Budgeting your time

The most frequent question I get asked by those who know me (especially by those who know I blog) is “how do you find the time.”  Yesterday a friend actually grilled me about it.  I felt like I was being interrogated!  It was fun. 

Here is how it went.  She started by saying “Where do you find the time?”

Then she went right into: “there are 24 hours in a day” and worked down the hours. 

“You work 10 hours per day on average.  So there are 14 left. How much do you sleep?”  (Unfortunately the answer is 6 hours per day tops.) 

“So you’re down to 8.  How much time do you waste?”  (Waste?!?!  I took “waste” to mean doing nothing, so my answer was none.  Why would I do that?  Even downtime is not “wasted” to me.  It’s mental therapy.  But it’s very limited.  How do I do this and not go insane?  I choose “things to do” that I enjoy and provide the mental therapy that “wasting” time normally would (like write to you folks – I enjoy it, but it’s certainly not “wasting” time). 

So I told her an hour or two per day though because I figured she included eating and not doing something else, or something like that.  And I do eat (although I am almost always multitasking eating with something productive).

“So you’re down to 6.  Your commute is an hour and a half a day, so you’re down to 4 and a half.”

You get the point. 

She was amazed that I “had enough time” to work as much as I do and still “blog” and enjoy time with my family.  (For those of you who don’t know me I work a lot – I would say I average 60 or 70 hours per week when you consider all of the additional work-related stuff I do.).

Well, I do.  I never actually “budget” my time like this – starting with 24 hours and working my way down with that much detail.  But I do budget my time.  Usually I just do it in my head, but sometimes I’ll take a scrap paper and plan a day or two.

Here is how I usually do it.  I start with making sure I budget to spend some quality time with my family.  It’s usually not as much time as I (or they) would like, but that’s a “whole nother” story.  I try and set as many boundaries with that and my work as possible (I’m not always the best at this one unfortunately.). 

Then I budget time for my most pressing work.  This is how much time I ”have” to work today.  I have a number of active projects at work, each with different deadlines and for different bosses and clients, so this gets tricky, but I’ve been doing it long enough that I sort of have it down.

Then I set aside at least 1/2 hour per day for the non-work related activities I do – like marketing our company (I’m not an owner, but hopefully will be someday.  I do get a bonus if I introduce new clients to the company, so there is some reward to hustle and help the business grow.)

Then I usually multitask the rest of the stuff (you all usually have my undivided attention – either that or I’m watching the game and blogging).  I always multitask my commute.  I’m either reading or listening to productive podcasts.  (Don’t worry, I take the subway, so I’m not reading in the car…)

It works for me.  I don’t write it down (usually).  But every day I at least take a mental snapshot about what the next day will look like.  Then when I wake up I do it again, just to remind me. 

Is that odd?  Probably, but it works for me.  I attack my days like I attack my saving, earning and spending!  And, believe it or not, I “find” time this way.  It’s really cool.

Does anyone else “budget” their time?  How do you do it?  Try it out for a week or two – you may find an extra hour or two in the day.  You could do it mentally or even written.  I won’t hold it against you, but I do want you to write down you financial budget!  For this, you could take a scrap paper on your desk at the end of the work day and in 30 seconds or less jot down what you have to do until work the next day, what you could multitask and how much time you’re going to spend doing each of them.  The key time saver is identifying things you could multitask (for me).

But don’t let me see you budgeting in a daily trip to my least favorite place on earth!  That’s right – until next time, put your credit card down and slowly step away from the mall!