How do you manage your time?

[flipjs]

I just can't believe how you can do a lot of things. You hold a JS Air screencasts every week, working on open-source projects, doing egghead series, helping devs reaching out to you, and a lot more. Would you mind sharing your secret?

[kentcdodds]

@flipjs thanks for the question, apologies for not getting to it sooner. Obviously I haven't prioritized this question as I should have when trying to manage my time ;-)

First off, just to set the record straight for @pavelkornev and others wondering, I actually have been married for almost 5 years and I have 3 children. A 3 year old girl, 2 year old boy, and 7 month old boy :-) They are my world and I love them dearly. I definitely allot plenty of time for them!

I am also an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka Mormons). This requires a great deal of time as well and means that I pretty much dedicate my Sundays to my family and church service as well as my Wednesday nights to my responsibilities as a youth leader.

I think I've been a little disorganized with things, so why don't I give you a basic schedule of my day (used this awesome tool):

	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
5:00am	Sleep	Sleep	Temple Session	Sleep	Sleep	Sleep	Sleep
7:30am	Kids get up	Kids get up	Kids get up	Kids get up	Kids get up	Kids get up	Kids get up
8:30am	Family time	Personal email/twitter/etc.	Personal email/twitter/etc.	Personal email/twitter/etc.	Personal email/twitter/etc.	Personal email/twitter/etc.	Personal email/twitter/etc.
9:30am	👆	Work	Work	Work	Work	Work	House work
10:30am	👆	👆	👆	Get ready for JSAir	👆	👆	👆
11:00am	👆	👆	👆	Start JSAir	👆	👆	👆
12:00pm	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
1:00pm	Church	Work	Work	Work	Work	Work	Naps
2:30pm	👆	👆	👆	👆	👆	👆	Family activities
4:00pm	Family time	👆	👆	👆	👆	👆	👆
5:30pm	Dinner & family time	Dinner & family time	Dinner & family time	Dinner & family time	Dinner & family time	Dinner & family time	Dinner & family time
7:00pm	Kid's Bedtime & spouse time	Kid's Bedtime & spouse time	Kid's Bedtime & spouse time	Kid's Bedtime & Youth Group at the church	Kid's Bedtime & spouse time	Kid's Bedtime & spouse time	Kid's Bedtime & spouse time
8:30pm	👆	👆	👆	Spouse time	👆	👆	👆
10:30pm	Bedtime	Bedtime	Bedtime	Bedtime	Bedtime	Bedtime	Bedtime

So from the look of it, I have no time to do all the other stuff I do. But here are a few things and exceptions to this schedule that open up some time.

Well, first off I should probably mention that I'm incredibly privileged to have a wonderful woman as a wife who helps me so much by taking care of so many logistics around the house and our lives which frees up a lot of my time.

I generally follow the "1 minute rule" from Gretchen Rubin:

I discovered an incredibly easy, effective hack—but it must be followed consistently if I want to see results.

It’s very simple: Do, without delay, any task that can be finished in one minute. Hang up my coat, read a letter and toss it, fill in a form, answer an email, note down a citation, pick up my phone messages, file a paper, put the magazines away…and so on.

Because the tasks are so quick, it isn’t too hard to make myself follow the rule—but it has big results. Keeping all those small, nagging tasks under control makes me more serene, less overwhelmed.

The problem is this

My life is full of these. So often it's best if I close down twitter/email/etc. to just get stuff done. I don't do that enough 😅

So aside from that, I try to automate as much as I can. With JavaScript Air, I have a lot of stuff automated (and plan to automate more) with setting up shows and things. Unfortunately, it still probably takes me around 3-4 hours per show (including show-time). I need to bring this time down.

My wife occasionally goes running or shopping in the evening after the kids go to bed. So I get about an hour or two in the evening every now and then before my wife gets back home and I get to spend the evening with her.

The open source stuff comes in little bursts here and there. Sometimes I get a work-related PR in during work hours. Other times it happens during that time my wife's out of the house.

Also, if I have a talk to prepare or I'm working hard on an egghead.io series then my wife will grab a book while I work on it, or we'll turn on some Andy Griffeth and she'll crochet while I work on OSS or JS Air or something.

Sometimes I'll wake up extra early or stay up extra late to work on something as well.

Hopefully this helps answer your question. As always, I'm pretty long-winded, so I'm sorry if this was TMI!

[kentcdodds]

I should probably mention that even though the schedule there looks pretty comprehensive, it's not. I spend time doing personal, family, and couple scripture study, occasionally hit up the skate park (I'm a roller blader), and spend time doing learning as well.

[kentcdodds]

I mostly hit the skatepark ramps :-)

[flipjs]

@kentcdodds Thanks for your time answering this. I'll start organizing my time, and hope to get to do more, especially my hobbies.

[kentsalcedo]

@kentcdodds Now that your kids are older have you found that you've had to reprioritize or rethink the scheduling? (Really enjoyed your decade review post and I admire that you've been able to level up and maintain a strong family bond all this time)

[kentcdodds]

Hey @kentsalcedo,

My schedule has changed a tiny bit, but it's actually mostly the same. My kids are now involved in more things that I spend my time enjoying (swim and piano lessons/etc). But really, I haven't had to change much about the schedule yet.