Issue #5: Where I Find the Time

Ben Lesh tweeted this the other day. It’s a good question and I hear this a lot. I am in this category of people, so I replied briefly but I wanted to expand more on the subject because I haven’t given it its due time.

I can’t speak for everyone but I can share what has worked for me. Let’s talk about the idea of fixed vs. discretionary time.

Budgeting money (and time)

When you budget your money, you usually categorize your monthly expenses into two major buckets: fixed expenses and discretionary expenses. These can be further sub-divided into recurring or one-time expenses.

A fixed expense is an expense you have to pay: the mortgage, rent, utilities, groceries, long-term care for a parent. The rest, though, is discretionary: Xbox Ultimate Game Pass, Netflix, eating out, new standing desk.

This distinction doesn’t imply a judgment, e.g. buying a standing desk is not “bad” or “good”, it’s at your discretion.

Let’s talk about this same budgeting idea in terms of another value unit: time.

Fixed time vs. discretionary time

If you audited your day, you could divide it into two major buckets as well: fixed time and discretionary time. Let’s look at a typical weekday:

• 12am - 6am: Sleep (fixed)
• 6am-7am: Getting kids ready for school (fixed)
• 7am-8am: Commute (fixed)
• 8am-4pm: Work at job (fixed)
• 4pm-5pm: Commute (fixed)
• 5pm-8pm: Dinner and kids (fixed + discretionary)
• 8-10pm: Relax and recharge (discretionary)
• 10pm-12am: Sleep (fixed)

By default the majority of your day is made up of fixed time—that is, the time you dedicate to someone other than yourself. Your work, your boss’, your kids’.

That 8pm-10pm is discretionary time. In that time, you could choose to: watch Netflix/YouTube, play a game, do a hobby, read a book, spend time with a loved one, or take a nap.

Two hours might not seem like a lot of discretionary time but over the course of a work-week, it’s still 10 hours. That’s 40 hours a month and about 520 hours a year. When you add it up, it’s a lot.

When I talk to a lot of people, including friends, people usually say, “But I don’t have any time!”. I know it is true that you are busy and I am busy. We are both busy. The question is, how are you busy?

Let’s borrow an idea from personal finance called “the gap.”

Mind the Gap

When we visited London, whenever the train came in the Underground you hear an automated voice in the station announce, “Mind the gap.” That’s the space between the platform and the train, don’t trip!

Minding “the gap” in personal finance is the amount you earn minus what you spend It’s really just another reframe on “savings” but the idea of the gap is that it can be grown in two ways: making more or spending less. “Offense” and “defense.” The power is in the gap. It creates more room in your life to make more meaningful decisions and to intentionally design your life.

You can apply this same thinking to time, in terms of fixed vs. discretionary time.

Fixed expenses are not immutable

Let’s go back to those “fixed” expenses.

• Mortgage / Rent
• Gas
• Food
• Utilities
• Loans

These are typically fixed expenses on someone’s budget. Most are “fixed” only in terms of being present but they are not fixed in terms of the amount (unless it’s loans, that is an emergency). Many of the fixed expenses come from decisions we make.

If I buy a $250,000 house, given an equivalent down payment, I pay less mortgage than someone with a $500,000 house. I’ve made a fixed expense smaller.

If I buy groceries from Aldi, I pay less than someone who shops at Lund’s (by about 30% by my receipt comparisons). I’ve made my grocery fixed expense smaller.

And on it goes down the list. Expenses may be fixed but they are not immutable. By making changes to your lifestyle, you could choose to lower fixed expenses. As you lower each one, you grow your gap.

Where do you spend your discretionary time?

Unlike income which varies, we all have the same 24 hours to work with. It’s our budget. Just like you can reduce spending to fall under a budget so too can you reduce “fixed” time spent. It may just take a mindset shift.

If we take our earlier example day and draw it as blocks of time, it might look like this:

The idea is that if you can lower the time spent on “fixed” time expenses, you now have more discretionary time to work with, this is your “gap.”

For example, what if this person eeked out 1 additional hour of their day? Maybe they choose to wake up at 6am, before the kids get up, to exercise or work on something important to them?

They have just reclaimed 1 hour of their day, which is 7 hours per week—that’s 52 weeks in a year making 364 hours per year.

Perhaps they’d rather not sleepless so instead they adjust their lifestyle in a different way. They switch to a remote work job and eliminate their daily commute.

Our example person’s commute is 2 hours a day. They now reclaimed that time, leading to a whopping 10 hours per week or 520 hours per year.

And then let’s go even further, to what your “ideal” day might look like. One where maybe you choose to work part-time, from 10am-2pm, 100% remotely.

Now in our fictitious example, this person has reclaimed an additional 4 hours which is 20 hours per week.

What this person has effectively done through choosing to reduce or eliminate the time they spent on “fixed” time is add back 1,562 hours per year (or 30 hours per week). That’s almost as much as a full-time job’s worth of time. And now they can use that time as they wish:

• learn the drums
• play a ton of games
• volunteer
• write a novel
• contribute to open source
• spend more time with family

The last one sounds wrong but it’s not. By reclaiming more of my time, I can give more of my discretionary time to my family intentionally (like board games or movie nights, etc.).

Let’s chart the fictitious scenarios to see the impact of each lifestyle decision:

The answer to finding more time is to take aim at your “fixed” time and spend less on it. When you have more time, you can slow down on life and enjoy the journey.

The pandemic’s impact

This is all well and good but what about the pandemic? It has affected so many people, with a net negative especially toward communities of color and poorer people. The fact is that so many people can’t even begin to think about “discretionary” time because the pandemic has made it so there’s way more fixed time now:

• kids learning at home
• taking care of elderly family members
• losing work
• being evicted

I don’t want to just gloss over this. I am hopeful that the situation improves for so many people.

This framework or set of ideas are just that—some (hopefully) useful tools. You may not be able to put them into practice yet (or at all, but I hope you can) until your situation improves. You shouldn’t feel a need to be “motivated” even if you have some discretionary time. That time should be used for self-care. It’s “putting your own oxygen mask on first” so that you can be your best for others.

So, what’s my gap?

So now to answer Ben’s question directly: how do I find the time? In other words, what’s my gap?

Well, I follow this same advice. Here is what my typical weekday looks like:

Since my job has itself turned into a 100% remote job, I was able to reclaim my commute just like the person in my example. I use my lunchtime to relax during the day. I typically have another small slice of time after work before the kids come home. And then after they go to bed, I have a chunk there.

My weekends aren’t much different except that most of the discretionary time (for myself) is during nap time in the afternoon for about an hour and then again after bedtime (about 3 hours).

All told, based on this, I have about 6 hours per workday and 8 hours each weekend.

My gap is 14 hours per week, on average. That is where I make time to do what matters most.

My 14 hours isn’t a constant. My wife and I schedule date nights, we sometimes watch shows with friends, chores in the evening can take extra time, but on average, it sounds about right.

The impact of lifestyle

Showing time as little blocks of red and green is great for illustration but it doesn’t really dive into the dirty details. Our days don’t usually have neat end/start times (unless we live by our calendar, which is an option).

There are many lifestyle decisions we personally made (or “arrived at”) that contribute to building our gap:

• I have a “distraction-free” phone where I uninstall social apps and disable all but the most critical notifications (and I don’t have email on my phone).
• I limit social media to 30m max a day.
• We use delivery services for groceries to reduce/eliminate time driving.
• We meal plan to reduce time spent shopping/thinking about what to eat.
• My work is remote which eliminates the commute.
• We divide weekly cleaning into small chunks and tackle them with the kids (laundry, tidying) or while one of us watches the kids (kitchen, bathrooms, floors).
• We only have one TV in the basement.
• The kids are in bed by 8p, full stop.

This is what works for us. Ultimately, the way you spend your time comes down to your lifestyle decisions and the routines you build for yourself. That is why you can’t just give blanket advice to people. Instead, I think it’s better to focus on the fixed vs. discretionary time and to inspect that more closely for your own life.

The link between time and money

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this idea of “the gap” in finance and in time are inextricably linked. I have been talking about time but many of the lifestyle decisions a person can make are tied to their financial outlook. As developers, we have the ability to find ourselves in the higher-earning category which gives us many more options. This is what I plan to focus on in my upcoming talk.

Recently I read through the book Make Time (affiliate) last year and it has a ton of great tidbits/advice you can take action on in an easy-to-consume format. I also previously recommended Atomic Habits (affiliate) for getting in the mindset of forming systems and that small changes lead to big results over time.

It really comes down to spending time (and money) on what I value most. This is also called a “valuist” philosophy.

Where does my motivation come from?

The pandemic impacted my motivation, especially at the onset but I eventually found my “new normal.” There was a lot of stress and anxiety. The motivation is probably not there yet for a lot of people where it used to be.

I’ve always been the type of person that enjoys the act of creation (in many forms) more than consuming. I mean, I’m not a robot; we recently finished Call My Agent on Netflix (it’s amazing!) and I’m 100+ hours into Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, but that’s because I’m intentionally choosing to spend my time there as those things brings me joy. I’m not just watching them by default.

So there you go. I encourage you to take a deeper look at how you spend your time. Find the fixed time in your life and see if you can shave it a little, give it a haircut. Maybe you’ll be able to grow your gap too and make room for what matters most to you!

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