Thursday, June 09, 2016

Your 3 buckets of time

Each day there are 24 hours, no more no less. There are 7 days in a week too, so in total, there are 24 x 7 = 168 hours per week. If we divide 168 hours into 3 buckets of 'time', we will have 56 hours in one bucket, with a total of 3 such buckets.




Let's look at the first red bucket. This is meant for sleep. If we have 8 hours of sleep per day over 7 days, we'll need 8 x 7 = 56  hours. This is exactly the number of hours we have in each of our bucket of time. So our first bucket of time is completely used up, just like that.


Let's look at the second yellow bucket. This is meant for work. If we each work from 9am to 6pm, we'll work for a total of 9 hours a day. Plus travelling time of maybe 2 hours to and fro, we'll perhaps hit 56 hours a week. This is another full bucket of time used up. For me, I work 7 days a week, so it'll average about 8 hours per day. Just about right. So our second bucket of time is completely used up, just like that. We only have the third bucket of time left.


Let's look at the third blue bucket. This is meant for our leisure, our self improvement, our time to be spent on family, friends, and community/religious events, exercise and our hobbies. Basically whatever free time we have comes straight from this bucket. This bucket is present in each and everyone of us. We can't say we have no time to do this or do that. Most likely, it's due to the fact that you might have overspent your bucket of time for work or for sleep, so you have to 'borrow' some time from the last bucket to make it up.


You can use this last bucket of 56 hours to improve your lot in life, or you can spend it on family and friends and live an active social life, or you can just watch television or your favourite drama series. Either way, we only have 56 hours to spend on such leisure activities. Well, more or less. I know some people sacrificed their sleep bucket so that they can top up their time on their work. Or some people might prefer to reduce their bucket of time spent on work to focus on their family in the last blue bucket. No matter what, we still have 3 buckets of roughly 56 hours of time in each bucket.


What are you doing to spend your last bucket of time?


Note: I did not come up with this wonderful concept. I copied it with pride from the mind-blowing book, "The Happiness Equation" by Neil Pasricha.

10 comments :

Createwealth8888 said...

Think most of us have overused the Yellow bucket. Need to get out from Rat Race and pursue FI to rebalance our buckets.

Read? The Reason Why Most Of Us Will Like To Pursue Financial Independence???

la papillion said...

Hi bro8888,

True. It'll be ideal if we can save half the bucket of time in the yellow work bucket and transfer it over to the last blue bucket. It'll have a very good balance :)

Sillyinvestor said...

3 buckets at different levels at different points of our life. When we are younger, the yellow bucket is studying, and that takes up more time than adults nowadays... Poor kids...

Parents spent the blue bucket bringing child to the yellow buckets

Hope they become dragons otherwise it is not worth it

la papillion said...

Hi SI,

Yes, different point in life, different set of buckets. I think still worth it lah, regardless of results. I wonder if I have a kid, am I going to stress on the study part? My heart says no, but I wonder whether i'll succumb to peer pressure haha

Singapore Man of Leisure said...

LP,

This 3 buckets analogy was used by a Hedge Fund too.

1 bucket for long term holdings.

1 bucket for medium term cyclical plays.

1 bucket for short term speculative/opportunistic trading.


I copy you, you steal with pride, he drew inspiration from us - that's the best compliment!

Createwealth8888 said...

How about Bucket List?

Whatever buckets. Once kick bucket. Game over!

la papillion said...

Hi SMOL,

I guess quite a few pple uses the bucket examples, you're right. Okay, stealing with more pride now! HAHA

la papillion said...

Hi bro8888,

Different issues? Bucket list is to do a series of things in your life before you passed on, so that you don't regret. I guess if everyday you're already doing the things you want to do and living the life you want, you don't need a bucket list, haha!

Rolf Suey said...

the blue bucket is for u to find out one day that why the hell am I doing with the yellow bucket?

la papillion said...

Hi Rolf,

I guess if our work is meaningful and contributes to society, it might not be such a bad thing. But I guess most work is meaningless and pointless, except to earn money to carry on our lives. I'm glad mine isn't like that, haha!