Translator: Leslie Gauthier
Reviewer: Camille Martínez
00:00
When people find out
I write about time management,
00:12
they assume two things.
00:16
One is that I'm always on time,
00:19
I have four small children,
00:25
and I would like to blame them
for my occasional tardiness,
00:26
but sometimes it's just not their fault.
00:29
I was once late to my own speech
on time management.
00:32
We all had to just take a moment
together and savor that irony.
00:36
The second thing they assume
is that I have lots of tips and tricks
00:40
for saving bits of time here and there.
00:44
Sometimes I'll hear from magazines
that are doing a story along these lines,
00:46
generally on how to help their readers
find an extra hour in the day.
00:49
And the idea is that we'll shave
bits of time off everyday activities,
00:53
and we'll have time for the good stuff.
00:57
I question the entire premise
of this piece, but I'm always interested
00:59
in hearing what they've come
up with before they call me.
01:03
Some of my favorites:
01:06
doing errands where you only
have to make right-hand turns --
01:07
Being extremely judicious
in microwave usage:
01:11
it says three to three-and-a-half
minutes on the package,
01:14
we're totally getting in on
the bottom side of that.
01:16
And my personal favorite,
which makes sense on some level,
01:19
is to DVR your favorite shows so you can
fast-forward through the commercials.
01:21
That way, you save
eight minutes every half hour,
01:25
so in the course of two hours
of watching TV,
01:28
you find 32 minutes to exercise.
01:30
You know another way to find
32 minutes to exercise?
01:34
Don't watch two hours of TV a day, right?
01:37
Anyway, the idea is we'll save bits
of time here and there, add it up,
01:41
we will finally get
to everything we want to do.
01:44
But after studying how successful
people spend their time
01:46
and looking at their
schedules hour by hour,
01:49
I think this idea
has it completely backward.
01:52
We don't build the lives
we want by saving time.
01:56
We build the lives we want,
02:00
and then time saves itself.
02:02
Here's what I mean.
02:07
I recently did a time diary project
02:08
looking at 1,001 days in the lives
of extremely busy women.
02:10
They had demanding jobs,
sometimes their own businesses,
02:14
kids to care for,
maybe parents to care for,
02:16
community commitments --
02:19
I had them keep track
of their time for a week
02:22
so I could add up how much
they worked and slept,
02:25
and I interviewed them
about their strategies, for my book.
02:27
One of the women whose time log I studied
02:30
goes out on a Wednesday night
for something.
02:32
She comes home to find
that her water heater has broken,
02:34
and there is now water
all over her basement.
02:36
If you've ever had anything
like this happen to you,
02:40
you know it is a hugely damaging,
frightening, sopping mess.
02:42
So she's dealing with the immediate
aftermath that night,
02:45
next day she's got plumbers coming in,
02:48
day after that, professional cleaning
crew dealing with the ruined carpet.
02:50
All this is being recorded
on her time log.
02:53
Winds up taking seven hours of her week.
02:56
That's like finding
an extra hour in the day.
03:01
But I'm sure if you had asked her
at the start of the week,
03:04
"Could you find seven hours
to train for a triathlon?"
03:07
"Could you find seven hours
to mentor seven worthy people?"
03:11
I'm sure she would've said
what most of us would've said,
03:15
which is, "No -- can't you see
how busy I am?"
03:18
Yet when she had to find seven hours
03:23
because there is water
all over her basement,
03:25
she found seven hours.
03:28
And what this shows us
is that time is highly elastic.
03:31
We cannot make more time,
03:35
but time will stretch to accommodate
what we choose to put into it.
03:37
And so the key to time management
03:42
is treating our priorities
03:45
as the equivalent
of that broken water heater.
03:47
I like to use language from one
of the busiest people I ever interviewed.
03:53
By busy, I mean she was running
a small business
03:56
with 12 people on the payroll,
03:59
she had six children in her spare time.
04:00
I was getting in touch with her
to set up an interview
04:02
on how she "had it all" -- that phrase.
04:05
I remember it was a Thursday morning,
04:07
and she was not available
to speak with me.
04:09
But the reason she was
unavailable to speak with me
04:12
is that she was out for a hike,
04:15
because it was a beautiful spring morning,
04:17
and she wanted to go for a hike.
04:19
So of course this makes me
even more intrigued,
04:20
and when I finally do catch up with her,
she explains it like this.
04:23
She says, "Listen Laura, everything I do,
04:26
every minute I spend, is my choice."
04:29
And rather than say,
04:33
"I don't have time to do x, y or z,"
04:35
she'd say, "I don't do x, y or z
because it's not a priority."
04:37
"I don't have time," often means
"It's not a priority."
04:43
If you think about it,
that's really more accurate language.
04:49
I could tell you I don't have time
to dust my blinds,
04:51
but that's not true.
04:54
If you offered to pay me $100,000
to dust my blinds,
04:55
I would get to it pretty quickly.
04:58
Since that is not going to happen,
05:00
I can acknowledge this is not
a matter of lacking time;
05:02
it's that I don't want to do it.
05:05
Using this language reminds us
that time is a choice.
05:06
there may be horrible consequences
for making different choices,
05:11
I will give you that.
05:14
But we are smart people,
05:15
and certainly over the long run,
05:17
we have the power to fill our lives
05:19
with the things that deserve to be there.
05:21
So how do we do that?
05:25
How do we treat our priorities
05:27
as the equivalent
of that broken water heater?
05:28
Well, first we need
to figure out what they are.
05:31
I want to give you two strategies
for thinking about this.
05:33
The first, on the professional side:
05:36
I'm sure many people
coming up to the end of the year
05:38
are giving or getting
annual performance reviews.
05:40
You look back over
your successes over the year,
05:43
your "opportunities for growth."
05:45
And this serves its purpose,
05:47
but I find it's more effective
to do this looking forward.
05:50
So I want you to pretend
it's the end of next year.
05:53
You're giving yourself
a performance review,
05:56
and it has been an absolutely
amazing year for you professionally.
05:58
What three to five things did you do
that made it so amazing?
06:04
So you can write next
year's performance review now.
06:10
And you can do this
for your personal life, too.
06:14
I'm sure many of you,
like me, come December,
06:16
get cards that contain these folded up
sheets of colored paper,
06:19
on which is written what is known
as the family holiday letter.
06:23
Bit of a wretched genre
of literature, really,
06:30
going on about how amazing
everyone in the household is,
06:32
or even more scintillating,
06:35
how busy everyone in the household is.
06:37
But these letters serve a purpose,
06:39
which is that they tell
your friends and family
06:41
what you did in your personal life
that mattered to you over the year.
06:43
So this year's kind of done,
06:47
but I want you to pretend
it's the end of next year,
06:48
and it has been an absolutely amazing year
06:50
for you and the people you care about.
06:54
What three to five things did you do
that made it so amazing?
06:57
So you can write next
year's family holiday letter now.
07:02
Please, don't send it.
07:10
But you can write it.
07:13
And now, between the performance
review and the family holiday letter,
07:14
we have a list of six to ten goals
we can work on in the next year.
07:18
And now we need to break
these down into doable steps.
07:21
So maybe you want
to write a family history.
07:24
First, you can read
some other family histories,
07:26
get a sense for the style.
07:28
Then maybe think about the questions
you want to ask your relatives,
07:30
set up appointments to interview them.
07:33
Or maybe you want to run a 5K.
07:35
So you need to find a race and sign up,
figure out a training plan,
07:36
and dig those shoes
out of the back of the closet.
07:39
And then -- this is key --
07:42
we treat our priorities as the equivalent
of that broken water heater,
07:44
by putting them into our schedules first.
07:48
We do this by thinking through our weeks
before we are in them.
07:51
I find a really good time to do this
is Friday afternoons.
07:56
Friday afternoon is what
an economist might call
08:00
a "low opportunity cost" time.
08:03
Most of us are not sitting there
on Friday afternoons saying,
08:06
"I am excited to make progress
08:09
toward my personal
and professional priorities
08:11
But we are willing to think
about what those should be.
08:16
So take a little bit
of time Friday afternoon,
08:18
make yourself a three-category priority
list: career, relationships, self.
08:20
Making a three-category list reminds us
08:28
that there should be something
in all three categories.
08:31
Career, we think about;
08:35
relationships, self --
08:36
But anyway, just a short list,
08:39
two to three items in each.
08:41
Then look out over the whole
of the next week,
08:43
and see where you can plan them in.
08:45
Where you plan them in is up to you.
08:48
I know this is going to be more
complicated for some people than others.
08:50
I mean, some people's lives
are just harder than others.
08:53
It is not going to be easy
to find time to take that poetry class
08:57
if you are caring for multiple
children on your own.
09:00
And I don't want to minimize
anyone's struggle.
09:05
But I do think that the numbers
I am about to tell you are empowering.
09:07
There are 168 hours in a week.
09:12
Twenty-four times seven is 168 hours.
09:17
That is a lot of time.
09:23
If you are working a full-time
job, so 40 hours a week,
09:26
sleeping eight hours a night,
so 56 hours a week --
09:29
that leaves 72 hours for other things.
09:32
That is a lot of time.
09:36
You say you're working 50 hours a week,
09:38
maybe a main job and a side hustle.
09:40
Well, that leaves 62 hours
for other things.
09:42
You say you're working 60 hours.
09:45
Well, that leaves 52 hours
for other things.
09:47
You say you're working more than 60 hours.
09:49
Well, are you sure?
09:51
There was once a study comparing
people's estimated work weeks
09:55
They found that people claiming
75-plus-hour work weeks
09:59
were off by about 25 hours.
10:02
You can guess in which direction, right?
10:06
Anyway, in 168 hours a week,
10:09
I think we can find time
for what matters to you.
10:11
If you want to spend
more time with your kids,
10:14
you want to study more
for a test you're taking,
10:17
you want to exercise for three hours
and volunteer for two,
10:19
And that's even if you're working
way more than full-time hours.
10:23
So we have plenty of time, which is great,
10:27
because guess what?
10:29
We don't even need that much
time to do amazing things.
10:31
But when most of us have
bits of time, what do we do?
10:34
Pull out the phone, right?
10:37
Start deleting emails.
10:39
Otherwise, we're puttering
around the house
10:42
But small moments can have great power.
10:46
You can use your bits of time
10:49
Maybe it's choosing to read
something wonderful on the bus
10:55
on the way to work.
10:58
I know when I had a job
that required two bus rides
10:59
and a subway ride every morning,
11:01
I used to go to the library
on weekends to get stuff to read.
11:03
It made the whole experience
almost, almost, enjoyable.
11:06
Breaks at work can be used
for meditating or praying.
11:11
If family dinner is out
because of your crazy work schedule,
11:15
maybe family breakfast
could be a good substitute.
11:18
It's about looking at
the whole of one's time
11:21
and seeing where the good stuff can go.
11:25
I truly believe this.
11:28
Even if we are busy,
11:34
we have time for what matters.
11:37
And when we focus on what matters,
11:39
we can build the lives we want
11:42
in the time we've got.
11:44