Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

How much time do you have for yourself?

Breaking down your life…

Have you ever stop yourself and verify how much time do you really have for yourself? Me neither. I never thought of doing to this before today. Why haven’t done that before?

I was just walking outside, unfocused, and it just clicked. How much time do I have for myself in a week? It’s not that’s I’m particularly busy with life. I’m studying informatics at university and I’m working part-time. I don’t have kids to worry about, or even a girlfriend for that matter, so generally I have a lot of free time on my hand… yet I don’t feel like I do. I feel like I am pissing my life away.

So I sat down, took a pen and a sheet of paper and spent 15 minutes to figure out how much time do I really have in my life. It doesn’t have to be super precise. All I wanted is an indication, a map, on how I spend my time.

Hours in a week?

# hours / week = 24h * 7 days = 168 hours

Hours sleeping?

I do my best to wake up at 6 am every morning and go to bed around 10 pm. I might vary, but without a doubt, I’ll dedicate 8 hours of sleep every day. No more, no less.

# sleep hours / week = 8h * 7 days = 56 hours

Hours at work?

My schedule changes a lot. Sometimes I might work around 35 hours other times 15 hours. So I’ll say 30 hours of work every week. I’ll add the commute too since we do not live in a bubble where an 8 hours day at work equals 8 hours of life. You have to commute to get there (unless you work at home). Luckily, I only have to walk 10 minutes, so that’s 20 minutes every time I work. Assuming I work 5 times in a week, that’s 1h40. So I spend around 2h commuting per week. 30 hours of work becomes 32 hours.

Day and night preparation

Considering we have to prepare every day, we have to count it too. Depending on the day it might take me 30 minutes every morning and at night maybe 15 to 30 minutes. It really depends but maybe 1 hour total of preparation each day. That’s 7 hours more per week.

Socializing

Well, I don’t have any friends so that’s more time for me I guess. Joke aside, I do have friends but I don’t spend much time with them, maybe once every 2 weeks or something for maybe 4 hours which means per week this is 2 hours.

Family

Since the beginning of this year, I’ve started talking to my parents once every week. The conversations usually last between 30 minutes to 60 minutes.

Food

It might take me between 1 hour to 2 hours, depending if I have to get the grocery. So maybe around 10 hours related to food.

Physical activity

I spend around 3 hours a week of training, including the commute plus the preparation.

Social media / Entertainment

I don’t watch TV except on rare occasion. Maybe one show on Netflix (1 hour).

I have managed to remove and reduce social media a lot. I don’t spend much time on Facebook anymore, I go once or twice on Instagram, and I don’t use twitter for my daily frustration and self-righteousness, but I do abuse Youtube. If you go to your mobile phone Youtube app, you can see lecture time and mine is around 5 hours (this week) of watch time a day… so that’s 35 hours down the toilet (not all of it, but most of it). That’s embarrassing.

Total

Week hours      168
Sleep           -56
Work            -32
Prep             -7
Food            -10
Sport            -3
"Social media"  -36
Social           -3
-------------------
Total left       21

Ok… so 21 hours doesn’t seem too bad, but let’s assume I will work those 24 hours on sides projects and since I know I am not productive 100% of the time (because my attention is all over the place), I’ll use the Pareto principle 80/20 to indicate how much time I would really spend on my sides projects.

If you don’t know this principle, here it is. It tends to go that way:

• 20% of people own 80% of the land.
• At work, 20% of persons will do 80% of the work, while 80% account for only 20%.
• In your life, it could go like 20% of your time will correspond to 80% of your work, which also means 80% of your time will be spent doing 20% of the work.

Obviously, this is not completely accurate, but things tend to closely take this proportion. Assuming the worst, 80% of my time is spent doing half-work (or staring at my computer wondering about my life’s choice) while 20% is actual work.

21h * 20% of actual work = 4.2 hours = 4 hours 12 minutes.

This means if I’m productive 20% of the time, I would have 4 hours of free time a week and, assuming the best, a potential of 21 hours per week. That’s a proportion of 2,5% to 12,5% I have for myself which correspond between 36 minutes to 3 hours per day. Obviously, all the time spent is not just a waste of time. Socializing and exercising is always good, but I am talking about the free time you have for yourself and your projects.

*University not included because I’m done for the semester.

Of course, there is a place for improvement. The 5 hours a day on Youtube is disgusting and the Pareto principle, although surprisingly accurate, is just a tool and a measure to approximate effectiveness.

Make your own conclusion with the result, but I know for a fact, I’ll have to be more conscious and careful of my time usage.

What about you? How much time do you have for yourself?

Thank you for reading. If you are interested in seeing more, follow me and follow the publication. New essay every week (kind of).