Zero-Based Time Budgeting: A Tale of Four Visions (for How to Allocate Your Time)

Yesterday, I was trying to wake you up to the fact that it’s fine to have the time freedom of FIRE.

But You better Use it, because it won’t last forever.

All those benefits of a Post-Fire Lifestyle listed are true.

I love the heck out of it, even if I am still trying to get my sea legs under me.

Occasionally, I still have some deadlines, but I do way less rushing around than in my pre-FIRE life.

Gone are the A-Holes I used to have to work with in order to get my hard-earned pay.

Sleeping in is possible, but I never do it. Again, conditioning has caused me to be a total morning person. Or am I a morning person? I am not sure. But I typically rise before the sun.

That said, wow, I’ve painted myself into a corner.

And I have not been able to figure out how best to use my time.

What to do?

Well, here are four visions of how to Allocate your time.

They represent four of the most common ways people Plan How to use time.

I have used all of them in one way or another.

The Grind

The other day, I heard a guy describing his life as a high-powered attorney at a successful law firm.

He and his coworkers had very simple lives.

Nice apartments. Nice cars. A lot of work and time in the office.

Get up. Go to the office. Drive back to the apartment. Repeat.

He said that you had better love your apartment and your car when that is all you have outside of 80 hours of work.

That was not unlike my life in a corporate role.

I didn’t put in as many hours per day, but it was a grind, as I have described in other articles.

The positives to this lifestyle are that your time decisions are pretty much on autopilot.

You know when you need to “clock” in.

You know when you can Duck out.

If you’re lucky, you have your weekends free to recreate and rest.

If you’re particularly driven or ambitious, you Can squeeze out two or three hours per day for side projects, too.

If you work for a fancy company, you get great pay and benefits.

If you work for an “enlightened” company, they provide lots of other perks, including ample time off for vacations and holidays.

Although a lot of people don’t use their vacation time (culture Frowns on it) and lose it.

It’s not bad.

It’s even better if you like your work.

Even better if you like who you work with and for.

The negative is that it is a grind.

It is monotonous. It never stops.

You have little time freedom.

You are likely numbing yourself, and/or in the process of numbing yourself, to escape.

Staying in shape?

Not so easy. Unless that is one of your side projects.

But it’s a way to live, and you can get used to it.

In fact, it is very hard to come out of, I have learned.

The Monastery Life

This was, and I suppose still is, one of my alternative visions for how to live my life.

Heck, it’s sort of what I am doing today.

I am batch-writing articles for the coming week.

When I am at a break point, I go for a walk to get in more steps. Then back to writing.

My strongest vision of this came around was when I was caught up in reading Ken Wilber in the early 2000s.

I pictured myself living in a small cottage by the Oregon Coast.

I always pictured myself alone in the vision, now that I reflect on it.

That is telling, because at the time I was married with three children at home.

It wasn’t that I wanted them out of my life, but I never had alone time, or perhaps enough alone time.

In my mind’s eye, I pictured myself in simple surroundings.

I would read, research, write. And then I would walk the beach.

There was a PBS show about a monk who solved murder mysteries.

He said he did three things every single day:

• work in the garden

• do his detective work, and

• worship (study scripture, pray, and meditate).

That sounded so pleasant to me.

Ah, just relax into a simple life. But also have things that interest you and utilize your talents and skills to keep it interesting.

It’s not too shabby of a vision.

But is it really what I want? Perhaps it’s exactly right for some.

but for myself? I am not so sure.

Definitely not all the time.

I was burning the candle at both ends at the time of the PBS show.

I needed rest.

I was also burning the candle at both ends when I came up with the Oregon Coast hermit, writer, beachcomber vision.

Hell, I’ve spent most of my life burning the candle at both ends.

I have a very hard time sinking into doing nothing much.

The Perfect Week: Put the Big Rocks In First

I love this vision for how to use your time, too. It makes so much sense.

It’s uncomplicated and is based on the idea of radical ownership of your own time.

It’s essentially the idea behind Stephen Covey’s First Things First.

Cal Newport has basically adopted this approach in his writing and his time-management planning system, too.

It’s very popular.

Personally, the best method I have seen for this was presented in a YouTube video by Craig Ballantyne. I think he’s even written two books on the topic:

The Perfect Day and then The Perfect Week.

It’s so simple.

You have seven days in a week.

Divide each day into six time blocks.

Fill in your “non-negotiable” items into the time blocks.

These would be what Covey termed the big rocks.

Ballantyne gave a cheesy example of “date night,” which is fine, but you get the idea.

Maybe you attend a workout class. You have some kind of lesson.

Perhaps you have a game night. Perhaps you go to church each week.

You decide.

But generally, stuff like that.

Appointments that you don’t want to miss. They are static and rarely move.

Then you figure out how to get the rest of your life done in the remaining time blocks.

My biggest problem with this approach is that I rebel against it. Immediately.

I have attempted it a few times.

I start the week with items filled out.

Then I say to myself, “F’ that, I have total time freedom. I’ll approach my day however I damn well feel like it.”

Thus, I’ve also tried to start the week with a blank sheet.

I have 42 open blocks (7 days × 6 blocks per day), and I fill it out as I go.

Well, I have a couple of items that I fill in, but in general, it’s totally blank.

I then have the flexibility to decide, in the moment, what goes into each time block.

I should probably give this “fill it in as I go” approach another try.

But … yeah, it’s never caught on for me.

One Hit Wonders

This is what I have been doing this year, since March 17, when I posted the first blog article.

The idea was to start implementing one new habit per month.

And not just a habit. A process habit. Or an outcome habit.

Something you really care about doing, consistently, that you can measure and hold yourself accountable to do.

And that is the key.

I have been holding myself 100% accountable to doing each one I have implemented.

No excuses. No loafing. No trying. Just do.

Yoda would be proud.

It worked until August. And then I hit a wall.

I backed off on one of the One Hit Wonders that I put in place prematurely (100 Open Mic Performances).

That helped.

Therefore, instead of six One Hit Wonders, I now have five.

and I am continuing to meet them.

But …

The problem remains that I am also not doing “all the things” that really matter.

Therefore, I went to Google Gemini to get some brainstormed ideas for how to budget my time going forward.

It was actually helpful and revealing.

I’ll cover some of what I learned in the next article.