Time and How Much You Really Have

Everyone is busy.  Everyone claims to not have any time, but why?  Let’s breakdown a typical workweek and find the time of day!  There are 168 hours in one 7 day week.  Most people work 40 hours a week and we will use an average of sleeping 8 hours per night. We can even assume that people typically spend 3 hours everyday, 7 days a week, driving to and from work and getting ready for work.

Weekly Hour Breakdown:

Total Hours Work Hours Sleep Hours Work Preparation Total Used So Far

168 40 56 21 117

This leaves 51 hours!  After 40 hours of work, 56 hours of sleep and 21 hours of preparation!  51 hours breaks down into slightly over 7 hours everyday.  Of course we want to hangout with our friends, exercise, read, etc… So let’s figure out why we can’t do everything we want to do…

Adding in Life

No matter how busy you want to be, you can almost always accomplish it all.  This is a matter of taking action, self-discipline and getting rid of excuses.  Let’s add in a busy life…

 

• 2 Hours for Church
• 5 Hours for exercise
• 7 Hours for reading
• 15 Hours for friends
• 15 Hours for eating

This leaves you with 7 extra hours every week.  This is over-estimating many things too!  Most people don’t tend to sleep a full 8 hours and most people don’t spend 3 hours preparing for work, 7 days per week.  This is also assuming you read everyday for an hour and exercise quite a bit.  This schedule is also for a very sociable person considering that it gives you 15 hours for your friends and an additional 15 hours for eating.  So where does your time really go?

Let the Technology Go

Notice that I didn’t include internet/computer/social networking time.  I have realized how much time I really spent on the computer and especially on social networking sites after I moved to the country and no longer had internet.  It is amazing what you can get accomplished without wasting a lot of time on the computer and with having a plan.

Plan Your Days!

Have a plan!  It doesn’t matter if you have a list of errands to run, several people to hangout with or work to do, if you have a plan and a task list, you can cut out all of the time you spend deciding what to do and cut out all the time you spend doing nothing!  Plan your days out so that you can use all of your time.  Don’t waste time and don’t make excuses.  You are not too busy.