My Kindle edition of “168 Hours” by Laura Vanderkam just whooshed into my Home Page.
A lifetime, if calculated from week to week, is “simply 168 hours, back to back, repeated again and again,” according to Ms. Vanderkam. Subtract 56 weekly sleeping hours (eight a night) and 50 for work and you still have 62 unscheduled hours each week. Husbands and wives talk to each other a mere 12 minutes a day.
So, what in the world are you doing with the rest of the time?
Ms. Vanderkam, a contributor to USA Today and many other publications, suggests you “outsource and automate.” According to the review in the Wall Street Journal, she herself retains a house cleaner and a laundry pick-up service, buys premarinated meat and prechopped veggies and frozen lunches. Cooking and cleaning are drudgery in her book. And she’s also a b-i-g multitasker. She cross-trained while pregnant.
I have to admire the author for making our time struggles more manageable. (Catch her blog for more ideas.) After all, it’s not about eternity. It’s about 62 hours a week. Can’t you wrestle that into shape and do with it what’s important? Think harder about where you want that time to go?
The book is a cross between Harvard Business Review and Real Simple Magazine according to Joseph Tartakovsky, a contributing book reviewer and student at Fordham Law School, who gives us some of the best advice for a solution to our time woes.
Do less, disconnect, insist on retaining a measure of tranquility – that takes time.
His ideas seem a better road map for 62 hours of unscheduled time than prechopped broccoli.
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