Time Budgets

 

I think we can all agree there are not enough hours in a day, time seems to fly as we get older and there is more to do than there is time to do it.  Because of this I try to budget my time so I am able to get things done that are the most important to me.

 

Number one is to keep a clean, organized and tidy home.  Because I work a full time job and often extra hours my time is very limited.  Housekeeping is not the only thing I want to spend my time doing so I do all of my housekeeping on a schedule and in 15 minute increments.  I have been doing this for quite a few years now and I am still amazed that this process actually works as well as how much I am able to get done in just 15 minutes of time.

 

Larger projects have a tendency to monopolize so much of my time that I rarely have time leftover for fun or even rest.  This has proven to be difficult for me so I have worked out a different strategy when it comes to that.  For one thing I don't take on quite as many big projects as I used to.  That has helped tremendously.

 

When I have a lot of small tasks that need to be completed I will schedule a bank of time and outline hour by hour how I can get those tasks finished.  If I have three hours on a Saturday I will schedule each of those hours with a reasonable number of tasks I feel I can get completed in that time frame.

 

Other longer term projects I now map out over a certain period of time and schedule an hour a day to work on that project.  When we pruned our trees last fall I knew it would take several weeks for us to accomplish this particular project.  I was able to work one hour after work a few days each week and 2 hours on Saturdays until it was done.  I was able to get the pruning completed without it taking over my life.  The bonus was we worked on it little bit by little bit so it was a much more manageable task overall.  The best part was I was able to do a lot of other things I wanted to do at the same time this project was going on.

 

There are a lot of different ways to budget time, but right now this process seems to be working very well for me.  Do you do any type of time budgeting?