Have you ever felt that relentless squeeze? You
know, that feeling that there just aren't enough
hours in the day. It's something that seems to
get, well, more intense the further we get in
our careers. I think particularly for mid -senior
professionals, you're juggling, demanding work,
family life, maybe trying to squeeze in some
personal goals too. Does that resonate, that
constant sprint? Oh, absolutely. It's almost
a universal lament, isn't it? The feeling of
being perpetually short on time. Well, today
we're going to challenge that very idea. That
pervasive myth. The core premise we're going
to dissect is this. Every single one of us, whatever
our commitments, has precisely 168 hours in a
week, full stop. That's the inescapable number.
Exactly. And the real challenge we're about to
discover isn't actually a lack of time, but maybe.
just maybe, a lack of clarity and, crucially,
intentionality in how we perceive and use those
hours. We are incredibly fortunate to have an
expert guide with us today, brilliant at synthesizing
complex information and connecting dots in, well,
quite surprising ways. It's a pleasure to be
here. Now, this idea of having more time than
we think, it feels almost counterintuitive for
so many people, especially when daily life feels
like such a constant sprint. What's your initial
take on that widespread feeling? Well, it is
fascinating, isn't it, how our perceptions of
time can diverge so dramatically from the reality
of how we actually spend it. We tend to operate
under this pervasive cultural narrative of perpetual
time scarcity, that constant time crunch. Right.
Yet the evidence, when you actually move beyond
those anecdotal feelings and look at the hard
data, the real world examples, it often tells
a remarkably different story. It challenges the
very foundation of that common belief. And that's
precisely our mission for this deep dive. We
want to extract... actionable insights, hopefully
transform how you view and use your 168 hours,
the goal is to help you shift from just, you
know, reacting to demand. Firefighting, essentially.
To intentionally aligning your time with what
truly matters to you, your real priorities, your
aspirations, ultimately leading to a life that
feels more fulfilling, not just more busy. So
let's jump in and unpack this revelation, starting
with that unwavering truth. 168 hours. A great
equalizer. It's a fixed quantity, isn't it? A
constant. Doesn't matter who you are, what you
do, how much you run. 168 hours. That's it. Exactly.
Personal experience of this constant how stretched
or free we feel within it that varies wildly
from person to person It's quite remarkable how
subjective it feels almost as if I some people
genuinely have more time than others indeed And
this is precisely we're looking at authoritative
data becomes so crucial It helps debunk some
really widespread assumptions about how we use
our time for instance in the US the Federal Bureau
of Labor Statistics Runs a very robust study
called the American Time Use Survey or ATS ATS
right? Yes, and that along with other similar
time diary studies conducted over the past four
decades or so, is really considered the gold
standard for sociological time research. And
how do they actually gather that data? It sounds
intensive. It is meticulous. They get thousands
of people to report their activities literally
minute by minute over 24 hour periods. Sometimes
a researcher is even on the phone, you know,
actively prompting for accuracy, perhaps gently
reminding participants about the actual physics
of time if they try to claim they somehow squeezed
28 hours of activity into a single day. Happens
more often than you think, I imagine. Perhaps.
But it's a rigorous approach designed to capture
reality, not just perception. And the findings,
well, they often challenge some deeply ingrained
beliefs. OK, like what? Give us an example. Well,
take sleep. Time diary studies consistently show
that Americans average about eight hours of sleep
per night. Eight hours? Really? Yes, about eight
hours. And what's particularly striking is that
this figure has remained largely unchanged over
the past 40 years. 40 years. Despite everything,
mobiles, the internet. Exactly. And this isn't
skewed by, say, retirees or students sleeping
in. Even married mothers who work full -time
with children under six, a group you'd assume
is highly sleep deprived, they manage an average
of 8 .31 hours of sleep. Fathers in that situation
get 8 .06 hours. That's genuinely surprising.
It is. And even married full -time working mothers
with older school -aged children still get a
very respectable 8 .09 hours. So, while individual
nights obviously vary, the narrative of widespread
chronic sleep deprivation across the working
population might not be quite as universal as
we often assume from, you know, just talking
to people. Okay, so sleep might be better than
we think overall. What else is the data challenge?
Well, then there's the perception around work
hours. That cultural narrative of the pervasive
60 -hour -plus work week, for the vast majority,
it seems to be largely a misconception. You hear
it all the time, though. You do. But the data
suggests that only about 1 % of the US workforce
actually logs these kinds of hours consistently.
And even that estimate, because it's often self
-reported rather than meticulously time logged,
might actually be too high. Most people seem
to be working significantly less than they perceive,
or certainly less than the popular narrative
suggests. Fascinating. And housework. That must
have changed. Oh, dramatically. Time spent on
household chores has fallen. quite precipitously
almost halved over the past 40 years. Halved?
Wow. Yes. To give you some concrete figures,
back in 1965, stay -at -home mothers spent an
astonishing 37 .4 hours per week just on cleaning.
37 hours, just cleaning. Just cleaning. Today,
married mothers who work full time spend about
13 .5 hours per week on all housework combined.
And it's not just mothers. Even dads whose wives
don't work full time are contributing over an
hour a day to household tasks now. Standards
have clearly changed. Yeah. And that's had a
huge impact on time allocation. Ray, you mentioned
those old magazine tips, vacuuming ceilings and
polishing shoes. Exactly. Things people simply
don't prioritize anymore. OK, one more television.
How does that fit in? Ah, television. Self -reported
viewing often exceeds the results from time diary
studies. Nielsen might report, say, 28 hours
per week on average. But the time diaries, which
track what people are doing as their primary
activity, show something closer to 18, 23 hours
per week. So discrepancy there, too. What does
that suggest? It suggests people don't fully
track how much time the TV is merely on. in the
background, versus when they are actively engaged,
truly watching. It points to a significant chunk
of, well, unaccounted for time that could potentially
be reevaluated or used differently. OK, this
is really interesting. So if the data suggests
we're largely getting enough sleep, maybe not
working quite as much as we perceive, and spending
significantly less time on housework than, say,
our parents or grandparents did. Then why? Why
do so many of us still feel perpetually busy
and under -rested? There's a real disconnect
here between the objective data and our subjective
experience. That is the core problem. And it
really boils down to awareness, or rather, a
lack thereof. The fundamental issue seems to
be that most individuals have frankly, absolutely
no idea how we spend our 168 hours. We just don't
track it. Precisely. And this unawareness leads
to spending massive amounts of time on activities
that offer only, perhaps, slight pleasure or
feeling of accomplishment, but contribute very
little to our careers, our families. or our personal
growth. What kind of activities are we talking
about? Those hours lost to excessive television,
aimless web surfing, reactive housework that
isn't truly necessary, just tidying things that
will get messy again soon, and countless errands
that could perhaps be... minimized or outsourced.
The busy work. Exactly. The busy work. And conversely,
insufficient time gets allocated to the high
impact activities that really do matter and require
more thought or initiative. We're talking about
things like properly nurturing our children in
meaningful ways, engaging in regular purposeful
exercise, or the deliberate practice of our professional
crafts, the things that genuinely advance us
towards our goals. So we fill the time with low
value stuff, feel exhausted, and don't do the
important things. That seems to be the pattern.
Consequently, we feel overworked and under rested,
and then we tend to believe stories or narratives
that confirm this view, creating a sort of self
-fulfilling prophecy. The transformative paradigm
shift, the real opportunity here, lies in approaching
time differently. It means starting with a blank
slate and viewing every minute as a choice. Every
minute as a choice. That's a powerful reframe.
And to really bring this concept to life, you
found some truly compelling examples of individuals
who seem to embody this intentional time management.
People who seemingly defy that time crunch that
the data suggests might be partly illusion. Yes,
there are some remarkable stories. Tell us about
Teresa Daitner. Right, Teresa Daitner. She's
a mother of six children, including eight -year
-old twins at the time this research was done.
And she successfully runs a seven -figure construction
company, DCG, overseeing projects ranging from
$10 million up to $75 million. Wow. Six kids
and a major construction company. Exactly. And
despite this immense responsibility, she manages
to sleep at least seven hours a night. She also
coaches soccer, she's cheering at her children's
games on weekends, and she was happily planning
her 21 -year -old daughter's wedding, all while
her business continued to grow. She even takes
days off for family outings, like seeing the
cherry blossoms in Washington. It sounds almost
impossible. It does. Which is why, apparently
when Barack Obama himself met her, he reportedly
asked her, when do you sleep? It perfectly captures
that disbelief people often have when faced with
someone managing such a seemingly packed yet
balanced life. Incredible. And then there's Michael
Shidlowski. Yes, Michael Shidlowski, a software
engineer at Google. His schedule is, well, equally
astounding. He teaches graduate level computer
science at NYU for six hours a week. He trains
for Ironman triathlons. The full Ironman. Swim,
bike, run. The full Monty. 2 .4 mile swim, 112
mile bike, 26 .2 mile run. He dedicates 15 hours
a week just to training for that. He also coaches
other athletes for about three hours a week.
On top of a Google job. On top of a solid 40
hour week at Google. He manages to sleep a full
56 hours per week. That's eight hours a night.
And after all that... He still finds he has about
28 .5 hours of free time left over each week.
28 hours free after all that. His key insight
after he tallied it all up. Despite everything
I do, I still have more free time than I thought
I do. He describes feeling pretty free and always
having a pretty good day. It really is a testament
to the power of intentionality. Their lives sound,
as you said, pretty sweet. They do. And it's
crucial to understand it's not because they possess
more hours than anyone else. They don't have
the secret time machine. It's because they approach
their 168 hours with profound purpose and clarity.
They're not simply reacting to demands. They're
making deliberate intentional choices about where
their time goes. This isn't about superhuman
capability or necessarily extreme privilege.
It's about treating each hour as a deliberate
choice and aligning it with what truly matters
to them. That idea of strategic investment of
time brings us really neatly to our next concept.
It's clearly not just about tracking where time
goes, important as that is, but what we do with
that time, what we choose to focus on. And this
leads us to a strategic concept usually reserved
for corporate boardrooms, the idea of core competencies.
How does that apply to us as individuals? That's
an excellent connection. The concept of core
competencies was, uh... first really powerfully
articulated by management gurus Gary Hamill and
C .K. Prelod in a very influential Harvard Business
Review article back in 1990. Right. I think I
remember that. Historically, the corporate model
often saw companies as these sort of behemoths
of strategic business units, often quite unrelated,
but hopefully profitable. Think of U .S. Steel
buying Marathon Oil, or a company like GE acquiring
investment banks or television networks. The
thinking was, if it makes money, a big corporation
should probably be involved in it. Diversification
above all else. In a way, yes. But Ham and Braha
contrasted this with the critical shift they
saw coming. They argued that in a more competitive,
globalized era, companies would need to focus
intensely on what they did best. They realize
that top talent is actually a scarcer resource
than raw materials or even capital. Interesting
point. And there's a significant opportunity
cost and clarity of strategic intent when energy
and resources are devoted to things that others
can do just as well or even better. It dilutes
focus and effort. So they defined a core competence
for businesses using three key criteria. Okay,
what are they? Firstly, it has to provide potential
access to a wide variety of markets. Secondly,
it must make a significant contribution to the
perceived customer benefits of the end product.
And thirdly, crucially, it must be difficult
for competitors to imitate, often because it's
a complex harmonization of individual technologies
and production skills. Hard to copy. Exactly.
And they noted that few companies truly achieve
world leadership in more than, say, five or six
such core competencies. So the conclusion was
clear. Modern successful companies focus relentlessly
on these core strengths and consciously minimize,
outsource, or simply ignore everything else.
It's what Thomas Friedman later sort of encapsulated
with the idea that the world is flat. Specialization
and focus become absolutely key to competitive
advantage. So how does this powerful business
framework originally designed for giant corporations
genuinely translate to us as individuals? We're
not global enterprises, obviously. But we certainly
have our own unique skills, our own value proposition,
don't we? How can we apply this very strategic
thinking to our own lives and our own 168 hours?
That's the critical question, and the translation
is remarkably direct and I think very powerful.
Individuals just like companies absolutely can
and should identify their core competencies.
The same three -part definition applies quite
well. These are abilities that you can leverage
across multiple spheres of your life. They are
important and meaningful to you. And crucially,
they are things you do best that others cannot
do nearly as well. OK. Can you give us an example
of that in practice? Let's look at a truly remarkable
case study. Roald Hoffman, born in 1937, a Jewish
Nobel Prize winning chemist. He survived the
Second World War, hiding in a schoolhouse attic
in Poland for over a year. incredible survival
story. Absolutely. And during that terrifying
period, he became, in his own words, a keen observer,
a watcher. He'd recorded the changing light the
seasons. He watched other children playing outside
from his hiding place This intense observational
capacity became his foundational core competency
shaped by extreme circumstances profoundly Despite
immense pressure later to become a doctor. He
pursued chemistry Applying these observational
skills to truly groundbreaking work He co -developed
the Woodward Hoffman rules, which earned him
a share of the 1981 Nobel Prize in chemistry
Amazing. But what's perhaps even more fascinating
is that after receiving the Nobel Prize, he began
writing poetry in earnest. He applied that same
core watching ability to poetry, endowing his
observations with emotional currency, as he put
it. He studies other poets, edits himself rigorously,
attends retreats. He acknowledges it's not easy
and requires many more drafts than my science
articles. So he leveraged that one core skill
across science and art. Exactly. Hoffman exemplifies
knowing what he is good at. and what he can do
better than almost anyone else, and leveraging
this core ability across incredibly diverse fields,
from wartime survival to chemistry and poetry.
That's a powerful illustration. Any other examples?
Yes. Consider Elizabeth Cambord. Her journey
began as an overweight former smoker working
as a nonprofit fundraiser. She initially struggled
with exercise, but then discovered she actually
loved working out, particularly group fitness
classes. Found her niche. She did. This passion
led her to get certified, and she found she excelled
at teaching, at choreographing routines, and
crucially, at creating an accepting environment
for different body types. She herself ultimately
lost over 70 pounds. She then made the bold decision
to leave her fundraising job and open her own
place, Sante Fitness Studio. Taking the leap!
And she made a very specific strategic point
of focusing only on group fitness, encouraging
all body shapes, and explicitly avoiding personal
training because Quite simply, she hated it and
felt it pulled her from other things she was
better at and enjoyed more. Focusing on her strength.
Precisely. She even strategically aligned her
volunteer work. Things like leading warmups for
charity walks or hosting community dances to
fund school P .E. programs in ways that also
benefited her business. In her family life, she
focused on group fitness. like hiking together
and nurturing her daughters, while acknowledging
what she hated to do, like watching her daughter's
softball games wasn't her thing and figuring
out how to make it go away without neglecting
her child. Both Hoffman and Cambord show this
profound clarity on what they truly excel at
and enjoy and focusing their energy there. It
strikes me though that these aren't always obvious
skills or predetermined paths. It really sounds
like it takes a process of self -discovery, maybe
even quite a bit of experimentation, to uncover
these unique competencies. It's not about just
fitting yourself into a predefined box, is it?
You've hit on a crucial point there. Identifying
your core competencies is absolutely an ongoing
journey. It's not a one -off exercise. You just
have to keep trying things, paying attention
to your reaction, noticing what makes you, as
Elizabeth Cambord put it, almost insatiable to
learn more about it. That sense of deep curiosity.
Exactly. Like a successful modern corporation,
individuals typically have no more than, say,
half a dozen true core competencies. Ideally,
the actual substance of your paid work should
be a core competency, something you genuinely
excel at and derive energy from doing. That makes
sense. Nurturing your key relationships, your
family members, your close friends. That's arguably
a non -negotiable core competency for everyone.
as no one else can fulfill that role quite as
you can. And importantly, your leisure activities,
too, should ideally be based around these core
competencies, things you do best, and are willing
to devote time and effort toward to make them
truly meaningful and enriching, not just time
fillers. So work, family, leisure, all connected
by these core strengths? Ideally, yes. The sobering
experience for many, though, comes when they
actually look at their time logs, as we discussed
earlier. Those logs often reveal that vast chunks
of the 168 hours are spent on activities that
are not core competencies, both at work and at
home. Like what specifically? Things like errands,
excessive housework, endless television watching,
aimless shopping. These often consume huge amounts
of time, yet when people reflect, These activities
are rarely classified as particularly meaningful
or important. Understanding this disconnect between
where time actually goes and what truly matters
is the first vital step to reclaiming your 168
hours and focusing on what counts. That's a powerful
insight. And it leads us directly to think about
work, doesn't it? So much of our 168 hours are
dedicated to our jobs. If that time isn't deeply
aligned with our core competencies, it can become
a significant drain on our overall energy and
satisfaction, can it? It's clearly not just about
the hours logged, but the quality and alignment
of those hours. Precisely. Being in the right
job, a job that genuinely leverages your core
competencies and aligns with your values, can
imbue you with amazing energy for the entirety
of your 168 hours. It's truly profound, the impact
it can have. More energy overall. Yes, you'll
possess more zeal, more stamina, more enthusiasm
for all other aspects of your life, including
your family. This might sound counterintuitive,
but working, say, 50 hours a week in a job you
genuinely love and feel energized by can actually
provide you with more positive energy for your
children than working just 30 hours in a job
you detest and that drains you. The intrinsic
motivation transforms your capacity and overall
well -being. This is a really important point.
The quality matters more than the quantity. Absolutely.
Consider the renowned marine biologist and explorer
in residence at the National Geographic Society
Sylvia Earle. Back in 1998, when she was 62,
which is actually the average U .S. retirement
age, her voice apparently just brimmed with joy
when she discussed her work, while speaking from
60 feet underwater in an underwater base called
Aquarius. 62 and working underwater with joy.
Exactly. And fast forward to 2009, when she was
73, she was still embarking on trips to the Yucatan
Peninsula and Australia to study whale sharks
and reefs, finishing books, collaborating with
Google to add oceans to Google Earth, campaigning
globally for marine sanctuaries. relentless energy.
Still going strong. She perceives each hour logged
doing this work, not as a chore, but as a source
of joy, even after accumulating over 7 ,000 underwater
hours throughout her long career. And this passion
even spilled into her family life. She often
involved her three children in things like making
slides from seaweed specimens she'd collected.
Her work wasn't a drain. It was clearly a wellspring
of energy that fueled her entire life. It's incredible
how that passion fuels everything. Now, thinking
about our modern career landscape, many people
seem to be chasing the idea of the four -hour
work week or simply dream of working less. But
does the research truly support this as the ultimate
path to fulfillment? Or is there something deeper
at play, as Sylvia Earle's life seems to suggest?
It's an excellent question, and it allows us
to challenge that popular four -hour workweek
prescription, drawing on some solid sociological
research. While an older survey from 2006 by
CareerBuilder .com found that 84 % of full -time
workers said they weren't in their absolute dream
jobs. Which sounds quite high. It does. But contrast
that with the 2002 General Social Survey, GSS,
a very respected study, which revealed a rather
surprising finding. 89 % of adults working more
than 10 hours per week reported being either
very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their
jobs. 89 % satisfied. That's much higher than
you'd expect. It suggests that most people find
a workable level of contentment in their employment,
even if it's not their ultimate fantasy job.
Furthermore, despite the popularity of TV shows
portraying a life of pure leisure, that same
2002 GSS also showed that most people would actually
continue to work in some fashion even if they
didn't financially need to. Why do you think
that is? Well, the truth seems to be that all
play and no work makes Jack as dull a boy as
the other way around. There is significant happiness
and fulfillment derived from engaging in meaningful
professional pursuits. Indeed, research published
in 2008 Journal of Career Assessment even suggests
that happiness can actually be an important precursor
and determinant of career success, not merely
a byproduct of it. So happiness drives success,
not just the other way around. That's what the
evidence suggests. The satisfaction isn't just
a reward for success. It actively fuels it. Okay,
so if the four -hour work week isn't the ultimate
answer for most, what does define the right job?
What are the characteristics we should be looking
for based on research? Research on happiness
and creativity points towards four key characteristics.
Firstly, intrinsic motivation. The right job
taps into activities you loved, perhaps as a
child, or things you would willingly do for free
just because you enjoy them. Like my writing
example. Exactly! Like your childhood desire
to write stories, not doodle equations. Or take
Elon Crew, an aeronautics professor. As a child,
he was fascinated by flight, apparently trying
to figure out how to fly without engines. This
later led to him inventing the foot -launched
sailplane. It's about that deep internal drive.
Makes sense. What's number two? Secondly, autonomy.
You need to be given a reasonable amount of freedom
and control in determining how to carry out your
work. Nobody thrives being micromanaged. It's
pretty straightforward. Trust and flexibility
are key. Agreed. Number three. Thirdly, challenge.
The work needs to be optimally challenging. This
means it calls upon your best skills and helps
you develop new ones, but without being completely
overwhelming or beyond your current skill level.
This ideal state is what the psychologist Mahali
Sixcent Mahali famously termed flow. Flow state.
Yes. He discovered this through a fascinating
experiment where thousands of people recorded
their activities and feelings via pagers over
time. He found people were happiest when they
were so completely absorbed in a difficult but
doable activity that hours pass by in minutes.
This deep absorption is a hallmark of truly engaging
work. and the final characteristic. And finally,
number four is organizational support. The work
environment itself, the organization, your colleagues,
needs to actively encourage your best work. This
means providing sufficient resources, fostering
a genuinely supportive team, ensuring good communication,
and cultivating an environment where creativity
and contribution are genuinely valued and encouraged.
All these elements combined create the fertile
ground for a truly right job. So it's the task
itself, the freedom, the challenge, and the environment.
Precisely. And building on this there's the crucial
concept of deliberate practice. popularized by
Kay Anderson's research. This is the idea that
achieving truly expert performance, whether you're
playing the violin or mastering a surgical technique
or writing code, requires at least 10 ,000 hours
of focused intentional practice. The 10 ,000
hour rule. That's the one. It's difficult to
push yourself beyond the basic job requirements
if you don't fundamentally enjoy or feel engaged
by what you do. You're likely just do what's
explicitly required or rewarded and then seek
escape. There was even a University of Maryland
study that found unhappy people watched about
20 % more television than happy ones, suggesting
they tend towards escape rather than actively
engaging with and solving problems. The right
job encourages that engagement and problem solving.
It really sounds like we can't just sit back
and wait for the perfect job to land in our laps.
It feels much more like something we have to
actively build or shape for ourselves. Is that
right? What are the practical pathways to cultivating
this right job, given the realities of today's
economy? You're absolutely right. It is very
much something you actively build or create.
Research suggests two primary pathways. The first
is creating the right job within an existing
organization. This involves finding an organization
that is reasonably flexible and open to leveraging
your unique talents. And then, as the saying
sometimes goes, concocting your dream job within
its structure. Often it might be easier to ask
for forgiveness than permission. You demonstrate
your value in a certain area, prove its worth,
and then work to formalize that expanded or reshaped
role. Carving out your space. Exactly. The second
path, which is increasingly common in the modern
economy, is self -employment. In New York City,
for example, self -employment was actually the
biggest single source of job creation between
1981 and 2006, adding nearly half a million jobs.
By 2009, something like 26 % of the entire U
.S. workforce identified as free agents. A quarter
of the workforce. Indeed. Now while some of these
are undoubtedly forced moves due to redundancy
or lack of traditional employment, for many,
it's a deliberate choice. driven by push factors
like frustration with bureaucracy and pull factors
like the desire for autonomy and the drive to
fully leverage their core competencies. Can you
give us an example of that self -employment path?
Certainly. Let's consider Mark Matsumoto. He
was a former finance professional who, after
what he described as a forced career change,
decided to transform his lifelong love for cooking
into a dream job as a food personality writing,
blogging, creating recipes. He now apparently
spends his weekdays exploring farmers markets,
cooking interesting dishes, and using his business
background and marketing skills to attract over
100 ,000 unique visitors to his website each
month. He initially viewed the change as a forced
move, but now he wonders why it didn't do it
sooner. His passion became his profession, offering
that crucial autonomy and alignment. Found his
calling through adversity. In a way, yes. Then
there are Julie Pickens and Mindy Donnie, the
creators of Boogie Wipes, those saline -infused
tissues for kids. Oh yes, I know those. Right.
Two mothers who, apparently between other business
ventures, had an epiphany while dealing with
their snotty children. Why not put saline in
the wipe? They launched their company, Little
Busybodies, Inc., in 2007. Now, they probably
didn't dream of tissues as children, but running
their own business gave them that incredible
autonomy and challenge we talked about. They
hashed out product details during playdates.
One worked flexible hours from an office with
a playroom. The other worked from home with an
infant. They gave their dozen employees similar
flexibility. They found themselves energized
by the challenge of problems like figuring out
how to get their product into major retailers
like Walmart. And that drive led to over $5 million
in sales in less than two years. Wow, so the
passion came from the process, the autonomy.
It seems so. Their journey shows that the passion
for the work itself, the problem solving, the
building something, can sometimes be developed
through the autonomy and challenge of entrepreneurship,
rather than necessarily being a pre -existing
love of the specific product or service. It's
inspiring to see how these individuals really
created their own versions of the right job.
Ultimately, though, how do we gauge if we're
on the right trajectory in our own careers? If
we're genuinely heading toward a right job rather
than just settling for a job, is there a kind
of litmus test we can use for ourselves? There
is a rather insightful, if hypothetical, test
you can apply. Ask yourself this. Would you take
400 million to walk away? 400 million pounds.
Yes. If someone offered you 400 million to walk
away from your current job and never do the stuff
of it again, never engage in the core activities
that define it, you have to stop and think about
it. Would you feel a genuine sense of grieving,
a loss, despite the immense riches being offered?
Hmm. That's a tough question. If the answer involves
hesitation, if you'd feel that sense of loss
for the work itself, it strongly suggests you're
on the right track. It implies you found work
that holds intrinsic value for you, something
beyond mere remuneration. It's about whether
the work itself holds a deep meaning that even
vast wealth couldn't easily replace. That's a
fantastic thought experiment. It really shifts
the focus beyond just compensation and onto the
intrinsic value, the meaning of the work itself.
Now, even if we're fortunate enough to be in
or building towards the right job, our calendars
can still get clogged up with activities that
aren't truly real work, things that look busy
but aren't genuinely productive. How do we cut
through that noise and identify what truly moves
the needle for us, professionally speaking? This
is such a critical distinction, isn't it? We
absolutely must differentiate between things
that look like work and actual work. And by actual
work, I mean activities that are advancing you
toward the purpose of your existence, or at least
towards your key professional goals. So separating
activity from impact. Precisely. So many common
workplace activities think of long, aimless meetings
where you're not essential. or obsessively checking
and responding to every single email instantly
can give a false sense of productivity. They
make you feel busy, but ultimately, they waste
time, and frankly, they waste lives. Consider
someone like Bill Gates. He reportedly attends
meetings only when he plays a critical part,
and others plan rigorously beforehand to avoid
wasting his time. There's no inherent nobility
in just sitting in an endless meeting if you're
not contributing or gaining anything vital. It's
like that example you used of the police officer.
Yes. The officer running herself ragged responding
to 300 individual 911 calls on a single problematic
street corner versus taking the time to figure
out and actually solve the root cause of the
problem there. One is constant activity. The
other is strategic impact. Makes sense. Can you
illustrate this focus on real work with another
example? Certainly. Let's look at Carol Fassbender
-Orth. She's a rising young scientist and professor
at Creighton University and also a mother of
two young children. Her upbringing was quite
unusual. She grew up on an apiary, a bee farm,
where she experienced countless bee stings. Ouch.
Indeed. But this apparently developed in her
a certain unflappability. a calmness under pressure,
they gave her a refreshingly pragmatic perspective
on academic work. She fundamentally understands
that academic scientists are ultimately judged
on the quality of their results in their publications
in significant journals, not merely on the number
of hours they spend physically present in the
lab or the number of committees they sit on.
Focusing on the outcome, not just the process.
Exactly. So her strategy is to focus intensely
on the metrics that truly matter for achieving
tenure in her field. Typically something like
three to five high -impact publications in major
journals, securing significant external grant
funding and maintaining reasonable teaching and
advising loads. She consciously minimizes time
spent on activities she deems a waste of time,
such as pursuing experiments that show limited
promise of success or getting bogged down in
internal academic politics. She's known to apparently
politely extract herself from meetings if they
become irrelevant to her core research goals.
It takes courage to do that. It does. She typically
works a focused eight or nine hour day, prioritizes
being home for time with her kids in the evening,
and then might do more focused work, like writing
or planning experiments, after they're in bed.
She plans her experiments carefully to avoid
frequent unnecessary late -night visits to the
lab. And her unflappability extends to handling
unexpected crises. There's a story of her getting
trapped in an elevator with her young children
at the lab late one Friday evening, a situation
she apparently took completely in stride. She
exemplifies focusing her energy on what truly
matters for her professional advancement and
filtering out the noise. Unflappability, I like
that. So if identifying the real work, the stuff
that truly matters like Carol did, is the first
crucial step, how do we then systematically eliminate
or at least significantly reduce all the other
stuff, the noise? You've discussed a powerful
three -part strategy for tackling this non -core
competency work. Can you walk us through it?
Yes, it's a comprehensive three -part strategy
and the elements are Quite straightforward. Ignore
it, minimize it, or outsource it. Ignore, minimize,
outsource. OK, let's start with ignore it. Right.
Ignore Ed Edirana. It is the most direct approach.
It means actively quitting projects, giving up
responsibilities that are just leeching time
without significant return, or simply declining
to take them on in the first place. Now, this
can feel frankly, scary as hell for many people.
Whether you're employed or self -employed, people
worry about burning bridges, damaging relationships,
or seeing their income plummet. There are real
risks involved. There can be. You shared a personal
example yourself, didn't you, about deciding
to stop writing that regular section for Reader's
Digest? Yes, that's right. As a new mom and freelance
writer, I stopped writing the non -bylined, only
in America section. It provided over half my
income at the time and was flexible, only about
20 hours a week. But I found it took up too much
mental energy, energy I wanted to put towards
my bigger goal of writing books and longer, more
serious articles. My income did drop by half
initially, which was stressful, but it eventually
recovered from higher value projects. And well,
as it turned out, the Reader's Digest Association
later filed for bankruptcy, so it was probably
a wise move long -term anyway. A perfect example.
This tactic often relies on negotiating from
a position of strength, ideally, by being exceptionally
good at your core work, making you valuable,
or perhaps by having a financial cushion or other
job offers waiting. As the saying goes, people
perform better when they don't desperately need
their jobs, as it fosters a willingness to take
calculated risks and push back against non -essential
tasks that don't serve their primary goals. Okay,
so ignoring it is about strategic quitting or
declining. What about the second part? Minimize
it. Minimize. It involves setting a reasonable
limit on your total work hours, perhaps aiming
for somewhere between 30 and 50 hours a week,
or 60 at the absolute maximum for sustainable
high performance. Then, the key is to commit
to filling large portions of that limited time
with genuinely high value work. This means actually
blocking off time in your calendar for strategic
thinking or deep work on key projects and treating
those blocks as absolutely unavailable to others,
just like an important client meeting. Protecting
your focus time. Precisely. A great example here
is Trista Harris, who we mentioned earlier, the
executive director of the Headwaters Foundation
for Justice. She implemented regular, short,
one -on -one meetings with each of her direct
reports, always with clear agendas sent in advance.
This proactive approach allowed her staff to
hold their big, pressing questions for these
designated times, which significantly minimized
random interruptions throughout the week. Think
about it. Two 15 -minute focus meetings per week
per report might only amount to less than four
hours total, but the impact on everyone's ability
to concentrate during the rest of the week could
be huge. That sounds very efficient. It is. Her
organization also transitioned to what's called
a Results -Only Work Environment, or ROE. This
allows employees to work wherever and whenever
they choose, as long as the required work gets
done effectively. This inherently minimizes wasted
time that can come from rigid schedules or unclear
directives. Harris herself blocks off chunks
of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, specifically
for strategic thinking time. She closes her door,
avoids email, and focuses purely on high -level
issues like fundraising strategies or emerging
philanthropic trends. And to manage the influx
of mentoring requests she received, she created
a helpful handout with resources for young women
and people of color interested in philanthropy.
She asks potential mentees to review it first
and then send specific questions beforehand,
ensuring those high -value interactions remain
focused and productive. It's all about structuring
time to minimize waste. Really smart ways to
manage interactions and focus. Okay, and the
third strategy, outsource it. Yes, outsource
it. This is about delegating tasks that don't
require your specific expertise or attention
to others, perhaps dedicated assistance, shared
administrative support, or external freelancers
and services. This is where the classic economic
law of comparative advantage comes into play.
Even if you could technically do a task slightly
better or faster than someone else, if your time
is more valuable spent on your core competencies,
it still makes economic sense to delegate the
less critical task. You free up your most valuable
resource, your focused attention for the activities,
where only you can deliver the highest value.
It's about opportunity cost again. Exactly. Continuing
with Trista Harris as an example, Beyond managing
her internal staff effectively, she actively
outsourced tasks. She hired someone through the
online platform Elance to design her New Voices
of Philanthropy blog. She used a virtual assistant
for specific research projects. And interestingly,
when she's invited to speak at conferences or
panels where she feels she isn't perhaps the
most appropriate or knowledgeable speaker, she
proactively suggests other talented individuals
from her broad, professional network. This builds
goodwill, helps others, and frees up her own
time for engagements where her unique expertise
is truly essential. That's a clever way to handle
requests. And she applies these lessons at home,
too. There's a story about when her 10 -year
-old daughter forgot her homework. Instead of
automatically dropping everything and driving
45 minutes back to school to retrieve it, Harris
leveraged her core competency as a mother, which
includes teaching responsibility to counsel her
daughter on how to approach the teacher, explain
the situation, and figure out how to solve the
problem herself. She taught a life lesson rather
than just playing fetch. It's about applying
the principle of leveraging the right skills
for the right tasks, regardless of who performs
them, across all domains of life. So what really
stands out across ignore, minimize, and outsource
is this overarching principle of intentionality.
It requires a really ruthless focus on what truly
moves the needle for you, professionally speaking.
It's fundamentally about working smarter, not
just longer hours, and actively reclaiming agency
over how your professional time is spent. Absolutely.
And perhaps one final crucial point on optimizing
professional life. Boosting your efficiency in
the long run also means actively getting better
at your core professional craft. This isn't just
about passively putting in the hours. It's about
engaging in that focused, deliberate practice
we mentioned earlier. It means actively studying
the work of others you admire, critically analyzing
your own work to identify weak spots, proactively
seeking constructive feedback, and continually
laboring to refine your skills. For instance,
you've mentioned that after years of dedicated
writing practice, if you're assigned the 1 ,000
word piece now, your first draft consistently
comes out somewhere between 900 and 1 ,100 words.
Yes, usually pretty close now. That reflects
an efficiency and precision gained through years
of intentional practice. It's a true mastery
of your professional craft that not only improves
quality, but also frees up valuable time and
mental energy for other pursuits. Continuous
improvement is part of working smarter. That's
a great point. Okay, so once we've started streamlining
our professional hours using these strategies,
the next significant area of time investment
and often perceived time drain is our home lives.
Many of us, especially those mid -career professionals
we mentioned, feel that the domestic burden is
precisely where the time crunch truly bites hard.
How has this changed historically? And more importantly,
what can we do about it now? It's true. That
feeling of the domestic burden is very real for
many people. But the fascinating reality is that
home economics, in the broadest sense, have undergone
drastic changes over the past few decades. The
single most significant shift is that the amount
of time devoted purely to housework has fallen
precipitously almost in half over 40 years. Halfed
again. Just like work hours perception. Indeed.
One major factor, of course, is simply smaller
family sizes. You mentioned Mrs. Meyer earlier,
the person whose family inspired the well -known
cleaning product brand. Apparently, she had nine
children back in 1965. Her daughter, Monica Nasif,
who later founded the actual Mrs. Meyer's Clean
Day brand, has two. Fewer children naturally
require less time for basic upkeep, like laundry,
dishes, general tidying. Simple maths, really.
It is. However, another absolutely crucial reason
for this decline is the significant lowering
of general housekeeping standards. Women today,
and men for that matter, simply don't do many
of the things women did 40 years ago. Think about
it. Those old, good housekeeping magazines contain
detailed instructions for things like cutting
raisins precisely with kitchen shears, meticulously
polishing children's footwear daily, ironing
electric blankets, or even routinely vacuuming
walls and ceilings. Vacuuming the ceiling? Seriously?
Apparently so. While labor -saving devices like
dishwashers and self -cleaning ovens certainly
existed back in the 1950s and 60s, women still
spent excessive hours on chores. This strongly
suggests that the perceived necessity of certain
tasks has changed much more significantly than
just the availability of tools. Even today, a
fair portion of the time spent by stay -at -home
mothers on housework, which averages around 26
hours per week, might not be strictly necessary
by today's standards, but everyone benefits from
these generally lowered societal expectations
of what constitutes a clean enough home. So it
sounds like the argument isn't necessarily to
neglect our homes or our families, far from it,
but rather to apply that core competency principle
here too. To focus our precious home time on
what truly nurtures relate and jumps in connection
rather than on chores that are often low impact
could potentially be done by someone else or
maybe even eliminated entirely. Exactly. For
most individuals, meticulous housework is not
one of these core competencies. Let's be honest.
Someone else can often do these tasks better,
or at least enjoys them more, or perhaps just
does them more efficiently because of their profession.
The crucial point to grasp here is the immense
opportunity cost involved in doing routine household
chores yourself, especially if you don't enjoy
them. Time spent scrubbing is time not spent
elsewhere. Precisely. Time spent on tedious housework
is time taken away from potentially much higher
value activities. Genuinely nurturing your children,
truly connecting with your spouse or partner,
pursuing personal passions that recharge you,
or even just resting properly. Therefore, making
a monetary investment in outsourcing household
tasks isn't merely an expense. It should be viewed
as a strategic purchase of valuable, non -renewable
personal time. Buying back your weekend. As that
cleaning service, Aptly put it to a client. You're
not buying a clean home. You're buying your weekend
back It really reinforces the underlying philosophy
that money like time is a choice and often a
related choice It's interesting the fact that
lawn care is one of the most highly outsourced
household chores in the US Apparently 30 % of
households hire services suggests that men perhaps
traditionally responsible for that domain have
Intuitively grasped this concept of buying back
time for quite a while That's a provocative thought.
Okay, so let's get practical. What are some comprehensive
concrete outsourcing strategies for various household
tasks that tend to eat up our time? Right, let's
break it down. First, consider food chores. This
is a really significant time -sink for many families.
Data shows married dual -income parents, for
example, spend a combined average of 9 .24 hours
per week just on grocery shopping, food preparation,
and the subsequent cleanup. Over nine hours!
That's more than a full workday. It is. And compare
that to the average time they spend actively
playing with their children, which is only about
three hours per week. Even stay -at -home mothers
spend over three times as many minutes on food
chores as they do on playing with their kids.
This is clearly a major area where time could
potentially be reallocated towards more meaningful
connection. So what are the solutions here? Well,
Sid Savara, the software developer in Honolulu
we mentioned earlier, provides a good illustration.
He was trying to avoid unhealthy takeout food,
but found himself spending as much as 15 hours
per week on all the related food tasks. Shopping,
defrosting, cooking, washing dishes despite actively
disliking it. His solution. He hired a personal
chef via Craigslist for just $60 per week plus
the cost of groceries. The chef prepares 12,
15 basic healthy meals for him. This arrangement
saves him an estimated 10 hours per week and
has the added bonus of reducing impulsive grocery
spending. A personal chef sounds quite luxurious
though. It can sound that way, but compared to
the cost of frequent takeaways or wasted groceries
and valuing his time, it made sense for him.
There are also commercial meal delivery services,
companies like Jenny Craig, perhaps Zone Chefs
or New Kitchen, that can deliver pre -prepared
meals in bulk. Wendy Kagan and Michael Belfiore,
another couple mentioned in the research, use
a vegan meal delivery service after their daughter
was born because, as they put it, cooking was
at the bottom of the totem pole at that point.
Practical survival mode. Exactly. But for most
families, perhaps the most accessible and genius
time saver is strategic online grocery shopping.
It allows you to do your shopping late at night,
after the kids are asleep, or during otherwise
wasted time, like a commute if you're not driving.
It completely eliminates travel time and those
tedious checkout queues. The checkout queue alone?
Right. Critically, online platforms allow you
to quickly refill your basket from previous shopping
lists, which automates buying your regular staples.
And they offer a huge plethora of ready -made
foods, things like pre -marinated meats, pre
-chopped vegetable mixes, decent quality frozen
meals. You've mentioned yourself being able to
make genuinely good, healthy, home -cooked meals
in about 15 minutes using these kinds of shortcuts.
Yes, absolutely. Things like a pre -marinated
pork tenderloin with a quick -cooked mushroom
risotto, or salmon filets with a simple soy maple
glaze served with pre -washed salad and microwavable
rice. Minimal active cooking time, only a couple
of pots. It's about leveraging that convenience
intelligently. Precisely. Briefly on dining out,
while Americans spend about half their food budget
in restaurants, often it's on fairly mediocre
convenient food rather than a special experience.
The suggestion here is perhaps make those simple
15 -minute meals at home most nights and save
your money and anticipation for a real dinner
out maybe with a babysitter once a week or every
couple of weeks. Make dining out an intentional
treat, not just a default for exhaustion. Makes
sense. Okay, food chores covered. What about
the bane of many households? Laundry. Laundry
and wardrobe maintenance. Sid Sivara, again,
provides an anecdote. He found his tiny apartment
washing machine simply couldn't handle his king
-sized duvet. It apparently sat dirty for four
months because the hassle of taking it to a laundrette
felt too great. His solution was outsourcing
all his laundry for about $7 per load, receiving
everything back clean, fresh, and folded within
48 hours. Four months for a duvet. Outsourcing
sounds like a win there. For him, it was. Sarah
Wagner, another working mother mentioned, also
outsources laundry. Her reasoning is simple and
powerful. I don't want to spend less time with
my children. I want to spend less time doing
housework. She rightly notes that families rarely
wax nostalgic about memories of sorting piles
of laundry together. For those with a higher
budget, services like personal shoppers or stylists,
such as Lindsay Weiner who helps clients find
clothes and build wardrobes, can save countless
hours of shopping time and reduce decision fatigue
around getting dressed. Okay, laundry. What about
general housekeeping, the cleaning? Housekeeping.
Professional cleaning services like Merry Maids
or The Maids can offer regular weekly or perhaps
bi -weekly cleaning. The cost might be around
100 pounds per visit, maybe totaling about 2
,500 pounds annually for a bi -weekly service.
Now that sounds like a lot, but compared to other
common discretionary spending, average UK mobile
phone bills might be around $876 a year, cable
or satellite TV, perhaps 852 nows. Viewed as
an investment in reclaiming your entire weekend
every other week, the cost -benefit analysis
might look quite different. Framing it as buying
back time again. Exactly. But even without hiring
a cleaning service, A key shortcut is simply
decluttering. An uncluttered house inherently
looks cleaner with much less effort. The absolute
key is maintaining clear, horizontal surfaces.
Kitchen counters, dining tables, desks. Ricondo
built an empire on this principle. There's even
a fun technique called the 27 Fling Boogie. You
set a timer and race to find 27 items to throw
out or donate in a short burst. Making it a game
can help. And for those who genuinely struggle
with chronic disorganization, hiring a professional
organizer is now a recognized profession. Your
own experience, I believe, with organizer Janine
Sarna -Jones revealed that sometimes the issue
isn't true disorganization, but perhaps just
laziness, or maybe overwhelm a willingness to
tolerate clutter because the activation energy
required to deal with it feels too high. Yes,
that was quite insightful. Bags of outgrown baby
clothes sitting there for months. It wasn't that
I didn't know where they should go, I just couldn't
face doing it. A very common feeling. Finally,
under home tasks, we have what the research calls
the little things that kill you. Essentially
all those miscellaneous errands and administrative
tasks. Death by a thousand cuts. Precisely. It's
the mental overhead of managing all those random,
infrequent, but often surprisingly time consuming
tasks. Scheduling the plumber, returning library
books, booking MOTs or dentist appointments,
dealing with insurance renewals. Ed Daley, a
man who cleverly branded his errand running business,
The Perfect Wife, essentially turned a period
of career transition into a thriving business
managing exactly these kinds of household details
for busy clients charging around $35 ,500. an
hour. His core competency, he says, is problem
-solving, making his clients' lives feel more
seamless. Outsourcing these small, often underestimated
tasks can free up significant mental bandwidth
as well as time. It really all points back to
that core message, doesn't it? For home life,
it's not about abdicating responsibility, but
about consciously reallocating your precious
time and energy towards the things that only
you can do nurturing relationships, creating
memories, and the things that bring true joy
and connection within your home and family. It's
a strategic investment in your overall well -being
and happiness. Precisely put. It's about consciously
building your home team, whether that team includes
paid services, other family members sharing the
load more effectively, or simply implementing
intentional systems and routines all designed
to support your core competencies and priorities
in your personal life. It frees you up to truly
focus on the relationships and activities that
nourish you, rather than getting constantly bogged
down by low -value, high -effort chores that
drain your energy. So once we've started streamlining
our professional hours and re -engineering our
home lives, the next big question naturally turns
to our personal time, our leisure. How do we
ensure that this precious time isn't just the
leftover bits, or filled by default with passive
consumption, but becomes truly rejuvenating and
fulfilling? It's got to be about more than just
escaping the daily grind, hasn't it? Absolutely.
The quality of our leisure time is profoundly
important, yet often neglected. And again, the
perception versus reality of leisure time is
quite distorted. Self -reported surveys often
indicate very little actual leisure time, maybe
16 .5 hours per week on average for Americans
for instance. Sounds about right for many people.
It does. However, those rigorous time -vary studies
we discussed earlier paint a very different picture.
They consistently show significantly more leisure
time than people perceive, but with a huge portion
of it, often 20 to 30 hours per week, recorded
as the primary activity dedicated simply to television
watching. 20 to 30 hours a week watching TV.
As the main thing they're doing, yes. And TV
tends to dominate leisure time for understandable
reasons. It's relatively cheap, it makes very
few demands on the viewer, and it fits incredibly
easily into any unplanned gaps in the schedule.
The default state for many, perhaps without even
realizing it, is to become world -class couch
potatoes. A rather blunt assessment. Perhaps,
but the data is stark. Critically, research consistently
shows that these kinds of low -engagement, low
-pleasure activities like excessive TV watching
often crowd out potentially much higher pleasure,
more restorative activities such as actively
socializing with friends, engaging meaningfully
with art or music, getting physical exercise,
or losing yourself in a good book. That's the
real danger, having free time that doesn't actually
recreate or revitalize you in any meaningful
way. That's such a crucial point. If we're not
mindful and proactive about how we spend our
leisure time, these precious hours can simply
disappear into activities that don't genuinely
recharge us, leaving us feeling strangely unfulfilled
even when we technically have free time. So how
do we make our leisure time truly purposeful
and restorative? The key really lies in structuring
our leisure time with the same kind of intentionality
we're advocating for work and home life. It means
choosing purposeful leisure. We could focus on
three key areas. Firstly, and this is non -negotiable,
the one rule is that exercise is non -negotiable.
Non -negotiable. Strong words. I believe it's
that important. Think of regular physical activity
as a critical, non -outsourcable core competency
for maintaining your health, energy, and overall
well -being. The official guidelines, for instance,
from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention
in the U .S. recommend a minimum of 150 minutes.
That's just 2 .5 hours of moderate activity per
week. When you think about it, 2 .5 hours out
of the full 168 really isn't that much time at
all. Puts in perspective. It does. Triathlon
coach Gordo Byrne puts it succinctly, doing three
to five hours of exercise a week consistently
will massively change your health. Byrne himself
is an example he apparently transformed from
a rather out of shape finance professional into
an Ironman Canada finisher, demonstrating what
consistent focused effort can achieve over time.
And you mentioned Paul Radcliffe inspiring your
own running. Yes. Seeing photographs of the renowned
marathon runner Paul Radcliffe continuing to
run while six and even eight months pregnant
was hugely inspiring. It motivated me to keep
running through both of my pregnancies, and I
personally felt significant benefits for the
baby's health, according to my doctor, and even
counter -intuitively increased speed afterwards
due to what felt like training with a stowaway.
It highlights that exercise really can be integrated
even during demanding life phases. The key recommendation
is simply to choose a physical activity you genuinely
enjoy because research shows those who enjoy
the process the most tend to achieve the best
and most consistent results. Running is popular
partly because it offers quick fitness results
with minimal equipment and also because the physical
impact means a normal person can realistically
only run for about an hour a day maximum, making
it quite an efficient use of exercise time. Okay,
so exercise is rule number one. What's the second
area for purposeful leisure? Secondly, pursue
passions and hobbies. Beyond essential exercise,
identify and actively commit to a small number
of other activities, maybe just one, two, or
at the very most, three that truly matter to
you personally. These should be things you feel
passionate about, things that are worth a significant
investment of your energy to genuinely get better
and get somewhere with them. If you have young
children, sticking to just one or two is probably
more realistic, but the key is that intentional
engagement, aiming for progress or mastery. not
just dabbling. Can you give an example of this?
Consider Justin Honeman, a Coca -Cola executive.
Despite a demanding job and presumably a packed
schedule, he found his essential creative outlet
in country music. He started taking lessons,
began writing his own melodies during commutes,
work breaks and weekends, becoming, in his words,
a bit obsessed. He didn't just strum casually,
he intentionally honed his craft, listening critically
to popular country songs to understand their
structure, working on refining his vocal technique.
He then took it a step further, hiring a professional
producer in Nashville to record his own album,
Saturday in the South, which apparently even
received some local airplay. He found that pursuing
this hobby actively changed the way that I operate
at work, providing a crucial creative component
that energizes his entire life, not just his
weekends. Country music from a Coke exec. Fascinating.
Okay, exercise, passions. What's the third key
area? Thirdly, and perhaps most vital for overall
well -being, nurture friendships through alignment.
The importance of strong social connections,
of friendships for our physical and mental health
is profound. Research consistently shows significant
benefits from better survival rates for women
undergoing treatment for breast cancer, to slower
rates of brain deterioration in old age, even
down to catching fewer common colds. Friends
are good medicine. Literally. There's a famous
hill experiment conducted at the University of
Virginia that visually demonstrates this. Students
were asked to estimate the steepness of a hill.
They consistently perceived the hill as less
steep when they were standing next to a friend,
compared to when they were alone, and the effect
was even stronger if it was a long -term close
friend. Friendships literally seem to lighten
our perceived burdens. That's amazing. But there's
a paradox, isn't there? There is. Full, busy
lives are often stressful. Friends help alleviate
that stress. Yet finding the time to actually
connect with those friends amidst our busy lives
can also feel stressful. It's a real catch -22
for many people. So what's the solution? The
suggested solution is a concept called alignment.
This is really a special form of multitasking,
but one that works. It involves consciously combining
activities that utilize different parts of your
brain or body simultaneously, or pairing a desired
activity like socializing with something you
have to do anyway. This avoids the cognitive
overload and reduced performance associated with
traditional multitasking, like trying to write
an email while on a conference call. Okay, give
me some examples of alignment for friendships.
Simple things, really. Sharing a meal together
is a classic you have to eat anyway. Going for
a run or a bike ride with a friend combines exercise
and socializing. Turning necessary trips to the
playground with your kids into planned play dates
with other parents whose company you actually
enjoy. Maybe volunteering together on a charity
board or project with a friend or family member.
Even just making those important phone calls
to catch up with friends while you're doing mindless
chores like washing dishes or folding laundry.
It's about consciously weaving social connection
into the existing fabric of your week, rather
than seeing it as yet another separate thing
to schedule. that makes a lot of sense piggybacking
connection onto existing activities. So given
all the demands on our time, work, home, exercise,
passions, friendships, how do we practically
carve out space for these vital leisure activities
without feeling like we're just adding more items
to an already overflowing to -do list? It sounds
like it requires some strategic planning, which
ironically, can feel like more work in itself.
It absolutely does require planning, but think
of it as high -leverage planning that ultimately
creates more fulfilling time rather than just
more tasks. The most effective approach seems
to be block scheduling for leisure. Essentially,
you advocate treating your meaningful leisure
activities with the same seriousness you'd treat
an important client meeting or a doctor's appointment.
You plan them in advance, you schedule them for
specific blocks of time in your calendar, and
you prepare for them mentally so you can be fully
present. Scheduling fun, doesn't that kill the
spontaneity? It might seem that way initially,
but the alternative for many busy people is that
the fun simply never happens, because unstructured
time gets swallowed by urgent demands or inertia.
Scheduling ensures it gets prioritized. Consider
using specific time slots. Morning blocks can
be excellent. Waking up just a bit earlier, for
example, Michelle Gier -Sole, a marketing consultant
mentioned in the research, wakes at 5 a .m. six
days a week for an hour -long walk on the beach
or quiet reading time. She shifted that time
from aimless late -night TV watching. Morning
often provides more energy and, crucially, fewer
potential distractions. Before the day's chaos
begins. Exactly. For those working in an office
environment, lunchtime blocks can be an ideal
time for exercise. Even just eating lunch quickly
at your desk two or three days a week can free
up a significant chunk of time to hit the gym,
go for a run, or take a walk when others might
be queuing in the cafeteria. Using that midday
lull productively. Yes. In the evenings, particularly
for families with two parents, implementing a
week -night -off system can be very effective.
Each parent gets one designated evening per week,
completely free for their own pursuits, hobbies,
seeing friends, exercise class, while the other
parent takes sole charge of the children and
household duties for that evening. This requires
clear communication and mutual commitment to
avoid scorekeeping or resentment. but it guarantees
dedicated personal time for both partners. That
sounds like a fair system. And finally, weekend
planning. Don't let your precious weekends just
disappear into a haze of errands and chores.
Spend just a few minutes sometime on Friday evening
or Saturday morning. To intentionally plan one
or two key activities that you want to do things
that might require longer blocks of time than
are available during the week. Aim for a healthy
balance between some structured family activities
or personal pursuits and also ensuring there's
some genuinely unstructured downtime for relaxation
and spontaneity too. The goal is simply to make
those weekend hours count towards your fulfillment
rather than letting them slip away by default.
Ultimately then, what you're suggesting isn't
about packing every single minute or creating
some kind of rigid, joyless schedule. It's really
about being mindful and intentional about how
we use our non -work time. It's about ensuring
our leisure time truly serves its fundamental
purpose of recreation and rejuvenation, which
in turn makes our entire 168 hours feel fuller,
more balanced, and more purposeful. Precisely.
Intentionality is the thread that runs through
it all. We've covered so much ground today. We've
journeyed through the surprising truth about
our 168 hours, exploring how the perception often
differs from reality. We've looked at how to
unearth and leverage our unique core competencies,
applying business strategy to our personal lives.
We've discussed redefining and refining our professional
lives to find or create the right job. And we've
delved into strategically re -engineering our
home and leisure time for greater fulfillment.
It's certainly a lot to consider, but it all
seems to point towards a really profound shift
in mindset. doesn't it? A shift away from a feeling
of scarcity toward the sense of possibility and
agency. It truly does. And if we were to boil
it down, the key actionable principles for anyone
wanting to embark on their own personal time
transformation really come down to these essential
steps. Firstly, and most fundamentally, recognize
you have a choice. Internalize that basic understanding
that every minute presents a choice. It's not
an inevitable obligation thrust upon you. You
need to embrace this agency over your time. Secondly,
you absolutely must know your time goes. You
can't change what you don't measure. Start by
keeping an accurate, honest time log for at least
one full week, 168 consecutive hours. It can
be, as one person who did it described it, a
mortifying experience initiative. You can't imagine.
Confronting reality. Exactly. But it's an absolutely
essential, often incredibly enlightening first
step to simply understand your current reality.
Where does the time actually go? Thirdly, try
to define your list of a hundred dreams. This
is an exercise in articulating what you truly
want out of your life, both personally and professionally.
Think big, think small. These dreams become your
guiding stars, your personal north star, helping
you decide where you want to intentionally direct
your time and energy. Fourthly, as we discussed
at length, focus on your core competencies. Actively
identify what you do best, what energizes you,
and what only you can do effectively. These are
the activities that bring you energy, meaning,
and will likely have the maximum positive impact.
This is where your primary investment of time
should yield the greatest return. Fifthly, and
this is the active pruning part, ignore, minimize,
or outsource everything else. Systematically
work to remove or significantly reduce all those
activities that are not core competencies or
that simply do not align with your defined dreams
and priorities. Common culprits that consume
vast? often unnoticed. Swathes of time include
excessive television, unproductive housework
beyond basic maintenance, random errands that
could be batched or delegated, obsessive email
checking, aimless puttering around the house
like browsing catalogs with no intention to purchase,
and even overly long personal care routines.
Start with tackling these easy wins first. For
example, if you realize you spend much time mindlessly
scrolling social media, simply becoming aware
of the pattern can help. One writer mentioned
cutting her five plus daily Facebook and Twitter
breaks down significantly just by noticing the
time drain. And finally, number six, actively
look for ways to fill bits of time with bits
of joy. Make less of small activities that genuinely
make you happy, feel meaningful or move you slightly
towards one of your goals and that take 30 minutes
or less or perhaps even less than 10 minutes.
These are things you can slot into those inevitable
small gaps in the day. For instance, Tathryn
Murphy, a lawyer we'll mention shortly, decided
to use her commute time to meditate on gratitude.
Another individual redirected a habitual 50 -minute
Facebook break towards spending that time on
a French language learning website instead. It
demonstrates how small, consistent efforts, applied
intelligently to those little pockets of time,
can add up to significant progress or increased
well -being over the long run. These principles
sound incredibly practical and empowering when
laid out like that. And you've mentioned they've
been put into practice by real people with real
tangible results. Can you share some examples
of these time makeovers? Yes. The research included
several case studies of individuals who tracked
their time and then worked on implementing these
kinds of strategies. For example, Catherine Murphy.
She was a first -year legal associate and also
a new mom. She initially described feeling incredibly
frustrated and in tears from a perceived total
lack of time. A very relatable feeling for many
new parents and demanding jobs. Absolutely. Her
initial time log revealed a very busy life, as
expected. Around 46 work hours, nearly 9 hours
sleep per night on average, which is good, 7
hours of exercise. But surprisingly, only about
4 .5 hours per week spent in primary child care
activity, although obviously much more time was
spent around her daughter. So the focused interaction
time was quite low. It seemed so. Some suggestions
made for her included deliberately not fixing
a broken television, which naturally led to more
reading and exercise time, intentionally carving
out some early morning mommy -and -me time before
the workday rush, like getting up at 6 .15 a
.m. to have nearly two focused hours with her
daughter before heading to the office and exploring
online grocery shopping to save time. The results.
She reported successfully starting to cook proper
home dinners twice a week, feeling she was prioritizing
quality mother -daughter time better by being
more present during the day, which included adopting
that commute meditation practice, and generally
feeling less frantic. It was about intentional
presence and small strategic shifts, not finding
huge extra blocks of time. Being present, that
seems key. Another example. Then there's Brian
Brandt. He was an executive pastor, also a coach,
and a father of three children. He felt his demanding
schedule left very little time for personal prayer
and reflection and for nurturing his marriage
Suggestions for Brian included making a conscious
effort to focus during time with his wife Specifically
turning off the TV and dedicating just 30 minutes
to real conversation each evening Also making
proactive short phone calls to her during travel
time instead of just listening to the radio at
work setting strict end times for meetings and
actively blocking out time in his calendar for
specific important projects. What were his results?
He reported finding he was praying more by integrating
it into daily routines like showering or mowing
the lawn. He made more intentional calls to his
wife. He saw a big difference in meeting efficiency
at work without diluting the quality. And significantly,
he finally found time to read books again by
consciously shifting away from watching TV or
checking emails late at night. Again, relatively
small shifts in habit leading to noticeable improvements
in areas he valued. Small shifts. Big impact.
One more. Let's take Andrew Riley. He was the
single father of three young boys running his
own web company from home. He described feeling
constantly stressed, always working on at least
two things at once, which led to frequent interruptions
from his children and frustration for everyone.
The suggestions for Andrew focused on creating
distinct concentrated blocks of quiet work time,
perhaps utilizing after school programs for a
couple of hours, or simply asking the children
to play quietly in their rooms during specific
afternoon periods and then Crucially, completely
shutting down all work devices for dedicated,
focused, undistracted time with his kids in the
evenings or on weekends. Separating work and
family time more clearly. Exactly. The results.
By intentionally not multitasking during his
dedicated family time, he reported experiencing
significantly less stress himself and enjoying
much more high quality positive interactions
with his sons. It proved that focused Even if
shorter blocks of time can be far more effective
and rewarding, then longer periods where attention
is constantly divided and blurred. Focus is powerful.
These examples really bring it home. They do.
And they also underscore that no one's schedule
remains perfectly typical or optimized from one
week to the next. Life happens. Managing your
168 hours is an ongoing project. It requires
continuous evaluation, adaptation, and that recurring
theme of intentionality. The goal isn't to achieve
some mythical state of perfect, rigid control,
but rather to strive for continuous improvement
and ever closer alignment between how you spend
your time and what you truly value. It's about
being flexible and responsive to life's inevitable
shifting demands while still holding firm to
your core priorities. That's a really important
perspective. It's a dynamic process, not a static
solution. I think perhaps the biggest takeaway
from all of this for any professional listening,
any parent, really any individual seeking more
fulfillment from their days is the empowering
message that you truly do have more time than
you probably think. And the power to align your
168 hours with your deepest values, your most
important goals, your biggest aspirations, that
power lies firmly within your grasp. It's a profound
and hopefully motivating realization. It can't
be truly liberating once you grasp it. So, we've
explored the surprising reality of your 168 hours
and hopefully provided a robust framework and
practical strategies for harnessing them towards
a life of genuine intentional living. This deep
dive has aimed to offer a different lens for
viewing your week not as a fixed burden to be
endured, but as a rich canvas full of potential
for achieving a life that truly reflects your
priorities. Indeed. And perhaps a final, provocative
thought for you, our listener, to carry forward
and reflect upon this week. If you were to approach
your next 168 hours as a completely blank slate
armed with this newfound clarity, what would
be the single most impactful core competency
you would commit to dedicating significantly
more time and energy towards? And conversely,
what single non -core activity that currently
drains your time or energy would you ruthlessly
eliminate, minimize, or outsource starting today?
A brilliant challenge to leave us with. Thank
you so much for guiding us through this truly
fascinating and incredibly actionable exploration
of time and intentionality. Your insights have
been absolutely invaluable. It's been my pleasure.
It's a topic I'm passionate about. If you found
this deep dive valuable, please do consider rating
and sharing our show with colleagues or friends
who might also benefit. Your support helps more
people discover how to unlock the potential within
their own 168 hours and truly live a life by
design. Until next time.