Have your Slice and Byte it too – P1 | Be More Series

With my work commitment, I had barely any time left in a day when my kids were less independent. I had a long list of personal things to get to but no time. I needed help. That’s when I devised a method to take care of my commitments and have time for my aspirations.

Read time: just over a min.

A long list of to-dos and not enough hours in a day to get to them. Dreams fade away, passion dies, and life sometimes ends up with regrets. That often seems to be the story for many.

Are we running out of time, or is it a question of an untapped perspective?

Let me explain my method using an example of an average office worker.

We’ll call this fictitious character Tim.

Tim is an aspiring writer but is not able to find enough time to pursue his dream. Investing 100s of hours penning a 400-page book seems like a distant dream for him. He dreads the various sacrifices he needs to manifest his aspiration.

Discovering Time.

Tim, like most others, need help finding more time and a method to fulfill their dream.

First, let’s help Tim find some time.

Like most people, Tim divides his time into three big slices.

Time Slice 1 – Work hours (06:00 -17:00)

Time Slice 2 – Home hours (17:00 – 22:00).

Time Slice 3 – Sleep hours (22:00 – 06:00).

Let’s break it down further.

The following assumptions may not apply to you specifically. For instance, the sleep hours for you and Tim may not be the same.

• Bedtime : 10 pm
• Wake up time: 6 am
• That’s 8 hours spent from the available 24 hours. 16 hours are remaining.
• The time between getting ready for work, commute (3 hours) and work hours (8 hours). The commute may be different given our current situation, but we’ll use that, hoping everything will be back to the old routine (well, maybe almost).
• That’s 11 hours spent from the remaining 16 hours. Balance is 5 hours.
• Tim now has 5 hours until bedtime before he repeats this routine.
• Let’s give 2 hours for dinner, family, entertainment, catching-up on urgent chores, last-minute work email, etc.
• Let’s add another 1 hour for things that may come in the way.
• At the end of each day, Tim has 2 hours left.

That may not seem much at a micro level, but when you stack them over a workweek, you get 10 hours each weekday (2 hours x 5 weekdays = 10 hours).

Tim has 10 solid hours each week, which is just over a workday each week. 

What? Tim has an extra workday in a 5 day week! Yes, you read that right. And he doesn’t have to make any sacrifices. And, that is not even counting the weekends. That’s a bonus. 

I have not included weekends simply because not everyone has the luxury of 2 days weekends, but most of us do have a five day work week.

We’ll call it Slice 4 or, as I call it, mySlice.

Like Tim, we all have this extra mySlice buried in our day-to-day schedule waiting to be discovered. All it takes is shifting the perspective of how we view time.

Tim is now a believer. We have helped Tim with the time challenge. We found him a new Slice of time in his typical busy day/week. He is open to thinking beyond the three slices.

How can Tim use this newly discovered 10-hours per week of available time?

Stay tuned to how we’ll help Tim with a system that would allow him to use his freshly discovered mySlice to fulfill his dream of becoming a writer.

Thank you for sharing some of your precious time with me each week. Leave a comment if you liked it.

Until next week.

Razak
CommonInterest