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Free time partitionning

Written by Solène, on 06 January 2021.
Tags: #life

Comments on Fediverse/Mastodon

Lately I wanted to change the way I use my free time. I define my free time as: not working, not sleeping, not eating. So, I estimate it to six hours a day in work day and fourteen hours in non worked day.

With the year 2020 being quite unusual, I was staying at home most of the time without seeing the time passing. At the end of the year, I started to mix the duration of weeks and months which disturbed me a lot.

For a a few weeks now, I started to change the way I spend my free time. I thought it was be nice to have a few separate activies in the same day to help me realizing how time is passing by.

1. Activity list §

Here is the way I chose to distribute my free time. It's not a strict approach, I measure nothing. But I try to keep a simple ratio of 3/6, 2/6 and 1/6.

1.1. Recreation: 3/6 §

I spend a lot of time in recreation time. A few activies I've put into recreation:

  • video games
  • movies
  • reading novels
  • sports

1.2. Creativity: 2/6 §

Those activies requires creativy, work and knowledge:

  • writing code
  • reading technical books
  • playing music
  • creating content (texts, video, audio etc..)

1.3. Chores: 1/6 §

Yes, obviously this has to be done on free time... And it's always better to do it a bit everyday than accumulating it until you are forced to proceed.

2. Conclusion §

I only started for a few weeks now but I really enjoy doing it. As I said previously, it's not something I stricly apply, but more a general way to spend my time and not stick for six hours writing code in a row from after work to going to sleep. I really feel my life is better balanced now and I feel some accomplishments for the few activies done every day.

3. Questions / Answers §

Some asked asked me if I was planning in advance how I spend my time.

The answer is no. I don't plan anything but when I tend to lose focus on what I'm doing (and this happen often), I think about this time repartition method and then I think it may be time to jump on another activity and I pick something in another category. Now I think about it, that was very often that I was doing something because I was bored and lacking idea of activities to occupy myself, with this current list I no longer have this issue.