted, you acquired knowledge and experience and now it’s time for more!
3. Treat your time as you would your salary, invest it wisely but also allow yourself to enjoy it, make your time work for you!

Know what you have

This is a real easy concept, work out how much time you have in a day and what you do with it. I don’t just mean the free time you think you have, I mean everything. Here is what you do:

1. Set a wake-up time (07:00)
2. Set a bed time (23:00)
3. Subtract wake-up from bed times (16 hours) to get your total waking time in a 24 hour period.

Now we know our “salary”. Our schools, college and the workplace conditions us for years to think of the “8 hour day”. In fact our day has twice as much scope than we are taught and is just begging to be used.

Budget what you have

Alright, we established we have 16 hours a day (112 hours per week). Now the clock watchers among you will be saying “Hang on, I work a 40 hour week, that’s less than half the budget?”. You are correct now let’s find out what else is going on in a day with some categories of things we must do.

1. Work: 8 hours (approximately)
2. Eating: 2.5 hours (breakfast, lunch, dinner)
3. Self-care: 1 hour (showers, dressing etc)

“Hold up…that’s 11.5 hours….I have 3.5 hours left per day”. That’s right my friends, 3.5 hours per day. 40 hours per week if you don’t work weekends. Going back to knowing what we have this is with a full 8 hours sleep each night, that really is amazing!

I have created a Google sheet to help you go through this exercise yourself and work out how much free time you have. You may be surprised by the results!

Time Slicing

Over the years I have heard many people refer to “multi-tasking” as a good way to achieve more in a given time period. I find true multi-tasking results in two tasks being done badly. The true intention behind the concept is actually time slicing, spending short bursts of time (30 to 60 minutes) with 100% focus on the task at hand. This has a couple of advantages:

• Reduces task fatigue and boredom from labouring on the same task for many consecutive hours or days
• Allows continual feelings of progress and achievement by looking daily at what you completed instead of focusing entirely on what lies ahead
• Allows you to take breaks between bursts, very important for maintaining motivation and higher levels of productivity

So what now? Well we need to do some housekeeping and define our Goals, Ideas, Steps and Tasks, known as GIST planning. This lets us make use of all the little bits of time we discovered in our budget. Before the mental anguish and groans overwhelm you I would like you to take a deep breath and read the following three items to see how easy it is to break almost anything into a GIST.

• Reading for an hour a day (Task) equates to two or three chapters (Steps) per week and perhaps one book (Goal) per month
• Paint one wall per day (Task), in one week you painted a whole room (Step) and in one month redecorated your apartment (Goal)
• Clean one room once per week (Task), in a month you cleaned your whole apartment (Step), keep this going continuously and you reduce cleaning time per session (Goal) as each room is visited more frequently

The key skills to practice here are patience and self-reflection. Scheduling in time to create and maintain your GIST is the foundation of effective time slicing.

Patience and self-reflection work in tandem between maintenance events. Remember to reflect on what you achieved each day and be patient when thinking about what remains to be done. If you have budgeted the time and you have a task list to choose from you will achieve all your goals. Our Google Sheet for budgeting time also contains a rudimentary GIST “To Do” page to help you define what you want to do with your newly discovered time and how you will make the best use of it. It is worth pointing out that my brain thinks in GISTs (a side effect of many years of project management and software engineering) but this is not the only way to build your task list, the important thing is to find a technique which lets you use 30 minute windows of time to organise your goals.

In summary…

Applying our money methodology to the time we have each day has let us realise potentially untapped resources we have but did not know. We can use that time however we want. Education, exercise, hobbies or just a good old Netflix binge but why not all of them! As with our money, reaping the maximum benefits from this approach takes practice. While there are many different methods for budgeting time and managing tasks I hope this has helped provide some structure and a starting point to your efforts. Pick what works for you and go with it, if it doesn’t work then change it!

Up next…

Join me again for part 3 of Life by the numbers where we talk about making the best of our new found resources by managing our effort, motivation and what to do when we are just “not feeling it”. See you soon!