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This exercise is designed to help you examine your work-life balance and time management. It will help you to identify how you would like to allocate your time and compare this with how you currently spend it. The exercise should be completed over the course of a week.
How to Use This Exercise
This is an individual exercise, designed to help you understand how you spend your time on a daily basis. It could easily be adapted as a group exercise, by asking people to complete the first part of the exercise, then coming back together after a week to review the results.
What You'll Need
- downloadable worksheet
- colored pens x 5 (if printing the worksheet out)
Dowload your Life Priorities Worksheet
What to Do
Consider your typical week. Think about the amount of time that's allocated to:
- work, including commuting
- family time
- personal time, i.e. pursuing activities you enjoy or just relaxing
- necessary personal tasks that you don’t particularly enjoy, e.g. shopping, housework etc.
- sleeping
How much time do you think you currently spend on each of those categories per week? Try to make reasonably accurate estimates of the number of hours you spend on each. You should have a final total of 168 hours (the total number of hours in a week).
Use the first blank pie chart on the worksheet to help visualize your week. Here is a worked example for guidance:
Now complete the second pie chart: how you would like your week to look, realistically. What do you want to do more of, and what would you like to reduce?
Compare the two pie charts and think about what you would like to change – and how.
Your perception of how you spend time may not always be accurate. Over the course of the next week (which should be a normal working week to be of the most use), record the amount of time you actually spend on each activity day by day. You may want to set an alarm for the end of the day to remind you to complete it. You can use the table on the worksheet or record it in your own way if that is more convenient.
Review
After you have a full week of data, complete the third pie chart to show how you actually spent your time in the last week. How does it compare with the other two? Are things better or worse than you thought?
You should now have a good idea of exactly where your time goes each week, and a model for how you would like things to be. Think about the following questions:
- What changes do you need to make?
- Are these changes realistic?
- How will you go about implementing the changes?
Have you discovered that you would ideally like to work different hours? Have you considered any financial implications that may result? Should you discuss this with your family and your boss?
Are necessary tasks eating up your time? Can you identify any ways to mitigate this? For instance, could you leave them until the weekend? Could they be dealt with in the course of one day rather than over the course of the week, or less often? Have you considered options like a hired cleaner, grocery delivery services, or doing some things online to help free up more of your time? Could you share tasks or ask for help from your family? Are there things you could do at lunchtime to free up your evenings?
If changing your working hours is not a realistic option for you, perhaps you would benefit from some of the other time management exercises in this section. You may be able to identify time-wasters that are eating into your time outside of work. Now that you know what you want to change, speak to your boss, family and friends to discuss any changes that affect them, and formulate a plan for how you can change your life to fit your ideal pie chart.
Find Out More
You may be interested in listening to our Book Insight of "168 Hours" by Laura Vanderkam.
