Theory of Free Time

How much free time do you really have?

I've broken it down like this:

Monday through Friday, I have to work. I work 8 hours a day, with a half hour commute both ways if I am lucky - that's 9 hours. Figure in the time I have to shower and get ready, I give myself an hour for this so it's not like I'm rushing around. That puts me up to 10 hours. Now I have to sleep - I can get by on less than 8 hours of sleep, I can make it ok with even 5-6 hours a day, less than that and I am a zombie. But let's say I am giving myself a full 8 hours and am always well rested. So I am up to 18 hours. That leaves me with 6 hours. I give myself about 2 hours of unwinding time - that is, time to veg out after work, make something to eat, or just sit there and do nothing and kind of decompress if I've had a hard day at work. That leaves me with 4 hours. 4 hours of free time. 4 hours a day to do stuff like: work out, practice guitar, work on my personal programming projects, do some reading, write in my blog, organize my finances, start a side business, get a real estate license etc. All of the various non sarging related projects and goals that I've set for myself - I don't count sarging because it is more like fun to me. So the breakdown for a typical weekday goes like

Weekdays
-------
Sleep 8 hrs
Work 8 hrs
Commute 1 hr
Shower, get ready 1 hr
Relax time, eating 2 hrs
FREE TIME 4 hrs

So on the weekends - let's say I give myself 8 hours of sleep on Saturday and Sunday, and I give myself another 2 hours to shower and eat. I have 14 hours of free time on the weekends.

Weekends
-------
Sleep 8 hrs
Shower, get dressed, eating 2 hrs
FREE TIME 14 hrs

I like to relax on the weekends, so I doubt I would be doing productive stuff for 14 hours on Saturday and Sunday. I like to be lazy, surf on the internet, go out sarging, basically be non productive and let my mind decompress. But on the other hand, I don't like to go an entire weekend without having done anything productive. I'd say about 10 hours productive time on the weekends is a reasonable amount to shoot for. Likewise, I'm not going to have energy to do stuff every night when I get home from work - sometimes I'm just completely worn out, or maybe I want to go out and have fun - so I'd say about 15 to 20 hours of productive time Mon-Fri is a reasonable amount to shoot for.

Time is more valuable than money. There's nothing I hate more than realizing I just spent the entire night doing nothing, even an hour a night of doing something productive is infinitely better than doing nothing all night. And - just like, if you don't know how much money you actually have in the bank, you are more prone to spend it frivolously - if you don't know how much free time you actually have, you're more prone to squander it.

So I'm imagining a healthy level of productivity - where 0 hours of productive time means that I'm being a total lazy slug, and 38 hours of free time means that I am basically using every available minute of time a week to do something productive, which will probably never happen. A healthy level of productivity is somewhere between 20 and 30 hours a week of free time used in the pursuit of doing something productive that will move me closer to accomplishing personal goals or advancing in my career. Which fits in with the theory of 'millionaires typically work over 60 hours a week' I got from the 21 habits of millionaires book. If I can make use of my available free time this way, I will be living a good life, and inevitably good things will start to happen.