In my last post of this series, I explained how to set up a time budget template. Now I’ll take you through how I plan a particular week. At this point, you should have a template set up with sections 1 and 2 filled in with your daily and weekly recurring commitments. It might look a little something like this:
Keep an eye on that number in the upper right corner. You don’t want that number to exceed your target for the week—especially before you get to your next two sections. I like to use 98 as my target (14 x 7). You can refer back to my first post in this series to determine what your target number should be.
Setting Up a New Week
In order to avoid reinventing the wheel each week, I duplicate my template. In Google Sheets, you can do this by right clicking on the sheet name. I select “Duplicate” and then name the template using the dates of the week that I’ll be planning. Because I delete numbers from the sheet during the week, I don’t like to copy and paste the previous week. Maintaining the template separately saves a lot of time. Once I’ve got my weekly sheet set up, I pull out my calendar.
Section 3
I use Cozi for my family calendar, but you can use any form that works for you! Just take a look at the upcoming week day by day. Enter any commitments for the week in the appropriate section. Most of these will be section 3, but check to make sure you didn’t forget anything in section 2! If needed, add it to the current week and update your template. For example, you’ll notice that the example above doesn’t include a weekly planning session! If I were actively setting up this budget, I would want to add that both to the current week and to my template.
For each unique item in your calendar, add an estimate (in minutes) of how long you think it will take in the column for the appropriate day. I try to overestimate rather than underestimate. And don’t forget to include driving and transition time! For a few weeks, I entered 60 for my daughters’ hour-long gymnastics lessons. I quickly realized that it takes 10 minutes to get to and from the gym, and they needed some time to change and gather their stuff. Using 90 was much more accurate.
One additional thing to note here is that sometimes activities can overlap. For example, I have lunch in section 1, but I might add a lunch with a friend to section 3. I can handle that in a couple of ways. Sometimes, I just enter the section 3 item, knowing that I’m probably overestimating the amount of time I will spend that day on lunch. This helps me not worry too much if lunch runs longer than I expected! Or I might go ahead and change lunch to 0 for that day in section 1. It’s up to you!
Once you’ve gone through your calendar, you can move on to section 4.
Section 4
This is where, to use a Disney term, we find the extra magic hours. Remember, section 4 is for anything you want to do during the week that doesn’t need to happen at a certain time. You might have some recurring tasks in here from your template. I keep my weekly baking projects here because I can’t always predict when we’ll need more bread, muffins, or cookies. (Carbs are fun!) Check your list and make updates as needed. Then take a look at your total time up in the J column. Hopefully, you’re under your target number for the week. If so, it’s time to add some fun!
For a long time, if I had extra time in my day, I would just fill it with other need-to-dos. I didn’t feel like I had permission to have fun until everything else in my life was done. But of course, it’s never done. There will always be another closet to organize, toilet to scrub, freezer to stock. Your kids will take every second you offer them. And, of course, the doomscroll is infinite. When I didn’t have a plan to have fun, I would either do more chores or stare at my phone. Neither filled me up.
Using a time budget helped me see that I was making time for my priorities. I could then choose how I wanted to spend the extra hours. Sometimes, I do have projects that need extra time, and I add those. But I also spend time on fun. This usually includes an hour for Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. It might be 30 minutes to read a magazine. If I have a larger amount of time, I might plan to browse a bookstore or squeeze in a walk with a friend (though this would move to section 3 once it’s on the calendar). Your fun might look totally different than mine—and that’s fine! Whatever you choose, add in line items to section 4 until you’ve hit your target budget number.
Overspending
But what if you get to section 4, and you’re already over budget on your time? Then it’s time to review the other sections. Reality is your friend, and if you believe your time estimates are reasonably accurate, then chances are you aren’t going to be able to do everything you’ve scheduled for the week. It’s better to make some purposeful cuts now rather than stressing yourself out, missing deadlines, or skipping sleep later in the week when your overcommitment catches up with you. Do you need to move an appointment? Can you purposefully decide to swap a labor-intensive meal for takeout or leftovers? If you’re self-employed, are you going to cut back your work hours this week?
This is also a good time to check for areas where you’ve doubled up. If you’ve got meals scheduled in section 1 and section 3, see if adjusting the numbers accordingly helps you get back in budget. Do you usually get 45 minutes of work done during the 90 minutes you have budgeted for your kids’ piano lessons? Make a note of that.
It’s ok if you are a little over your budget, but I’ve found that anything much more than 30 minutes per day over is either going to cause significant stress or result in dropped balls. Better to put them down gently.
On the weeks that I’m over, I like to keep a short list of the things I needed to cut underneath my budget. That way, if I do end up with some extra time (maybe a meeting gets cancelled or the toddler takes an extra-long nap), I can be purposeful with the windfall.
Next time, I’ll share how I use my time budget to plan a specific day. Have you given time budgeting a try? What are your favorite things to spend an extra magic hour on? Let me know in the comments!
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