Find Time to Do More Things: Free Up to 15 Hours a Week

There is a reason most of us don’t have the time to do side-projects. Between our job at the lab that forces us to work long hours (more than half of postdocs work at least 50 hours/week and 1/4 work at least 60 hours/week), and growing duties at home (we spend an average 20 hours a week on housework), there never seem to be enough minutes in the day!

So first, let’s try to understand how we actually use our time and then how to change things so that we could save some time to pursue other projects. It seems that besides the hours we spend at the lab, sleeping, or doing housework, watching television and browsing the internet is what consumes most of our time. Indeed, we watch an average 11.5 hours of TV per week and spend an average 14.2 hours on the Internet! Some teenagers even spend up to 30 hours a week online, with an average 20 hours.

What can we do about it?

It should be quite easy to cut down on time spent on housework: by simply outsourcing to a housecleaner, although I know it’s difficult to have the money for that, with a small researcher salary (average $35,000 a year for a post-doc salary).

Now, if we consider watching TV, it takes almost two hours of each of your days. Of course, I don’t suggest you stop watching TV altogether. I’m even probably more addicted to TV series like “Dexter” and “Grey’s Anatomy” than most of you. What I mean is that you can change your behavior towards TV in order to free up a few hours a week. Indeed, there are mainly two ways to watch TV: watch whatever is on, or only watch specific programs. By changing from one category to the other, you can easily free 5 to 6 hours of extra time and with that time, you can do things you always wanted to do such as learn a new language, volunteer and/or take dance classes…

How can you reduce the time you spend watching TV? Try to thoughtfully consider which shows you most enjoy and as Ramit Sethi often says: “Spend lavishly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t”. Here you can interpret this as: spend time watching the shows you really love, and stop watching the ones you don’t. If it helps you, you can also invest in a DVR such as TiVo (consider it an investment in yourself). With it you can record all the shows you love, cut through commercials, watch them, and then turn the TV off! I don’t recommend going cold turkey though. Instead, try eliminating one or a few shows you really don’t care about that much, or try strategic viewing, i.e. not watching every episode. By making this one simple change, you can free up over 600 hours a year of free time.

What about browsing the Internet?

Many of you probably now think “I don’t watch that much TV!” But watch out, as I mentioned before, most of us spend even more time browsing the Internet than watching TV and an Internet addiction can be even worse. Browsing around the Web reading useless posts and watching videos isn’t much better than watching TV. Instead, you can try to set goals while working online. For example, instead of reading the news for an hour everyday, why not read about how to create a blog and try blogging about something that could help your fellow researchers or join a forum or a scientific community?

Finally, try to have a goal in mind for those extra hours. Otherwise, you will easily slip back into your old habits, since you won’t have anything else to do. Motivate yourself with a specific, measurable goal, for example, to read 12 books in the next 12 months. If you really want to do something meaningful with your time, or if you have a goal in mind, and you watch TV or surf the Internet mindlessly, you do have time to reach that goal — probably over 1000 hours a year in fact.