From Time-Broke

A budget for your hours.

You would never spend money without a budget. Most people spend time — the only thing they can’t earn more of — with no budget at all.

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A time budget gives every hour a job: you decide what each area of your life receives, watch what actually happens, and adjust without shame. What we measure we improve.

sleepworkupkeepyours~29h

The method, in four moves

1

See the week as 168 hours

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Not as days, not as a list — one sum, the same for everyone alive. Sleep, work, and the already-spoken-for come off the top; what remains is the money in the drawer.
2

Give every hour a job

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Areas of life — recovery, family, work, friendship, the body — each get a weekly allowance of hours, chosen on purpose, rest included.
3

Write what actually happened

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Not to grade yourself — to see. The gap between the plan and the truth is information, never a verdict.
4

Meet yourself weekly

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Ten minutes: what the hours did, what next week gets. The adjustment is the practice; perfection was never the point.

Common questions

What is a time budget?

A time budget is a plan that gives every hour of your week a job before the week starts — the way a money budget gives every dollar a job before it's spent. You decide how many hours each area of your life gets, then compare what actually happened against what you planned, without shame, and adjust.

Why do my days disappear?

Days disappear the way unbudgeted money disappears: in small, unwatched pieces. Nothing dramatic takes them — they leak through unplanned transitions, untracked scrolling, and yeses that were never weighed against anything. The fix is not discipline. It's visibility first, then a plan.

Isn't scheduling every hour controlling?

A budget is not a cage — it's permission. When rest has hours assigned to it, rest stops feeling like theft. The point is never to fill every hour with work; it's to make sure the things you say matter actually receive hours, including doing nothing.

How is this different from a todo list?

A list only knows what's next; it has no idea what anything costs. A time budget prices every commitment in hours — the one currency you can't earn more of — so saying yes to something finally means seeing what it takes that time from.

Where to take this

The book walks the whole method; the tree shows you what your current shape looks like; the app runs the practice daily.

Time-Broke, the bookGrow your tree — five minutesaim, the app

Or start smaller: the letters carry the method a few minutes at a time.

Go deeper: the week is 168 hours · rest is a budget line · the ten-minute weekly meeting

The letters

Ideas like this one, a few minutes a week, in plain words. No noise, easy out.