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Exploring time budgets, independent thinking, and making things stick
Logan
December 12, 2024
In partnership with
Exploring time budgets, independent thinking, and making things stick
Happy Thursday! Thanks for reading Intentional Dollar — where we look at old money ideas through a new perspective.
What’s inside?
One tool to experiment with
Two quotes from others
Three questions to dig deeper
Four lines of poetry for the point
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. These weekly posts represent my simple thoughts, a few quotes, and some questions — for educational purposes only.
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One tool to experiment with:
Time Budgets:
What if the structure of your day, or lack thereof, is impeding progress?
Day structure is the shape you build the day into, or the daily budget for your time. In a work setting, we are used to this. Meetings, projects, and tasks all scheduled into an 8-10 hour block of time.
Why, though?
It’s because scheduling is effective at governing the time and place an activity should occur. While great at directing us during work hours, we often leave the tool in our desk drawer, locked up until the next work day. When we get home, or have free time on the weekends, the day gets looser. Not saying this is wrong, but if you are looking to advance your financial goals, or personal goals, a schedule could be helpful.
Schedules give purpose to the day. Think about retirees for a moment. One plague a lot of the newly retired face is the instant introduction to unstructured living. Spending years on a Monday-Friday work schedule inherently provides a sense of time purpose. This time purpose offers a clear to-do list and times to execute the tasks.
Subsequently, when you retire, the day becomes wide open, and all the previous routines, work habits, and structure fall off.
You slowly start to sleep in more, delay the morning workout, and push back the chores, turning your day into a mess of inefficiency. One day to the next. The old time constraints from the job are gone, and gone with them is the sense of urgency that comes with living on a time budget.
Why is this?
We regress to relaxation; relying on random and fleeting motivation to accomplish tasks. High achievers — uber productive people — can fall into a sedentary lifestyle, and quickly.
But this is not limited to retirement. An unscheduled life affects all of our time in the margins; time where we could be advancing our agendas.
In practice, I’m not suggesting you budget each minute. Rather, allocate time to the primary activities that you want to spend your time on. Planning on relaxing and watching TV? An intentional time to do this keeps the dissonance at bay, as you’re not spending time you shouldn’t. It’s an effective method of mental accounting your day. Time x is when we do x. Time y is when we do y. Commingling x and y will get us tangled, losing critical velocity and efficiency.
At this point, you might be thinking true independence and free time is the exact opposite of this scheduling thing — having absolutely nothing on the schedule. No obligations, no commitments, nothing.
However, scheduling your own time is different. It’s an intentional mechanism to say these are all the things I want to do today, and here’s when I want to do them.
This is why it’s a productive habit to schedule and ensure that if we only get 30 minutes to workout, we won’t be scrolling our phones and wasting minutes in the gym.
Time budgeting purifies your activities and provides accountability.
If you’ve struggled with procrastination, motivation, efficiency — it’s not that you’re flawed. It’s that you need a schedule. You’re the author of the schedule, and the schedule is the author of the day. It’s you charting the course, but the schedule drives you there. You just have to stay in the seat.
A schedule will change how you spend your time.
build a time budget for your day
Two quotes on independent thinking:
Independent thinking requires a constant audit of the way we take in the world. An audit like this requires poking at the current ideological, and sometimes dogmatic, tenants in our minds to disabuse them of a belief in permanent residency.
“Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”
“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, priveleges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.”
Three questions on making things stick:
What if I doubled the practice reps I historically put in?
How might an aphorism, analogy, or acronym make the subject sticky?
What if I changed my approach to learning this material? Instead of reading, listen. Instead of listening, draw. Instead of drawing, build.
Which question stuck with you? Questions like these are spotlights for the mind. Reply to this email and let me know which one shined light on a previously dark cave.
Four lines of poetry for the point:
Build a budget for your day,
Defend the seconds you’d squander away.
Purpose will follow and efficiency will trail,
Behind the old schedule’s wrinkled veil.
Contact Me:
Content ideas, questions? Reply to this email or reach out to me at [email protected]
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. These weekly posts represent my simple thoughts, a few quotes, and some questions — for educational purposes only.
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