Time Budget – A Powerful Time Management Strategy

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“Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.”
-Thomas Edison

Do you sometimes stress trying to make time to finish everything by the end of the day? Or find yourself wishing there were just a few more hours? And most importantly – when you look back at how that time was spent, do you sometimes spend it other than how you intended?

Would you spend 10 minutes planning, if it could guarantee it would free up hours for you to spend on what you really wanted? For me anything that helps me make more time is valuable. Once I started tracking where I spent my time, I then moved to actively budgeting it – and this is the strategy I use week after week, and at this point it literally takes me a few minutes a week, and pays dividends in terms of hours.

Today join me in this discussion about how to create a time budget, and then a bonus tip at the end that I use to instantly make time for anything new that I let into my life.

Planning Your Days With A Time Budget

Budgeting where cash in your wallet goes is a great way to ensure you spend your money where your priorities are – and budgeting my time similarly ensure I spend my time appropriately on my priorities.

The first step to planning our days and week? Figure out what needs to go in the budget.

Must-Do versus Like-To-Do

One of the distinctions I make when I create a budget is what I must do versus what I like to do. There are certain things that for me are simply non-negotiable in my current lifestyle. The must do items aren’t necessarily difficult, they can be enjoyable – but it’s where I draw the line. Examples include sleeping, amount of time spent at work, and a minimum amount of time spent with friends and family.

So, the first step for me in my budget? Determine my must dos. I break this up into a few steps.

Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Yearly Budgets

I like to do my budgeting in terms of Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly activities. For monthly and yearly, I don’t necessarily schedule all my items in advance, but I like to budget in time every week so that as these things come up (for example, annual health check ups) they do not throw off my schedule. I then determine how many hours I have available on a weekly basis, to allow some flexibility.

Also, I like to estimate high. This gives me a buffer, because I know sometimes things will take more or less time, and it’s always easy to fill the time with “Someday” projects and leisure activities if it’s there – but far worse is overcommitting and not being able to fit in everything I have scheduled, and then need to make the decision to drop something much closer to the commitment.

So, let’s take a look at an example.

Daily Tasks

Daily Tasks. 7 days a week.
- Sleep. 8 hours.
- Hygiene. 1.5 hours.
- Meals. .5 hours (if I’m just eating at home, this is the fastest it can get)
- Total – 10 hours
Workweek/Weekday Tasks (5 days per week). My workweek is a normal weekday workweek
- Work. 9 hours. This includes my lunch break.

Weekly time used so far:

Daily: 10 x 7 = 70 hours
Weekday: 9 x 5 = 45 hours

Total weekly time used = 70 + 45 = 115 hours

Now one point I should note, the 45 hours per week spent at work is technically not a must do, you could make an argument that this is a like to do. After all, it’s my choice: if I wanted, I could leave my job and get a part time job working 20 hours per week. For me personally, that’s my decision to make it a must do. It’s a matter of personal satisfaction, money and the benefits that come with the type of work I do full time. If you are in school, freelance, or are an entrepreneur – that may not be a must do, it may be a like to do.

Weekly Tasks

Weekly Tasks.
- Time with friends and family. 15 hours (minimum must do).
- Grocery shopping and cooking. 10 hours. (and I have data to back this up)
- Chores. 6 hours (cleaning, random organizing, car maintenance, etc)

Total weekly time used = 115 + 31 = 146 hours

Monthly Tasks

Monthly Tasks. I tend to not have too many of these. Most of these will be captured in my generic weekly chores (for example, monthly bill payments). However, perhaps you have a particular group you volunteer with, or have activities with that would fit in here.

Total weekly time used = 146 hours

Yearly Tasks

Yearly Tasks. Here I have a lot of “life maintenance” type of stuff. I just round it up.
- Annual and biannual checkups. 20 hours (doctor, vision, dentist)

If you divide it out it comes out to less than an hour per week – I’ll go ahead and estimate high, and call it 1 hour per week.

Total weekly time used = 146 + 1 = 147 hours

How Much Time Do You Actually Have?

time_graph

Writing it out like this often is an eye opening experience. Do you know how many hours there are in a week?

24 hours per day x 7 days per week = 168 hours per week.

So for me, based on these numbers, how much time do I actually have left for other items in my life?

168 hours total – 147 spent = 21 hours left

And that is why any time that I have is so valuable. Out of 168 total hours, 21 hours is left over and I can spend differently it week to week. That’s still a lot of time – that comes out to 3 hours per day, but it’s going to be eaten up fast,

Help! I’m Over 168 Hours! Now a point to note – you may find you are above 168 hours, or too close for comfort. In that case, you may first be interested in reading about some examples of how to instantly make more time for yourself. If you are over 168 hours, then the issue isn’t time management – the issue is that you’re trying to do more things than you have time available, and so need to first make time before moving on to budgeting it.

Like To Dos and Discretionary Spending

So now that we’ve determined how much time we have available, there are two areas to divide up this last 21 hours:

Categorized Activities. Family time, work time, personal time, etc. Just like we have above. I like to keep it simple with just a few categories. I group, for example, practicing guitar, and working out as personal time – both are areas of my life I am trying to improve.
Discretionary Spending. Finally, I categorize some time every week as discretionary spending. This gives me a bit of a buffer for when new things come up. I recommend starting out with at least half the time you have left over as discretionary spending.

So in this case, I would first categorize all the activities I’ve already determined above, and then I might add to each out of this additional budget – adding in items I want to do, but that aren’t strictly necessary. In this example, of this leftover time, I might end up with perhaps 10 hours with scheduled activities, and 11 hours of discretionary spending per week.

Help! I don’t have enough hours left for my like to dos! Again, you might find that you are very ambitious, or that you have a lot of interests, and end up with more like to dos than you have hours left over. I know I often have this problem – there are never enough hours in the week to do everything I like to do! My solution? Put a few on top to focus on, and put the rest on the backburner in a “Someday” bucket. As I complete goals and free up time, I get to the items on my “Someday” list – knowing full well that since I have so many things I like to do, I may not get to accomplish everything on the list. The important thing though, is to make sure the ones I truly want get to the top of the list. This is somewhat analogous to the concept of Most Important Tasks (MITs) discussed in Zen To Done.

My Time Budgeting Secret – Pay As You Go

“You will never “find” time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.”
– Charles Bruxton

I’m not going to wade into politics, but I can tell you that implementing a pay as you go strategy has worked wonders for my time management. It’s simple.

Start With a Balanced Budget. This may take a few iterations. We sometimes forget to budget for things, and other times we estimate poorly.
Pay As You Go – Preferably With The Same Category. Now, whenever a new commitment comes up, I just look over my weekly schedule, and mentally think about which category I need to free up in my time budget. If for example I want to go to a concert, I need to understand that’s probably 4 hours of discretionary spending I need to free up that week. If my budget is completely full, then that means skipping a party, or giving up other leisure activities (same category) to keep my budget balanced. In rare circumstances you can cross categories, but in general I try not to. It really needs to be an exceptional case for that type of blatant disregard of my budget.

There are always going to be more things to do than I can do, and for me this strategy can make time management more manageable. Now rather than trying to squeeze everything into limited hours, I just have to prioritize what I can and can’t do, and when a new commitment comes up, I decide whether I want to take it – and if so, I either need to have discretionary time available that week, or need to drop another commitment to make time for it.

Converting Dollars To Hours

A final point – I’ve often thought about time versus money and the tradeoffs we all make. One thing that this exercise made very clear to me was how valuable, and limited, my time really was. This made it easier to make informed decisions about when to spend additional money for services or hiring someone to help.

For example, above I mentioned how much time I discovered I was spending on cooking. You can get all the details in my article about how I outsourced my cooking and literally bought some time. Similarly, when I found I had a number of computer based tasks that were eating up my time, I hired a virtual asssistant. I initially resisted, but looking at the numbers made it clear I was letting my ego control my decision instead of the finances.

In such examples, the problem wasn’t that I didn’t have enough resources – it was that I hadn’t yet analyzed where my time was going, and so didn’t see the inefficiency in the system. I had too little time – but I had enough money where I could buy more time, I just didn’t realize the relative value.

What are your thoughts? Have you ever budgeted your time? Do you think about the value of your time, or do you have a totally different perspective?

If you want to begin working on your own time budget, but aren’t sure where you actually spend yuor time, I suggest you first start with this article: How to Track Where You Spend Time With A Time Log.

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