15 reflections on 15 years of 168 Hours

My first time management book, 168 Hours, came out 15 years ago this month.

(I think the actual date was May 27 for the hardcover. The paperback came out a year later.)

It was a really exciting time for me. I had written a career book earlier (Grindhopping — no, you probably haven’t read it) but not much had happened with that. 168 Hours was a fairly major commercial launch — for instance, I wound up going on the Today Show, and Fox and Friends, and the book was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal (if not exactly nicely).

In many cases with non-fiction books, people build a career in their subject matter expertise, and then write a book about it. That was not really the case for me. I came at this from the writing side, and 168 Hours was my platform to become a time management expert — though even then it was not immediate.

But anyway, I loved writing the book. I am happiest when working on a big writing project and throwing myself into it fully. Here are a few thoughts as I celebrate the book being out in the world for 15 years.

(Have you read it? If not, you can pick up a copy! If you have read it, I would love to hear if you took any advice from the book or used any tips in your life. Feel free to post here or email me at laura at lauravanderkam dot com.)

1. People say “24-7” frequently, but seldom multiply it through. This has been good for me for search engine purposes! Not many people talk about there being 168 hours in a week, but thinking about life in terms of 168 hours, rather than 24, is just liberating. It shows us how much space we have. For instance, working 40 hours a week, and sleeping 8 hours a night, leaves 72 hours for other things. It also reminds us that things don’t have to happen daily, nor do they have to happen at the same time every day, in order to count in our lives.

2. When you zoom out to 168 hours, many of the things people depict as harsh trade offs just aren’t. Maybe you worked late Monday night but you were home earlier Tuesday and Wednesday. Maybe you didn’t have family dinner Thursday night but you did on Friday. Maybe you didn’t work out on Monday but you did on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. Looking at time holistically is not only more accurate (Tuesday and Saturday both occur just as often so one is no more “normal” than the other) it’s more satisfying.

3.“I don’t have time” means “it’s not a priority.” This is probably my favorite observation from 168 Hours. It is slightly bracing language…but often more accurate. There may be consequences to making different choices, but we are smart people, and over time we have the power to fill our lives with the things that deserve to be there.

4. Everything is material. In the year before I wrote 168 Hours I had been writing a weekly column for Scientific American’s webpage looking at former winners of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search (at the time it was called the Intel Science Talent Search, and has continued to evolve). Many of these scientists were resurrected as characters in 168 Hours. I re-interviewed them and got new material as well but I could call upon their stories — and I think it gave me a more varied set of people than I might have gotten otherwise. Also, I interviewed Sylvia Earle (not a Westinghouse person, but also a scientist) and that was cool. I have interviewed her three times in my life and every time was a treat.

5. Time tracking is eye opening. I did it a few times for the book. I also had other people track their time too. But it’s strange to me that I didn’t start tracking my time continuously until 2015. Go figure! But if people take nothing else from my work, know this: knowing where the time goes is the first step to spending time better. It’s worth a shot.

6. The American Time Use Survey is fascinating. So are various historic time diary studies. Seeing these studies was my first insight into the truth that a lot of times people don’t really know how they spend their time. Or how people did in the past. We just guess. We overestimate the things we don’t want to do and underestimate the things we do want to do. People will tell you they have no free time whatsoever, and you’re having this conversation at a party. Women spend more time with their kids in the modern era than they did in the 1960s. We are not increasingly sleep deprived. And work has decreased a lot over the last 100 years.

7. Not everyone will like a book. Often, the criticisms will all be similar and, honestly, kind of boring. I got (and get) a lot of complaints about “privilege,” especially if I mention the crazy idea of exchanging money for services in the context of domestic labor. So let me say this. No, I am generally not cleaning my bathrooms. Nor is any male author giving productivity advice. So it goes. I will say that one slightly odd criticism was along the lines of “well, you can do anything if you only have one kid” (which was the case when I wrote the book). So I’m glad to report that having five kids has not yet caused me to admit defeat.

8. One of my favorite sections was on the “new home economics.” I had written about Mrs. Meyers and Caldrea for the Wall Street Journal and I was able to repurpose some of that. Mrs. Meyers is actually a real person, and the difference between her life and her daughter Monica Nassif’s life (Monica was the founder of these high end cleaning product companies) showcases the differences in how women spend their time now vs. in the past.

9. Working a split shift is still good advice. If you need to work long hours, and you have a commute, and you have young kids who go to bed early, your best option for seeing them in the evening is to leave work early some days, hang out with them, then do more work at night (at home) after they go to bed. Doing this “split shift” means you’re trading off work time for TV time vs. work time for family time. A lot of professional women do this, though there’s zero reason men can’t too (many do!). Especially as places require people to return to their offices, I think this will wind up being useful advice again.

10. Mornings count. I came up with the advice about working a split shift originally to counter some of the people (of all political persuasions, by the way) who insist women won’t work big jobs because they’ll “never” see their kids. I think the “never” story has some holes in it. I mean, weekends are real days, and even people who work and travel during the week might be home on the weekends. But even if you did work late every night, little kids often wake up at the crack of dawn. If your kid is up at 6 and you leave for work at 8…that’s two hours. It’s no different than if it happened at some other point. People often have a big blind spot about mornings. Family breakfast is just as good as family dinner.

11. Time is too precious to be totally leisurely about leisure. That’s another of my favorite lines. I think leisure time should be taken seriously!

12. It’s good to focus your leisure time. Better to choose a few things and go all in, committing enough time and resources to make them really fun. Instead of singing a bit here and there…sing in a choir.

13. Be open to possibilities, plan for opportunities. I think that’s another good phrase — we can structure our lives so opportunities can find us, and we can also know what we’ll do if we get really lucky. What would you do if things went really right?

14. Use bits of time for bits of joy. I like this phrase. These days I’m often listening to Beethoven in the crevices of the day. All time matters and little bits of time can be used for things that are far more satisfying than deleting email or scrolling around on social media.

15. I love writing. Especially books. There’s something so cool about getting to explore a topic at length. So I’m glad that I’ve continued to get the opportunity. Look for the next book, Big Time, next spring!

What did you take from 168 Hours? The Best of Both Worlds Patreon community will be having a Zoom discussion about 168 Hours on Wednesday the 21st at 1 p.m. eastern.