168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

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As a busy mom of 4 who home schools and works at night after they are in bed, her advice offered me nothing towards time management.

I expected some discussion of time management and definitely expected help re-arrranging my thinking about time.There are ideas in here that can truly make an immediate difference in your life, and various statistics that will put your mind to rest. Read this if you need lots of inspirational stories from people that manage their time well by having personal assistants and plenty of money. So let's say you sleep 7-8 hours a night (because you really should), then you actually have 112-119 hours a week. adds up to 168 hours—one week—and, according to Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours, it is the ideal unit by which to examine our lives. And I suspect that once the author actually has school-age children, she might not be so gung ho about feeding them school lunches to save time.

Vanderkam says, "Because I keep these time logs, I can look up any day I want and tell you exactly what I did, which is kind of fun. But there were huge sections where her suggestions and reasoning were based on underlying assumptions that I just don't agree with at all. Vanderkam doesn't address energy at all -- she seems to assume that any time of day or night is eligible for productive work -- but pay attention to it.

Most of us complain about not having enough time to do what it takes to feel successful at home or at work. As the title suggests, Vanderkam argues that each of us has 168 hours each week and how we use those hours is a personal choice. After taking a long, hard look at how we spend our time, my husband and I decided to outsource more of our work to other people, spend more time as a family and give up the desire for a spotless house. hours is a time management strategy designed by Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think.

Instead of letting the daily grind crowd out the important stuff, they start by making sure there's time for the important stuff. If you take into account the fact that it only takes 20 hours to learn a new skill, you’ll be well on your way to planning more exciting and efficient weeks than ever before. Put down the Twinkie, turn off the professional wrestling program on TV, pick your big ass up off the sofa, and start training for a marathon.

If this gives me two extra hours a week, that will be a win as that’s two extra hours I can spend learning microscopy or writing fiction. I've become very strict about what I choose to read in this department, but the structure of the book did okay and was fast to read and catch the useful ideas. In the VERY FIRST chapter she admits her class privilege (flippantly I might add) and then totally disregards it for the next 200 some pages. I've yet to read any magic technique that will tell you that you are getting the most out of your life.