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How to gain control of your free time

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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,
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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)
Title:
How to gain control of your free time
Speaker:
Laura Vanderkam
Description:

more » « less
Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
11:54

English subtitles

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