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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
is that I have lots of tips and tricks

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for saving bits of time here and there.

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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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I question the entire premise
of this piece, 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 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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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,
which makes sense on some level,

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is to DVR your favorite shows so you can
fast-forward through the commercials.

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That way, you save
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, 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,
sometimes their own businesses,

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kids to care for,
maybe parents to care for,

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community commitments --

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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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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, 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 -- 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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To get at this,

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I like to use 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" -- 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,
she explains it like this.

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She says, "Listen Laura, everything I do,

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every minute I spend, 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,
that's really more accurate language.

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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 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

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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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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 your personal life, too.

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I'm sure many of you,
like me, 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 over 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, 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 ten 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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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,
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 -- 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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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 might call

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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

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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: career, relationships, self.

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Making a three-category list reminds us

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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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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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Twenty-four 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, so 40 hours a week,

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sleeping eight hours a night,
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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They found that people claiming
75-plus-hour work weeks

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were 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, 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, 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, what do we do?

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Pull out the phone, right?

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Start deleting emails.

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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

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on the way to work.

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I know when I had a job
that required two bus rides

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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, 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,

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maybe family breakfast
could be a good substitute.

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

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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,

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we can build the lives we want

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in the time we've got.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)