Where Does the Time Go? Use This Work Life Balance Calculator to Find Out
Read more about: Featured, Time Stress, Time for Myself, Work-Life Balance
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We’ve all heard the expression . . . “Time flies when you’re having fun.” However, I think we’d all agree that time flies when you’re crazy busy too! I think that’s why we’re also familiar with the age old question “Where does the time go?”
Well I discovered a tool on CNN.com to help answer that question! It’s a work life balance calculator that enables you to find out exactly how you spend the 168 hours we all have in one week. Specifically, you input the number of hours you spend on the following activities:
- Work
- Sleep
- Meals
- Commute
- Leisure
- Chores
Frankly, I think there needs to be a category for transitional activities like getting ready in the morning, driving to soccer practice and putting the kids to bed, but I ended up putting those types of activities under chores and leisure. While I thoroughly enjoy reading my girls a bedtime story, reminding them to brush their teeth is a chore!
I was pleased to discover that when I input my typical schedule during the school year into the work life balance calculator that I was in pretty good work life balance. (I didn’t bother to input my summer schedule because with three kids home all day, there’s no way to be balanced!)
So if you too are asking yourself “Where does the time go?” take a few minutes to figure that out. Hopefully, you’ll either be pleased with your level of work life balance or be able to identify areas you can modify to get yourself more in balance.
Shannon Hutton draws on her experience working full-time, part-time and from home with three kids to blog about the universal challenge of achieving work-life balance. She also uses her Master's in Education and professional experience as a School Counselor to address parenting and school issues in her weekly 
This is an excellent exercise. I just completed something similar called a Life Log, where I tracked similar categories everyday for a period of 12 weeks. It was extremely revealing indeed. Not only did it identify the areas where I could improve, but it also gave me the feedback to see the areas where I was doing well and the opportunity to acknowledge myself for those. Because I did this over a period of months, I also found that it helped me uncover the places where I was resisting making changes, even though I “said” I wanted to…another excellent opportunity for personal growth and self-discovery. I recommend this kind of exercise to anyone who really wants to get clear about how to take greater responsibility for what is and isn’t working in their life. The way we spend our time is how we create our lives.
Amy
On Twitter @amymiyamoto