Time Is Just An Excuse: My Infamous Time Audit

The single most common excuse I hear from people is “I don’t have enough time.”

When people feed me that line, we fill out one of my infamous time audits.

In this exercise, the person claiming this and I stand in front of a big whiteboard. I write “168” in big numbers. I tell the person that 168 happens to be the number of hours there are in a week.

Then, I ask the person how many hours he works and sleeps each week. For the purpose of this exercise, let’s say he works 70 hours a week— that’s 14 hours each day, Monday through Friday.

Then, I usually assign the person 8 hours of sleep each night, or 56 weekly hours. I don’t ask about sleep, I tell—people rarely get 8 hours of sleep every night, but that’s how much they should be sleeping.

Add 70 and 56, and the person has used only 126 hours out of a possible 168.

Do the math, and we’re left with 42 extra waking hours each week that this guy tells me he “doesn’t” have.

That’s the equivalent of nearly 2 days that he claims just aren’t there. I ask the person what the hell he does with the rest of his time. It’s a fair question.

The person inevitably starts to shout things like “I have to commute to work,” “I have to grocery shop,” and “I have to spend time with my family!”

So without even asking him, I give the guy 10 hours of commuting (2 hours, 5 days a week), 3 hours of weekly grocery shopping, and 20 hours of quality time with his family.

That brings his total hours to 159 hours, mean- ing he still has 9 hours each week.

By now, the guy gets the message.

I want you to do the same exercise. Grab a pen and paper and write 168 in big numbers up the top. That’s how many hours you have in a week. 

Now add up how many hours you spend during the day on things like working, commuting, sleeping, spending time with family, etc and subtract it from 168. This is how much time you have left over.

You will quickly see you have a lot more time than you think.

The hard truth is that everyone has enough time for health and fitness. If you choose not to use it, that’s your prerogative.