Finding Time: How to Get More Done
Finding time for the activities associated with your goals can be difficult. Learn how to be proactive instead of reactive and get more done.
How often do you wish there were more hours in a day?
Perhaps you want to follow a healthier lifestyle, enjoy a hobby, return to school, or start a side business. Finding time for the activities associated with your goals can be difficult—especially if you work full-time and have children.
I share your frustration. As a wife, mom, design educator, photographer, and blogger, I constantly balance my schedule to fit everything in. I’m not always successful. (I am human, after all.) But I have learned a few things about finding time.
The best suggestion I can offer is to be proactive with time management instead of reactive.
Being proactive is simply a matter of planning the best way to use your time.
First, you must recognize how much time you spend on different activities. Your time can be divided into four different types of hours:
1. Survival Hours
Survival hours include:
- Sleeping (8 hrs)
- Eating (1 hr)
- Exercising (30 min)
- Meditating or praying (15 min)
- Showering, etc. (30 min)
These hours are the most important hours in the day because, well, your health and wellbeing depend on these activities. You don’t want to skimp on these hours—so straight off the top, you are down to about 14 remaining hours or less.
2. Work Hours
Work hours include time spent getting to and from and attending a paying job. These hours vary from one person to the next. Let’s go with some averages:
- Full-time job (8 hrs)
- Commute (1 hr)
As I said, work hours and commute times vary. My husband and I both work full-time, but he commutes 3 hours a day, and I walk downstairs to my office. Working from home buys me extra time. Plug in the numbers that describe your situation. Using the average numbers I’ve shown above, we have 5 hours remaining in our 24-hour day.
3. Home Management Hours
Home management hours may include:
- Cooking
- Cleaning
- Grocery Shopping
- Paying Bills
- Running Errands, etc.
While these hours also vary from day to day and person to person, let’s go with a conservative estimate that at least 1 or 2 hours are spent on some form of home management each day. With this scenario, we are left with an average of 3 or 4 personal hours.
4. Personal Hours
Personal hours include the free time we spend with:
- Family
- Friends
- Hobbies and pastimes
These hours are usually spent on activities we enjoy. They are also the hours we are most likely to squander. (I, too, am guilty of binging on Netflix…)
Finding Time: Taking A Mindful Approach
Assuming you want to squeeze something more into your day to meet a particular goal, where is the time going to come from?
Many people carve extra time out of their survival hours. They get less sleep, skip exercising, and make less than healthy food choices—all in the interest of finding time.
This is a mistake. Remember, your health and wellbeing depend on these survival hours. You are less likely to reach your goal if you are not taking good care of yourself.
Carving time out of survival hours is a reactive approach to time management.
A better approach would be to use your remaining hours more mindfully. Take a hard look at your day and ask yourself the following questions:
- In addition to survival hours, which activities are must-dos?
- Is there a way to be more efficient with these must-do activities?
- Which activities can I give up, postpone, or delegate?
- Where or how am I wasting time?
- How much “downtime” do I need to recharge and remain enthusiastic?
- Based on my answers to the previous five questions, how much personal time do I have today?
Once you determine how much personal time you have to work with, then it’s a simple matter of deciding how you will use that time. While your overall goals can remain steadfast, you may need to adjust your timeline and expectations to realistically reflect how much you can actually accomplish on any given day.
Planning how to use personal hours is a proactive approach to time management.
You have to determine what works for you. Conduct an honest assessment of your time and what you can realistically achieve on any given day. Then stick with it!
When I first started blogging I could have really used a post such as this! You did a fabulous job breaking down the hours in a day to determine how much time is realistic to spend blogging per individual. Thanks for sharing my tips too. I hope your post helps many an aspiring blogger out there!
I hope so too Jennifer. Thanks again for sharing your insights. 🙂
Interesting breakdown. Kind of sad we have so little Personal hours in today’s world… But it is what it is and we’ll take it and win with it! Thank you for the inspiration (and the include!).
Moran
I wonder if we have less personal time than previous generations… Would be interesting to find out! Thanks again for sharing your insights Moran. 🙂
It is an interesting subject.. It depends how long you go back in history. I took “The History of Human Kind” on Coursera (recommended!) and there Dr. Yuval Noah-Harari claims that closer in time previous generations had less personal time as the day to day duties took more time (as the technology wasn’t advanced), but if you go back to the hunter-gatherer era in history, it seems like while obtaining food and finding shelter obviously took more time than today, once these were found, all of the rest of the time was spent with the kids and the tribes. Interesting to think about 🙂
Kinda makes me want to go live off the grid! 😉 Thanks for sharing the information – it is indeed interesting…
I enjoyed this post. Social media can be rewarding and addicting but it is a huge time drain too. That was my biggest frustration when I started blogging. Everything you read stresses that you have to be everywhere at once. Knowing how impossible that is, and putting you and your content as a priority has helped.
I agree Julie! If you slow down and narrow your focus it might take you a little longer to build an audience, but you are more likely to stick with it and enjoy the process! Glad you enjoyed the post!
What a great post! I’m still struggling a little bit with the whole working full time and managing a home and a blog. Each day is different for me, but I feel that lately I’m have started getting the grove of things. Right now, I am just trying to organize myself with a calendar so that I can dedicate appropriate time to everything. For now, I’ll continue to take it one day at a time and try not to stress it too much. Slow and steady wins the race. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you Vanessa. Taking it one day at a time is the best thing to do! I’m a list maker – great at organizing my day – okay at organizing my week… I have a tough time going any further than that. I know some folks schedule their posts out months at a time… I’ve tried, but it’s just not my style. I think you have to be true to who you are and find what works for your personality, etc. 🙂