Budgeting Time for the Week – Part 1
Budgeted Time – Part 7
This lesson is designed to help one grasp an understanding on how to budget your weeks and actually create a budget for a week. We will break it down into two parts: 1) boundaries to your schedule and 2) having a rolling view of one’s schedule. To get us started in this first installment, we want to introduce you to these two practices before we get into the details of each respectively. In this way, we will first share the basics and then come back with the practice or practical detail later.
Boundaries to Your Schedule
Anytime you talk about a budget, what it does is creates boundaries. A budget means boundaries. A budget helps you identify your own personal borders or dividers. For example, when you cross state lines, it lets you know that you’ve moved from one state to the next state. Crossing these boundaries indicate what laws and rules now govern how you live and operate. Those lines are important even at its minimum of giving you an idea of where you are located. In a financial budget, when you go over the amount you should spend in one area means you have to pull from another area. In other words you’ve crossed some boundaries. Knowing your boundaries financially and those dividing lines is quite important. The same is also true with your time. If you’re scheduled to work an eight-hour shift of time or time block (a.k.a. a time transaction as I like to call it) and you’re asked to work over that means you are pulling time from somewhere else. You have wandered across a boundary. The question is, where are you pulling that time? Into what territory have you wondered and are now pulling resources? You see, in life, you have to have these boundaries set.
“Boundaries in your schedule” has three pieces, we’d like to offer as food for next-level-thought.
- You should give every week a purpose.
If you don’t give your week a purpose, someone else will give you a week of their purpose. - You have to control your time or it will be controlled for you.
Most of your life, if you don’t set up boundaries, is controlled by someone else. Because you have no set boundaries, your time will be controlled by a person or an organization if you allow it. - You should use your calendar to identify the boundaries desired to govern your week of time.
We’ll take a look at your calendar and talk about how to set the boundaries in what I call time slots or open spaces. We will find a way to figure out how to visually see the open spaces that you really have available. This way when someone asks you for your time, you know what time blocks are available based on the boundaries you have preset.
Setting blocks also teaches us when we are available to work. For example, if every Wednesday you have a project meeting from 8 to 12 that means nothing else is available for you to do during that time-block. Therefore your only available open slot will be in the afternoon. If you don’t have this set, or these boundaries already mapped out on your calendar, what ends up happening is you will try to do more work on Wednesday than you have time to get done. Once you have these blocks in place, you can start filling in the blocks with tasks that you prioritize.
30-Day Rolling Scheduling
We have a process that we call a “30-day rolling calendar.” That means every week I look out (ahead) for 30 days. I then place the blocks or boundaries into my calendar. Later we will define those blocks in greater granular detail so that you can get some ideas on what goes into your calendar. For example, there are some things that go into your calendar that are automatic that most people don’t ever have on their calendars. Here’s an example. I have to plan when to shave. Shaving is a normal activity but it takes more time for me to prepare for my day than compared to the day I don’t shave.
In theory, any time you add something to your calendar, you’re adjusting to that time anyway. The point is, I’m going to plan beforehand, as opposed to having a reactive approach. We choose to be proactive as opposed to reactive.
This proactive approach to managing what you do in a week’s time is why most people, when they talk about how I am wired, say I never get in a hurry. For the most part, I am not in a hurry because I’ve already pre-planned for everything that’s going to occur in my week. Do things come up and disrupt your calendar or your schedule from time to time? Sure. But if you already have it budgeted, you already know what items will have to adjust. Stress and worry comes in when you: 1) don’t know what you have going on, and 2) when you forget something you planned to do because you didn’t place it on your time-budget (calendar). The beauty of having a planned schedule is, it makes life and operating one’s life easier in this way.
I know all of this sounds intense and it should because this is next-level-type of thinking. The goal and the only reason we’re doing this is so that you can take your calendar, your schedule for a week to the next level. If we do this together, you will learn how to go from an ordinary normal life to an exceptional, extraordinary life. Your time will no longer be where it can be wasted by others. It is going to be where you get to decide where your time is spent. Those are two different concepts. Without boundaries most people will have their time taken from them and unfortunately, they don’t even realize it occurred until after it occurs. If I’m spending time with a person, this means it’s already scheduled around every other activity I have that requires my attention. When and by what set of boundaries those tasks, activities, and events occur must be scheduled. Let’s stop allowing ourselves to be robbed of time by creating a budget to manage how it’s used.
Question: What would you like to know that will help transform how you budget your time over a period of a week?
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