If It’s Not In
The Calendar,
It’s A Guess.
Everyone has 168 hours a week. The billionaire, the lawyer, the parent of three, the business owner. Same budget, different allocation. This episode is a coaching session — the same exercise Rickard does with entrepreneurs every week. Two audits. Thirty minutes. Everything changes when you actually look.
“Make it simple, but significant.”— Don Draper, Mad Men
Before reading any further — two numbers. Write them down honestly, just for yourself.
How many hours a week do you spend on your phone? Scrolling, streaming, watching. Your best estimate.
How many hours a week do you spend training? Intentionally moving your body for your health.
Hold those numbers. We are coming back to them.
Benjamin Franklin was one of the most productive people in recorded history — founding father, diplomat, inventor, writer, publisher, scientist. He did more in one lifetime than most institutions manage in a century. And when historians looked at how, the answer was almost embarrassingly simple.
Every morning, one question: “What good shall I do today?” Every evening: “What good have I done today?” In between — he accounted for his hours. Not obsessively. Deliberately. He tracked the gap between what he intended and what actually happened.
He was not naturally disciplined. He understood that if you do not know where your time went, you cannot change anything. The review is not a waste of time. It is how you sharpen the saw — so everything else cuts better.
Two hundred and fifty years later, the data on how people actually spend their time is one of the most uncomfortable things to look at. So let’s look at it.
Every person on this planet has exactly 168 hours a week. Billionaires, parents, lawyers, business owners — same budget. Here is how the average working adult actually allocates theirs.
That last one. 67% of gym memberships go unused. People are already paying for fitness. They signed up, they gave the direct debit permission, they had the intention. They are just not going. They are spending money on health and time on screens — simultaneously — while telling themselves they have neither.
“You are not too busy and you are not too broke. You are unaware. That is the only real problem.”
When Rickard sits down with an entrepreneur, the first thing he asks is simple: show me your calendar. Not what you plan to do. What is actually in there. The calendar tells everything — where the real focus goes, what gets protected, what gets sacrificed, what is being built versus merely hoped for.
If it is not in the calendar, it is not a priority. It is a wish. And wishes do not compound.
Franklin called his version of this moral accounting. A simple ledger, reviewed daily. Most people never do it once. Not because they are lazy — because nobody ever asked them to show their calendar.
Open your calendar right now. Find three slots where your training will happen this week — not where you hope it will, where it will. Put them in. Name them. Protect them as you would a client meeting or a flight.
Then schedule one hour in the next seven days for the money audit. Put it in the calendar. That appointment alone could save you hundreds of euros a year and show you exactly where your resources have been going without your awareness.
Two calendar edits. That is how it starts. Not with a resolution. With a decision that leaves a mark in the data.
If you are in Berlin and looking for a professional team to help with your health and fitness — a free assessment to find the best strategy for you.
Book your free assessment →If you are a fitness professional looking to sharpen your coaching — take the Escapist Academy quiz and find out what level you currently operate at.
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Join the community → (coming soon)“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
We Don’t Start Over Again.
New episode every Monday — hosted by Rickard Long