Seriously. You do.
When I was a programmer, I thought I worked so many hours, even up to 100. I have come to realize that while I may have sat at my computer that long, or been in the office that long, I really didn’t work that long. And as much as you think that you do work a lot hours, chances are, you really don’t.
If you don’t buy that idea, you really need to read Laura Vanderkam‘s new book, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. If you want to be able to train for a marathon, and don’t think you have the time, you need to read this book. If you want to read the latest novel, but don’t think you have the time, you need to read this book.
We all have 168 hours. The key is how you use them.
It’s an unquestioned truth of modern life: we are all starved for time. With the rise of two-income families, extreme jobs, and the ability to log on to the world 24/7, life is so frenzied we can barely breathe. But what if we actually have plenty of time? What if we could sleep eight hours a night, exercise five days a week, and learn how to play the piano without sacrificing work, family time, or any other activity that is important to us? According to Laura Vanderkam, we can. If we re-examine our weekly allotment of 168 hours, we’ll find that, with a little reorganization and prioritizing, we can dedicate more time to the things we want to do without having to make sacrifices.
The book’s author is Laura Vanderkam. Laura is also the author of Grindhopping: Building a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues. She is a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors. She is also a freelance writer and her work has appeared in Reader’s Digest, Scientific American, Wired, The American, Portfolio and other publications.
Knowledge is power, and when it comes to understanding how we use our time, we often lack the knowledge. Laura opens the book with the myth of the time crunch, helping the reader realize that too often we overestimate the hours we spend on a task, whether it is work, or housekeeping or parenting. The real problem is that most of us do not have any idea how we spend our 168 hours.
To solve that, she suggests that we begin to keep a time diary. This was a real eye-opener for me. I had no idea how much time I wasted searching the internet, reading social media sites, watching television, etc. You cannot change what you do not know. I was surprised a couple of years ago when I made note of everything I ate. I was shocked at how much I ate just walking through the kitchen as I was heading to the bathroom or to the home office. A handful of chips here, another snack there. When I wrote it all down, it changed the way I thought about food, making me think about what and how I ate. By keeping track of our time, down to the minute, we get to see how much time we waste!
Once we see how much time we are wasting, we can begin to reprioritize our time to accomplish what we want to accomplish, whether its playing the piano or writing that next novel.
Vanderkam offers some very practical advice for helping you find your core competencies, which are often the things you love to do. And if you love what you do, you will have more energy for the rest of your life as well. If you are trying to build a career while raising a young family, you will have more energy for your children if you work 50 hours a week in a job you love than if you work 30 hours in a job you hate. Therefore, you need to be in the right job. While the book is not a book on career advice, Laura does offer thoughts on finding the perfect job for you, and it is often a job that does not have a traditional job description.
In addition Vanderkam offers suggestions for creating a calendar that allows you to accomplish your core competencies, be more productive, and achieve what you want. In a competitive work environment, we think we need to be in the office late. But is it possible to leave at 5 pm and have time with the family and then work later, after the kids have gone to sleep? And still get the eight hours of sleep we need? And the exercise we need? Yes, it is possible, and Laura shows you how.
Vanderkam then offers suggestions on managing your time at home. There was a very interesting stat I came across as I read this section of the book: more parenting takes place today than in the 1950′s by both mother and father. In the 1950′s stay at home mothers spent less time with their children, despite the fact that they were home, than mothers do today. Why? More housework. Today’s parents, and mothers in particular, are willing to let the housework go so they can spend more time with their children.
That does not mean that your house needs to be dirty and messy. It means that if you prioritize your time toward parenting, then you need to be willing to forego you doing the cleaning. The same with laundry. She suggests that you outsource those tasks by finding people who will do it for you. Often the monetary cost is less than we think and the time savings it provides us allows us to do more of the things at which we are most effective and love.
Creating a full life and aligning your time is not an easy task. But if you do, you can have the time to achieve what you want to achieve out of life.
I really enjoyed this book. It is extremely practical while being more than just challenging you to count your minutes and hours. The author helps you understand how you are best motivated, employing the ideas from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian psychology professor and author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. At the end of each chapter, she challenges you through questions that cause you to consider the possibilities rather than being stuck in the box you create for yourself. At the end of the book, she provides a look into real case studies of how people used their time, how they changed their time usage, and the impact this had on their life. Finally, this is a book of experience. Laura provides interviews of people who have achieved much through their core competencies, time management, and outsourcing. It is not a book of facts, though it includes some potent ones, but a book of experiences. It empowers you to say, “I can do this!” And you can.
With a little work and a little change, you can make the best use of your 168 hours.
