Father Time

There have been several posts or discussions between the three of us priority setting, time management and how each of us use our time.  But really, I’m wondering how do we use our time?  While Brad may have a spreadsheet clearly outlining his time usage, I certainly don’t.  So it was fun coming up with the listed below rough draft of the big rocks and how I utilize my waking hours (sleep time excluded).

Waking Time Available for Use in a Week:  119 hours (assumes 7 hours of sleep per night, on average)
Work Time:  55 hours (46%)
Driving Time:  16 hours (13%)
Family Time, no overlap to eating/TV time:  20 hours (17%)
TV Time:  9 hours (7.5%)
Eating Time:  7 hours (6%)
Workout Time:  5 hours (4%)

This is a current depiction.  I couldn’t think of anything that directly takes more than 5 hours per week.  This draft also assumes that I am not traveling, there are no holidays, and that I work five days and am off two.  Holiday weeks would certainly skew the results. 

Of the six big time consumers listed here it’s made me realize a few things.  The first is that I spend three times more of my waking moments driving than I do working out.  I even spend more time filling the pie-hole than I do working out.  Perhaps shocking, perhaps not.  One surprise to me was the amount of time I spend each week driving.  I (we, my family) spend a lot of time in the car.  Yes, TV time made the top six list and I estimated the actual amount of time I spend in front of a TV as accurately as I could.

One time consumer I’m proud of is what I’ve labeled “family time”.  Some might say that when you are spending over two times the amount of time working as you spend with your family that the ratio is out of whack.  But practically with the amount of time my family spends together, 20 hours felt like a good commitment to me.  And most of that time is on the weekend, of course. 

So what are the six biggest consumers of my brother’s time?  I hope they respond but I’ll take wild guess and say that:

·       Marc spends approximately the same amount of time in a car that I do.  Brad, not even close. 

·       Both Marc and Brad spend less time working.

·       Brad and Marc spend more time working out than I do.

·       The family time element will be interesting.  I’ll guess that both Marc and Brad spend more “family time” than I do, but perhaps that isn’t the case. 

While the mix varies to some degree and yes, I would like to spend less time working and more time doing other things, in general I was happy with my estimate.