WEBVTT

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When people find out
I write about time management,

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they assume two things.

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One is that I'm always on time,

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and I'm not.

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I have four small children,

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and I would like to blame them
for my occasional tardiness,

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but sometimes it's just not their fault.

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I was once late to my own speech
on time management.

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(Laughter)

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We all had to just take a moment
together and savor that irony.

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The second thing they assume

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is that I have lots of tips and tricks
for saving bits of time here and there.

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And sometimes I'll hear from magazines
that are doing a story along these lines,

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generally on how to help their readers
find an extra hour in the day.

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And the idea is that we'll shave
bits of time off everyday activities,

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add it up,

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and we'll have time for the good stuff.

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And I question the entire 
premise of this piece,

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but I'm always interested

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in hearing what they've come up with
before they call me.

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Some of my favorites:

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doing errands in a way where
you only have to make right-hand turns --

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(Laughter)

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Being extremely judicious
in microwave usage --

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so it says three to three-and-a-half
minutes on the package,

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we're totally getting in
on the bottom side of that.

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And my personal favorite,

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which makes sense on some level,

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is to DVR your favorite shows

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so you can fast-forward
through the commercials,

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and that way you save about
eight minutes every half hour,

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so in the course of two hours
of watching TV,

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you find 32 minutes to exercise.

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(Laughter)

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Which is true.

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You know another way to find
32 minutes to exercise?

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Don't watch two hours of TV a day, right?

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(Laughter)

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Anyway, the idea is we'll save bits
of time here and there,

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add it up,

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we will finally get to
everything we want to do.

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But after studying how successful
people spend their time,

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and looking at their
schedules hour by hour,

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I think this idea
has it completely backward.

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We don't build the lives
we want by saving time.

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We build the lives we want,

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and then time saves itself.

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Here's what I mean.

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I recently did a time diary project

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looking at 1,001 days in the lives
of extremely busy women.

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They had demanding jobs,

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sometimes their own businesses,

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kids to care for,

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maybe parents to care for,

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community commitements --

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busy, busy people.

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I had them keep track
of their time for a week

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so I could add up how much
they worked and slept,

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and I interviewed them about
their strategies for my book.

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One of the women whose
time log I studied,

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she goes out on a Wednesday
night for something.

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She comes home to find
that her water heater has broken,

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and there is now water
all over her basement.

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If you've ever had anything
like this happen to you,

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you know it is a hugely damaging,
frightening, sopping mess.

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So she's dealing with the immediate
aftermath that night,

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next day she's got plumbers coming in,

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day after that,

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professional cleaning crew
dealing with the ruined carpet.

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All this is being recorded
on her time log --

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winds up taking seven hours of her week.

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Seven hours.

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That's like finding
an extra hour in the day.

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But I'm sure if you had asked her
at the start of the week,

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"Could you find seven hours
to train for a triathlon?

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Could you find seven hours
to mentor seven worthy people?"

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I'm sure she would've said
what most of us would've said

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which is, "No.

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Can't you see how busy I am?"

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Yet when she had to find seven hours

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because there is water
all over her basement,

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she found seven hours.

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And what this shows us
is that time is highly elastic.

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We cannot make more time,

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but time will stretch to accommodate
what we choose to put into it.

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And so the key to time management

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is treating our priorities

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as the equivalent
of that broken water heater.

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And to get at this,

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I like to use some language from one
of the busiest people I ever interviewed.

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By busy I mean she was
running a small business

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with 12 people on the payroll,

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she had six children
in her spare time.

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I was getting in touch with her
to set up an interview

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on how she "had it all" --

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that phrase --

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I remember it was a Thursday morning

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and she was not available
to speak with me,

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of course, right?

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But the reason she was
unavailable to speak with me

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is that she was out for a hike,

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because it was a beautiful spring morning,

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and she wanted to go for a hike.

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So of course this makes me
even more intrigued,

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and when I finally do catch up with her,

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she explains it like this,

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she says, "Listen Laura,

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everything I do,

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every minute I spend

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is my choice."

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And rather than say,

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"I don't have time to do x, y or z,"

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she'd say, "I don't do x, y or z
because it's not a priority."

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"I don't have time," often means
"It's not a priority."

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If you think about it,

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that's really more accurate language.

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I mean I could tell you I don't
have time to dust my blinds,

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but that's not true.

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If you offered to pay me $100,000
to go dust my blinds,

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I would get to it pretty quickly.

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(Laughter)

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Since that is not going to happen,

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I can acknowledge this is not
a matter of lacking time,

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it's that I don't want to do it.

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Using this language reminds us
that time is a choice.

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And granted,

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there may be horrible consequences
for making different choices,

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I will give you that,

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but we are smart people,

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and certainly over the long-run,

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we have the power to fill our lives
with the things that deserve to be there.

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So how do we do that?

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How do we treat our priorities

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as the equivalent
of that broken water heater?

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Well first we need
to figure out what they are,

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and I want to give you two strategies
for thinking about this.

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The first on the professional side.

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I'm sure many people
coming up to the end of the year

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are giving or getting
annual performance reviews.

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You look back over your
successes over the year,

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your "opportunities for growth,"

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and this serves its purpose,

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but I find it's more effective
to do this looking forward.

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So I want you to pretend
it's the end of next year.

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You're giving yourself
a performance review,

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and it has been an absolutely
amazing year for you professionally.

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What three-to-five things did you do
that made it so amazing?

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So you can write next year's
performance review now.

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And you can do this for you
personal life, too.

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I'm sure many of you,

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like me,

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come December,

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get cards that contain these folded up
sheets of colored paper

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on which is written what is known
as the family holiday letter.

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(Laughter)

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Bit of a wretched genre
of literature really,

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going on about how amazing
everyone in the household is,

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or even more scintillating,

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how busy everyone in the household is.

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But these letters serve a purpose,

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which is that they tell
your friends and family

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what you did in your personal life
that mattered to you

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over the course of the year.

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So this year's kind of done,

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but I want you to pretend
it's the end of next year,

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and it has been an absolutely amazing year

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for you and the people you care about.

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What three-to-five things did you do
that made it so amazing?

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So you can write next year's
family holiday letter now.

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Don't send it ...

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(Laughter)

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Please,

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don't send it.

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But you can write it.

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And now between the performance
review and the family holiday letter,

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we have a list of six-to-10 goals
we can work on in the next year.

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And now we need to break
these down into doable steps.

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So maybe you want
to write a family history.

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Well, first you can read
some other family histories,

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get a sense for the style.

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Then maybe think about the questions
you want to ask your relatives,

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set up appointments to interview them.

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Or maybe you want to run a 5K,

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so you need to find a race and sign up,

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and figure out a training plan,

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and dig those shoes
out of the back of the closet.

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And then --

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this is key --

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we treat our priorities as the equivalent
of that broken water heater

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by putting them into our schedules first.

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And we do this by thinking through
our weeks before we are in them.

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I find a really good time to do this
is Friday afternoons.

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Friday afternoon is what an economist
a "low opportunity cost" time.

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Most of us are not sitting there
on Friday afternoons saying,

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"I am excited to make progress

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toward my personal and
professional priorities right now."

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(Laughter)

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But we are willing to think
about what those should be.

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So take a little bit
of time Friday afternoon,

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make yourself a
three-category priority list:

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career, relationships, self.

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Making a three-category list

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reminds us that there should be
something in all three categories.

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Career we think about;

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relationships, self --

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not so much.

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But anyway, just a short list,

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two-to-three items in each.

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Then look out over the whole
of the next week,

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and see where you can plan them in.

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Where you plan them in is up to you.

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And I know this is going to be more
complicated for some people than others.

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I mean some people's lives
are just harder than others.

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It is not going to be easy to find
time to take that poetry class

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if you are caring for multiple
children on your own.

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I get that.

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And I don't want to minimize
anyone's struggle,

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but I do think that the numbers
I am about to tell you are empowering.

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There are 168 hours in a week.

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24 times seven is 168 hours.

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That is a lot of time.

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If you are working a full-time job,

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so 40 hours a week,

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sleeping 8 hours a night,

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so 56 hours a week --

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that leaves 72 hours for other things.

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That is a lot of time.

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You say you're working 50 hours a week,

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maybe a main job and a side hustle.

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Well that leaves 62 hours
for other things.

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You say you're working 60 hours,

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well that leaves 52 hours
for other things.

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You say you're working more than 60 hours.

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Well, are you sure?

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(Laughter)

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There was once a study comparing
people's estimated work weeks

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with time diaries --

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found that people claiming
75-plus hour work weeks

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we off by about 25 hours.

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(Laughter)

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You can guess in which direction, right?

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Anyway,

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in 168 hours a week,

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I think we can find time
for what matters to you.

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If you want to spend
more time with your kids,

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you want to study more
for a test you're taking,

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you want to exercise for three hours
and volunteer for two,

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you can.

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And that's even if you're working
way more than full-time hours.

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So we have plenty of time,

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which is great,

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because guess what?

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We don't even need that much
time to do amazing things.

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But when most of us have bits of time,

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what do we do?

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Pull out the phone, right?

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Start deleting emails,

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or otherwise we're puttering
around the house,

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or watching TV.

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But small moments can have great power.

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You can use your bits of time

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for bits of joy.

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Maybe it's choosing to read something
wonderful on the bus on the way to work.

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I know when I had a job

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that required two bus rides
and a subway ride every morning,

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I used to go to the library
on weekends to get stuff to read.

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It made the whole experience almost ...

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almost enjoyable.

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Breaks at work can be used
for meditating or praying.

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If family dinner is out because
of your crazy work schedule,

00:11:06.803 --> 00:11:09.552
maybe family breakfast
could be a good substitute.

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It's about looking at
the whole of one's time,

00:11:13.374 --> 00:11:15.776
and seeing where the good stuff can go.

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I truly believe this.

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There is time.

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Even if we are busy,

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we have time for what matters.

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And when we focus on what matters,

00:11:30.438 --> 00:11:33.027
we can build the lives we want

00:11:33.027 --> 00:11:34.518
in the time we've got.

00:11:34.758 --> 00:11:35.866
Thank you.

00:11:35.866 --> 00:11:37.236
(Applause)