168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

Product Information

There are 168 hours in a week—this is a new approach to getting the most out of 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? 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. Work rarely consumes 100% of anyone’s time. Even the people who say that they work 80 hour weeks rarely work that hard. There is always room for improvement. I don't think people should read an excessive amount of self-help materials - at some point you just gotta start implementing what you read instead of being caught in the perpetual, never-ending reading cycle, yes? I've become very strict about what I choose to read in this department, but the structure of the book did okay and was fast to read and catch the useful ideas. Do you know how you are using your time now? Or, in an average week of 168 hours, where is that time going? Despite the imperfections of this book, I have re-read (or re-listened to it multiple times) so clearly it hits a chord with me.

If this gives me two extra hours a week, that will be a win as that’s two extra hours I can spend learning microscopy or writing fiction. Use your insights to rethink your schedule One way to make time with your spouse is to schedule a spouse conference of 30 minutes before bedtime. At that point, you can discuss different aspects of your life. To better manage your time, create a spreadsheet and log all 168 hours of the week. That way, you will have a clear understanding of where your hours are going. The idea that we’re under a ‘time crunch’ is a myth. The real crisis all of us are under is more along the lines of misuse of time. We spend our time doing things that aren’t very high on our real personal priority list. It’s not just the time we waste doing unimportant stuff. It’s also the time we spend being productive towards ends that really don’t mean very much in our life.”

Have the kids stay a few extra hours in day care or hire a babysitter for more free time after work - if you spend too much time with your kids it won't be quality time. If you haven't done any reading on mindful time management, then I suppose this book is a decent place to start, as long as you remember that Vanderkam wrote it for people *exactly like her*, and take her advice with a pinch of salt. But you'd be better off reading Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity or The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change and working those systems into a lifestyle that's meaningful for *you*.

The other problem with thinking about your time in increments of 24 hours instead of 168 hours, is that it is inherently more stressful (you feel you have “less time”), especially if you don’t take the planning fallacy into consideration—the phenomenon whereby an individual displays the “optimism bias” and thinks they need less time than they do to complete a given task, regardless of historical evidence to the contrary.You should now have a good understanding of why thinking about your time in 24-hour increments is not always the best solution. After all, I don’t mow my lawn every 24 hours, and therefore wouldn't normally think about reducing the frequency of mowing. We see and hear that number often enough, but does anyone ever do the math? 24/7 adds up to 168 hours—one week—and, according to Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours, it is the ideal unit by which to examine our lives. Most of us complain about not having enough time to do what it takes to feel successful at home or at work. 168 Hours posits that if we look at the data objectively—how we really spend each hour in an average week—we all have “enough.” After keeping a log for one week, readers can conduct their own Time Makeover: identify dreams and the “actionable steps” they require, optimize “core competencies” and, my favorite, outsource or minimize all the stuff left over. With allowances for downtime and “bits of joy” thrown in, time can finally be on our side, 24/7.” Use bits of time for bits of joy. Plan on how to use your time when you are idle or when the unexpected happens. It’s perfect for those who think they face a constant time crunch. Until recently, I was one. Reading the book helped me realize I do have time to write that novel, start that blog, take that dance class, exercise every day — and still have dinner ready for my husband and spend quality time with my kids.”

There were also several insulting references to families that chose to have the wife/mom stay at home, which admittedly made continuing to read more difficult for me (I'm a stay-at-home mom). I also felt that, while she's clearly devoted to nurturing her children and advocated that strongly, the references made to nurturing one's spouse/partner were a nod-and-wave at best.

Have a story that will take your career to the next level. The best personal stories not only reach earlier events but also include the present. The New Home Economics Another gem in this book is that time with friends is time wasted unless you are multi-tasking. Go out to eat with a friend (since you have to eat anyway) or somehow schedule time around something you need to do. Don't knit; she calls that a "cliche" forgetting that perhaps knitting's emerging popularity stems from the fact that people find happiness and a sense of accomplishment in doing it. She recommends watching less TV; I agree with that. She recommends watching no more than one hour of TV per day; I think that's unreasonable. If we are home, we watch Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! and an episode or two of something on Netflix. If we're out, we're out; no TV. Over the course of a week there's an OK balance. Her point is that TV gets you nowhere toward your goals. That's true. What she neglects to understand is that the human brain needs a certain amount of downtime. But, when you consider all of the other things I’m doing that are probably wasting a good chunk of that time (T.V., social media, online browsing, household chores etc), I may be using those hours a lot less intentionally than I could be. After all, as much as I enjoy watching shows on Netflix to decompress, I’d infinitely prefer to actually learn something new, like how to play the guitar. hours is enough time to work 50 hours a week, sleep 8 hours a night, and still spend massive amounts of time with your children. But since all hours aren’t created equally, making this come out right involves moving around chunks of hours like puzzle pieces. Split shifts are a good way to use the fact that young children sleep more than adults do to still get your work hours in.”

Well, my dream job is to be an astronaut. It's not going to happen. I am in my mid-30s, have no science education and a 15-year career doing something else. Almost every book in this genre makes a similar recommendation. I find it useless. If everyone were doing his/her dream job, would we have janitors? Port-a-potty maintenance crew, etc. Granted, there are some "undesirable" jobs that appeal to a handful of people (i.e. podiatrists, those people who rescue alligators/venomous snakes from human habitats) but most of us aren't working our actual, honest-and-true dream job. Better advice would be how to find meaning in your work, how to stay motivated and focused when the work gets boring (even dream jobs come with a side of tedious tasks), how to move forward, grow and get new challenges/opportunities in your field. Now, if you h-a-t-e your job, that's something to look at but I feel like many of us are working jobs that are medium-ish -- they are not too hard/too easy, they pay enough to pay the bills, there's an ebb and flow between challenge and overwhelmed -- where's the advice on how to make the most of that kind of job? The kind most of us have? OMG. HAHAHA. Seriously? Raise your hand if you have a dedicated assistant? OK, even if you do have an assistant, raise your hand if that assistant is tasked with managing your work schedule/calendar AND your personal schedule/calendar (i.e. haircuts, appointments, etc.). Yeah, didn't think so. Dear Laura Vanderkam: Mad Men is not a show that takes place in the present tense.Your children need to be treated as commodities so that you can rank yourself alongside other hyper-successful people. If your offspring disappoint you, drop them off at the adoption agency and start over. Choose a small number of activities that bring you the most happiness. Make sure that one of the activities involves breaking a sweat given that your health is non-negotiable There has to be a better way...and Laura Vanderkam has found one. After interviewing dozens of successful, happy people, she realized that they allocate their time differently than most of us. Instead of letting the daily grind crowd out the important stuff, they start by making sure there's time for the important stuff. When plans go wrong and they run out of time, only their lesser priorities suffer. You could learn to scuba dive. You could go on a number of long hikes. You could learn to bake macarons or chocolate eclairs. You could have a really long, luxurious nap, you could spend valuable time with your loved ones.