We all seemingly have the same amount of time in the day, and the same amount of days in a week.
168 hours in a week.
How are you spending your time? How are you investing your time? Are you investing your time at all?
Let’s take a typical scenario and break this down in terms of where you spend your time. We could call this a ‘time budget’ or to loosely quote my financial coach – a ‘spending plan for your time…’
- Sleep
- 49 hours
- Let’s estimate that you are an average American and you get around 7 hours of sleep per night.
- Work / Job
- 60 hours
- Let’s estimate that on average you are working around 50 hours a week with commute and travel time factored in. Typical schedules say 5 days a week with 12 hours per day.
- Eating / Personal Basics
- 21 hours
- Let’s estimate that you spend 3 hours a day eating between snacks, meals, and the occasional meal out with friends and family. This also accounts for your daily hygiene time and personal upkeep.
130 hours burned…
So we started with 168 hours and just these three categories of ‘time spending’ amounts to 130 hours. Now not everyone spends the exact amount I’m estimating here, and for some people it will vary greatly. I think these estimates pass the reasonableness scale.
In the past I have ranted about screen time, and as an average American it is just amazing how much time – per Nielsen’s study back in 2016 – Americans spend 4.5 hours A DAY watching TV/tablet-based TV shows/media.
I’ll go with 4 hours a day for this exercise – that’s 28 hours consuming TV and Netflix and Youtube and, and, and, and…
158 hours burned
This leaves you 10 hours of accounted for time – if you are a fairly typical American. Now factor in any family commitments, religious practices, and some unexpected events in any given week – no wonder you have no time!
Wait a second, where’ the time for some fun???? Do you enjoy going to live shows like I do? What about a baseball game? Kiss 4 hours goodbye right there when you factor in traffic…
You must be so busy.
No wonder you cannot find the time to get to the gym.
Gotta grab that fast food, no time to cook, right?
So how do you fit it all in?? Do you skimp on your sleep and just do 6 hours on average? Do you only work a 40 hour work week with a minimal commute? Are you really doing the things you want to be doing on any given day?
Fundamentally, how much time out of the week are you investing into yourself?
This is the question that prompted this post.
Are you spending an hour a day at the gym or working out? That’s a strong start to the path to greatness and certainly an investment.
Are you taking an online class or studying for a professional certification an hour or two per night after hours? Better yet, do you take a Saturday a month and invest that time into a vocation that will enhance the quality of your life longer term? An online course from a place like Udemy could be pursued while everyone is still sleeping on an early Saturday morning.
When I say investing into yourself – I am referring to compounding the benefit of the time you spent on a given task. A classic is in the gym. Now if you are on the treadmill doing some light cardio for an hour, there is a direct benefit, and I believe that is a great investment into yourself.
The benefit will likely continue for another 45-60 minutes after that cardio session has ended. Now what if you did weight training, where you were building some muscle along the way. You would be cultivating a greater capacity to burn more calories in less time longer term – due to the increased energy capacity your burgeoning muscles could provide. This is where I am taking this notion of investing into yourself.
For many of us, just getting off of our asses and hitting the treadmill is a win, and yes it is an investment of a sort. It is a great entry point for even greater benefits to be realized once you have established the basics of a gym going habit – perhaps even landing upon a fitness-based lifestyle. This is the zone where I am encouraging you to lead yourself into.
This same notion of ‘essential improvements’ and of habit development as a stepping stone towards true up-leveling of one’s life can be applied in many dimensions of your life.
If you want to learn a new skill, cultivate a basic habit of 15 minutes a day of reading a book on the subject. Eventually, you will establish yourself as a master, possibly even becoming a trainer or coach to others in that skill.
If you want to be a writer, start writing each day for a set amount of time or for a set amount of words. Eventually, you will become a prolific writer, and the quality of your thoughts / prose will be continuously ramping. The time it took you to write that first page of 1000 words, will continue to decrease – even as the quality continues to go up.
If you want to become more conscious and mindful – start with a 10 minute a day meditation habit. The results will flow.
If you want to know where you are spending all of your time, try monitoring where you are spending your time after you get home from work each day for a few days. I have seen a few people online go off about time tracking for 2 weeks straight, and that sounds just horrible to me. However, if you were to monitor yourself for a couple of ‘usual days’ during the middle of the week – I bet you could find some amazing things out about your ‘time budget.’
The first step is becoming more aware of where you are spending the 168 hours you have. Once you have begun cultivating your awareness of how you spend your time, then you may begin to decide where to invest your time into yourself.
I’ll be expounding on this notion of time investments and how to drill into the usual culprits of wasted time in a future post or two. I am also toying with a few ideas that I’ve put in motion that are effectively multiplying my time so that I escape the seeming limit of 168 hours per week.
