Don't spend time cooking in the kitchen. You can still have a home cooked meal by opening a can of lobster bisque or microwaving a frozen burrito. (My kids thought this one was particularly hilarious.) 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. 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. 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.

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. Hours does, indeed, contain a lot of food for thought. There are ideas in here that can truly make an immediate difference in your life, and various statistics that will put your mind to rest. And once you read it, you’ll no longer have to struggle to find an excuse for avoiding things: as author Laura Vanderkam says, if you don’t like to do something, own the truth.”We particularly love one of her underlying motivations for looking at time differently, which is to debunk the maddeningly prevalent idea that women cannot do things like have a “Career” and a “Family” all at once” 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.

If you’re serious about your career, it should not be hard to find two or three senior people in your organization or industry who honestly like you. But it is your responsibility to seek these people out.” 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? 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.

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. 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. 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 We predict that 168 Hours will fly off the shelves and into the hands of anyone who has ever uttered the words: ‘I’m SO busy!’ or ‘If only I had more time!’ Vanderkam’s approach is incredibly powerful and resonant given the average American watches 4 hours of television. A day!” I’m willing to go out on a limb and bet you’re either overestimating or underestimating what you’re doing with your time.

Do you know how you are using your time now? Or, in an average week of 168 hours, where is that time going? The truth is, money, like time, is a choice—and often a related choice. Just as you need a “work team” to support your career, you need a “home team” to help you focus on your core competencies and save time in your personal life. If you’re rolling in cash, this may literally be a team.” 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

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. In Bill Gates' words, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” I went up and down on this one: yes, helpful in pointing out that priorities matter and just flailing around without thinking about them means you feel like you never have enough time; but, no, admitting that you're incredibly privileged and wealthy doesn't give you brownie points for when you *completely* ignore the effects of that privilege and wealth for the rest of your premise and then insist that *everybody* else is just misguided. It's awesome that you work at home and have a flexible schedule and don't have to factor commute-time in, but HI, THE REST OF THE WORLD MAY NOT WORK THAT WAY. And I say that as someone who enjoys many of those same privileges. (And if reading/listening to music is not one of your priorities, listening to books/music while spending 2 hours each day in the car isn't going to help with that feeling that there's not enough time.) What a waste of several of my precious 168 hours! Like many people, I struggle with motivation and focus so I'm always looking for wisdom or advice on topics like time management, productivity. This has to be one of the worst how-to/self-help books I've ever read.