105 hours

I use a set of tactics and principles to manage my time. I call it 105 hours.

I've honed this method over several years, and it works. Well, it at least works for me.

Today, I'm in full control of my time.

But how I manage my time will not, and can not, be immediately applicable to you. Everybody is different, and everybody's lives and circumstances are different too.

But I believe we're more alike than different. I also think it's fun to learn by seeing what others are doing.

So I hope there's something for you to learn from seeing what I do.

If there's any one thing you incorporate into how you manage your time because of how I manage mine, then I'll be happy.

The 105 hours areas

Here's how I've divided the 105 hours areas:

• Sleep
• Exercise
• Work
• Chores
• Smartphone, Internet, and TV
• Application

It's not that there are any real areas or divisions for this; it just seemed natural to split them up this way when I was writing about it.

I describe each area below, along with a summary.

Sleep

Sleep time management pertains to how much and when we sleep. It's hard to be explicit and disciplined about these two aspects of our life, but I think they're also critical.

On 9 hours a day for sleep, I discuss why I think 9 hours of every day should be allocated to sleep and how to do it.

On Sleep dilemmas, I talk about how to navigate going to sleep late and decide whether to wake up sleep-deprived or sleep in and how to mitigate their downsides.

Sleep gives the 105 hours method its name: by allocating 9 hours a day to sleep, we have 105 hours a week for everything else.

It's a lot of hours! What do we do with them?

Exercise

Exercise is vital. It's also challenging to prioritize. For those of us that don't exercise yet, how can we exercise more?

On 5 hours minimum for exercise, I talk about not only how much time to allocate to exercise, but also about how to make it a priority so that we actually do it.

Work

Ah, work. The thing we spend most of our time on, after sleeping. It's a lot of time, so it deserves a lot of attention.

In Define work hours, I suggest that we all should know at what times of the day we work, something increasingly harder to do in a post COVID-19 world where work is remote and we're somewhat at work all day.

In Total work hours, I make the case that understanding how much time is allocated to work is critical because otherwise you can't plan how you spend your time on anything else.

In Track time at work, I explore the fact that, because we don't track our work time precisely, we actually work less than we think we do.

Without doing the things in those 3 articles, it's impossible for me to know how much time I have to allocate for other activities.

I then deal with what seems like the biggest time stealer: Chores.

Chores

When we think we don't have time, it's easy to blame chores: it seems like we're always doing chores.

Well, and sometimes we are.

In Time independence, I introduce a concept similar to financial independence, except instead of not having to work to live, it means you don't have to spend your time to live, such as by doing chores.

In Minimize chores I discuss tactics to reduce the chores we have to do to a minimum so we can free up time for other things.

In Buy your chores time back I argue that our money is well spent by buying our time back by paying others to do mandatory chores.

My wife helps me tremendously by doing the bulk of the family chores, but these tactics drastically remove the time both of us spend on them.

Then I go from the seeming biggest time stealer to the actual biggest time stealer: our digital devices.

Smartphone, Internet, and TV

When it comes to digital devices, I'm somewhat unconventional: I don't use the internet, I don't use a smartphone, and I don't watch TV.

It's very extreme, I know. I don't expect anybody else to do the same as I do.

But for me, it does help. I have so much free time now. I also feel so good about how I use my time.

I have time to read a lot of books, exercise, learn new things like AI, practice the guitar, and spend time with friends.

I can even play video games, although all my video games are disconnected from the internet.

Like someone who's gone into a healthy diet and doesn't want to go back to junk food, I don't think I'll go back to using the internet or a smartphone.

Much of what I do and how I think about digital devices was inspired by Cal Newport's book Digital Minimalism – but taken to an extreme.

In No time for smartphones I talk about my decision not to use smartphones and its implications.

In No smartphones and emergencies I handle the most common question when I tell others I don't have a phone: "What if there's an emergency?"

If you're curious, the second most common question is, "But how do you talk to people?" and they're always baffled when I move my hands between me and them while saying, "Well, like this, like you and I are doing right now!"

In Control computer internet use I talk about specific tactics I use to not spend any time on the internet when using a computer.

In No time for TV I talk about my decision to stop watching TV and, in particular, why I think the biggest problem isn't movies or sports but TV shows.

In that article, I also highlight that watching TV is the activity we spend the most time on in our lives after sleeping and working.

And finally, in TV is a behavioral drug I make the case that, like alcohol, sugar, and other drugs, TV plays an addictive, negative role in our lives.

Finally, I outline some specific principles for putting it all together.

Application

I don't have much to say in my articles about how I use my free time or how you should use yours.

Honestly, my articles are also not very practical. I don't end them with calls to action like "Now you should do this or that!", no.

I'm just telling you my story.

So my applications are not quite practical. They're more like principles that are important in how I use my time.

Actually, one theme about these Application articles is that they're about aspects that are both critical and commonly neglected.

In Making time to be alone, I talk about the importance of alone time in our lives, especially for those of us who live with our families, like partners and kids, and are rarely on our own.

In One thing at a time I talk about single-tasking and highlight the rarely talked about the fact that digital devices are always present when we're multi-tasking.

Finally, in Self-imposed routines, I discuss the importance, and extreme difficulty, of building and sticking to a routine on our own.

Conclusion

Many people finish articles or series saying, "OK! Know you know everything I do about this! Phew!" but I can't say that; it'd actually be a big lie.

In all honesty, I think these are a little shallow. They're 1,000-1,500 words articles, and I think they add up to about 25,000 words: that's 1/3 of a very small book.

Very little.

I know that's not the greatest compliment and advertisement for them, so at least I'll say that I think what's written in them is, for the most part, really unique and valuable.

They're just not very deep.

We're hindered by two big factors.

The first is, of course, I'm not a good writer yet. I only just started writing and, like every skilled endeavor that we begin, we look back several years later and think, "I can't believe I was this bad at this!"

I'm definitely hindered by my current skills. But I did the best I could with the skills I have now.

The second is that the internet is no longer a good place to host long-form written content. Our attention spans are limited, our distractions are prevalent, and most of this content will be consumed on the internet and on smartphones.

Honestly, trying to convey long-form written content this way is quite a hopeless battle; one I don't know how to win yet.

Naval Ravikant once said that he could expand each of his tweets on his tweetstorm on how to get rich (or something like that) into hours of conversations.

This is exactly what I did my famous tweetstorm about. Of course, every one of these tweets can be extrapolated into an hour’s worth of conversation. The tweetstorm below is a good starting point.

Jorgenson, Eric. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness (p. 30). Magrathea Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Like much on the internet, I think it's the same with the articles above: there's much more to be said about this topic, and I have said it numerous times with mentees, colleagues, and friends.

But this little is what is said about them for now, at least here.

While I have nothing else written on these subjects, I quote from books on several articles. They're all excellent sources for further reading.

Below are some of the most influential books, which I hope you should have time to read once you apply similar principles to your own time:

• "168 Hours" by Laura Vanderkam
• "Digital Minimalism" by Cal Newport
• "Goodbye, Things" and "Hello, Habits" by Fumio Sasaki

As I mentioned earlier, if there's any one thing you incorporate into how you manage your time because of how I manage mine, then I'll be happy.