168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

by Laura Vanderkam

Years and decades are made up of a mosaic of repeating patterns of 168 hours.

I am particularly interested in how people who are not household names achieve the lives they want, and what we can learn from their best practices.

Certainly, everyone’s life can benefit from quick tune-ups, but getting the most out of your 168 hours takes discipline in a distracted world.

I want to make sure you take away two thoughts: you can choose how to spend your 168 hours, and you have more time than you think.

We don’t think about how we want to spend our time, and so we spend massive amounts of time on things—television, Web surfing, housework, errands—that

You’ll need to change your life to spend more time on these things, and less on the things that are neither meaningful nor pleasurable for you or for people you care about.

It takes about 1,000 hours to write a book, and if you stop watching 20 hours of TV per week, you’ll free up the time right there.

When you say “I don’t have time,” this puts the responsibility on someone else: a boss, a client, your family.

There’s little point, though, in being too scattered to master something, or in spending much time on activities in which you can’t excel.

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.

Make a list of as many activities as possible that you’d like to try or accomplish during your life. Cross off the ones you’ve done, and note how they made you feel.

What things do I spend time on that other people could do, or could do better?

But here’s the fascinating part: if you love what you do, you’ll have more energy for the rest of your life, too.

if you are blissful at work at least a few times per week, the carry-over creativity boost, compared with someone who isn’t happy, can soon cover the full 40–50 hours.

One recent University of Maryland study found that unhappy people watched 20 percent more television than happy ones. Unhappy people like to escape.

As Allen writes, “More and more people’s jobs are made up of dozens or even hundreds of e-mails a day, with no latitude left to ignore a single request, complaint, or order.

1. Seize control of your schedule.

2. Do not mistake things that look like work for actual work.

3. Get rid of non-core-competency tasks by ignoring, minimizing, ...

What would need to happen in the next year for you to know, concretely, that you are closer to your career goals than you are now?

On Sunday nights, or before the start of your workweek, sit down and list the actionable tasks you need to do to advance you toward these goals.

Never miss a deadline. Follow through on anything you say you’ll do as a matter of personal integrity.