Book #46: 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam

I started reading a few new book blogs and this was a suggestion one of them mentioned that I instantly picked up on. I am a sucker for ways to be more productive and use your time better. Seriously, I love self-help books (which is totally dorky and probably NOT a great use of time, ironically . . .) because I like the new motivation I feel to be more conscientious about how I use my time and what I choose to do every day. This is especially important for me now, as a stay-at-home mom, with nothing that I absolutely HAVE to do. I was very, very good (if I do say so myself) at managing my time when I was a busy student--I am motivated by busyness and get more done when I have more to do--but now I notice myself wasting more time, or at least not being as productive as I LOVE being. I feel so good on days when I can point to things I've done or accomplished, even if it's as simple as taking Dane to the park and reading books with him and making a good dinner. (This motivation, by the way, is one of the main reasons behind this blog. Having a blog where I record what I read and my reactions to it gives me a lot of satisfaction and makes me feel like I've accomplished something by adding it to my digital "collection" I've read.)

So, anyways, this book seemed right up my alley. I like Vanderkam's main thesis: that most of us don't use our time very well. She makes the excellent point (that I hadn't really considered much before) that if we look at our time by the week instead of by the day, we actually have quite a lot of extra hours every week that we don't all use very productively. If there are 168 hours in a week, and you sleep for 56 of those and work for 40, you still have almost 70 extra hours to do other things with them. Obviously, you need to do things like eating and showering and driving with that time, but even when you build those activities in, we all have extra time that we could use to build towards extra hobbies or volunteering or whatever we really want to do. So the excuse "I don't have time" really doesn't hold water for most of us. She sprinkles plenty of examples of people who are crazy busy (with six kids and running their own business) but still manage to have fulfilling lives with personal exercise and time to themselves, which make me feel like a lazy slob for not having started a charity to help African orphans or something yet.

One section of the book is how to use your time better with your job, which I kind of skimmed through since it obviously doesn't apply to me at this stage of my life. (Vanderkam doesn't seem super enamored with stay-at-home parents, by the way, talking a lot about how too many women choose to stay home with their kids because they think they won't have time to do both.) But she has a few chapters on how to use your time better at home, like with your housework and your hobbies, etc. I don't necessarily agree with everything she advocates, like how she suggests outsourcing many household chores (like cooking, laundry, cleaning, shopping, etc.) so that you can use your time better. It sits wrong with me for several reasons: that is a very privileged view of the problem that not many, including myself, can afford, and also because I don't think our goal here in life is to get rid of all not-necessarily-thrilling chores that we have to do. What sort of example about work are we setting for our children if we outsource every single unpleasant chore that we have to do? When are our kids going to learn how to do those sorts of chores themselves? She argues that getting rid of those chores leaves you more time to spend time with your kids, which I definitely agree with, but I also think you're not just supposed to spend leisure, fun time with your kids but also working time.

All in all, I do like a lot of her suggestions and just the general theme of being more conscious about your decisions and scheduling yourself out more before you waste your time away. I've already started making some lists of time use and goals of what I'd like to accomplish to follow some of her suggestions. One thing I liked that she did was to make a "List of 100 Dreams"--basically a bucket list--of everything you could possibly think of wanting to do in your life, and then focusing on spending your time so that you CAN accomplish those things, whatever they may be. I also liked her idea of a time log so you can see what you spend your time ON in real life, so that you can see where the problems may lie and what you can do to improve. I want to do both of these things (in fact, Tommy and I started a "List of 100 Dreams" for FHE last night!) and really be good about this.