In his book “The Clean Coder”, Robert C. Martin talks about having a time budget. He recommends working 60 hours a week: 40 hours for your employer and 20 hours for yourself. I think having a time budget is an interesting idea and I will explore the idea of time budgeting in this article.
We all have 168 hours a week. If we budget our time to have 40 hours working for our employer and 20 hours working for ourselves that still leaves 108 hours a week. What would you do with your 108 hours each week?
Clearly we have some things we must do every week. We have to sleep and if assume we sleep for 8 hours a day that subtracts 56 hours from our available hours each week. This still leaves us with 52 hours a week. Other things also take up our time like travelling to and from work as well time to prepare and eat meals. Let’s subtract an additional 3 hours per day to account for this time, which is 21 hours a week. This still leaves us with 31 hours a week to do what we want.
So now you have a time budget that has 40 hours for working for your employer, 20 hours for working for yourself, and 31 hours left over to do whatever you want. I think this provides plenty of time to let you do what you want with your life.
Why work 20 hours for yourself? I think it is important to have hobbies and personal projects to work on. I believe life is more meaningful when you can look back and see that you have accomplished something with your time and efforts. Setting aside 20 hours a week to work on your hobbies and personal projects means you are actively doing something meaningful every week and that you use your time outside of work for more than just entertainment.
Entertainment is important too and the time budget we looked at in this article still leaves you with 31 hours to do whatever you want outside of the time spent working for your employer and the time you spend working for yourself. 31 hours is a lot time and you can use these hours however you want. These 31 hours would be a great time for things like watching TV, reading, playing games, or pursuing whatever forms of entertainment you enjoy most. Some of these 31 hours could also be the time you spend with friends and family.
Working for yourself can also mean working to improve yourself. Improving yourself can mean time spent learning new skills or practicing skills you already possess. For example, as a computer programmer I could spend time learning new coding techniques to improve my knowledge and effectiveness as a computer programmer. Reading to expand your knowledge and learn new things is also important. This means you can use your 20 hours working for yourself as both time to learn and develop yourself in addition to working on hobbies and personal projects.
Other things you could do with your 20 hours working for yourself is to pursue additional learning opportunities. For example, you could take online courses to learn new subjects. Many colleges and universities also provide courses you can take. Consider pursuing some of these learning opportunities as part of the time you spend working for yourself.
To sum up, I think that having a time budget is an idea worth considering. People budget their money so they can have control over their finances. Why not budget your time as well so you can have control over your time. I think this will make you more organized and productive and it will ultimately give you more control over your life.