This is only inspired by YNAB.
You need a schedule; just like you need a budget.
YNAB is a really cool app/webapp for budgeting. But, in explaining how the software works and, even more importantly, the ideas behind it, the YNAB creators reached for an obvious analogy to budgeting money: budgeting time.
This – devising a system for budgeting time based on the YNAB system for budgeting money – is certainly not an original idea, even if I independently 'discovered' it. It's an extremely obvious generalization of the same ideas.
This repository – really just this document for the forseeable future – is an exploration of this obvious generalization. You – we – need a schedule – but how to create it, and then maintain it?
I'm familiar with Getting Things Done (GTD) so expect the ideas herein to borrow from it liberally.
Instead of a budget with accounts and categories, our time budget – our schedule – is really just a calendar with events.
Besides things like eating, bathing, commuting, and working a regular job, you're going to need to schedule various tasks that you need or want to do.
You're also going to have various projects that you want to complete. Basically, a project is just a set of tasks.
Tasks and projects in YNAS correspond pretty directly with goals in YNAB. They're both aspirational, i.e. targets we're aiming for, and we need to allocate our scarce resource towards them as part of prioritizing what we have to work with.
The rules of YNAB:
- Give every dollar a job.
- Embrace your true expenses.
- Roll with the punches.
Analogous to the rules for YNAB, here are the rules for YNAS:
- Give every minute a job.
- Embrace your true activities.
- Roll with the punches.
Every minute should be scheduled.
But this doesn't mean that every minute needs to be scheduled for an important obligation or for working on some ambitious project!
A lot of time should be 'scheduled' as explicit 'slack' or free time, both to provide for flexibility in handling changes in what you've already scheduled (see rule 3), but also so you can relax or have fun.
Schedule time to make progress on all of your obligations and other important projects and tasks.
Just as you should be budgeting regularly for large infrequent expenses, you should be scheduling time to make progress on large infrequent activities.
Look at that – no need to change the name of the rule!
When appointments are canceled or rescheduled or a work meeting runs over it's scheduled time, you're going to need to re-schedule or cancel other tasks, projects, and events. Regularly review what you need and want to be done and when. Explicitly 'schedule' slack or free time that can then be spent, in its moments, doing activities appropriate to the then-current context – and this should include relaxing and being entertained or having fun.
Here are various categories of priorities that YNAB mentions for prioritizing one's budget:
- Budget for Obligations
- Embrace Your True Expenses
- Deal with Your Debt
- Age Your Money
- Set Quality-of-Life Goals
- Just for Fun...
Here are the YNAS versions:
- Schedule for Obligations
- Embrace Your True Activities
- Deal with Your 'Debt' (Neglected Obligations and Other Time Sinks)
- Age Your Time
- Set Quality-of-Life Goals
- Just for Fun...
You know you're going to need to launder your clothes after a certain amount of time. So you should schedule time to do it.
Ideally, your implementation of a scheduling system would readily indicate whether you're unlikely to meet your regular obligations for any reason. That way you could re-schedule your obligation for an earlier or later time. If you know you're going to be out of town when you'd normally go to the laundromat, then you could reschedule going to the laundromat before you leave town (or stretch the number of days you wear your clothes a bit).
Maybe you don't set aside time to talk on the phone with your best friend.
But you still end up talking on the phone with them for hours each week.
Maybe you think you can get ready for work in half an hour.
But it still takes you at least a full hour.
Schedule time for what you're actually doing and give yourself enough time for as long as it typically takes.
[Doing this well might be tricky. I'm not sure the best way to easily record what you're doing and how long you're doing it for.]
If you're not proactively scheduling time to meet your obligations then you're probably scrambling to meet them at the last minute (or not meeting them). Dealing with your 'debt' just means scheduling more of whatever you need to do until everything is explicitly scheduled.
[This is very similar to what programmers and other IT people refer to as technical debt. In fact, the most significant measure of technical debt is often the time required to 'service' it.]
I think this should also include 'time sinks' – anything you're doing that requires too much time (whatever that is). But be careful not to avoid admitting that something is a 'true activity', even if a part of you thinks it's low-value or wasteful.
With money, it's great to pay this month's bills with last month's income; or, in other words, use this month's income to pay next month's bills. With time, it's similarly great to meet tomorrow's obligations today.
Aging your time simply involves completing tasks and activities further and further ahead of time.
So you've scheduled time to meet all of your obligations and you're accounting for all of activities you're going to do, and realistically how long they're going to take, you've taken care of any previously neglected obligations, and you're staying ahead of everything.
Now what?
Now you need to prioritize everything that would make your life better.
Have you always wanted to paint? Have you been slacking on exercising regularly? Whatever it is, now you have time to do it.
Really, you've been spending time having fun this whole time! [Or at least I hope you have.]
You definitely need to schedule time for fun, and often. But relative to all of your other priorities, fun comes last. Unless you're spending so little time having fun that it's causing you to neglect your obligations or affecting how long it takes you to do other things.
Time cannot be saved – and then spent in the future – it can only be 'saved' by being 'spent' doing something else
You should go to the dentist regularly, but you can't save 15 minutes each month and then spend an hour and a half of those minutes every six months to actually make your dentist appointment.
Tho in another important sense – e.g. if you complete an obligation now – you can spend time in the future that you would otherwise have had to spend some other way.
Every dollar or cent is the same but every hour or minute is almost never the same as any other. If you need an hour for some activity it probably makes a drastic difference when the 60 minutes are spent, e.g. as a single block of time or as 60 separate minutes. Almost all activities are not even possible to do in small enough spans. Even answering a single email probably takes more than a literal minute.
There can also be big differences in when something's done, e.g. in the morning or evening, on a weekday or weekend.
For time however, there is often a significant amount of it required before one can even begin some activity.
Commuting or traveling between locations where activities are performed is an obvious example but still one that is sometimes easy to forget.
Another example is any setup or prep needed before starting a project, e.g. clearing and cleaning the kitchen counters before beginning cooking.
Sometimes this extra time can be 'amoritized' by being included in other activities, e.g. always clearing and cleaning the kitchen counters after cooking or preparing food. But then the ancillary activities become teardown or cleanup activities that need to be accounted for too.
One analogous counterexample for money I've noticed is sales tax – it's easy to ignore or forget it when budgeting for a purchase.
You can't (legally) spend the same money more than once but, in a limited sense, you really can do multiple things at the same time.
Or, rather, you can alternate between multiple activities within a larger period of time. It's difficult, maybe impossible for many people, to fully engage in multiple activities simultaneously, but it's certainly very easy to check your email on your phone when you're, e.g., in a meeting and you don't need to pay attention to a specific conversation among other people.
- Calendar
- Task list(s)
- Alarm
- Timer
- Project repositories
- Notebook or issue tracker
- Files (physical)
- Files (computer)
GTD has a good rule for what to put on your calendar – only put 'hard' events or activities on it, i.e. events or activities that you are (or want to) do on a specific date or at a specific time.
Activities you do most days – like going to a full-time job – can be ommitted. Tho maybe it'd be helpful to see your prep time, commute, and time at work visualized on your calendar.
You need at least one list of important or urgent tasks that aren't already scheduled on your calendar.
Tasks can be kept in any kind of list – in an app, in Google Tasks, in a notebook, etc.
Tasks can be broken up into separate lists based on the required, or feasible, A list of projects can also be kept in the same place
review and for selecting something to do when scheduling or when free time becomes available.
An alarm – clock, app, etc. – is a very handy way to remind yourself to do something at a specific time.
I like the iOS Alarm app on my iPhone. I've got alarms to wakeup in the morning ("alarms" because I like to wakeup later on the weekends), an alarm to review the tasks I want to do each night, and alarms to get ready for bed on weeknights (because I can easily stay up way too late if I'm engrossed in something). And besides those alarms, I create lots of other alarms for one-off things like reminding myself to leave work early at a certain time if I'm going to a doctor's appointment.
Timers are useful for following-up on something that doesn't require your immediate attention. Cooking is a perfect example of how timers are useful.
You need places to keep both information relating to your projects and to other physical items, e.g. tools, materials.
You should have a place to keep notes pertaining to your projects and their sub-projects. I like using issue tracker software for this.
You've got all your W2s and tax returns organized and in safe place, right? [You should!] Besides that stuff, and bank statements, copies of your birth certificate, etc., it's really nice to have a place to keep papers and smaller-than-books paper info for your projects and recurring tasks. I've got an entire file box just filled with product manuals and assembly instructions!
You probably have some way of (at least somewhat) organizing the files on your computer (or computers). That's good, and you should probably try to improve it over time as good organization should produce cost savings in terms of finding files when you need them.
Add new events to your calendar.
And also consider what ancillary events there might be related to the new primary event. Do you need to put something in your bag to bring to the event? If so, you should create a separate event (or task) to put that something in your bag at an appropriate time. [Or, if you can, put that something in your bag now!]
GTD recommends that, if the task should realistically take less than two minutes, you should do it immediately. If you can't or don't want to do it immediately, add it to your task list. If you aren't committing to definitely completing the task, add it to your 'someday/maybe' task list.
I'm inclined to state that both weekly and monthly periods should be explicitly
Seemingly contrary to rule 1, it's not clear that you need to create (and edit) items on your calendar for this. So maybe all times that are not explicitly scheduled should just be left unscheduled.
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