How to Make Time for Everything (Then Actually Do It)

Making time for everything starts with a blunt arithmetic reality: the average week already gets fully allocated before most people add “extra” goals like learning an instrument, building a side business, or writing consistently. Using a “168 hours” spreadsheet framework, the analysis breaks a typical week into sleep, work, food, chores, fitness, entertainment, and social time—then shows how quickly the remaining “free” hours go negative once childcare and modern media habits are included.

The spreadsheet begins with sleep and work as the two largest fixed blocks. With an average of about 8.7 hours of sleep per night (rounded to 8 for simplicity), plus a wind-down period, sleep-related time lands at roughly 56 hours per week, leaving about 108.5 hours for everything else. Work then consumes another large chunk: assuming an 8-hour workday, five days a week, plus lunch, commute, and daily prep/transition time, work totals about 52.5 hours per week. At that point, sleep and work together account for roughly a third of life each, leaving “about a third” for everything else.

Food and household tasks narrow that remaining space further. Based on internet averages, eating and food prep/cooking add up to around 12 hours per week, while chores land around 6.5 hours per week (roughly under an hour a day). Entertainment and media are the biggest surprise. The analysis cites about 19 hours per week watching TV shows/movies/streaming, plus additional time on social media apps. Even with conservative assumptions, entertainment totals roughly 29.5 hours per week, leaving only about four hours per week for “everything else” after entertainment, fitness, and basic social/family time are accounted for. The conclusion is stark: even without kids, the typical allocation can already exhaust the 168-hour budget.

Childcare makes the situation collapse. Adding roughly 2 hours per day of active childcare plus additional weekly admin/logistics and kid-related tasks pushes childcare to at least ~18 hours per week, driving the spreadsheet into “overdrawn” territory—negative free time—meaning there is no room left for additional ambitions unless something changes.

The second half turns the math into a personal case study: Ali Abdaal’s own strategy while working full-time as a doctor and building YouTube and a side business. He frames the solution as three levers: squeeze efficiency in required tasks, sacrifice selectively, and “double dip” by combining activities (like using commute and lunch time for audio books/podcasts). His biggest time unlock came from cutting cooking and healthy meal prep—skipping breakfast, relying on ready meals/takeaway, and reducing food-related time from typical estimates (10–15 hours/week) down to about 2.7 hours/week. He also reduced chores via outsourcing (a cleaner every other week), minimized entertainment by largely avoiding TV, and kept social media lower than average. Double dipping mattered too: he used commute time (often at 2–3x speed) and sometimes lunch breaks to plan and consume content.

The takeaway is not that everyone should copy his sacrifices, but that time scarcity is real and non-negotiable. The spreadsheet approach helps people identify where their hours actually go, then decide what to trade—entertainment, media scrolling, certain comforts—rather than blaming themselves for failing to “fit everything in.” For parents especially, childcare can consume a huge portion of the week, so the only sustainable path is deliberate tradeoffs or major life changes like reducing work hours.