168 hours of the week
Learning to be more intentional about how I spend my time
I’ve been saying this a lot lately:
“I don’t have time”
I don’t have time to meet up tonight. I don’t have time to read. I don’t have time to start my personal side projects. I don’t have time to workout.
I want to be saying ‘yes’ to the things and people that are important to me and not feel as though I am unable to because the hours in the week slip away and I’m scrambling to fit everything in.
I decided to take a step back and think about how much time I actually have and how I spend it. The first thing was to recognise how much time is available to me:
There are 168 hours in a week
Next, I wrote down all the activities that are integral to my life such as sleeping, eating, getting dressed, working etc. I’m one of those people that can’t survive without 8 hours of sleep, so I need to build it into my schedule.
Sleep: 8 hrs/day x 7 days = 56 hours
Exercise: 1 hr/day x 6 days = 6 hours
Eating: 30 min per meal x 3 x 7 days= 10.5 hours
Getting ready/winding down: 1 hr/day x 7 days= 7 hours
Work: 9hrs/day X 5 days = 45 hours
Admin (emails/calls/messages): 1hr day x 7 days = 7 hours
Chores: 2 hrs/ week
Total: 131.5 hours
Remaining: 36.5 hours
This works out to roughly 11 completely free hours on weekend days and around 3 completely free hours per weekday.
This is powerful information. I know there is more than enough time to spend 5 hours on the weekend on my personal projects or reading, while still being able to spend stress free time with friends and do other things I enjoy.
Being conscious about the time I have, the next step is to plan — make an effort to time box, use my work hours to focus on being productive, use my 3 hours on weekday evenings for social time, admin time, personal development, relaxing or anything in between.
I know things don’t always run according to plan. Things take longer than expected, code has unexpected bugs, there are traffic delays, last minute meetings, bad hair days. But I think that by being more intentional with our time, we can take back a lot more control over how we spend our hours and days.
If you have tips for optimizing your time, I’d love to hear from you! Tweet me @nikhilaravi
