How do I manage my time?

Yep.
I have a wife, 2 groups of friends, 3 kids, family, my health, full-time job, managing 3 websites with more than 200k visitors/month - not related to my job, I play in a band and I also take on open-source projects.

I often hear people say "I don't have time". DUDE you have time. A more justifiable answer would be "I don't want to waste my time on this" :)

So, you have time, spend it on what you want, don't try to do them all :)

• The biggest problem I see is the 2-hour daily commute... I chosed a job less well paid, but it is a 10 mins walk from home.

• Also, the girlfriend is the first item of your array... I would put your health there =))

The commute is a great time to get in some learning or leisure time. You could read books, listen to a podcast, watch a video...

It's hard to suggest anything else since you haven't specified how much free time you have. Maybe try seeing how you spend your week (making sure to give yourself plenty of sleep and exercise), see where you have some free time, and work back from there?

So the first thing is to use your 2 hours on the commute in a productive way:
I tend to cycle so it hits my health button, but if you have time and a phone the following are possible:

1. Podcasts for developers, use your preference.
2. Audio books, audio books can be great for learning or new views on things.
3. Call your friends or family to catch up.

Then we have lunch:

1. Get out for a walk, or a jog maybe.
2. I tend to go to the gym at lunch.

So now we have the working week days more productive and focused.
Health, jobs and some learning in.

You then have 5 evenings and 2 weekends days, combine health and the girlfriend in some way:
Dates include:

rock climbing.
Walking in nice places.
Gym, swim, cycle.

Same thing with friends, I tend to fall into bad habits of eating and watching TV with friends and family which is great to relax but if that is all i do it's not great.

I personally feel that health impacts so many other areas of life, if you feel full of energy then work can be a breeze, learning is more fun etc.

TLDR

168 hours (per week)

52.5 -- sleeping
14.5 -- food related
40 -- working
20 -- commuting
20 -- GF
12 -- friends
9 -- chores

4 -- gym overlap with social time or subtract from something above

Hope this helps :) All just a suggestion can't say for sure what your specific situation is like.

Ok, lets break it down it won't be easy,
168 hours in a week.
biggest chunk sleep.

get at least 7.5 hours a night to be healthy.

so 7.5 * 7 = 52.5 hours

left with 115.5 hours

got to eat, best not to rush this, but there are some optimizations you can make. One is food prepping.

Food prep lunch every day to save both money and time. this will take about an hour and will save roughly 1.15 hours over the week making lunch in the morning.

estimating 30 minutes to eat and make breakfast 30 min for lunch, 1hr for dinner. gives 2 hours a day or 14 a week + 30min for food prep = 14.5 hours

101 hours left food and sleep taken care of

full time job = 40 hours
commute is 2 hours so 4 there and back = 4*5 work days = 20hrs commuting

41 hours left

A healthy relationship should probably take up 20 hours a week roughly
or 2.85 hours a day. you can optimize this by sharing meal times. (this will depend a lot on the person though)

this leaves 21 hours for 2 groups of friends and chores around the house and hygiene.

house chores depending on the house can be done routinely each day at about 30 mins a day depending on size of house, and use. this is 3.5 hours for house chores. + grocery shopping (2hrs) + 30 mins a day for hygiene.

leaving 12 hours for social activity with friends.

spent over the weekend you could do Friday nights with 1 group of friends and saturday nights with the other leaving sunday for planning and other personal items you want to get done.

your biggest wasted chunk of time would be the commute. maybe a good time get on a hands free call and be social.

if you want to add health then I suggest working out with friends or GF, and making that part of your social time. other wise you will sacrifice social time to personal health which is a hard thing to do.

1 hr work out 4 days a week Get those rest days in ;)

I threw a spreadsheet at that problem. Budget your time like you budget your income. Even throwing a tiny bit of organization at it helped me make the most of what time I had, and allowed me to plan my weeks out in such a way that no one aspect of this list is neglected.

Could the commute be shortened? If yes, it will help greatly.

I recommend to plan everything on a calendar and to stick to it. Planning in advance also greatly helps. Don't forget to save time for your hobbies too.

If your commute is by bus, I would also recommend reading and learning new things during each trip. That's four hours of reading per day!

I used to have all of that minus the girlfriend and then I moved in close to the office so I removed the commute and replaced it with gym time. My suggestion is to organize the afternoon/evening and use a day on the weekend to plan out the weekdays and also be very ruthless when it comes to prioritization.

I would first carve out sometime to think about your needs and what you ultimately want. You could also designate days to when you see your family and gf or exercise for health!