The 76 hour work week

Have you read Tim Ferris' book The Four Hour Workweek? It's a great book, and to give you a sample of what's there, I encourage you to listen to the 4 hour workweek overview Tim gave at the 2007 SXSW conference. I've listened to the book and the podcast. It's got some very interesting ideas, and this is the key point in my opinion: you should do only what you absolutely need to do, and you should outsource the rest. To Tim, this means not answering your e-mails in a timely, not doing your own design work, and that we should fire those customers that suck up the most of your time.

So when Edward Mills asked "What would you do with an extra 36 hours of free time each week?", I immediately gave this 36 hours to my wife too. Because you see, the biggest, best thing I would do with 36 additional hours would be to spend more time with my wife Kim. She's going to school (2/3 time) and working (2/3 time) and we don't spend nearly enough time together. But that wouldn't be the full 36 hours, for she'd want to do some other things too, so I'll take 3 extra hours of her time a day, for a total of 21 hours. I'd still have 15 left to invest in something else.

I'd invest 7 hours a week in exercising. Getting in shape should really be a bigger priority for me right now, and if I had 7 extra hours a week to invest, I'd definitely invest in exercising. That'd leave 8 hours for me to invest in something else worthwhile.

With the remaining 8 hours, I'd take an hour a day and write in a more focused way. I write a lot now, with 5 or more posts a week here at Make It Great!, 3 or more posts (focused on management and productivity tips) at Slacker Manager, at least 1 per week at Joyful Jubilant Learning (plus any topical forums and any other times I feel inspired to share about learning), and 1-2 posts per month at 100 Bloggers.

In an hour a day of focused writing, I'd bet I could finish a few more books that I've begun. For the last hour, I'd sleep an extra 7 minutes a day, so I'd have one extra snooze for each day. I find that if I hit snooze once, and only once, I feel like I'm treating myself, and I am off and running faster when I get up.

Doing this thought-provoking exercise reminded me of what's really important to me, because it's not that I'd do anything completely new with this extra time, I'd just do more of what I'm already doing. Starting right now, I'm going to start aligning my time and my writing with what's really important to me.

You can expect a few changes here, first and foremost that you will see a longer article posted every Monday morning here. I'll keep the category as Monday Morning Greatness, but I'll be more focused in my writing.

I'm also going to be getting up earlier 3 days a week to take a walk around my neighborhood, as the lack of time is not a good enough reason for why I'm not doing something about my health. I'm going to start by changing these 2 things for 30 days, and we'll see what happens from there.

What about you? What would YOU do with an extra 36 hours of time in your week? Would you be like me, and devote more time to things you're already working on? Or would you take up a new hobby, a new craft, or try something else completely new?

Please share below in the comments box, or take this back to your own blog and write your own If I had 36 Extra Hours of Free Time article. At the very least, I encourage you to spend 30 minutes this week thinking about this very important idea and re-aligning your life with what's REALLY important. Thanks for the push Ed!

[Phil Gerbyshak was originally asked by Edward Mills: "What would you do with an extra 36 hours of time each week?" and it took him what felt like 36 days to come up with a good answer.]

Comments

[Edward Mills]

Hi Phil

Thanks for playing. You've made some great observations. I'll definitely be looking forward to the extra writing that you'll be doing here as well as the books. And, like you, I've found that starting with just a few minutes a day can make a big difference. So enjoy those morning walks, and especially those extra 7-minutes of snooze time!

[Phil Gerbyshak]

Thanks Ed! I look forward to those morning walks too, and the extra sleep too!

[Mark Goodyear]

I'd split the time between writing and playing with my family.