Time Budgeting: How to Spend Your Hours Like You Spend Your Money

We budget our money with spreadsheets, apps, categories, and more. But time? We spend it like it's completely unlimited. But what if we treated time like our most valuable currency?

I wanted to use the word "invest," instead of "spend" in the title because when we invest money, there's an expected return. Spending feels like squandering. There's no ROI.

But I couldn’t use "invest" in the title because I didn't want you to think about investing money in stocks, bonds, and GICs. 

Time as Investment

It’d be great if we stopped spending our time and instead invested it.  We do that by allocating it, just like we might allocate our money in a budget. When we put our money into something, we're looking for: ​

• What's the outcome? 
  
• What's the ROI? 
  
• What's the interest I'm going to get? ​
  

Every hour of our day has a strong ROI if we use it wisely. If we invest our time, we can use it to make money, boost our energy, and build stronger relationships; but when we spend time, it will drain us.

Asking if the way we use our time boosts or drains us:

• Are the things you're doing with your time boosting your energy or draining your energy? 
  
• Are they boosting your income or draining your income? 
  
• Are they improving your relationships or draining your relationships?
  

You could stop reading right now and just take that as the point, because it's a different way of thinking. We shouldn't give our money to software we're not using or subscriptions we're not using. A lot of times we unconsciously allocate our time to things that really aren't beneficial.

The Cost of Reactivity

Entrepreneurs spend a lot of their time being reactive to situations, and context switching. Even right before I recorded this, I was jumping between tasks and was like, "Stop it. Stop waiting for the person to reply. Set up a time to actually talk to them."

That reactivity and context switching are actually causing entrepreneurs to lose 32% of their week. That's like a third of your time wasted that could be used more efficiently.

It often hurts for us to waste our money, but it doesn't always hurt for us to waste our time. We don't see it in the same way. We're not just going to throw our money away, but we throw away our time on things like doom-scrolling or procrastination.

Time budgeting, just like financial budgeting, helps you to have these five benefits: 

1. clear priorities 
2. less overwhelm
3. stronger boundaries on what you're saying yes to 
4. more meaningful progress
5. the ability to be decisive and make decisions based on all of these pieces.

Why Aren't People Doing This?

1. Guilt of Saying No: We'll say no to something financial because we know we maybe can't afford it or don't want to put our money towards something, and most of the time we're not embarrassed by that. We get to choose a luxury vehicle or something reliable and price conscious. We're not going to apologize to people buying one over the other.
But we have a lot of guilt in saying no to something when it involves our time. If we have time, we feel like we should give it freely. People don't necessarily know how much money we have, so they're not always asking us to give that freely, but sometimes they make their own judgment on how much time we have and how much time we can give.
2. Thinking that Being Busy Equals Being Valuable: If we're thinking about being busy, we give away our time. Instead, we can think about our time being valuable, then we will invest our time on what matters to reach our goals and build relationships.
3. Reactivity Disguised as Responsibility: "I gotta deal with this. I gotta deal with this," rather than checking in and being like, "Is this a priority for me? Is this important for me?" I heard a funny expression on a show: "Not my sink, not my dishes." You don't have to wash someone else's dishes if it's not your sink. We're often put into situations where we give so much of our time to help others without actually seeing the value.

The Problems When Time Is Ignored

1. Always Behind: There are always more things to do because you're saying yes, because you're not honouring your own priorities. You're doing too many things for too many people. You're putting everyone else's stuff first. 
2. Burnt Out: You feel behind, then become burnt out because you're always trying to catch up because time is just being burnt at both ends and in the middle. And guess what happens to your own agenda, your own goals? They get pushed to the back burner.
3. Priorities Hijacked by Urgency: These priorities you have get hijacked by the urgency of other people's tasks or by staying up with your list. Always putting others first will lessen your confidence and drive.
   
4. Living Out of Alignment: You end up living out of alignment with your values. We make decisions with our money. We also make decisions with our time. The ways we make decisions with our time can affect our loved ones, our goals, society around us and ultimately our own happiness.
   
5. Unhappy Life Path: You might end up on a life path or living a life you're not happy about. That's usually what I see happen. Time for others and no time for yourself.
   

What Can You Do?

If you know that time is a resource, just like money is a resource, figure out how much time you have.

1. Assess Your Time: How much of my time is flexible that I can decide what happens with it? How much of my time is constricted? Like if I'm at a nine-to-five, from nine to five I only have the hour in the middle of the day that's mine, or I have the start of the day that's mine, but then I have kids at this hour. Figure out how much you have. That's usually what a financial advisor does, right? They figure out how much money you have, then you can invest it wisely.
2. Do an Audit: Look at last week and ask yourself: Where did I spend my time, and where did I invest my time, and where did I waste my time? Invest, spend, and waste. Categorize each activity towards things that are leaking your energy, draining your energy, or giving you a really high ROI.
3. Optimize High ROI Activities: Maybe an area is good, but could it be better? Could it be better if you give more time or even less time? Is there a difference between a three-hour hangout with a friend and a one-hour hangout? Could you do the one-hour hangout more often? Is three hours too much? Could you meet in the middle rather than driving the full distance? Would that be supportive of your time?
4. Reallocate Saved Time: Find one spot where you can save some time, then make sure you're allocating it to something that's a value to you. Don't find an hour and then allocate it to doom-scrolling, Netflix, or procrastinating. Actually do something that moves your needle forward and helps you achieve your goals and be happier.

Invest your hours like they matter, because they do. The moment you start treating your time as currency, everything from your confidence to your results begins to shift. When you choose where your time goes, you take ownership of the life you’re creating.

Until next time, stay dynamic!