Off the Clock Quotes

“The discipline of joy requires holding in the mind simultaneously that this too shall pass and that this too is good. This alchemy of mind isn't easy, but the good life is not always the easy life. Happiness requires effort. It is not just bestowed; it is the earned interest on what you choose to pay in.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“SECRETS OF PEOPLE WITH ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD Tend your garden. Make life memorable. Don’t fill time. Linger. Invest in your happiness. Let it go. People are a good use of time.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“Conscious fun takes effort. This seeming paradox—Why should fun be work?—stops us in our tracks. So we overindulge in effortless fun (scrolling through Instagram . . .) It is the effortful fun that makes today different, and makes today land in memory. You don’t say “Where did the time go?” when you remember where the time went.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“Being off the clock implies time freedom, yet time freedom stems from time discipline. You must know where the time goes in order to transcend the ceaseless ticking.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“What do I like about my schedule? What would I like to spend more time doing? What would I like to spend less time doing? How can I make that happen?”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“I believe that consciously choosing to create such memories will stretch the experience of time.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“We seized the opportunity to take a grown-ups-only hiking trip in Acadia National Park.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“The words that need to come out will come out with gentle persistence. Love, including self-love, is patient, which is really another word for being generous with time.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“Consciously lingering in pleasurable downtime reminds us that we have downtime. And that can make us feel like we have more time than when we let is slip through our hands.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“The truth is that even ten minutes spent looking at the sky with nothing to fill the time can feel long.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“Calling something "work" doesn't make it a more noble use of time than anything else. Work that doesn't advance you toward the life you want is still wasted time.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“A better question when asked to take on something in the future: "Would I do this tomorrow?”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“Rich memories can expand time both as they are being created and in the rearview mirror.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“Constantly minding time is more challenging than letting it slip unnoticed into the past. It is also never done.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“Work was all I did, and I realized that was upsetting.” It was upsetting philosophically—there is more to life—but it also felt financially foolish. “I live in New York City. If all I was doing was working, I could do that from anywhere. I could do that from a shack in the middle of the desert,” she says. “Why pay to live in one of the world’s most expensive cities if I wasn’t taking advantage of it?”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“If a negative state is assumed in life, then you have to call attention to its absence.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“Calling something “work” doesn’t make it a more noble use of time than anything else. Work that doesn’t advance you toward the life you want is still wasted time. You will never get those hours back, and we only get so many. Wrote Shakespeare in Richard II, “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“Conscious fun takes effort. This seeming paradox—Why should fun be work?—stops us in our tracks. So we overindulge in effortless fun (scrolling through Instagram posts about dinner parties), and underindulge in effortful fun (throwing a dinner party ourselves). But “although minutes spent in boredom or anxiety pass slowly,” writes Grudin, “they nonetheless add up to years which are void of memory.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“This is all true, and yet not really an argument against ownership. It is easy to believe our own excuses, particularly if they’re good ones, but in a world of 7 billion people, there is always someone facing Y who is doing X. All of us have to assess the plot of life we are allotted every twenty-four hours and figure out how we can make the most of what we’ve been given.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“As with the principals tracking their time, it is this second step, envisioning how a schedule could look, and the third step, holding yourself daily to this design, that leads to time freedom.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“Time is elastic. It stretches to accommodate what we choose to put into it.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“Strategizing boosts efficiency; planning your toughest work for the time when you have the most energy means a task might take one hour instead of two.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“Katy Cannon, a UK-based novelist, reports that she has developed this more persistent and abundant perspective on time over the years. At the start of 2013, she had a four-year-old daughter and had just sold her first book. Her contract called for her to turn in another book six months later, which seemed like the sort of work/life disaster one might need to write a very British novel about. But she did it, and in 2016 she wrote and edited five books, a novella, and three short stories (also using the pen name Sophie Pembroke). This is how she makes such prolificacy work. She takes about two weeks to plan her books, outlining scenes and working with her editors on characters and plots. Then, execution happens in small bursts. She sets a timer, and in a twenty- to thirty-minute block of total focus, she can write an 800- to 1,000-word scene. She does two or three of these blocks a day, generally putting down 2,000 to 3,000 words. This is not a huge number; I suspect the average office worker cranks out close to 2,000 words in emails daily. But 2,000 is enough, because Cannon just keeps going. Over a four-day workweek of these two or three bursts per day, she produces about 10,000 words. That means she can write a 70,000- to 80,000-word novel draft in seven to eight weeks. Add in the planning time and two weeks for editing, and that’s a full book in eleven to twelve weeks. Are the books perfect? No, but no book is ever perfect, even ones that take eleven to twelve years to write. As for some idealized book that never made it out of the author’s head, where it would be sullied by reality? We don’t even need to have this conversation. Cannon’s books have the virtue of being completed and out in the world, giving readers pleasure. Done is better than perfect, because there is no perfect without being done.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“Despite the usual reputation of self-help, the truth is that most self-help readers already have their lives together. People pick up books on time management because their lives are good, and yet they can see in that goodness that there is space for even more wonder.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

“En la encuesta sobre la percepción, la gente que estuvo muy de acuerdo con la frase “Ayer usé mi tiempo para hacer actividades que me hacen feliz” era 20% más propensa a estar de acuerdo con la noción de que, en general, tenía más tiempo para las cosas que quería hacer en la vida. La gente con calificaciones dentro del 20% superior invierte una proporción mayor de su tiempo en actividades que se sabe que mejoran el estado de ánimo —ejercicio, actividades de reflexión, interacción con los amigos y la familia—, en relación con la gente en el 20% inferior, que pasa más tiempo en internet y viendo la televisión, actividades que brindan un tipo de placer que no le sirve de gran cosa a nadie a la larga.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Qué hace la gente exitosa con su tiempo libre: ¡Siéntete menos ocupado y logra más!

“Para cada día de una semana completa, planea una actividad de entre 10 y 20 minutos que involucre algo que te parezca disfrutable. Éstas son algunas opciones: Observar la puesta de sol. Sentarse en la terraza de una cafetería para tomar una buena taza de capuchino. Visitar una librería en tu hora de comida. Ir a pasear a un parque cercano.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Qué hace la gente exitosa con su tiempo libre: ¡Siéntete menos ocupado y logra más!

“La definición de saborear es reconocer que algo es agradable y que estás viviéndolo.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Qué hace la gente exitosa con su tiempo libre: ¡Siéntete menos ocupado y logra más!

“Aparentemente, saborear va de la mano con la sensación de que el tiempo pasa con más lentitud”.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Qué hace la gente exitosa con su tiempo libre: ¡Siéntete menos ocupado y logra más!

“La gente que llega tarde suele ser increíblemente optimista.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Qué hace la gente exitosa con su tiempo libre: ¡Siéntete menos ocupado y logra más!

“A mucha de la gente que siempre llega tarde le gusta complacer a otros.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Qué hace la gente exitosa con su tiempo libre: ¡Siéntete menos ocupado y logra más!