In our Time Management class, one of the topics we talk about is “168 Hours.” You may wonder what that means, but it’s fairly simple. Every week, you have 168 hours to do whatever it is you need to do. There is no way to add more hours to a day, or a week! Everyone is given the exact same number of hours, but it sometimes appears that others get much more done in their allotted time!
Are you wasting time? Are you using it to your best advantage? One tool to help you figure out where 168 hours are going is to simply plot it out! Of course, you have to devote a certain number of hours to sleep each day, but the rest of the hours are there for you to work on fulfilling your dreams and meeting your potential.
Even when you consider blocking out the hours for work and commuting, you are still left with a large chunk of time. How are you using it? You can use Microsoft Excel to create a spreadsheet with the days of the week across the columns, and each hour down the rows. Then, take 10 minutes and fill in the hours for this week. Where can you find more time? Where are you wasting time? What can you rearrange?
I’ve even created a spreadsheet for you! If you are familiar with Google Docs, you can view and copy this spreadsheet immediately and map your own 168 hours.
This exercise is just one of the tools we look at during our Time Management class. We’d love to help you develop strategies to help you be more successful. Check out our website for our class schedules!
