Sleep for 7 hours, max. 8 if you're a real lazy-ass. You can sleep when you're dead. Don't "sleep in" on weekends. Wake up earlier and go to bed earlier since "nothing meaningful" gets done after 10p anyway. Except. Everyone is different. Some people have their best "brain time" at different times. More useful: adjust your sleep schedule around your best hours of the day -- plan to sleep when you know you're likely to have the hardest time staying focused. I’m planning to try logging my time for a week soon so I can better see how I’m actually spending my time and decide what changes I want to make. Feel free to aim big. Few calculated risks end in disaster, and any investment made in a project you care deeply about is likely to generate some return.”

I could go on and on. She also shared that she ran a lot during both of her pregnancies and could fit into her pre-pregnancy jeans just a couple weeks after having her babies. So helpful. If you can't tell, this book got under my skin a bit. Most people don't have money to spend on a personal chef, and I think it's really shallow to think that the only way to live a successful, happy life is to have an amazing career that gets you lots of money. I kept having to put the book down because I was just too miffed to continue; the only reason I finished it was because it was for my book club.After visualizing the next level. Know the gatekeepers. For the next level, you will need someone who knows their way around or who will open doors for you.

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. 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. Even if you sleep 49 hours a week (seven per day), and work 40 hours a week, that still leaves you with a whopping unallocated 79 hours. probably my favorite part of this book was where vanderkam contrasts the reports of how people think they spend their time versus how they actually spend it. i used to have a friend who claimed that, between her actual outside-the-house job & a small side business that she ran to help make ends meet, she worked an average of 80 hours a week. & yet, she didn't come close to keeping traditional 9-5 hours (more like 11-3), & she spent enormous chunks of time sitting on her porch smoking weed & watching TV. i kind of wanted to buy a copy of this book & leave it on her doorstep. i'm sure she felt as stressed out as someone who really did work 80 hours a week, but that was probably a function of guilt over having such terrible time management skills. Having practiced this strategy for a week, I can safely say that while it is very hard to maintain an accurate log—I am not good at remembering to write down what I’ve done every half hour—it was insightful, and has made me think much more about the activities I don’t want to spend time on, as well as the goals I want to accomplish, and how I might now, build time into my week (not day) to move in a positive direction.Your core competencies are those things that you do best that nobody else can do as well as you. For example, at your job this might be in-depth research, or it might be analyzing complex data, or it might be managing with empathy. At home this would be something like spending time with your kids or partner, or exercising. The latter two illustrate a slightly different way of thinking about your core competencies—the things only you can do for you. Nobody else can exercise for you, just as nobody else can strengthen the relationship you have with your kids or partner for you. Those things take one-on-one time with you and only you. If you answer “no” to these questions, look for what you can change this week and this year. Controlling Your Calendar hours is the number of hours you have in a week. Thinking about time from this more macro perspective is the secret to doing more of the things you value, and less of the things you don’t. 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. if you want to get the most out of your 168 hours, you need a work team and a home team, all focused on their core competencies, so you can focus on yours.”

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 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. You can make your experiment with 168 hours even more interesting by really tuning in to your emotions as you go about your day. And, if you can build in activities that make you feel calm, or that allow you to rest, if mentally, you’ll feel better for it. Keep your to-do list super shortYour 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.

As the title suggests, Vanderkam argues that each of us has 168 hours each week and how we use those hours is a personal choice. By using both research, examples of people who've accomplished an incredible amount of success in several major life areas, and her own, personal examples, this book is full of reasons why they excuse "I'm too busy" is really just a cop-out for not making tough, personal choices on how and where and on whom we spend our time. 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.”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. I am, admittedly, a productivity addict - which means I like to read anything and everything on productivity and time management that I can get my hands on (though this hasn't necessarily made me more productive). Vanderkam's book was enjoyable, but I felt it was geared more towards the working mother. Quite a bit of effort is spent in assuaging guilty feelings about untidy homes and take-out food. Her solutions are impractical for those on limited budgets, though she makes a good try at justifying them, e.g. get rid of cable so you can afford to pay someone to do your laundry (what about those who can't afford even cable?), but I admit you can't write a book for everybody. 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.