168 Hours Quotes

“Though you will save many hours by seizing control of your calendar, and clearing away non-core-competency activities, in the long run, the best way to create more time is to actually get better at your professional craft.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“This is what happens when you treat your 168 hours as a blank slate. This is what happens when you fill them up only with things that deserve to be there. You build a life where you really can have it all.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“go back through your “List of 100 Dreams” and choose elements of a few to incorporate into your days. Make two lists: one of activities that take half an hour or less, and another of activities that take less than 10 minutes. Then, figure out ways you can make these two sets of activities as easy as lighting up a cigarette or turning on the TV any time a bit of leisure shows up on your schedule.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: 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 give a slight amount of pleasure or feeling of accomplishment, but do little for our careers, our families, or our personal lives. We spend very little time on things that require more thought or initiative, like nurturing our kids, exercising, or engaging in the limited hours we do work in deliberate practice of our professional crafts. We try to squeeze these high-impact activities around the edges of things that are easy, or that seem inevitable merely because we always do them or because we think others expect us to. And consequently, we feel overworked and underrested, and tend to believe stories that confirm this view.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“the right job leverages your core competencies—things you do best and enjoy—and meets certain working conditions, including autonomy and being challenged to the extent of your abilities.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“you can choose how to spend your 168 hours, and you have more time than you think.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“Reading fiction as you commute to a job you don’t like will make you feel somewhat more fulfilled; being in the right job will make you feel incredible.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“Identify your core competencies. There are the things you do best, and that other people cannot do nearly as well. If you’re in the right job—one that taps your intrinsic motivations, gives you lots of autonomy, and challenges you to the extent of your abilities—one of these will probably be the substance of your paid work. Others likely include nurturing your family members and other loved ones, and nurturing your own soul, brain, and body in ways that you excel at and enjoy. Make a list of your core competencies. How many of your 168 hours are you devoting to these things? How many are you devoting to other things?”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“As adults, overall, in two-parent families have spent more time working for pay, the time they spend interacting with their kids has also increased.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“You cannot remove randomness from the universe. You can, however, use your 168 hours to stack the odds in your favor. To do this, you have to place many bets, and leave nothing you can control to chance. In other words, you have to be open to possibilities, and plan for opportunities.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“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,”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“if you were offered $400 million to never do the stuff of your work again, would you be bummed about it, despite your riches? If you would, then it’s time to ask a follow-up question. If you did land a windfall, and could still do the stuff of your job, what parts of your job would you change? Given that you’d never have to work a day in your life, what would you do more of and what would you shove off your plate?”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“Doing a lot does not mean you’re doing anything important with your 168 hours.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“This is the 168 Hours principle for work: 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.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“If you do have a job you like, if you’re happy in life, you don’t need those materialistic things to make you happy,” he says.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“people were happiest when they were completely absorbed in activities that were difficult but doable, to the point where their brains no longer had space to ruminate about the troubles of daily life.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“by trying lots of things you think you might enjoy, you will learn more about yourself, and what you are actually good at, what might be your core competencies, and which of the biggies are worth going for. You may be shocked by what you discover. This is why you just have to keep an open mind and try things.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“you’ll need to figure out what you want to do during your 168 hours. Many of us have no idea; one of the benefits of claiming to be overworked or starved for time is that it lets you off the hook for dealing with the burden of choice. From interviewing people who love their lives, I’ve found that these people focus, as much as possible, in the work and personal spheres, on what I call their core competencies. These are the things they do best, and that others cannot do nearly as well or can’t do at all.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“when it comes to daily life, the time-crunch narrative doesn’t tell the whole story. The problem is not that we’re all overworked or underrested, it’s that most of us have absolutely no idea how we spend our 168 hours.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“when you focus on what you do best, on what brings you the most satisfaction, there is plenty of space for everything. You can build a big career. You can build a big family. And you can meander along a Maryland creek on a weekday morning because the day is too wild and beautiful to stay inside.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“Here’s what I think is the difference,” she says. “I know I’m in charge of me. Everything that I do, every minute I spend is my choice.” Daytner chooses to spend those minutes on the three things she does best: nurturing her business, nurturing her family, and nurturing herself. “If I’m not spending my time wisely, I fix it,” she says. “Even if it’s just quiet time.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“As Lord Chesterfield, the eighteenth-century British statesman and writer, once noted, “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year if you will do two things at a time.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“few years ago, for a study published in 2008 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers asked thirty-four University of Virginia students to wear weighted backpacks and estimate the incline of a steep (26-degree) hill. The guesses were wildly inaccurate, which is no surprise. People have as hard a time estimating angles as they do estimating how many hours they work or sleep. What is surprising is that students who were standing next to their friends perceived the hill as much less steep than students who stood alone did. When asked to estimate the angle, those with friends said 47 degrees (compared with 55 degrees for solo walkers), and “the longer friends knew each other, the less steep the hill appeared,” the researchers wrote.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“Fill bits of time with bits of joy. This was an exercise from Chapter 8. Make lists of things that make you happy or that you find meaningful, and that take 30 minutes or less, or even less than 10 minutes.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“Knock a few of these easy items off first, then look for ways to minimize more complicated time traps.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“Ignore, minimize, or outsource everything else. I asked all my time-makeover guinea pigs to identify activities they wanted to get off their plates, and to fill in the blank for the sentence “I spend way too much time on ____.” If you keep an accurate log of your 168 hours, you will likely be surprised by the number of hours you spend on certain things.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“Fill in your 168 hours with blocks of core-competency time. Broadly, figure out what hours you would like to be working, sleeping, nurturing your family and friends, and nurturing yourself—for example, engaging in structured leisure activities such as exercise, volunteering, or participating in religious activities. For longer-term projects on your “List of 100 Dreams,” schedule in the blocks of time associated with each actionable step.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“Sometimes the answers are profound—for example, win a Nobel Prize—and sometimes they’re more basic, such as “cook dinner for my family two nights per week.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“For the longer projects, create a list of actionable steps, and how long each might take, in terms of hours if you can. A lifetime is simply 168 hours, repeated again and again, and creating a completely unedited list of anything that might be pleasurable or meaningful will help you figure out what matters to you, and hence should go in your schedule.”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

“Create your “List of 100 Dreams.” This was the exercise from Chapter 2 that the career coach Caroline Ceniza-Levine does with her clients. Come up with as many answers as possible to the question of “What do I want to do (or do more of) with my time?”
― Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think