This post is from our regular contributor, Kristi.
Most people realize the benefits of meticulously planned budgets.
Budgets allow you to recognize week spots in your finances, secure your money, eliminate wasteful spending, and encourage growth through investing.
As simple as they are, budgets are powerful tools that anyone can use to help get ahead financially.
We’ve all heard the old adage, time is money. If time is money, then shouldn’t your time be budgeted just as meticulously as your money? Especially when juggling part-time jobs or kids, time becomes a precious commodity.
If there never seem to be enough hours in your day to accomplish everything on your to-do list, then you might want to consider creating a budgeted time schedule for yourself. Analyze your day the same way that you would analyze your finances. You might find that you are able to edit out some activities to create a more efficient schedule.
Do you think you budget your time effectively? Here are some questions to ask yourself when analyzing your schedule.
Do you have time gnomes?
A time gnome is something I just made up, but hear me out. Is there anything in your life that steals minutes from your day like your dryer steals socks? A time gnome is anything that chips away 5, 10, 15 minutes or more throughout the day. By the end of the day, weak, month or year, you could have lost hours, days, and weeks of productive time.
Some of my time gnomes are checking my email too frequently, getting sidetracked online (looking at you, Pinterest), and scrolling through Facebook. Each and every one of these can easily suck 20 minutes away. By the end of the day, I have lost out on a solid hour of productivity because I let myself get distracted.
Time is a precious commodity, don’t let the time gnomes steal it away. Instead of periodically checking social media with no time limits, budget a set time into your day instead. Also, try to limit how often you check your email. Budgeting a specific time to respond to email could help prevent distraction from your current task every time a new message pings in your inbox.
It’s important to make productive use of your free time. We give some tips on how to do that here and here.
Can you achieve better results by hiring someone else?
Is the effort worth the time, and have you considered outsourcing? Taxes, accounting, administrative duties, and technical problems are the usual suspects for outsourcing.
Why waste time struggling to accomplish something that you aren’t good at, hate doing, or are actually losing money by focusing on? Realizing when to outsource a project is instrumental to freeing your time so you can focus on the jobs that actually make money.
Hopefully, you are in a job or career that you love and that you are great at doing. By outsourcing tasks outside of your specialty, you will be able to focus on whatever it is that you are paid to do. Most of the time, the dividends produced by increasing your productivity will trump the expense of outsourcing.
Are you wasting time by micromanaging?
Do you have a hard time letting go of complete control of a project? Do you waste time by constantly looking over the shoulder of your employees, or going back and doing a job differently after they’ve already completed the work, even though the work they did was sufficient or even great?
You might want to ask whether your standards are too high, or if your employees aren’t good enough. If they aren’t excelling at their job, then hire someone different who you do trust enough to get a project done without constant oversight. Workers are there to support you and get the job done. Don’t waste your time by doing their jobs.
Do you seek perfection unnecessarily?
At what point do you stop working on a project? Take a step back and assess whether your work is solid and well-thought out. It may not be a Mona Lisa, but does it have to be? Sometimes, good is good enough.
Of course there’s always a time and a place for perfection, but flawlessness doesn’t always have to be accomplished for every project.
Ask yourself if your need for perfection is necessary or just wasting time. Focus on perfection only when it’s truly important that you do so.
Do you have a hard time saying no?
Are you trying to juggle too much? Work, second job, side hustles, kids, PTA, soccer coaching, and community events. At what point do things become too much to handle? If you have a hard time saying no, then your obligations will pile up and eventually start to slip. How much stress and lack of sleep are you willing to endure before you learn to let things go?
It is alright to say no. People won’t hate you. You can say, “Sorry, I have a bit too much on my plate to take that on right now. I will let you know if my schedule changes in the future.” A little bit of diplomatic refusal could save your time and sanity.
More time equals more money
Stop letting the time gnomes sneak off with your precious minutes. Outsource cumbersome and time-consuming tasks to others so that you can focus on the work that you are most efficient at and which bring in money. Don’t be a micromanager or have an obsessive need for perfection. Learn to say no, so that you aren’t wasting time on projects that are unimportant to you.
Streamlining your work, cutting out inefficiency, and learning to delegate from a distance will free up your schedule so that you can focus on the most important things and potentially earn even more money. Treat your time like you would treat your money, and make sure to budget your time effectively.
Do you budget your time effectively? Which activities could you drop from your schedule to make more time?
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I seem to accomplish the most when I organize my to do list by time and with time allotments. Say 8:00-9:00, 9:00 – 9:30. I feel more productive. Maybe this is only in my imagination but at least I know where my time went. :)
Although I’m not quite as rigorous with my time budget as my financial budget (after all, I can’t have sinking accounts with my time), I use a loose time budget to be sure that I accomplish all my priority tasks which includes both personal and professional tasks. Once I’m done with those though, you know that trashy netflix is getting flipped on.
Mrs Crackin the Whip Recognizing when you are most productive is really important! It can be a serious waste of time to try to get work done when you just can’t seem to get it together. I know that I won’t get anything done around lunch time, so I don’t even try =]
Hannah UnplannedFinance No judgement here =] I love Netflix time!
This is something I’ve become more diligent over lately as we’re so busy. I have no problem hiring things out that I’m not equipped to do or don’t have the knowledge for, but it’s those small bits of time that add up. I work with a pretty solid to-do list, but have learned I need to force myself to close out things like email and social media sites so I can focus on the task at hand – allowing me to be more efficient and thus, make more money.
FrugalRules I agree completely. The time gnomes are my biggest hurdle when trying to manage my time effectively. I have a hard time focusing if I can see that a new notification for social media or email has poppped up.
I REALLY need to start tracking my time. Especially when it comes to my online time! I know that I spend quite a bit of time online, but I’m not quite sure how much of it is spent getting lost down rabbit’s holes or how much is actually productive. Time to bust out my spreadsheets to get back on track!
Christina@EmbracingSimple I love a good spreadsheet! I try to justify my online time as valuable “networking” when in reality it’s about 50% actual productive networking and 50% goofing off or getting lost down the rabbit holes.
I’m getting better at this simply by writing down my priorities for the day on a notepad and checking them off as I go. I still have some time leaks, but I try not to stress about it too much, as that is another form of trying to be a perfectionist. :)
I have a bad habit of getting sucked into Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram, so I have actually made that part of my schedule so that after I accomplish a number of tasks, I allow myself the break and by scheduling it into my day, I find that I waste less time when I do it.
Beachbudget I love to do lists to help me prioritize my day as well.
blonde_finance making social media a part of your schedule is a great way to enjoy the sites without overdoing it and wasting as much time.
I finally learned my lesson about taking on too much. I set out a serious time budget for the school year, and I need to be extremely strict with myself about meeting my own deadlines. Otherwise I get crazy, and then all of my work suffers. :)
One new category I added into my time budget is sleep! Since sleep is usually the first thing to go, I decided to make it a priority. I know my students and husband will appreciate it!
I have several gnomes that suck up my time. The worst is getting distracted by household chores when I really need to get work done. Time management is a continuous work in progress.
I fought hiring house cleaners and mowers for a looooong time. We have finally given in. It’s a bit of a temporary thing. I don’t always plan to pay others to do that work, but right now I need it. I need to focus on my freelancing career and the big move. After we move, we will scale way back.
On another note, this is something I have been contemplating about my own blog. Should it ever grow to be something that is completely unmanageable alone – what will I do? I would like to keep the writing as my voice. That basically means I have to do social media, too. But what tasks can I outsource? I have a list of them growing in my mind. Maybe one day I’ll need that list :-)
AlexandraRSF That’s a great point! I need to prioritize sleep as well! When I don’t prioritize sleep, I usually end up stressed, over-tired, and cranky.
Eyesonthedollar I never really thought of house chores as a time gnome, but you’re absolutely right. Sometimes the dishes or laundry can and should wait until my actual work is finished. It’s hard to learn to not juggle so much all the time.
indebtedmom I hear you! I desperately need someone to mow our yard. We live on just shy of an acre and we only have a push mower. Mowing the yard, especially while watching the two kids, eats up a whole morning and leaves me exhausted afterwards.
Once your blog reaches the point where you need help, you can hire a virtual assistant to focus on the social media aspects while you focus on the writing. Once I can afford it, I would love to hire consistent help for the more technical aspects of running a blog.
I struggle with managing my time efficiently. It seems like there are always 20 things I should be doing. I’ve been trying to make a more conscious effort to allocate.
houseoftre I agree that it can be hard to break down your day. Especially when facing a long to do list with items of equal importance, it’s difficult to prioritize.
My issue isn’t time, though there are days when I feel the crunch. I have to budget my energy. (Yay for chronic illnesses.)
So I have to schedule days very carefully, which I suppose amounts to scheduling my time carefully. I try to have only one appointment — my husband and I have a fair number of doctors appointments between the two of us — a day. At most two. If we have to get to three different places in a single day, I consider it hectic.
Similarly, we have to group errands. We can hit the post office on the way to the grocery store. Or we can pick up toilet paper at Walgreens on our way home from the doctor. Back when gas prices were higher, people were preaching grouping your errands together. I was baffled that anyone *didn’t* do that.
I definitely feel that I have a hard time saying no. The worst part is that the person that I have a hard time saying no to is myself. I tend to take on more than I can efficiently handle. I’m always contracting new projects and need to realize to prioritize those tasks that are more beneficial so that I don’t keep running into the time crunch.
Financial Tour Guide I have the problem of saying yes to everything as well! It’s hard to turn down projects, so I often find myself crunched for time.
AbigailP I agree with you on grouping errands! I try to get all of my shopping done at one store if possible so that I don’t have to get my two young kids in and out of their car seats multiple times.