hat’s how many hours we get each week… 168 hours. Never an hour more nor an hour less. We have no say in the matter. But the way we spend those 168 hours is up to us, and that’s the focus of Laura Vanderkam’s book 168 HOURS — YOU HAVE MORE TIME THAN YOU THINK.
“We tend to think in terms of weeks,” Vanderkam tells me when I ask her why she talks about hours instead of days, for instance, or months. If we work 40 hours a week and sleep eight hours a night, that still leaves 72 hours for other things. “The space is there to do the things we want to do, we just have to find it.”
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When people want to lose weight they keep a food log, and when they want to manage their money they keep a financial budget. So in the same way, Vanderkam recommends keeping a time log.
After talking with Vanderkam, my advice is, try it. Keep a diary of what you do with every chunk of time for a week. Don’t make it complicated. Simply jot things down in a notebook that you keep on the kitchen counter, or use the spread sheet available on Vandekam’s website at www.My168Hours.com.
Be forewarned. The more detailed your diary, the more you will learn from it, and the better you will be able to use it as a guide for using your time more efficiently. For example, rather than recording “worked” for five hours, write “worked on financial statements two hours; worked on seed purchases, three hours.”
Tally up the hours by grouping them into major categories such as sleep, work, interacting with kids, etc. If the week isn’t a more or less typical week, repeat the time log for another week.
When analyzing your time log, Vanderkam recommends asking yourself what you like, what do you want to do more of, what do you want off your plate, where are the time wasters such as watching TV and surfing the Internet. “Find the wasted time,” she says. “Almost everyone has more space.”
Most people are amazed at how much TV they are watching, she says. There’s nothing wrong with watching TV but she advises people to only watch the shows they really love. And when it comes to how we spend our time, Vanderkam doesn’t mince words.
If you’re “working” but the work you’re doing isn’t furthering your goals, then it’s not work, it’s wasted time.
Vanderkam recommends doing what matters most first. Reading and responding to emails can usually wait. Switching back and forth between work and checking email in particular is a huge time waster. “We’re easily distracted by email,” Vanderkam explains. “It’s like an unopened gift and we need to see what it is.”
When Vanderkam wants to get some work done she turns off the phone and her browser so she can really focus. Another way people tend to waste a lot of time is running around doing errands. “Try to compress these errands into one trip,” she suggests.
Completing the time log will make you more aware of how you spend your time. Then, that awareness can help you to use your time more effectively. One of the interesting things about doing the time log is that most people discover they are actually working less than they thought. When people are constantly on call or are always checking their BlackBerrys, they will feel like they are working more than they actually are.
One of the challenges for farmers and other small business owners is to not have work consume all 168 hours. One way to make sure this doesn’t happen is to have a compelling and enjoyable personal life, says Vanderkam.
To ensure you leave work behind she recommends buying tickets to a show or creating an appointment with your kids or spouse. Another way to prevent the farm operation from taking over your life is to train others. “Hire good people who can handle their jobs,” says Vanderkam.
Simply put, Vanderkam recommends identifying the parts of your work you enjoy and spending as much time on these things as possible. The same goes for your home life. Spend time with family and friends and outsource cleaning, cooking and maintenance when possible.
Time is a precious, non-renewable resource. By paying more attention to how we spend our time, and by cutting out the time wasters, we can make more room for the things we really care about instead of saying, “I don’t have time.”CG
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Get with the program
Keep a time log. Using the spreadsheet available on Vanderkam’s website www.My168hours.com or by writing in a notebook, record your activities in 15 or 30 minute blocks of time for 168 consecutive hours. Be detailed. Keep the log until you feel you have an accurate view of how you spend your time.
Also create your “List of 100 Dreams.” This is like your bucket list. What do you want to do, or want to do more of? These could be simple or grand. For goals with longer timelines, make a list of the steps needed to attain the goal. This will help you figure out what’s important to you and hence what you need to make sure is on your schedule.
Identify core competencies. These are the things you are good at, that you like to do or that only you can do (e. g. be a parent to your children, or exercising.)
Start with a blank slate. Other than sleeping and eating, the way we spend our time is our choice. You might not like the consequences of not doing something thing but it is still a choice.
Fill in your 168 hours with blocks of core-competency tency time. Figure out when you will work, eat, sleep, spend time with family, exercise, etc.
Ignore, minimize, or outsource everything else. What do you spend too much time doing? What time-wasting habits would you like to get rid of? Common culprits are watching too much TV, spending too much time on housework, looking for misplaced items, meal preparation, running errands or checking email.
Fill bits of time with bits of joy. Make a list of meaningful things you can do in 30 minutes and another of things you can do in less than 10 minutes. We tend to waste these bits of time but by spending this time more carefully we can accomplish some things we didn’t think we had time for or put more pleasure in our day so that at the end of the day we feel good about our day.
Tune up as necessary and review periodically as life changes.
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Laura’s Time-Savers*
Watch less TV.Commit to watching only shows you love and absolutely nothing else.
Do one thing at a time.When you try to check e-mail while doing other work, it can take 15 minutes or more to get back into the swing of things. Multi-tasking eats hours. Focus until you finish and then move on.
Eat sandwiches for dinner.Or leftovers, or a frozen pizza, or eggs, or a quick salad. The point of family dinners is to be together, not channel Julia Child.
Lower your housekeeping standards.The house will just get dirty again, but you’ll never get that hour back. The laundry can wait another day or two.
Aim for good enough.The vast majority of our work doesn’t have to be done to perfection, it just has to be done.
Give things a home.Time spent hunting for shoes and cell phones isn’t helping anyone.
*For more time saving tips check out Vanderkam’s website at www.My168Hours.com.
