How to gain control of your free time | Laura Vanderkam | TED — Transcript

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1. 0:00Translator: Leslie Gauthier Reviewer: Camille Martínez
2. 0:12When people find out I write about time management,
3. 0:16they assume two things.
4. 0:19One is that I'm always on time,
5. 0:23and I'm not.
6. 0:25I have four small children,
7. 0:26and I would like to blame them for my occasional tardiness,
8. 0:29but sometimes it's just not their fault.
9. 0:32I was once late to my own speech on time management.
10. 0:35(Laughter)
11. 0:36We all had to just take a moment together and savor that irony.
12. 0:40The second thing they assume is that I have lots of tips and tricks
13. 0:44for saving bits of time here and there.
14. 0:46Sometimes I'll hear from magazines that are doing a story along these lines,
15. 0:49generally on how to help their readers find an extra hour in the day.
16. 0:53And the idea is that we'll shave bits of time off everyday activities,
17. 0:56add it up,
18. 0:57and we'll have time for the good stuff.
19. 0:59I question the entire premise of this piece, but I'm always interested
20. 1:03in hearing what they've come up with before they call me.
21. 1:06Some of my favorites:
22. 1:07doing errands where you only have to make right-hand turns --
23. 1:10(Laughter)
24. 1:11Being extremely judicious in microwave usage:
25. 1:14it says three to three-and-a-half minutes on the package,
26. 1:16we're totally getting in on the bottom side of that.
27. 1:19And my personal favorite, which makes sense on some level,
28. 1:21is to DVR your favorite shows so you can fast-forward through the commercials.
29. 1:25That way, you save eight minutes every half hour,
30. 1:28so in the course of two hours of watching TV,
31. 1:30you find 32 minutes to exercise.
32. 1:31(Laughter)
33. 1:32Which is true.
34. 1:34You know another way to find 32 minutes to exercise?
35. 1:37Don't watch two hours of TV a day, right?
36. 1:39(Laughter)
37. 1:41Anyway, the idea is we'll save bits of time here and there, add it up,
38. 1:44we will finally get to everything we want to do.
39. 1:46But after studying how successful people spend their time
40. 1:49and looking at their schedules hour by hour,
41. 1:52I think this idea has it completely backward.
42. 1:56We don't build the lives we want by saving time.
43. 2:00We build the lives we want,
44. 2:02and then time saves itself.
45. 2:07Here's what I mean.
46. 2:08I recently did a time diary project
47. 2:10looking at 1,001 days in the lives of extremely busy women.
48. 2:14They had demanding jobs, sometimes their own businesses,
49. 2:16kids to care for, maybe parents to care for,
50. 2:19community commitments --
51. 2:20busy, busy people.
52. 2:22I had them keep track of their time for a week
53. 2:25so I could add up how much they worked and slept,
54. 2:27and I interviewed them about their strategies, for my book.
55. 2:30One of the women whose time log I studied
56. 2:32goes out on a Wednesday night for something.
57. 2:34She comes home to find that her water heater has broken,
58. 2:36and there is now water all over her basement.
59. 2:40If you've ever had anything like this happen to you,
60. 2:42you know it is a hugely damaging, frightening, sopping mess.
61. 2:45So she's dealing with the immediate aftermath that night,
62. 2:48next day she's got plumbers coming in,
63. 2:50day after that, professional cleaning crew dealing with the ruined carpet.
64. 2:53All this is being recorded on her time log.
65. 2:56Winds up taking seven hours of her week.
66. 2:59Seven hours.
67. 3:01That's like finding an extra hour in the day.
68. 3:04But I'm sure if you had asked her at the start of the week,
69. 3:07"Could you find seven hours to train for a triathlon?"
70. 3:11"Could you find seven hours to mentor seven worthy people?"
71. 3:15I'm sure she would've said what most of us would've said,
72. 3:18which is, "No -- can't you see how busy I am?"
73. 3:23Yet when she had to find seven hours
74. 3:25because there is water all over her basement,
75. 3:28she found seven hours.
76. 3:31And what this shows us is that time is highly elastic.
77. 3:35We cannot make more time,
78. 3:37but time will stretch to accommodate what we choose to put into it.
79. 3:42And so the key to time management
80. 3:45is treating our priorities
81. 3:47as the equivalent of that broken water heater.
82. 3:52To get at this,
83. 3:53I like to use language from one of the busiest people I ever interviewed.
84. 3:56By busy, I mean she was running a small business
85. 3:59with 12 people on the payroll,
86. 4:00she had six children in her spare time.
87. 4:02I was getting in touch with her to set up an interview
88. 4:05on how she "had it all" -- that phrase.
89. 4:07I remember it was a Thursday morning,
90. 4:09and she was not available to speak with me.
91. 4:11Of course, right?
92. 4:12But the reason she was unavailable to speak with me
93. 4:15is that she was out for a hike,
94. 4:17because it was a beautiful spring morning,
95. 4:19and she wanted to go for a hike.
96. 4:20So of course this makes me even more intrigued,
97. 4:23and when I finally do catch up with her, she explains it like this.
98. 4:26She says, "Listen Laura, everything I do,
99. 4:29every minute I spend, is my choice."
100. 4:33And rather than say,
101. 4:35"I don't have time to do x, y or z,"
102. 4:37she'd say, "I don't do x, y or z because it's not a priority."
103. 4:43"I don't have time," often means "It's not a priority."
104. 4:49If you think about it, that's really more accurate language.
105. 4:51I could tell you I don't have time to dust my blinds,
106. 4:54but that's not true.
107. 4:55If you offered to pay me $100,000 to dust my blinds,
108. 4:58I would get to it pretty quickly.
109. 4:59(Laughter)
110. 5:00Since that is not going to happen,
111. 5:02I can acknowledge this is not a matter of lacking time;
112. 5:05it's that I don't want to do it.
113. 5:06Using this language reminds us that time is a choice.
114. 5:10And granted,
115. 5:11there may be horrible consequences for making different choices,
116. 5:14I will give you that.
117. 5:15But we are smart people,
118. 5:17and certainly over the long run,
119. 5:19we have the power to fill our lives
120. 5:21with the things that deserve to be there.
121. 5:25So how do we do that?
122. 5:27How do we treat our priorities
123. 5:28as the equivalent of that broken water heater?
124. 5:31Well, first we need to figure out what they are.
125. 5:33I want to give you two strategies for thinking about this.
126. 5:36The first, on the professional side:
127. 5:38I'm sure many people coming up to the end of the year
128. 5:40are giving or getting annual performance reviews.
129. 5:43You look back over your successes over the year,
130. 5:45your "opportunities for growth."
131. 5:47And this serves its purpose,
132. 5:50but I find it's more effective to do this looking forward.
133. 5:53So I want you to pretend it's the end of next year.
134. 5:56You're giving yourself a performance review,
135. 5:58and it has been an absolutely amazing year for you professionally.
136. 6:04What three to five things did you do that made it so amazing?
137. 6:10So you can write next year's performance review now.
138. 6:14And you can do this for your personal life, too.
139. 6:16I'm sure many of you, like me, come December,
140. 6:19get cards that contain these folded up sheets of colored paper,
141. 6:23on which is written what is known as the family holiday letter.
142. 6:28(Laughter)
143. 6:30Bit of a wretched genre of literature, really,
144. 6:32going on about how amazing everyone in the household is,
145. 6:35or even more scintillating,
146. 6:37how busy everyone in the household is.
147. 6:39But these letters serve a purpose,
148. 6:41which is that they tell your friends and family
149. 6:43what you did in your personal life that mattered to you over the year.
150. 6:47So this year's kind of done,
151. 6:48but I want you to pretend it's the end of next year,
152. 6:50and it has been an absolutely amazing year
153. 6:54for you and the people you care about.
154. 6:57What three to five things did you do that made it so amazing?
155. 7:02So you can write next year's family holiday letter now.
156. 7:07Don't send it.
157. 7:09(Laughter)
158. 7:10Please, don't send it.
159. 7:13But you can write it.
160. 7:14And now, between the performance review and the family holiday letter,
161. 7:18we have a list of six to ten goals we can work on in the next year.
162. 7:21And now we need to break these down into doable steps.
163. 7:24So maybe you want to write a family history.
164. 7:26First, you can read some other family histories,
165. 7:28get a sense for the style.
166. 7:30Then maybe think about the questions you want to ask your relatives,
167. 7:33set up appointments to interview them.
168. 7:35Or maybe you want to run a 5K.
169. 7:36So you need to find a race and sign up, figure out a training plan,
170. 7:39and dig those shoes out of the back of the closet.
171. 7:42And then -- this is key --
172. 7:44we treat our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater,
173. 7:48by putting them into our schedules first.
174. 7:51We do this by thinking through our weeks before we are in them.
175. 7:56I find a really good time to do this is Friday afternoons.
176. 8:00Friday afternoon is what an economist might call
177. 8:03a "low opportunity cost" time.
178. 8:06Most of us are not sitting there on Friday afternoons saying,
179. 8:09"I am excited to make progress
180. 8:11toward my personal and professional priorities
181. 8:13right now."
182. 8:15(Laughter)
183. 8:16But we are willing to think about what those should be.
184. 8:18So take a little bit of time Friday afternoon,
185. 8:21make yourself a three-category priority list: career, relationships, self.
186. 8:28Making a three-category list reminds us
187. 8:31that there should be something in all three categories.
188. 8:35Career, we think about;
189. 8:36relationships, self --
190. 8:37not so much.
191. 8:39But anyway, just a short list,
192. 8:41two to three items in each.
193. 8:43Then look out over the whole of the next week,
194. 8:45and see where you can plan them in.
195. 8:48Where you plan them in is up to you.
196. 8:50I know this is going to be more complicated for some people than others.
197. 8:53I mean, some people's lives are just harder than others.
198. 8:57It is not going to be easy to find time to take that poetry class
199. 9:00if you are caring for multiple children on your own.
200. 9:04I get that.
201. 9:05And I don't want to minimize anyone's struggle.
202. 9:07But I do think that the numbers I am about to tell you are empowering.
203. 9:12There are 168 hours in a week.
204. 9:17Twenty-four times seven is 168 hours.
205. 9:23That is a lot of time.
206. 9:26If you are working a full-time job, so 40 hours a week,
207. 9:29sleeping eight hours a night, so 56 hours a week --
208. 9:32that leaves 72 hours for other things.
209. 9:36That is a lot of time.
210. 9:38You say you're working 50 hours a week,
211. 9:40maybe a main job and a side hustle.
212. 9:42Well, that leaves 62 hours for other things.
213. 9:45You say you're working 60 hours.
214. 9:47Well, that leaves 52 hours for other things.
215. 9:49You say you're working more than 60 hours.
216. 9:51Well, are you sure?
217. 9:53(Laughter)
218. 9:55There was once a study comparing people's estimated work weeks
219. 9:58with time diaries.
220. 9:59They found that people claiming 75-plus-hour work weeks
221. 10:02were off by about 25 hours.
222. 10:04(Laughter)
223. 10:06You can guess in which direction, right?
224. 10:09Anyway, in 168 hours a week,
225. 10:11I think we can find time for what matters to you.
226. 10:14If you want to spend more time with your kids,
227. 10:17you want to study more for a test you're taking,
228. 10:19you want to exercise for three hours and volunteer for two,
229. 10:22you can.
230. 10:23And that's even if you're working way more than full-time hours.
231. 10:27So we have plenty of time, which is great,
232. 10:29because guess what?
233. 10:31We don't even need that much time to do amazing things.
234. 10:34But when most of us have bits of time, what do we do?
235. 10:37Pull out the phone, right?
236. 10:39Start deleting emails.
237. 10:42Otherwise, we're puttering around the house
238. 10:44or watching TV.
239. 10:46But small moments can have great power.
240. 10:49You can use your bits of time
241. 10:52for bits of joy.
242. 10:55Maybe it's choosing to read something wonderful on the bus
243. 10:58on the way to work.
244. 10:59I know when I had a job that required two bus rides
245. 11:01and a subway ride every morning,
246. 11:03I used to go to the library on weekends to get stuff to read.
247. 11:06It made the whole experience almost, almost, enjoyable.
248. 11:11Breaks at work can be used for meditating or praying.
249. 11:15If family dinner is out because of your crazy work schedule,
250. 11:18maybe family breakfast could be a good substitute.
251. 11:21It's about looking at the whole of one's time
252. 11:25and seeing where the good stuff can go.
253. 11:28I truly believe this.
254. 11:31There is time.
255. 11:34Even if we are busy,
256. 11:37we have time for what matters.
257. 11:39And when we focus on what matters,
258. 11:42we can build the lives we want
259. 11:44in the time we've got.
260. 11:46Thank you.
261. 11:47(Applause)