Once I’d had that rock-bottom moment of insight, the pattern that led to it was clear. <\/p>\n
Running out of time<\/b><\/i>
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/timeismoney.jpg\" "\\"Time")
Looking back, I could see how over the past six months I’ve taken on more and more freelance work without letting any of my other commitments go. To make it all work, I started borrowing. It was just a few hours here and there at first: saying I’d do the laundry tomorrow instead of right now, asking my husband to drive for gymnastics this week and promising to do it next time.<\/p>\n
Pretty soon, I needed to start repaying some of that borrowed time. Deadlines I’d gotten extensions on came due like dreaded tax bills, chores I’d postponed piled up around the house. I ran into the same problems I’m familiar with from money-based debt: I owed more than I could pay. There were simply not enough hours in the day for all the commitments I had.<\/p>\n
Richter says the biggest consequence for perennial time borrowers is losing joy in life. You’re constantly rushing around, and even the things you love become no fun anymore. I’ll add health problems, sleep deprivation, short-tempered fights with my family and making expensive mistakes to that list.<\/p>\n
Being out of time is not unlike living under clutter<\/a> in that sense. When you always need to be in two places at once, you can’t be your best at anything. You make mistakes, lose things, miss deadlines. That can start costing you real money, as well as lowering your quality of life.<\/p>\n Time wasn’t always in such short supply for me. As a stay-at-home mom managing a household of five people on one salary, I’d adopted the adage, \u201cI have more time than money\u201d as my personal motto.<\/p>\n For years, the best solution to any problem I faced was the time-intensive DIY approach. I learned a lot of money-saving skills during that period, and spent many hours gardening, baking, mending, doing bike repair and bartering goods and services.<\/p>\n But when I didn’t drop my DIY ways after I started working for money again, it quickly became apparent that I no longer had more time than money.<\/p>\n I was sleeping four or five hours a night trying to make my temporal ends meet, and still falling further behind. It seemed like I was working every waking hour to keep a commitment for someone else. My kids were feeling it, too. They wanted more downtime, and were showing it through frequent tantrums and poor sleep.<\/p>\n Something had to give.<\/p>\n Finding time<\/b><\/i> I turned my suddenly-much-happier kids loose to play with their neighborhood friends, watch Sesame Street<\/i> and bake cookies with me in the afternoons. I spent my evenings at home, not running around town trying to keep up with a social life that suited my 25-year-old self better than my mom-self.<\/p>\n After quitting (almost) everything, here are a few techniques I used to bring my time debt under control:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Unlike money, you can’t get more time. Sure, you can become more efficient up to a point, but eventually you just have to say no to something you really want to do, because you want something else more. Time management is all about tough choices.<\/p>\n Richter suggests asking yourself these questions when choosing to make a time commitment:<\/p>\n She also suggests making time commitments for now instead of later. Like money, time we commit to spend in the future seems easier to handle than time we have to spend right now. But like money, it really isn’t. You won’t have 20 free hours in six months that you don’t have now.<\/p>\n
\nFirst, I did the time equivalent of declaring bankruptcy: I quit everything. No more writer’s group, no more swim lessons, no more gymnastics classes, no more weekly library story hour.<\/p>\n\n
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