168 Hours
Laura Vanderkam
35 min
8 Key Points
4.5 RateWhat's inside?
Discover how to maximize your time and productivity within a week, proving that you have more time than you think to achieve your goals.
You'll learn
1. How to boss your time for top-notch productivity2. Balancing work and play: the how-to3. Ditch time-wasters and focus on what matters4. Time tracking: what's the big deal?5. Making every hour of your week count6. Goal-setting: why it's a game-changer.Key points
01The Great Illusion of the Time Crunch
Have you ever reached the end of a long, exhausting week and wondered where all your time actually went? You are certainly not alone in this feeling. In our modern society, being incredibly busy has almost become a badge of honor, a universal signal that we are important, in demand, and doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing. When we run into an old friend at the grocery store or catch up with a colleague by the coffee machine, the standard response to "How are you?" is almost always an exasperated sigh followed by, "I am just so busy!" We wear our exhaustion like a heavy, invisible medal. However, Laura Vanderkam invites us to take a step back and look at time through a completely different, highly mathematical lens. Instead of focusing on the twenty-four hours in a single day—which can easily be derailed by a flat tire, a sick child, or a sudden crisis at work—we need to look at the week as a whole. A week contains exactly one hundred and sixty-eight hours. This is a fixed, non-negotiable number that applies to every single person on the planet, regardless of their wealth, status, or occupation. Let us break down the simple, undeniable math of those one hundred and sixty-eight hours. If you are aiming for a very healthy eight hours of sleep every single night, that accounts for fifty-six hours of your week. If you work a demanding, full-time job that requires fifty hours of your time—which is actually significantly more than the average person works, despite what they might claim—you have used up one hundred and six hours. Subtracting that from our total leaves you with a staggering sixty-two hours of completely unallocated time. Sixty-two hours! That is essentially another full-time job, plus a part-time job, left over for you to do whatever you please. You could use those sixty-two hours to train for a marathon, learn to speak fluently in a foreign language, write a novel, volunteer at a local animal shelter, or simply sit on the floor and build elaborate Lego castles with your children. Yet, for most of us, those sixty-two hours seem to vanish into thin air, leaving us feeling deprived, stressed, and perpetually behind schedule. Why is there such a massive disconnect between the time we actually have and the time we feel we have? The answer lies in how poorly we estimate our own behavior. Vanderkam leans heavily on the fascinating research of John Robinson, a leading sociologist who has spent decades studying how Americans use their time through detailed time diaries. Robinson's extensive data reveals a startling truth: we are terrible at guessing how many hours we dedicate to various activities. When people are asked to estimate how much they work, those who claim to work sixty, seventy, or even eighty hours a week are almost always exaggerating. They might be spending time at the office, but they are also browsing the internet, chatting by the water cooler, taking long lunches, or simply staring blankly at their screens. When these same people are forced to write down exactly what they are doing every fifteen minutes, their actual working hours usually plummet to around forty-five or fifty. We inflate our working hours because it makes us feel productive, but this mental exaggeration comes at a steep emotional cost. It convinces us that we have no time left for the things that actually bring us joy. Furthermore, we tend to drastically overestimate the time we spend on tedious chores and underestimate the time we spend on basic personal care, like sleeping. The narrative of the chronically sleep-deprived professional is pervasive, but the time diary data shows that, on average, most adults are getting very close to the recommended seven or eight hours of sleep a night. The problem is not a systemic lack of time; the problem is a severe lack of intentionality. We are allowing our precious, fleeting hours to be stolen by invisible time thieves. We check our emails fifty times a day, scroll mindlessly through social media feeds for hours on end, and watch television shows we do not even enjoy just because the screen happens to be glowing in the living room. Think about how often we use the phrase "I don't have time" as a polite excuse to avoid doing things we simply do not want to do. If someone asks you to join a difficult committee or attend a boring networking event, saying "I don't have time" is socially acceptable. But the reality is that we always have time for the things we truly prioritize. If your basement suddenly flooded, you would miraculously find ten hours this week to deal with plumbers, insurance agents, and cleaning crews. You would not say, "I am too busy to deal with this flood." You would simply rearrange your schedule because the flood became an immediate, undeniable priority. Vanderkam challenges us to apply this same level of fierce prioritization to our passions, our families, and our careers. By acknowledging the vast expanse of those one hundred and sixty-eight hours, we can strip away the victim mentality that tells us we are at the mercy of the clock. We are the masters of our own time, and realizing that the time crunch is largely an illusion is the very first, crucial step toward reclaiming our lives.
02Unlocking Your Unique Core Competencies
Now that we have established that you actually possess a mountain of free time, the next logical question is how exactly you should be spending it. To answer this, Vanderkam borrows a brilliant concept from the world of high-level corporate strategy: the idea of "core competencies." In the early 1990s, business strategists Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad introduced this term to explain why certain companies succeed while others fail. They argued that a successful business should not try to do absolutely everything. Instead, a company should identify the very few things it does better than anyone else in the world—its core competencies—and focus all its resources there, while completely ignoring, outsourcing, or minimizing everything else. For example, a brilliant software company should focus on writing world-class code and designing intuitive user interfaces; it should not waste its time trying to manufacture its own office chairs or grow the coffee beans for the breakroom. Those tasks are better left to other companies whose core competencies lie in furniture manufacturing or agriculture. Vanderkam takes this powerful corporate philosophy and applies it directly to our personal, daily lives. What if you treated your own life like a highly successful, strategic enterprise? What are your personal core competencies? To figure this out, you must ask yourself a very pointed question: What are the activities that only you can do, and that bring the highest possible value, joy, and meaning to your life and the lives of those around you? Identifying your core competencies requires a deep, sometimes uncomfortable level of self-reflection. In the professional realm, your core competency might be your ability to forge strong relationships with difficult clients, your talent for synthesizing complex data into clear presentations, or your visionary leadership that inspires your team. It is highly unlikely that your core competency is answering routine emails, formatting spreadsheets, or sitting in endless, unproductive status meetings. In your personal life, your core competencies are even more distinct. No one else on the entire planet can be a spouse to your partner. No one else can be a parent to your specific children. No one else can take care of your physical health, cultivate your unique spiritual life, or pursue your deepest creative passions. These are the things that demand your absolute, undivided attention during your one hundred and sixty-eight hours. Conversely, you must also identify what your core competencies are absolutely not. Unless you run a professional cleaning service and derive immense personal fulfillment from scrubbing grout, cleaning your bathroom is not your core competency. Mowing the lawn, folding laundry, grocery shopping, and waiting in line at the post office are all tasks that need to be done, but they do not necessarily need to be done by you. Anyone with basic skills can perform these tasks. Yet, so many of us spend hours every single week stubbornly doing these things, completely draining our energy and eating into the sixty-two hours of free time we worked so hard to find. We tell ourselves that we are saving money, or that things will only be done "right" if we do them ourselves, but this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the value of our time. The resistance to this idea is often deeply psychological. We are culturally conditioned to believe that doing everything ourselves is a sign of moral virtue. The image of the superhero parent who works a full-time job, cooks organic meals from scratch every night, keeps a spotless house, and sews their children's Halloween costumes is a very pervasive, very toxic myth. Trying to be competent at everything guarantees that you will be extraordinary at nothing. It dilutes your energy and leaves you feeling frazzled and resentful. To break free from this trap, you need to conduct a brutal audit of where your energy goes. Make a comprehensive list of all the things you do in a typical week. Then, ruthlessly categorize them. Highlight the activities that leverage your unique talents, the things that make you feel alive, challenged, and deeply connected to your purpose. These are your core competencies. Everything else on that list is a candidate for elimination. You do not have to change your entire life overnight, but you must start recognizing the difference between high-value activities and low-value filler. Consider how liberating it feels to finally admit that you are terrible at organizing your tax receipts, and that spending five hours a month fighting with spreadsheets is a miserable use of your finite time on Earth. By acknowledging this, you open the door to finding a better solution, whether that means hiring a bookkeeper, trading services with a highly organized friend, or finding software that automates the process. When you strip away the non-essential tasks, you create a beautiful, wide-open space in your schedule. This space allows you to double down on the things that truly matter. You can pour your best, most vibrant energy into your career ambitions, your most cherished relationships, and your own personal growth. By stubbornly focusing only on your core competencies, you transform your life from a chaotic juggling act into a finely tuned, purposeful masterpiece.
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03Transforming Your Career Without the Grind
04Escaping the Endless Housework Trap
05Parenting and Partnership Free From Guilt
06Rethinking Sleep and Reclaiming Active Leisure
07Conclusion
About Laura Vanderkam
Laura Vanderkam is an American author and speaker, known for her insights on time management and productivity. She has written several books, including "168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think", and contributes regularly to various publications such as Fast Company and The New York Times.
