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This article is republished with permission from <\/em>Wonder Tools<\/a>, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.<\/em><\/p>\n I love Laura<\/a> Vanderkam\u2019s books about how to make the most of time.<\/p>\n It\u2019s never about stuffing more into our days. It\u2019s not about productivity. It\u2019s about savoring and being creatively thoughtful about what we choose to do.<\/p>\n Her books 168 Hours<\/a><\/em> and Tranquility by Tuesday<\/a><\/em> changed how I think about my own weeks. For example, her argument for \u201ceffortful before effortless,\u201d nudged me to spend more of my discretionary time on my hobbies.<\/p>\n Her latest book, Big Time<\/a><\/em>, released last month, makes the case for time abundance: we have more time than we think, and there are surprising ways we can savor it.<\/p>\n Laura and I talked about why weeks matter more than days, how to make work more satisfying with small changes, and why your weekday evenings may hold more free time than you realize. Below, my favorite ideas from our conversation:<\/p>\n When people say \u201cmy life is a circus,\u201d they mean chaos. Laura says that\u2019s a slander against circuses. A real circus is a super-organized performance. Nobody gets shot out of a cannon at the wrong time.<\/p>\n She thinks of life as a well-orchestrated three-ring circus: career, relationships, and self. You\u2019re the ringmaster. Each ring may have a bigger or smaller act at any given moment. A good circus is managed for delight. You want to run a show you\u2019d actually want to watch.<\/p>\n The circus also needs a safety net. Complex lives require backup plans so that complexity doesn\u2019t descend into chaos.<\/p>\n There are 168 hours in a week. That number matters more than 24.<\/p>\n If you work 40 hours and sleep 56, you still have 72 hours for other things. That\u2019s not all free time. But we have much more discretionary time than we often realize. Laura says the time-crunch feeling often results from looking narrowly at today. Zoom out to the week and you\u2019ll often see more room.<\/p>\n Laura tracks her time on a basic Excel spreadsheet. Half-hour blocks. Monday through Sunday. She checks in three times a day and jots down what she did since the last check-in.<\/p>\n She doesn\u2019t make pie charts. She uses plain language: \u201cEmail.\u201d \u201cCooking.\u201d \u201cReading.\u201d \u201cDriving.\u201d Whatever you\u2019d casually tell a friend if they asked what you were doing right now.<\/p>\n At the end of each week, there\u2019s room to reflect. What were the highlights? What did you enjoy most? What was most memorable this week? What was frustrating? She then archives the log and opens a new one.<\/p>\n Laura has been doing this long enough that she can now pull up an old log from the same week in a prior year. She recently compared this past April with April 2020. She now has a kind of personal time capsule. (My wife and daughters use Gretchen Rubin\u2019s 5-Year One-Sentence Journal<\/a> for a related time capsule).<\/p>\n Tip:<\/strong> You can use Laura\u2019s simple, free time-tracking spreadsheet<\/a>. If spreadsheets feel like too much work, try Toggl<\/a><\/strong>. I use Rize<\/a><\/strong>, which automatically categorizes my time so I don\u2019t have to remember to log.<\/p>\n Laura tested three tactics with hundreds of people over three weeks. Each tactic helped people feel more satisfied with their work to a statistically significant degree. The approaches don\u2019t require that you change your job. They also don\u2019t depend on you having a ton of autonomy. So they\u2019re designed to work for all sorts of roles.<\/p>\n One participant in Laura\u2019s study told her: \u201cI thought about leaving my job. I may still do that. But now I see ways to make work better whether I quit or not.\u201d<\/p>\n Golden hours are what Laura calls the stretch of weekday time after work and before bed. For most people, that\u2019s roughly 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. Five hours.<\/p>\n Laura\u2019s challenge: set one golden hour intention each day. Thirty minutes of something you chose and genuinely enjoy. Not work. Not housework.<\/p>\n It might be: reading. A puzzle. A walk. A board game. Playing music. Even watching a movie with a loved one, if you chose that.<\/p>\n The point is awareness, and intention. Once you claim 30 minutes of chosen leisure, you\u2019re less likely to tell yourself the story that you have no free time.<\/p>\n Laura also noted that Golden Hours<\/em> is the title of her next book. Given that this book just came out, I\u2019m impressed that she\u2019s already ready for the next one.<\/p>\n This was the most memorable and useful tactic I learned from Laura\u2019s previous book. It pops up again in this one. Here\u2019s the idea: when your schedule allows for a bit of leisure time, start with at least a few minutes of something that takes effort, before you default to screens or other mindless activity. Read three pages of a book before opening Instagram. Start drawing or playing an instrument (my choice) before picking up your phone.<\/p>\n One of two things will happen. You may get absorbed in the book and keep going. Or you might switch to Instagram anyway, but at least you\u2019ve enjoyed a few minutes of something you care about first.<\/p>\n Laura likes taking on big, year-long projects, like listening to all of Bach or Beethoven, or reading all of Jane Austen or Shakespeare, all of which she\u2019s done in years past. Those all require just 10 pages a day or listening to one piece. If you sprinkle your days with effortful moments, you\u2019ll get deep into projects you care about over the course of a year. If not, you\u2019ll have a year\u2019s worth of scrolling or other mindless diversion that may not add up to something memorable.<\/p>\n Laura\u2019s insight: effortful fun is especially enjoyable and valuable once you clear the initial hurdle of getting started. But when you start with effortless fun, it\u2019s easy to get sucked in and hard to switch to something effortful with more friction.<\/p>\n Laura\u2019s family uses the acronym TOAD: Time Outside After Dinner. Once daylight extends past dinner, go outside. Walk. Play. Just be out there. It breaks the default drift toward screens during the post-dinner hours.<\/p>\n Some things just take time. Laura talked about how her books reveal themselves slowly as she writes them. She may start with a detailed outline, but the nuances within each chapter emerge gradually.<\/p>\n A piece of music becomes part of you only after many hours of practice. I\u2019ve spent years on some of my favorite violin pieces; I often find new wrinkles, like dynamics or articulation marks I hadn\u2019t paid much attention to, even after I\u2019ve spent hundreds of hours looking at the music.<\/p>\n After 11 years of tracking, Laura knows exactly what fits in 168 hours. Her weekly priority lists are short and realistic. If something is on the list, she\u2019ll do it. If not, she\u2019ll push it to a future week.<\/p>\n That precision eliminates guilt. She doesn\u2019t assign herself things she won\u2019t actually do. And she doesn\u2019t feel bad about things she deliberately chose not to do this week. If you occasionally feel guilty about not doing enough, as I do, check out I Didn\u2019t Do The Thing Today<\/a>: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt, <\/em>by Madeleine Dore<\/a>. It\u2019s a brilliant take.<\/p>\n Most productivity advice is about saying no. Laura flips that. Almost all new opportunities, relationships, and breakthroughs come from saying yes to something you\u2019re not entirely sure about.<\/p>\n The reason to clear your schedule isn\u2019t just to have less going on. It\u2019s to create the mental space to say yes when something unexpected appears. If you feel completely swamped, you might not even consider new possibilities. Managing mental load isn\u2019t just about getting things done. It\u2019s about staying open to what could come next, and allowing for serendipity. It\u2019s about being open to what Laura calls little bets, giving time to something new that might end up being terrific.<\/p>\n Tip: <\/strong>In his book, Flourish<\/em><\/a>, Daniel Coyle describes this approach as opening yellow doors. They\u2019re yellow (like a yellow traffic light) because they aren\u2019t a clear GO. You\u2019re not sure where they\u2019ll lead. You may instinctively resist them in favor of more obvious green doors. Coyle points out, as Laura does, that these yellow doors can lead you to surprising places you wouldn\u2019t otherwise go.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/strong>Live every day as if it\u2019s your last\u201d sounds inspiring. But it\u2019s not practical for consistently making real decisions about how we spend our time.<\/p>\n If everything was about living for the moment, you wouldn\u2019t save money, learn a new language, or practice cello. Planning would seem futile or foolish.<\/p>\n Laura prefers a different frame: \u201dSomeday we will die. But on all the other days, we will not.\u201d She attributes it to a Snoopy cartoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n Most days are not the last day we\u2019ll be alive. It\u2019s worth investing in things that pay off later. Build skills. Start the long project.<\/p>\n The Social Security Administration publishes actuarial tables<\/a><\/strong> if you want reassurance about your own life expectancy. For most ages, your odds of making it to next year are excellent. That\u2019s true whether you\u2019re in your forties, like Laura, or 92. Interesting fact: Only when you\u2019re 105 do your odds of dying within a year start to exceed 50%, according to those tables<\/a>.<\/p>\n Laura\u2019s family has a routine meal schedule. Pasta on Mondays. Fajitas on Tuesdays. Breakfast for dinner on Thursdays. (They love bacon). Weekends are for trying something new.<\/p>\n That approach extends beyond food. Sticking to formulas frees up mental energy for things where decisions are crucial. You\u2019re not being boring. You\u2019re being strategic about where your decision-making efforts go.<\/p>\n Jeff Bezos and other visionary leaders talk about separating reversible small decisions from impactful ones that can\u2019t be reversed. If you don\u2019t like one lunch, you\u2019ve got another one coming. If you fire someone or leave a partnership, you may not get an easy redo.<\/p>\n This article is republished with permission from <\/em>Wonder Tools<\/a>, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.<\/em><\/p>\n1. Your Life Is a Circus. Be the Ringmaster<\/h2>\n
2. Think in Weeks, Not Days<\/h2>\n
3. Track Your Time Simply<\/h2>\n
4. Enjoy Work More with 3 Small Experiments<\/h2>\n
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5. Reclaim Your Golden Hours<\/h2>\n
6. Try Effortful Fun Before Effortless Fun<\/h2>\n
7. Go Outside After Dinner<\/h2>\n
8. Practice Active Patience<\/h2>\n
9. Leave Room to Say Yes<\/h2>\n
10. This is Probably Not Your Last Day<\/h2>\n
11. Make Fewer Decisions. Rely on Presets<\/h2>\n