As I’ve gotten older I’ve become more and more aware that how you choose to spend your time has a significant impact on your success and life satisfaction. We all have the same amount 24 hours in a day, yet some people seem to get an order of magnitude more done each day.
I believe this is because successful people structure their day and allocate their time in ways that allows them to accomplish the things that are most important to them. They match their schedule to their priorities.
One extreme example is the schedule that actor Mark Wahlberg posted to his website. Here is his “typical daily schedule”:
There are a lot of things about this schedule that are really confusing to me (getting up at 2:30 am, somehow playing golf in just 30 minutes per day, taking 2 30-minute showers per day, and spending an hour in cryo therapy every day), but by looking at his schedule we can infer what’s important to Mark. Family must be most important, as he’s allocating 2-4 hours per to day to family time. His physical fitness is the second most important thing – he works out twice a day and spends a total of about 2 hours and 30 minutes exercising. Nutrition is clearly important, as he schedules his meal and snacks and spends 2-3 hours per day eating/prepping meals and snacks.
Mark’s priorities are family, physical fitness, and nutrition.
My priorities
In order to ensure that my allocation of time reflects my priorities, I need to have clear priorities. After some soul searching I’ve decided I have 3 priorities that I want to arrange my time around. Here is a brief explanation of each.
Family and family meals
I love my wife, I love my kids, and I want to maximize the time I spend with them. Unfortunately, my current job in sales requires me to do quite a bit of travel (both domestic and international), so when I’m not traveling my family time is even more important to me.
I try to maximize my time with the family in a few ways. First, we prioritize family meals. We have a big breakfast together every morning and dinner together every night.
Second, I try to integrate family time with other things we are going to do anyway. One example is our family bike rides in the morning. We need to take the kids to preschool in the morning anyway. Their school is exactly 2 miles from our house. So, instead of just one of us driving them to school, we put them the bike trailer attached to my bike, my wife hops on her bike, and we bike them to school instead. That turns a boring drive into a combination of exercise, family time, and transportation.
Third, I try to keep my weekends free so I can do things with the kids. On the weekends I usually take the kids on what we call a “State Street Stroll”. Right after breakfast on either Saturday or Sunday we get the kids dressed, then they jump in the bike trailer and I bike them downtown to State Street (the main drag in downtown Santa Barbara). It’s 10 miles each way, and that takes about 40-45 minutes.
Once we are downtown the bike trailer converts into a stroller. We stroll to a coffee shop so I can get a cup of coffee and the kids get a hot chocolate or croissant. We walk up and down State Street and either end up at the beach or a playground before we head back to our bike.We end our morning by visiting a pirate statue in front of the candy store where we usually park my bike, then ride home in time to put our son down for his nap around 1 pm.
Exercise
I’ve never been a particularly good athlete, but I’ve always enjoyed exercising. Most of my scheduled workouts revolve around lifting weights, with most of my cardio coming from biking the kids to school and/or biking to work (10 miles each way). However, I’ll mix in the occasional rowing workout.
Growing up, exercise was never emphasized in my family. Both my parents were in education and academic achievement was really the priority. I can probably count on one hand the number of times that I remember my parents intentionally exercising for the sake of exercise, and I unfortunately I think that this lack of attention to physical fitness has manifested itself as various physical ailments as my parents have aged.
My workout time is partially some “me time” where I get to exist in the moment, but I also see my exercise time as an investment in my family. I was 37 years old when my daughter was born and 39 when my son as born. I want to be around when they graduate from college, get married, and have kids of their own. I strongly believe that regular intense exercise will help me live a long and healthy life.
I’ve found that the only way to ensure that I have time to exercise every day is to make time by scheduling my workout for first thing in the morning, before my family wakes up. This way my workout doesn’t detract from time spent with my family and it doesn’t get crowded out by other things in my day.
Career success
The vast majority of our financial success has been possible due to my high income. Although my wife is an attorney and capable of getting a high paying job, we’ve decided to have her stay home with the kids (at least until they are both off to kindergarten).
This means that my career is the sole source of income for our family. As such, I feel a lot of responsibility to ensure that my career is moving forward and our income is solid.
One thing I love about my current job is the flexibility. I can more or less come and go as I wish. The hours I work don’t matter; my production does. I use this flexibility to occasionally shift some of my work hours into the evening when my children are asleep.
A typical weekday
5:30 am – Wake up, make coffee, drink coffee while reading the news and waking up.
6:00 – 7:00 am – Work out.
7:00 – My family wakes up. Get the kids out of bed, change my son’s diaper.
7:15-8:00 – Make and eat breakfast.
8:00 – 8:15 am – I get kids dressed for school while my wife packs their lunches.
8:15 – 8:30 am – Family bike ride to school.
8:30 – 9:00 am – Shower, get dressed, head into work. It’s a 12 minute drive to work from our house.
9:00 – 12:30 pm – Work. Because I work in the software industry I find that many of my customers aren’t exactly early risers. I tend to use my morning hours to answer email, work on quotes/proposals, etc.
12:30 – 1:30 pm – Lunch. I usually eat by myself and try to use this time to be productive. This means working on my blog, staying current on the latest in financial planning, or running errands. Sometimes (especially in the summer), I’ll eat at my desk while working and then walk the 1.4 miles each way down to the beach.
1:30 – 5:30 pm – Work. This is the time of day when I tend to call customers or chat with my colleagues about our current customer engagements.
5:30 – 5:45 am – Drive home
5:45 pm – Arrive home. This is another time of the day that I always look forward to. There’s nothing better than walking into the house, yelling “Daddy’s home!” and having the kids come running from wherever they are to give me a big hug.
6:00 – 6:30 pm – Family dinner.
6:30 – 7:15 pm – Give the kids a bath, brush their teeth, get into PJs, read bedtime stories, and put them to bed.
7:15 – 7:45 pm – Dishes. My wife does just about all of the cooking, so I try to do the dishes every night.
7:45 – 9:30 pm – This is my flex/free time. Sometimes I’ll watch a TV show with my wife. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I’ll work on this blog or do work for my financial planning job. Sometimes I get some additional stuff done for my job.
9:30 pm – Get ready for bed,
10 pm – Sleep
This schedule is remarkably consistent every weekday. I suspect this is true for most people – you have a routine that works for you and you stick it.
The weekends are pretty different. I still wake up at 5:30 and work out from 6-7 am, but otherwise every weekend is different. We try to schedule social time with friends (with and without the kids). We try to tackle some projects around the house. The kids and I do the aforementioned State Street Stroll just about every weekend.
Hopefully it’s interesting to see how I allocate my time.
How about you? Does your schedule reflect your priorities?