How Not to Get More Done in Less Time

AKA

How to Go to Bed With the Thought, “That Was an Awesome Day.”

I’ve been a self-help junkie since my early 20s, using books to cure everything from my depression to my bad marriage. During the late 90s, I also worked at Rodale Press, which, at that time, was The Self Help Capital of the Universe.

Now, after nearly two decades of self-help junkiehood, there are few tips that I have not read or written.  For this reason, it has become increasingly rare for a self-help book to change my life in any significant way.

Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours is one exception to that rule. I became familiar with Laura a few months back when she interviewed me for a story for USA Today.

We soon learned that we both belonged to the same professional organization. You might say we hit it off, but I wouldn’t say that because “hit it off” is a cliché and good writers don’t write clichés.

Anyway, when she told me about her book, I promised to review it.

And then I fretted. Let me tell you. If there is a possible way to worry about something, I will find it. If you are the worrying sort, then you might have already guessed the notion that plagued me after I promised Laura that I would write a review.

If you are not the worrying sort? Probably not.

Either way, try to guess. Then go on and read the next line paragraph. And then leave a comment and let me know if you came up with it—or something even more worrisome that, for some odd reason, didn’t occur to me.

This is what I worried: What if I already know everything that’s in the book? What if I don’t like it? Then what do I do? Tell Laura that I can’t review it? Write a review that isn’t true? What?

Let me tell you, all of that worrying just wasted mental energy that didn’t need to be wasted. Laura’s book changed my life.

On the first page, Laura tells a story about Theresa Daytner, who owns and runs a 7-figure-revenue construction company and is the mother of 6 children, including a set of twins. You might expect someone like Daytner to be harried. She’s not.

She seemingly balances her demanding job and her demanding family life with some sort of elusive ease. She’s rested, and she’s happy.

How does she do it? Is she some sort of super mother that the rest of us should just pretend does not exist because of the inevitable jolt to our fragile egos?

No, she’s not a super woman. She just spends all of her time on the right stuff – the stuff that she deems important – and little to no time on the wrong stuff.

And that’s the magic of 168 Hours. It’s not a book about getting more done in less time. It’s not about how to multitask, and it’s not a book full of tips about how to clean your house more efficiently. Sure, you will find advice about how to cut your grocery shopping, cleaning and laundry time. But it’s not what you think. She doesn’t tell you to fold clothes while you are talking on the phone to your mother while simultaneously having sex with your husband.

No, she tells you to stop folding clothes.

And depending on how you feel about talking to your mother, she tells you that you might want to stop doing that, too. (A quick note to my mother who reads this blog: I talked to you twice on the phone this weekend, which was after I read this book. Therefore you should understand that I enjoy talking to you on the phone and value it enough to consciously make time for it.)

It’s revolutionary.

168 Hours is a book about spending more time on what you want to be doing, and less time on the things you think you should be doing.

With humor, statistics, and powerful anecdotes, Laura makes a compelling case in favor of the following notion: we all have more time than we think.

Ever since I picked up the book, I’ve been thinking about how I spend my time. Here are a few things that I’ve learned from this exercise:

* Twitter is a big fat time suck. You might think that it only takes a few seconds to respond to a tweet or to pen the wittiest Facebook status update ever written. And, for you, maybe it does. When I started timing myself, though, I realized that my social media time went way beyond what I thought. We’re talking hours, folks.

* Mindless chatter is a time suck, too. I’ve also been noticing how much time I spend conversing with others about topics that don’t change my life or theirs. It’s crazy terrifying is what it is.

* Don’t even get me started about email.

* Whenever I feel frustrated, it’s a signal that I’ve given away time that I really wanted to keep for myself. Resentment stems from spending time on things that I don’t believe in or see the merit of.

* Happiness comes from spending time on the stuff that matters. For me, writing this blog matters. Working on my book matters. Making my daughter laugh matters. Getting my husband to smile matters. Being there for my friends matters. On the days when I spend nearly all of my minutes on what matters to me, I go to bed thinking, “Wow, that was an awesome day.”

* Stress comes from spending time on stuff that doesn’t matter. I would never have believed this until I saw it for myself. You won’t believe me until you pay attention to how you spend your time, too.

Since reading Laura’s book, I’ve constantly been asking myself, “Is this how I want to be spending my time?” Of course, occasionally the answer to that question is “No” and there isn’t a dang way around it. For instance, I don’t like paying my bills. But, if I want to stay out of jail, it’s something that has got to get done, and it’s something that no other human being can do for me. (If you know of a way for me to outsource this boring task, will you let me know?)

Yet, in many cases, a lot of the stuff that I thought I had to do really didn’t have to get done. For instance, my house doesn’t need to be cleaned every week. And most of it doesn’t even need to be cleaned once a month.

I don’t have to respond to every single email, either. And I don’t have to respond to any of them right away. In fact, when I’m motoring along on an important piece of writing, I can just turn off my email.

I don’t have to answer my phone and I don’t have to return every single message. I don’t have to agree to talk to every person who wants to talk to me.

Sure, some people might complain about me behind my back. They might call me stuck up, or they might say, “That Alisa, it takes her at least a week to respond to the simplest of emails.”

But how I spend my time is my choice. How you spend your time is your choice, too. What choice will you make?

Read Laura’s blog.

Get Laura’s book.

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Tagged as: time management