Time-Broke

Free worksheet

Time budget worksheet: your 168 hours on one page (free PDF)

Every week has 168 hours, for everyone. Most of us have never seen where ours go. This one-page worksheet puts the whole week on a single sheet, so you can see what’s already spoken for and decide what the rest is for.

How to use it (about 15 minutes)

  1. Write the fixed hours first: sleep, work and commuting, upkeep (meals, chores, errands).
  2. Subtract them from 168. What’s left is the week you actually get to choose.
  3. Give those hours a job, by area of life: family, friendship, the body, recovery, your own work. Rest counts. Give it hours too.
  4. At the end of the week, write what really happened next to each line. The gap isn’t a grade. It’s information.
Download the worksheet (PDF)A4 version

Want the letters that go with it? Leave an email and we’ll send the opening letters of Time-Broke.

Common questions

How many free hours do I really have in a week?
Start with 168. Take off sleep (56 hours at 8 a night), a full-time job with a commute (often 45 to 50), and upkeep like meals, chores and errands (often 15 to 20). That leaves roughly 40 to 50 hours before anything else — the book, counting the body's maintenance and the standing commitments most adults carry, lands nearer twenty-nine. Either way, many people have already promised more of it than they have, which is why the week feels short.
What’s the difference between a time audit and a time budget?
An audit looks back: where did last week’s hours go? A budget looks forward: what will next week’s hours be for? The worksheet does both. Plan in one column, then write what actually happened in the other.
Do I have to track every 15 minutes?
No. Weekly totals per area are enough to see the shape of your week. If you want the daily version, Currant, the app from the author of Time-Broke, runs the same practice on your phone, with no streaks and no red badges.
“Most of us have never seen the numbers on our weeks.”

Time-Broke, Andrew Lewis

Read the opening of Time-Broke freeDraw your life as a tree (five minutes)Read the letters