Time And Tide Wait For No Man

It's amazing how people will spend considerable time budgeting their money, but no one pays much attention to budgeting their time.

Time.
It's so precious.
Time is money.
We only have so much.

And like money, the important point is, how much you have now.
Timeflow is as crucial as cashflow.

I was listening to a work colleague some time back discuss how she planned her shopping, by working out what was cheaper where.
By my reckoning, the shopping trip must have involved a four hour journey, a full tank of petrol and five supermarkets.
Is it worth it for a twenty pound saving a month?
For three times as long as just going to the nearest one?

Do you think you are selling your free time well?
I don't.

The fact is, there are one hundred and sixty eight hours in the week.
Factor in travelling time and other randomness, you can fairly allocate fifty to fifty five hours to work.



Take out Shopping, Eating, The Bathroom, Domestic Chores and other essential life tasks, you are left with around a hundred hours.

That might sound a lot.
But fifty hours or so is considered a good week's sleep, and thirty five is really a bare minimum.
You can't get by with much less.
Not if you are able to keep going.

And Life is like a never ending stream of bills, eating into our overdraft.
You never have the time you think.

Factor in somewhere between ten to thirty hours on friends. It depends on the week, but these are the rough guidelines.
Factor in ten to fifteen hours blogging- It IS time consuming, but if you are reading this, you know these figures are accurate-ish.
Factor in five hours television or DVDs.

Now looking at the upper limits of these demands, we have already lost our hundred hours.

In weeks where social life demands the full thirty, there isn't much room for anything else.

And here come the unexpected bills, we forgot about before we worked out our budget.

There is your mother you never visit.
There is your grandmother you never visit.
There are the interesting places you never take a Saturday afternoon to visit.

And now the football season has started.
That's another four hours a week at least!

And where could you fit a relationship in?
Long term?
You can juggle it for a bit, after that you are in trouble.

Something has to give.

For me, it's usually sleep.
I really don't sleep enough.
Four to five hours, most weekdays.
I try to catch it up at weekends, but I always wake up on Monday STILL feeling exhausted.



Is it like this for everyone?

Thank God for the Bank Holiday Weekend.
Nice Long Baths, Nice Long Sleeps...