I hesitated to buy this book because of the negative reviews, especially the one that says all the useful info is in the TED talk. I finally decided to buy it because someone quoted a useful line from it that wasn’t in the talk, and I’m glad I bought it and read it.
The thesis: If you work 8 hours a weekday and sleep 8 hours a night, you still have 72 hours a week for all other purposes. Even if you work 12 hours a weekday, that still leaves 52 hours. Yet we all complain about not having enough time for anything we want to do. So, where do those free hours go? Track your time over the course of a week and find out. In this context, it becomes absurd to say you don’t have time for something. It’s more accurate to say it’s not a priority. Your priorities are not what you want to do, but what you actually do.
The author gives inspiring examples of people who manage to do it all. One is Theresa Daytner, who manages a business full time and is a mother of six but still finds adequate time to sleep. Even President Obama was shocked. I like these examples; I don’t like to read books by mere speculators.
The author also gives tips for finding time to do what we want with out lives. We need to focus on our core competencies—the things no one else can do for us (like time with our children). For every task we would rather not do, we can at least see if we can eliminate it, automate it, or delegate it (check in that order). Examples include shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Before women joined the workforce, they actually spent less time with their children than they do now, despite having more children. The extra free time was taken up by these tasks; cultural rules developed to fill all that time with housework (like—actual examples cited by the author—having to chop up raisins and vacuum the walls and ceiling). Some say delegating these things costs too much money, but money has to be prioritized like time. If you spend x hours a week cleaning, how much would you pay to have that time back? Isn’t that more important than the money you spend on expensive toys? It would be interesting to see a money management book like this.
All in all, it is very helpful, and not just for working moms. I am a single man, and I find the ideas a huge game changer.
I disagree with a few things, though. I disagree with the idea that finding a job one loves enough to want to do more than full time is so easy; many of us have to take what we can get. I disagree with the idea that parents need to find fulfillment in careers instead of their children, or that the raising of children should be farmed out as the author seems to be implying. I disagree with the idea that we shouldn’t want to work fewer hours; personally, I like the idea of implementing these ideas in tandem with those of The 4-Hour Work Week (which the author believes to be misguided). The author seems to be buying into the “quality time” myth (I would have preferred to have more time with my parents than not, regardless of activity level), but this can be easily ignored by applying the principles to trying to have more time with one’s children.
Still, apart from these minor quibbles, the book is great, and I recommend it to everyone.
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The basic principles of this book are applicable to anyone
"This is what happens when you treat your 168 hours as a blank slate. This is what happens when you fill them up only with things that deserve to be there. You build a life where you really can have it all."I am obsessed with Vanderkam’s "What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast", so I was thrilled to find this audiobook at my library and it did not disappoint. In this edition of time management advice, Vanderkam stresses the importance of efficiency and prioritization so you can make time for *everything* that matters to you during your 168-hour week. I found that after following her prescribed steps and objectively assessing my data, I had a shocking amount of cumulative time available from which I could squeeze more productivity. The basic principles of this book are applicable to anyone who wants to feel more in control and achieve all their life goals, big and small.Vanderkam proposes the concept that you have 168 hours available to you in a week; if it were a blank slate, how would you fill it? After a thorough assessment of current time usage, Vanderkam provides advice on how to both design and implement your “ideal” 168-hour plan. Even 10- to 30-min pieces of time can be utilized as micro-steps towards achieving larger life goals if you are prepared and managing your time accordingly. With this approach, she insists you can accomplish everything you’ve ever wanted to do.“There is time for anything that matters.”I found her discussion of outsourcing household tasks (and the associated stigmatism) fascinating, particularly the opportunity costs of hiring someone and the concept of specialization (disguised as “core competencies”) in the assignment of household tasks or in choosing to support local task-specific businesses. While certainly hiring someone to do those loathed cleaning chores may be financially challenging, she offers a few ideas when considering your budget. From her outlook, prioritization is key, and her theme that “you can make what you want most work” rings strong throughout the book (and she certainly admits “no one said having it all would be easy”).Her insistence that everyone has enough time to do anything they want if they manage their time better may grate some people wrong, and her emphatic crusade against time spent watching television became a bit lecture-y at times. However, I respond well to blunt facts and her point that “everything you choose to do is a choice” forced me to consider how exactly I’m using each of the minutes in my 168 hours.It sounds a bit cliché to say I feel like I could accomplish anything after reading this book, but her arguments and methodology struck a chord for me and I was all for her positive insistence on the need to “plan for what will happen after your breakthrough success”. If anything, this book forced me to realize how much time I really have and how inefficiently I use my hours. If you’ve ever needed a kick in the butt or want to figure out how people seem to get so much done in a day, this is a great book to reassess your time usage and build a plan to better utilize and prioritize your time.
Top reviews from other countries
Stephanie
Especially good book for working moms
Reviewed in Canada on October 19, 2021
