Lessons from WiRL: Laura Vanderkam

Everyone always talks about how there's not enough time to do everything they want. However, Laura Vanderkam challenged that belief. We think of a day as having 24 hours, 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for work, and 8 hours for everything else. Among those last 8 hours though, the typical person fits in overtime at work, getting ready for work, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and maybe a workout. When you stop to look at it, all your time's gone.

So Laura presented it in a week format. There are 168 hours in a week. Say I sleep 8 hours every day (7x8=56 hours), I usually work 9-10 hour days (5x10=50 hours), and I have a dog, so we do a 30 minute walk in the morning and an hour walk at night (7x1.5=10.5 hours). I take 20 minutes to have breakfast every morning and about an hour to cook and eat dinner every night (7x1.3=9.1 hours). Changing in the morning and at night, shower, etc, another hour and a half per day (7x1.5=10.5 hours). So even after all that, I should technically have about 32 hours left to do everything else. Well I don't know where all that time went, but I was clearly not using it well considering I couldn't think of what else I do!

One thing Laura highly suggested was keeping a time diary. While I know that many New Year's resolutions don't stick, I'll try my hardest to keep track of where my time is going. While I won't use it to just focus on being more efficient, I want to understand where I am throwing away hours every day that I could be using to do something for myself, whether that's working out, painting, hanging out with my dog or people, etc. It should be an interesting project for next year. Here are some other key takeaways I got from Laura's presentation:

• The CDC asks us to exercise 2.5 hours per week
• Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good
• Keep a time log (just use excel, in 30 minute increments)
  • Like a food journal for time
  • Write down what you're doing as often as you remember
  • Bill your time to different projects (work and personal)
  • Try to keep going for 1 week (168 hours
  • Break time down into categories: work (plus subcategories), sleep, personal care, children, spouse/partner, housework, travel, TV, etc
• Review your schedule
  • What do I like most about my schedule?
  • What do I want to do more of? 
  • What do I want off my plate?
  • Remember the empty spreadsheet - time is a blank slate
  • Goal: fill your 168 hours with only the things that deserve to be there
• Your list of 100 dreams
  • Instead of asking how to save time, ask what you want to  be doing more of with your time - at work and in your personal life