Money Management Rules Of Thumb Also Apply To Time Management

I feel lucky that I have always had good money management habits – e.g., I don’t overspend, I save and invest regularly. Therefore, I don’t think much about basic money management strategies, and I don’t cover these tips in this blog.

However, I was reading a great money habits post from PlanEasy, and it struck me how much the widely accepted good money management rules also apply to time management.

I’m pretty good with my time, but I have had to work at it. When I’m anxious, I feel hurried, and I actually say to myself, “You have enough time” to calm myself down. Stress manifests itself to me as a time issue (i.e., feeling hurried) because time is my bugaboo. If I’m not deliberate with my time, I’m prone to wasting it.

Wasting anything isn’t good, but at least money is renewable – we can earn more of it. Time lost is lost forever. Therefore, inspired by PlanEasy’s handy list of good money management habits, here are seven rules of thumb for good time management:

1 – Create a budget

I once totaled up everything on my to do list for the day, and it came out to 28 hours – clearly not doable, even if I pulled an all-nighter. This forced me to identify exactly what were the most important priorities for that day and figure out when to schedule the rest (or delegate or drop these entirely). This “do, delegate or drop” analysis can be extended to weekly, monthly and annual activities.

What daily habits, such as exercise or meditation, do you need to budget time for? Based on your typical work week (e.g., 40 hours), what will you budget time for in this particular week and onward? Based on your goals for the year, how will you budget time for each project? If you don’t budget your time proactively, you may fritter it away on unimportant tasks. Or you’ll overpromise what you can do (to others or to yourself) and miss deadlines.

2 – Track your spending

Much like people keep a money diary to track spending, I keep a time diary. If you don’t track your time currently, I highly recommend it, as we often underestimate how long things take and how much we can get done. The time diary helps me with budgeting because I know how long it generally takes to write a blog post or take my favorite gym class (including commute time!) or balance my bank accounts. It also helps me as a consultant because I can more accurately price and scope out projects.

Do you know where your time goes? Are you spending it on your priorities? If you have never kept a time diary, be prepared for some harsh truths about your time. I once lost over an hour surfing my Netflix queue – that’s not even watching anything, just the previews! Having to record that lost hour was enough to break that habit for good.

3 – Pay yourself first

Just as you can save the first 10% of your earnings (or whatever portion you save), you can also take the first one, two or more hours of your day and earmark these for your most important activities. It could be the self-care routine that would otherwise get overlooked as the day gets busier. Hal Elrod (creator of The Miracle Morning) has a great morning routine that takes just six minutes! Or it could be a key priority that you tend to procrastinate about. Brian Tracy has a great book about this, aptly titled, Eat That Frog.

How can you pay yourself first from a time perspective? Do you need to rethink what you do first thing in the morning – postpone jumping into emails and instead implement a morning routine or eat your frog?

If you’re not convinced, you can experiment with a new routine over the next 30 days and see for yourself. Once you see how much more productive you are when you invest time in yourself first, you may never go back.

4 – Save for infrequent expenses

We all have predictable, though infrequent, bursts of time needed. Tax preparation is one example. Even if you have an accountant who does the heavy lifting, you still need time to get your receipts in order, and this will happen every April (every quarter if you need to file quarterly estimates). If you’re a parent, the start of the school year is another particularly hectic time. The holidays are also busy.

My consulting work includes coaching and teaching professional development topics, and I always remind my busy, Type A clients to factor in these busy periods in advance. Block off time in your calendar now in March for taxes, in August/September for school, and in November/December for holidays. Block additional time as needed – I block out vacations! This way, you have a visual reminder not to overschedule.

5 – Create an emergency fund

You can’t save time from one day into the next, but you can build buffers into your schedule for unforeseen demands on your time. You probably already do this by not scheduling all 24 hours in the day – you know you need to sleep, even if you don’t get enough of it. You can be even more proactive by not scheduling all of your waking hours.

At a minimum, reserve one hour of your workday as an emergency fund for overflow work – things often take longer than you think. Block off rest periods every few hours, if you’re prone to powering through. Block out a full day every few weeks or so to save for serendipitous opportunities or just a longer rest break.

6 – Create an investment plan

Hopefully the above time management habits give you a more expansive sense of time – from the buffers you build in, from the morning time you carve out, from being more thoughtful and proactive about how you go about your days, weeks and months. Ideally, you spend this newfound time on activities that benefit you and whose benefits compound.

Professional development is one example of time spent that compounds. You invest time to attend a conference, read an insightful book, or upgrade a skill, and you have that expertise going forward. Taking care of your health is another investment – getting even a moderate amount of exercise on a regular basis compounds health benefits over time. Pursuing a hobby is an investment in your emotional well-being.

What will you invest your time in?

7 – Automate investing

Developing a habit of exercise, regular professional training, or a morning routine can make your time decisions more automatic. Setting reminders is another way to automate – e.g., when I make an appointment for my annual physical, I set a reminder for the next year to make the appointment. This way, I don’t need to remember, as I have a process in place to do that for me.

For priorities you want to keep on your radar but are easy to overlook, set up some kind of reminder system. I keep a list of books I want to read so I have suggestions readily available. I set aside weekly time blocks to reach out to my network because it’s too easy to forget about people we don’t see day-to-day. So that I don’t get distracted by every new idea, I keep a running list of possible projects or tasks that occur to me, and then I set a monthly reminder to review the list and pick what I really want to focus on. How can you make good choices with your time more automatic?

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Good money management happened naturally for me, but time management is something I had to learn. Luckily, money management rules of thumb apply nicely to time management.

How about you? Do you struggle most with time, money, or something else? What has worked for you?