{"id":12340,"date":"2019-07-20T18:11:01","date_gmt":"2019-07-20T23:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=12340"},"modified":"2019-07-20T18:11:01","modified_gmt":"2019-07-20T23:11:01","slug":"book-review-168-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=12340","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: 168 Hours"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“In our distracted world, even fallow hours take discipline.” Laura Vanderkam<\/a>, 168 Hours: You have More Time Than You Think<\/em><\/a>, 80<\/div>\n
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168 Hours.\u00a0 Everyone gets the same amount of time each week.\u00a0 It’s one thing that is not impacted by your gender, your socioeconomic status, your education, or even your motivation.\u00a0 Everyone gets the exact same number of seconds, minutes, and hours in a calendar week.\u00a0 How are you choosing to spend yours?\u00a0 In her book,\u00a0168 Hours: You have More Time Than You Think,\u00a0<\/em><\/a>Laura<\/a> Vanderkam<\/a> helps us see that we all likely have FAR more time available than we ever thought possible.\u00a0 It’s all about being intentional and choosing how we are going to spend our lives.<\/div>\n
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This book was a great read and a wonderful mix of theory and practicality.\u00a0 I’m grateful for the way that Vanderkam shared about choices she makes as a writer, a wife, a mom, and a friend.\u00a0 There were several areas that she dove into that were particularly applicable for me to consider.\u00a0 I read this over the summer, making it a great time to evaluate priorities before the next school year gets underway.<\/div>\n
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I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below…<\/div>\n
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  • \n
    \u201cSimply changing my words from \u2018I don\u2019t have time for that\u2019 to \u2018That\u2019s not a priority for me\u2019 has completely changed the way that I organize my life. Actually, the way I live my life.\u201d Location 61<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    In our distracted world, even fallow hours take discipline. Location 80<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • \n
    The weekly 168-hour cycle is big enough to give a true picture of our lives. Years and decades are made up of a mosaic of repeating patterns of 168 hours. Yes, there is room for randomness, and the mosaic will evolve over time, but whether you pay attention to the pattern is still a choice. Largely, the true picture of our lives will be a function of how we set the tiles. Location 1191<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    when you focus on what you do best, on what brings you the most satisfaction, there is plenty of space for everything. Location 231<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    you can choose how to spend your 168 hours, and you have more time than you think. Location 310<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    Time-diary studies are valuable in sociology because they force us to face the reality that a day has 24 hours and a week has 168, and all our activities must, in fact, fit within these limits. Location 373<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • \n
    Effective people outsource, ignore, or minimize everything else. The coming chapters will talk about how to identify these core competencies at home and at work. You\u2019ll 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. I will not pretend this is easy. Location 445<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    An individual\u2019s 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. Location 591<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    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\u2014honing their focus to get somewhere\u2014and, like modern corporations, chucking everything else. Location 596<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    The second part of the \u201clove what you do\u201d equation\u2014that the right job needs to be challenging\u2014is more intriguing. At first blush, people often seem to prefer easy tasks. But as Amabile tells me, \u201cMost people get bored with \u2018easy\u2019 jobs.\u201d Ultimately, you want work that\u2019s optimally challenging, where \u201cthe work calls on your best skills, and helps you develop new skills\u2014but is not completely beyond your skill level.\u201d This is because such work puts you in a state that the psychologist Mih\u00e1ly Cs\u00edkszentmih\u00e1lyi terms \u201cflow.\u201d Decades ago, in a now famous and widely chronicled experiment, Cs\u00edkszentmih\u00e1lyi and his colleagues decided to figure out exactly when people were happiest. They gave thousands of people pagers that would go off randomly throughout the day, and asked them to record what they were doing and how they felt (aside from being annoyed at the incessant buzzing). They found that 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. Time seemed to warp, as Cs\u00edkszentmih\u00e1lyi wrote in his 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. \u201cHours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours.\u201d When researchers interviewed people with considerable skills in certain areas\u2014for instance, composers seated at the piano, figure skaters in the middle of intense practice\u2014such people spoke of feeling as though they were carried along by water. They were almost floating. Hence, \u201cflow.\u201d Location 955<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    What do I love so much I\u2019d do it for free? How can I get someone to pay me to do that? If there\u2019s no obvious job title in an organization doing what I love (and often there isn\u2019t), what\u2019s a low-cost way I could start a business doing that, and get the cash register ringing quickly? Location 1,163<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    If you\u2019re pretty sure you are in the right job, then try asking this question: If someone offered me a windfall to never do the \u201cstuff\u201d of my work again, how would I feel about that? Location 1,230<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    Any \u201cwork\u201d that is not advancing you toward the professional life you want should not count as work. It is wasted time. Location 1,312<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    a lot of the busyness that goes on during workdays gives us a false sense of productivity that\u2019s dishonest to indulge. Doing a lot does not mean you\u2019re doing anything important with your 168 hours. Location 1,318<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    What do you want to do during your workday? Location 1,340<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    Young children naturally want to spend time with their parents, but even older children can be lured into the habit if you behave like you truly want to invest time with them. That means not checking your Blackberry every 3 minutes. The point is to treat your children as privileged clients. You have to think through the time you\u2019re going to spend together because it is valuable. If you don\u2019t, one of two things will happen. Location 2,212<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    I think time is too precious for us to be totally leisurely about leisure. 2,841<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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    What one to three leisure pursuits would I like to build, regularly, into my 168 hours? Location 3,174<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    “In our distracted world, even fallow hours take discipline.” Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You have More Time Than You Think, 80 168 Hours.\u00a0 Everyone gets the same amount of time each week.\u00a0 It’s one thing that is not impacted by your gender, your socioeconomic status, your education, or even your motivation.\u00a0 Everyone gets the exact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,35,37,12,16,23,28,17,32,30,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-creative","category-eli","category-emma","category-family","category-generosity","category-integrity","category-leadership","category-marriage","category-money","category-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}