The time budget
When people talk about budgeting, they generally mean allocating money so that it’s spent the most effectively. However, it can be good to include a time budget as well.
Like the first step in creating a good monetary budget, tracking time can be a great way to figure out what’s important to you.
(And more importantly, it’s a great way to figure out whether or not the things you’re actually spending your time on are the things that really matter to you.)
Don’t believe me? Take a day and note down everything you do, along with the stop & start times for each activity.
I bet you will be surprised by what you’re really spending your time doing.
If you’re like many people, you’ll see a surprising large amount of time spent doing nothing in particular on the computer, and/or a large amount of time spent staring at the TV.
Do you really want, “she was a great TV watcher/internet user” on your gravestone?
Next, take a look at a list of the things you love to do/want to achieve, and the people you love to do them with. How much time are you spending on those kinds of things? Is the amount of time you’re actually spending on them proportional to their importance?
If not, make some adjustments. If you find yourself vegging in front of the TV or computer, stop and ask yourself if this is what’s important to you. If you’re doing it “to unwind”, remember that unwinding doesn’t take all of your free time. Set a timer that makes you get up and go into the other room to turn it off, and then get on to what you really love.
Great reminder – people always complain that they don’t have enough time for all of the things they want to do but they do have the time to sit infront of the TV for two hours a day. Even an hour a day doing something you want to achieve will put you 365 hours closer at the end of the year – that’s almost 10 weeks of work time. What could you accomplish in that time? A lot!
A couple of years ago, I was feeling overwhelmed by the seemingly endless number of home projects that I had going on. Using the concepts that I learned doing earned value management at work, I created an Excel file with all of my household projects and assigned a set number of hours to each task. After I created a schedule, I was amazed at all of the remaining time that I still had. You really can waste lots of time watching TV and surfing the net.
Wow Matt, put that way, an hour a day can make a huge difference.
Good idea with the Excel file, Corporate Barbarian.