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You’re Not As Busy As You Think | How to be more productive | Laura Vanderkam


expectations are infinite time is finite
you are always choosing choose well and
the reason I like this phrase is is
because we have this idea well if I just
work harder I can I can get all this
stuff done or maybe if I’m just a better
person I can do meet all the demands in
my personal life no expectations are
infinite you cannot do everything even
if you work 24 hours a day even if you
never slept you still couldn’t do
everything that somebody might want you
to do but once you realize that you
realize that you’re always choosing how
to spend your time then you can start to
make those choices more consciously you
can actually choose well and think about
how I might choose well in any given
moment to create the life I want I think
that people would be a little bit
surprised if they were to do a time
diary about how much time sort of leaks
out of their life what are some of the
big ways that people lose time without
really being aware of it so honestly the
biggest way people lose time is by being
unintentional about it you don’t think
about what you’d like to do with your
time and so you could do something but
you don’t because you haven’t thought
about it one obvious thing of this is on
the weekend you know maybe you could go
for a bike ride
that would require like getting up and
doing it you know going out somewhere in
the in the morning you don’t think about
what you want to do until it’s like 1:00
p.m. on the weekend and then by that
point you can’t go do the longer ride or
you know they’re there things your
family needs to get to so you’re not
going to be able to fit it in and and so
big chunks of time can sort of disappear
because we haven’t thought about what
we’d like to do with it yeah so this was
a great exercise that a career coach
shared with me many years ago which is
you know it’s a good answer to that
question of people think they have no
time and so they don’t think of what
they want to do with their time and then
when time appears we do whatever is
easiest because we don’t think we have
any time we haven’t thought about it so
that’s why we wind up scrolling around
on our phones all the time the list of
100 dreams sort of helps to solve this
so completely unedited list of anything
you want to spend more time doing so the
first third is easy because people often
want to travel more
like the 33 countries they want to visit
so we got that all right but after that
it starts getting a lot harder if you’re
like oh well there’s that state park and
our way you know we lived here for six
years we’ve yet to get to or and you
know really want to bike more there’s a
couple bike trails near my house I want
to do or you know I should read poetry
or I’d like to go try that restaurant
somewhere or you know get to the library
and do whatever like you start to get
far more doable as you get toward 100
you have to come back to this several
times to actually get to a hundred but
then having this list when you have open
time or you’re making your priority list
for the upcoming week you say well let
me pull something off that list you know
maybe this is the weekend I will go to
that state park or you know I will go
for that bike ride and you know Tuesday
over lunch if that’s an option in your
life and then you’re doing cool things
right we lose so much time every time we
are looking at a notification and then
you have to get back to what you were
doing and then by the time you’re back
and what you’re doing there’s another
notification imagine that so you know
and if you can go till the end of the
day that is that is great a lot of
people can’t quite do that and so then
if they think that’s the goal they’re
like well I can’t even try so I’m not
gonna go but you can check in frequently
but even if you just said okay 15
minutes on the hour I’m gonna be in
responsive mode I’m gonna be looking at
my texts my emails my phone calls
whatever and then I’m off for 45 minutes
and then I’m back on for 15 minutes and
then I’m off for 45 minutes so yeah that
if you can figure out ways to control
the inputs for chunks of time during
your day you can you can get so much
more done and not lose all that time on
task switching well one of the things
that is really good for feeling like you
have more time is spending more time
with people whose company you enjoy and
that seems very straightforward like of
course we should see friends and family
that sounds great and yet people don’t
do it because it takes effort to do so I
did a time diary project where I had 900
busy people track their time for a day
and then I asked them questions about
how they felt about their time and I
could give them a score we had called it
a time perception scores that people who
felt time was abundant or people who
felt time was scarce and they were
starved for time
time perception scores rose in direct
correlation with how much time people
spent interacting with friends and
family and it’s not that the people that
the highest time scores had more time
than anyone else I mean these were all
sort of equivalently busy people and it
turned out that the people at the lowest
time perception scores spent more time
watching TV and more time online than
the people with the high time perception
score so they all had leisure time it’s
just they were spending it in different
ways and it turns out that being social
tends to make you feel like you have
more time whereas being social online it
often makes you feel like you have a
little bit less it sort of gets away
from you and you know it I say this as
an introverted person I’m not saying you
have to be in a party every night but
there are people that you like even if
you are very introverted and and what
you can do to spend more time with those
people will be time well spent
there’s this idea of effortless fun and
effortful fun and getting together with
people whose company you enjoy is
effortful fun right it takes a lot of
work you got to call them make plans you
got to go do something together you
probably have to dress up I’m ever not
dress up but at least you know wear
clothes like you can you know
necessarily be in in your pajamas you
know you make a plan like you have to do
it even if it was like not a great day
at work like you’re gonna still go to it
whereas you know surfing the web doesn’t
demand to any of that right it’s
completely effortless fun so it’s the
difference between throwing a dinner
party which is effortful fun and looking
on Instagram at photos of other people’s
dinner parties which is effortless fun
and they’re both a reasonable way to
spend an evening but one is obviously
going to be much more memorable and feel
much more sort of profound and like you
have this time for doing awesome things
in your life if you actually have the
dinner party so you know you want to
make sure you invest some in that kind
of well I hope that I will help people
realize that they do have time for
whatever is important to them and we
talked ourselves into this idea that oh
I’ll never be able to do X I’ll never be
able to do Y I just don’t have the time
and I don’t believe that’s true I
believe we do have time
168 hours we all have each week for what
matters to us and particularly I would
like to help people see that life is not
either/or that professional success does
not need to come at the expense of
having an awesome personal life nor does
an awesome personal life need to come at
the expense of achieving you know great
things in the world changing the world
in some way but to make it a better
place so I hope I can help people see that there’s time for both
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