If Only There Were More Hours in the Day…

Why wish for more hours in the day when we can make better use of the ones we’ve got?

Wishing there were more hours in the day is just that: a wish. There are two facts we know about time. First, there are exactly 24 hours, or 1,440 minutes, in each day. That amounts to 168 hours in one week and 8,760 hours in one year. Second, we all have the same amount of time. Rich people cannot buy more. Forgetful people cannot lose it. Scientists cannot invent more time. Powerful people cannot yield influence and gain more. When it comes to time, it is the only aspect of life where there is true equality. So, the question is not one of where do you find more time. You cannot do it. The real question we need to be asking is how do we manage the things that we do in the 168 hours that are available in the week?

The following is a typical breakdown of how activities may consume our time in one week:

What this means is that we have 48 hours every week to spend on other activities. Things such as:

• Family time
• Leisure activities
• Religious/spiritual worship
• Paying bills
• Personal growth
• Activities for children
• Grocery shopping
• Yard work
• Cleaning the house
• Maintaining the car
• Watching television
• Surfing the Internet
• Free time

If the typical breakdown of activities is fairly accurate for you, then you have approximately 48 hours to spend on other activities. If you have a career that takes more time, say 55 hours in a week, then you only have 38 hours to divide up on other activities. If you have a new baby or very young children in your family, you may have even fewer hours for other activities.

If you are going to be successful managing your time, it is critical that you know how you spend your time. If we are focusing on accomplishment, then it is important you realize when you are productive and when you are not. The best way to conduct a time audit is to record your time, activity by activity, as you progress throughout the day. To conduct a time audit, follow the seven steps listed below:

1. List boundary times. For example, list what time you get up in the morning and what time you go to bed at night.
2. Then write down/fill in activities that are conducted on a ritual basis: things like taking a shower, checking personal emails, reading the paper, driving to work and back, or eating meals are things that you do on a consistent daily basis.
3. Shade in meetings and other large blocks of time where you spent your day.
4. Outline all other activities that made up your day.
5. Compute the length of time you spent in that activity.
6. Circle anything you accomplished or completed.
7. Summarize the areas where you did not make the best possible use of your time.

One problem with this method of a time audit is that when you forget to record your activities as you complete them, you may find you have blank spots during your day. If someone asked you what you did in that time slot, you may find it necessary to reply, “I worked…I think.”

A sample time audit might look something like this:

What are the benefits of conducting a time audit? It lets you see how you really do spend your time. Some of my learning points from this audit are:

• I spent four hours in meetings during the day.
• I spent 40 minutes of my day listening to John whine.
• I wasted 15 minutes walking to Andy’s desk when an email would have worked just fine.
• Mary’s review was the most important task I had to complete and I still did not get it done.
• The ABC proposal could have been easily delegated if I had planned ahead.

In this exercise, I estimated that I probably missed two hours of my time. What’s scary is this was a typical day for me. So what’s two hours a day? When you think about the big picture, minutes turn into hours and hours quickly turn into days. For example, let’s say you find that you waste just 15 minutes each day. At the end of the year, that adds up to 11 full eight-hour days of productivity. Thirty minutes wasted equals 22 full eight-hour days. One hour a day equals 44 full eight-hour days, and last, if you find two hours, like I did, that equals 88 full eight-hour days of productivity.

Our homework for you is to download this worksheet (or create your own) and conduct a time audit at least once this week.