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I WAS FORTUNATE to find enough time during my working years to pursue various hobbies and other personal interests. My part-time work arrangement allowed me to have four-day weekends. I’d hoped that, after retirement, I would have even more time to take on personal projects.
But surprisingly, I found myself with less free time. Not only was I failing to start new projects, such as writing software for the website of the nonprofit I cofounded, but also I was struggling to keep up with my current commitments. It stressed me out.
An obvious explanation was travel. Since retiring, I’d taken several trips with friends and family, including a few multi-week vacations. I’d also devoted significant time to catching up with old friends. Yet this didn’t fully account for where my time was going, especially during the weeks I was home.
I had a similar experience in my career when I first took on a managerial role. Once I became a manager, I found myself struggling to cope with a growing backlog of work. I began each day by preparing a to-do list, only to find that, by the end of the day, most of the items remained untouched.
Frustrated and exhausted, I set out to address my time management issue. I resorted to a rather crude method to get to the bottom of it. I meticulously kept a detailed journal to record my activities hour by hour. After maintaining the time log for several weeks, I reviewed it and my problems became self-evident.
The primary source of time leakage was my habit of frequently checking emails and rushing to respond to incoming messages as soon as they appeared in my inbox. The second major time drain was attending numerous meetings, many of which weren’t essential. My days were so fragmented between emails and meetings that I had little time to accomplish anything substantial.
Once I identified the culprits, I brought more discipline to my daily routine. I shifted away from the compulsive always-on work style and blocked large segments of my daily calendar for important tasks. I minimized email interruption by turning off notifications for most of the day.
I also went on a meeting diet, attending only those I deemed essential. These adjustments helped me reclaim much of the time I’d been losing, without any noticeable downside.
I borrowed a page from my own playbook to solve my retirement’s time-crunch mystery. I kept detailed records of my activities for three weeks and then reviewed them. Unlike last time, I couldn’t pinpoint one or two factors draining my time. I was simply stretching myself too thin across multiple activities and goals.
To address this, I decided to experiment with a budgeting technique. A humble confession: I’ve never found success with conventional budgets, especially those requiring detailed categorization and tracking of every dollar spent. I admire those who have the patience to meticulously monitor their expenses—I’m just not one of them.
Instead, throughout my earning years, I adopted a reverse budget: I saved first and spent what was left. I applied this same technique to manage my time in retirement. I decided to allocate 50 hours a week for my personal use, and spend the rest on everything else.
Why 50 hours? My rough calculation went like this: First, I committed the weekends completely for family time. I estimated that my basic needs—things like nightly sleep and occasional naps, showers and hygiene, meals, routine chores and so on—took almost 14 hours each day. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because I prefer things slow and easy.
That left me 10 hours a day for five weekdays, or 50 hours a week, dedicated to my personal pursuits. To keep things simple, I decided to split this time evenly among my five different interests, spending roughly 10 hours a week on each:
1. Physical fitness. I exercise each day, but I don’t enjoy it. I dislike it so much that I spend nearly an hour each day mentally preparing myself to get started. The actual workout lasts barely 45 to 60 minutes. If you include a few minutes for cooling down, it turns into a two-hour task.
Despite my dislike of physical exercise, I take it seriously. I want to stay fit, or at least slow the deterioration of my physical abilities. Listening to podcasts during my workouts helps reduce the boredom. I also mix up my exercise between swimming at a local community club, walking outdoors and strength training. Regardless of the form of exercise, it’s often the least enjoyable two hours of my day.
2. Hobbies. I enjoy acquiring or honing skills that align with my hobbies. Currently, part of my hobby time goes to practicing the flute, at least when my wife and daughter aren’t home to complain about the occasional squeaky or off-tune notes.
I’m also learning Spanish. Sí, quiero aprender español para poder viajar a México y otros países de habla hispana con más confianza. Progress is slow but promising.
3. Social connections. I make a concerted effort to stay connected with people. This includes mentoring through our nonprofit to provide investment and financial education, catching up one-on-one with friends and former coworkers, giving informal music lessons to acquaintances, and so on. When I don’t feel like meeting anyone, I write online articles for audiences I care about.
4. Continuing education. I want to stay current on topics related to finance, economics, behavioral psychology and anything that catches my interest. Thanks to numerous sources such as Coursera, edX and MIT, there’s no shortage of online classes from reputed educators. If I’m not enrolled in a class, I’ll often read nonfiction.
5. Doing nothing. Finally, I reserve the remaining 10 hours a week for doing nothing, unless something unplanned comes up. I simply sit by the window with a pot of tea, look outside and let my mind wander.
My new schedule is already showing results. While my days are busy, I’m no longer overwhelmed with dozens of things that have little significance.
Sanjib Saha retired early from software engineering to dedicate more time to family and friends, pursue personal development and assist others as a money wellness mentor. Self-taught in investments, he passed the Series 65 licensing exam as a non-industry candidate. Sanjib is the president and cofounder of Dollar Mentor, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization offering free investment and financial education. Follow his nonprofit on LinkedIn, and check out Sanjib’s earlier articles.
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Thank you very much for the article! I found it very interesting and relevant, since I recently retired. I now struggle with making my time count. I even started using a time-tracking application to see where my time is going and it’s enlightening. I have a question for you, if you don’t mind: how much time do you spend watching television? I personally have always been anti-TV-watching to a point that we never had any TV channels and no cable at our house. The only TV my kids ever watched was rented videos/DVDs. But then came the internet and streaming, the kids grew up and moved out. The long story short – these days I end up spending around 3 hours a day watching TV. It’s mostly a combination of movies and YouTube Videos. It’s fun, but I feel it’s too much. How about you?
Hello! Thanks for sharing your experience. I occasionally watch TV, but not on a regular basis. My wife and I might watch a movie together on weekends, but it’s not very regular. We have a TV in the kitchen too and we sometimes keep the TV on (with a standup-up comedy, a talk-show, or something light) at dinner time, but don’t pay too much attention. Same thing for my occasional daytime naps – I leave the TV on with a documentary and quickly fall asleep. A single episode might take a month to finish :). That’s pretty much about it as far as “entertainment viewing” is concerned.
I also watch some of the video courses on TV, but I do not count them as TV watching because they serve a different purpose.
In the past, my wife and I used to watch TV several nights a week – watching a movie o