"I do not have the time for this..." Is that and excuse or not?
Every person on earth has the same amount of time in a day. Why is it then that some get more done than others? Why do some people achieve their goals and dreams while another person simply does not get there at all?
One of the biggest culprits in this is how we manage our time.
Here is something to think about for a moment…
There are 24 hours in a day. If we look at a table of the average week, where does all your time go?
Let’s do a calculation on an average 5-hour work week with a 9-5 job.
| Average Work Day | 5-Day Work Week | Average Saturday | Average Sunday | Average per Week | |
| Work Hours | 8 | 40 | 40 | ||
| Average Sleep | 6 | 30 | 8 | 8 | 46 |
| Hours spent on Family (Cooking/shopping/taking care of kids/etc): | 3 | 15 | 4 | 4 | 23 |
| Exercise | 1 | 5 | 3 | 8 | |
| Other time spent (hobbies/social/etc.): | 1 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 13 |
| Going to church/spending time on religion | 1 | 5 | 4 | 9 | |
| Relaxing/Afternoon nap | 1 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 10 |
| TOTAL | 21 | 105 | 21 | 23 | 149 |
| TOTAL HOURS | 24 | 120 | 24 | 24 | 168 |
| HOURS LEFT | 3 | 15 | 3 | 1 | 19 |
This means that in a typical week there should be around 19 hours available for you to focus on something else like creating your new side hustle or working on your own business etc.
That’s almost an entire day.
We have the habit of telling ourselves that “I do not have the time”, but if you take a closer look at what takes up your time each day, you might notice that “I do not have the time” might actually just be an excuse.
So, where does my time go?
The only way to truly understand what takes up your time each day is by tracking and logging what you are doing. Yes, it is a lot of work and can be frustrating. But if you really want to start making changes in your life, you, unfortunately, have to do this. Even if it is just for one month to get an idea of where you can change or improve.
Below is a link to a worksheet template you can download and use for this. There is a .pdf version that you can print out and an excel version that you can complete digitally.
Download the two timetracking templates today and start taking charge of your own time again.
How to manage your time better
I know that it seems like a lot of hard work to track every single thing you do each day, but I want to encourage you to try it and commit to it for at least one month. Once you see the trends and have a better understanding of what you spend your time on, you’ll start to get an idea of what changes you can make.
By using this template, you can start figuring out what you can do less of, what you can do more of, what you can shuffle around to open more time in other places, when you can spend time on your goals and dreams, and you will get a better understanding of your life in general.
Use this data you collect to work out a set daily or weekly routine or start working on your next big idea.
