168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

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Instead, she goes with the "core competency" metaphor which really only resonates if you've read a zillion business books (I have, so I was OK but I thought the analogy was we weak because people are not corporations and accomplishments are not finished products off a manufacturing line). This is not just a time management book like the name implies. This really is a book about people living their dream lives and dream jobs and accomplishing their goals, and fundamental to all of that is first taking control of your time.” 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.

I might not be the best at all of these skills but nobody else can do them for me seeing as they are things that fulfill me, or that I want to get better at doing (photography and microscopy). I would usually give a book like this one star as it could be boiled down to fit on a 3X5 index card, but instead was bulked out into book-length form by adding dozens of examples of perfect people who “have it all.” I’ve never met anyone remotely like that. And, yes, I get it that we have 168 hours in a week and that I could do more with my time. On the other hand a lot of the really “successful” people I know bore the shit out of me and have nothing to say that I want to hear. Someone talking to me about their training for a marathon or other work-out routine stuff is at the bottom rung of conversation; it's on the same level as talking about bodily functions.The best way to master a time management technique is to understand the nitty-gritty details. How do you implement it successfully? Here are a few things to think about. Take short breaks 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. 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.”

hours is a time management strategy designed by Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. Use the principle of alignment to build in more time with family and friends. Commit to activities that utilize different parts of your brain, particularly the ones that don’t require active mental engagement 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. This is what happens when you treat your 168 hours as a blank slate. This is what happens when you fill them up only with things that deserve to be there. You build a life where you really can have it all. Laura Vanderkam is the author of several time management and productivity books and has her own TED talk "How to Gain Control of Your Free Time" which reflects some of the strategies in this book.

The best part of the book was Vanderkam's argument that we will be more successful and happy if we focus on our 'core competencies' and outsource the rest of our lives. She does a fantastic job of explaining how certain things in our lives can and should only be done by us and encourages people to hire others to do the things that most of us do, but that aren't part of our core competency skill set (ie: housework, laundry, making huge dinners every night, etc.). Get a real idea of how many hours you have to spare each day: The best (and perhaps worst) part of this time management strategy is that it shows you how much time you actually do have to spare once you’ve taken sleep and work out of the equation. It can be alarming to see how much of that potentially valuable time is spent on things like watching television, or crafting the perfect social media post. Unless you work two jobs, you probably have the time to work and learn something new every single week. After taking a long, hard look at how we spend our time, my husband and I decided to outsource more of our work to other people, spend more time as a family and give up the desire for a spotless house. This book gets four stars for inspiring me and my family to utilize our time-the most precious resource we have-much, much better.