What do you do with your 10 x 10?

‘Which bite of food would you leave last on your plate?’ a friend asked me a while ago when we were having a drink.

‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well, some people just finish off their plates without thinking about an order what to eat first. Other people make sure that every bit of food they taste is the best choice at that moment. And of course you have the ones that leave the best bite for last’. I read an article recently that explained that these sort of choices are connected with your life choices.

This works the same for time. Do you have any idea in what extent the choices on spending your time are made consciously?

On overage you sleep around 7 to 8 hours a night. That means you are awake 16 to 17 hours per day. Roughly about 1.000 minutes. Every day! Tim Urban came up with the idea that this means 100 blocks of 10 minutes.

Do you know how to spend 100 x 10 minutes? How much time will you allocate to do which activity? How much time for your PhD, how much for your friends, running your household, for yourself? How much time will you allow for fun things? How much time you think you should work? Which blocks of time are negotiable, which aren’t?

Find a quit place and fill the schedule in. Are 10 minutes of meditating worthwhile? Do you really want to spend 12 x 10 minutes on television every evening? Do you want to spend time cooking and doing your own shopping, or do you prefer to have it delivered?

Don’t forget to leave some blocks blank.

And now the fun part: fill in the schedule with all the time you actually spent today. And? What are the differences? Is the actual schedule the one you really want? Van Morrison made this song a while ago: precious time is slipping away….

The choice is yours!