168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

by Laura Vanderkam

you can choose how to spend your 168 hours, and you have more time than you think.

In 168 hours, there is easily time to sleep 8 hours a night (56 hours per week) and work 50 hours a week, if you desire. That adds up to 106 hours, leaving 62 hours per week for other things.

managing time in weekly blocks

An individual’s core competencies are best thought of as abilities that can be leveraged across multiple spheres. They should be important and meaningful. And they should be the things we do best and that others cannot do nearly as well.

Broadly, those who get the most out of life try to figure out and focus on their core competencies. They know that at least one key difference between happy, successful people, and those just muddling along is that the happy ones spend as many of their 168 hours as possible on their core competencies—honing their focus to get somewhere—and, like modern corporations, chucking everything else.

if you love what you do, you’ll have more energy for the rest of your life, too.

try to identify the “who, what, when, where, and why” answers we reporters learn to cram into the first paragraph of a story.

researchers interviewed people with considerable skills in certain areas—for instance, composers seated at the piano, figure skaters in the middle of intense practice—such people spoke of feeling as though they were carried along by water. They were almost floating. Hence, “flow.”

One recent University of Maryland study found that unhappy people watched 20 percent more television than happy ones. Unhappy people like to escape. They don’t spend their time solving problems or thinking their way around personal obstacles. People who are in the right jobs will.

So when a job working with autistic children opened up, he quit and went back to teaching. Now he’s supporting his family on about $40,000 a year and has written a book called How to Survive (and Perhaps Thrive) on a Teacher’s Salary. The Kofkes live frugally, but when you love what you do, it’s a lot easier to come home and sit on a secondhand sofa than if you’re miserable for 8 hours a day.

it is often easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Ideally, there should be almost nothing during your work hours—whatever you choose those to be—that is not advancing you toward your goals for the career and life you want.

If you want to use your 168 hours effectively, once you make a commitment to yourself to spend a certain number of hours on a task, keep it. Never miss a deadline. Follow through on anything you say you’ll do as a matter of personal integrity.

You can have a great system for organizing e-mail, or scheduling daily conference calls on various projects, but I’m guessing at your retirement dinner, people won’t talk about your pristine in-box or packed schedule. They’ll want to talk about what you’ve done.

I define “work” as activities that are advancing you toward the career and life you want. If they aren’t, then they are not work. This is true even if they appear on your work calendar or you’ve always done them, and they should not have more esteem in your mind than playing Tetris.

This is the anatomy of a breakthrough for busy, balanced people: Know what the next level looks like Understand the metrics and gatekeepers Work up to the point of diminishing returns Spin a good story Be open to possibilities and plan for opportunities Be ready to ride the wave

Think about the question during your commute, or while you’re jogging. Try to picture the next level as specifically as possible. Maybe you work in an organization where the next level is clear: you make partner, get promoted to vice president, or become a full professor.

Much of the literature in the work-life-balance or time-management genre—including from experts I admire—approaches this issue from the perspective that this thing called “work” is keeping you from having a personal life.

We Wash It Laundry that usually caters to Philadelphia college students.

married moms and dads in dual full-time-career couples spend a combined 9.24 hours per week on grocery shopping, food preparation, and cleanup. By contrast, they spend about 3 hours per week, total, playing with their children.

If the average person started exercising every time he was tempted to turn on the tube, he could be doing triathlons competitively within a few years. Instead, most of us elect to become world-class couch potatoes.

Here is the process for doing your own “time makeover”:

Create your “List of 100 Dreams.”