3 buckets of time revisited

Haven't really blogged out any article for nearly a month because I was busy with work. It's my peak season now before I can have my well deserved rest towards the end of the year. This year is qualitatively different from any years that I've been through, but I will blog about such things when my work for this year truly dwindles down.

I want to talk about the 3 buckets of time and I've been spending quite a while thinking about it. I had written an article on it last year, here. Each day has 24 hours, and if we divide the amount of time we have daily by 3, each bucket of time will have 8 hours.

The first bucket is meant for sleep. That's like 8 hours down the drain. The second bucket is for work so that we can earn money to buy the necessary things needed for life, like food, shelter and a lot more beyond survival. That's another 8 hours down the drain. It's this 3rd bucket that I'm most interested in right now.

Before I had a child, my last bucket of time is mainly spent on the following activities:

1. Gaming
2. Reading
3. Shopping/cafe/walking around in malls
4. Exercising
5. Friends
6. Household chores

With a kid, my last 8 hours of time is spent on:

1. Family (and kid)
2. Gaming
3. Household chores
4. Netflix
5. Grocery shopping

I introduced to myself another sort of bad habit, which is watching Netflix. Gaming is still in the list of activities, but the quality and quantity of gaming is much much reduced. I only have a small segment of time to game, much less than what I would have without a kid. Reading is thrown out of the window and there's just no way to do it. At least not for now. It's not that I don't have the time, it's just that it's extremely tiring to do it, so I could only hope to vegetate myself in front of a tv binge watching on Netflix. It's a bad thing, I know, but until I'm still in survival mode and not yet in a steady state to move out of this comfort zone.

I suspect more and more, I would have to take some time out of my work and sleep bucket to increase my third bucket of time. I would increasingly have to spend more time with the kid, sacrificing sleep and work along the way. I think this might last for the next few years until the situation is stabilised but till then, any 'me time' would have to be reduced. I'm not complaining; there's joy in taking care of the kid. I think a lot of people don't want kids because they are not prepared to sacrifice personal time for another person, namely the child. It's a personal choice, so I'm not here to make judgements. But better to open both eyes to know the consequences of the decision. It's the worst case scenario to want a kid but not prepared to sacrifice, or not want a kid but not prepared to be lonelier in the future. Can't escape the cause and effect of actions.

But back to the 3 buckets of time. I think it ties in with the concept of frugality. I define frugality as the efficient use of limited resources, which also includes time. I've to think of ways to streamline my work flow and make it better. Somehow, in between all these, I also have to slot in time to do homework for stocks. Thankfully the two systems I implemented towards the end of last year is bearing fruit. I blogged about it here. I'm very used to the work flow now and I must say it saves me a lot of time. There's less time looking at my watchlist to see what stocks to buy, because I only do my homework once every week (more if needed), and I'll just stick to my plan.

We can't increase our daily bucket of time beyond 24 hours, but we can optimise and waste less time, and that's the best we can do, isn't it?