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. Also, a lot of the studies in her book showcase women who "have it all." The woman who runs a multi-million dollar business, is raising 5 kids and hikes every week was one of the people she used as an example of someone who uses her 168 hours very wisely. The whole concept of being a woman who can 'have it all' is actually incredibly destructive and creates an enormous amount of psychological stress. Using time better IS essential to a happy and productive life. But trying to convince women that they should be able to do everything isn't healthy.

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 there were huge sections where her suggestions and reasoning were based on underlying assumptions that I just don't agree with at all. If she doesn't come right out and say it, she strongly implies that a woman who doesn't have a career aside from mothering and home-making is wasting her time and life. I don't agree. Several other things she writes about here just rubbed me the wrong way. For example, I'm not sure how bragging about fitting into your pre-pregnancy jeans one week after your baby was born fits into this book. And I suspect that once the author actually has school-age children, she might not be so gung ho about feeding them school lunches to save time. She claims the hot lunch offering in school are now "healthy." Hmm. In Bill Gates' words, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” 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.).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. In Vanderkam’s words, “… we spend massive amounts of time on things… that give a slight amount of pleasure or feeling of accomplishment, but do little for our careers, our families, or our personal lives… consequently, we feel overworked and underrated, and tend to believe stories that confirm this view.” I found her discussion of outsourcing household tasks (and the associated stigmatism) fascinating, particularly the opportunity costs of hiring someone and the concept of specialization (disguised as “core competencies”) in the assignment of household tasks or in choosing to support local task-specific businesses. While certainly hiring someone to do those loathed cleaning chores may be financially challenging, she offers a few ideas when considering your budget. From her outlook, prioritization is key, and her theme that “you can make what you want most work” rings strong throughout the book (and she certainly admits “no one said having it all would be easy”). Most of us are used to thinking about time in terms of only a handful of hours—eight hours of work a day, seven hours of sleep, 24 hours in a day. We plan our lives around these small time slots, becoming ever more harried and stressed as we struggle to do the things we say we will do, or want to do, in the allocated time. Laura is also the author of a time management fable, Juliet’s School of Possibilities and another novel, The Cortlandt Boys, which is available as an ebook.

It’s not a time management book (though it can certainly help you manage your hours). It’s more of a ‘wake up and open your eyes, you twit,’ kind of book. Or, for those who prefer the gentler version, it’s the sort of book that says, ‘Isn’t this interesting? Look at how much time you really have. Now what are you going to do about it?’” Use bits of time for bits of joy. Plan on how to use your time when you are idle or when the unexpected happens. In the first section of the Reports I see how many hours I scheduled (104) and how many I logged (115). I will note that I only scheduled time for sleep, work and eating.Remember, while this first exercise is a good starting point, the optimism bias is probably at play and I am either underestimating or overestimating how much time I spent on each task, depending on what it entails. For example, while I might think I only sleep about 7 hours a day, I might not be taking into account, the time I take getting to sleep, or even napping.

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.” According to James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, on average it takes about 66 days (2 months) for a new behavior to become automatic (though that number is not clear-cut and for some people it takes less or more). Give yourself enough time to do it. If you don’t manage to get it right the first time, just keep trying. Change is hard. Pros and cons of the 168 hours time management method Have your personal assistant/executive assistant/secretary make your appointments, manage your schedule, and take care of the little tasks that add up. 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.” 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.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. You don’t need to be a time management guru to appreciate the potential. If you take into account the fact that it only takes 20 hours to learn a new skill, you’ll be well on your way to planning more exciting and efficient weeks than ever before.