168 Hours You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam

Welcome to Productivity Book Group. I'm your host and facilitator, Ray Sidney-Smith. Thanks for joining or listening in on Productivity Book Group's live discussion of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam. A little bit about the author and then a little bit about the book, and then we will get into the discussion. So about Laura Vanderkam, this is from her website. Laura Vanderkam is the author of several time management and productivity books, including Juliet's School of Possibilities, which is a time management-focused fable, Off the Clock, I Know How She Does It, What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, and of course, 168 Hours. Her work has appeared in many publications—New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Fortune. She's the host of the podcast Before Breakfast, and she's also the co-host with Sarah Hart Unger of the podcast Best of Both Worlds. She lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband and 5 children, and she blogs at lauravanderkam.com. And lifting some segments out of the Amazon book description, It reads, quote, there are 168 hours in a week. This book is about where the time really goes and how we can all use it better. After interviewing dozens of successful, happy people, she realized that they allocate their time differently than most of us. The key is to start with a blank slate and to fill it up and to fill up your 168 hours only with things that deserve your time. Vanderkam shares creative ways to rearrange your schedule to to make room for the things that matter most. 168 Hours is a fun, inspiring, practical guide that will help men and women of any age, lifestyle, or career get the most out of their time and their lives. And so, end quote. And so with that, the book is structured in 4 parts. We have 9 chapters, and she really takes us through the arc of discussing the 168 hours, discussing at home, at work in parts 2 and 3, and then finalizing the book in Part 4, where she talks about the hard work it really takes to be able to make this happen, and not kind of leaving on a, you know, warm and fuzzy note, but really giving us a chance to really think about the difficulty of how we manifest what we want our 168 hours per week to look like. And so I wanted to kick off the discussion with what were your initial impressions of the book. What were your initial kind of impressions of the book? And we can kind of go from there. And just for folks, you can just say your name before you speak, and that helps folks kind of track along with us as we make our way through the discussion. What were your initial impressions of the book?

Well, I'll jump in. This is Frank Buck. The, I guess, the biggest takeaway was logging your time. You know, she makes the point that we really The biggest problem with their time is we really don't know where it goes. And until you run a time log on what is sort of a normal week for you, you really aren't going to have any idea.

I can go next. Oh, I think I saw Robert raise his hand. So no worries.

Hop right in, Usha. Hop in. Go ahead, Usha. I'll wait.

OK. So yes, as I read the book— and I read this many months ago, or maybe a year ago. And as I read it, my first thought was, well, there's not a lot that's new here. But when I finished the book and I sort of reflected, I said, well, let me go back and look at the last week and actually capture how many hours, high level, that I spend on things. And I have to tell you, it was a rude awakening. It wasn't where I would have expected it to be. It wasn't where I would have wanted it to be. And yes, there was a lot of space I couldn't account for. And then around the same time, I was making decisions about another life event, or life activity I should say, that I wanted to take on. And I had been thinking that, oh, I'm not going to have time for it, not going to have time for it. It was something in the spiritual realm. And but when I finished a book and after I had that aha moment, I said, well, let me go back and actually calculate how many hours it's going to take, what percent of my time that would be. And sure enough, surprise, surprise, it was less than 1%. It would have taken less than 1% of the 168 hours. And at that point, I knew there was no thinking about it. I was going to do it. And I'm happy to say now I'm doing, you know, double of what I had anticipated doing. But I think the book changed my life in that sense.

That's wonderful to hear, Usha. All right, Robert.

I can't say changed my life, but boy, it's really helped since I signed up for to, to read it. Just as an example here, just going through filling out this chart for a 24-hour period. First benefit is I'm conscious of not wasting time. Thinking in 15-minute chunks usually I, one of the things I do is go back to it as often as possible. So I don't go like 3 or 4 hours and try to remember what I did. So by staying on top of it, I'm just a lot more aware of my time where it goes. And when you document your time, just like your food, for instance, if you do a food log, you're, you automatically want to do it better. So that's a big takeaway for me. Is it sustainable? She kind of recommends in the book to do this to get in the habit, but she doesn't say do it forever. But I want to keep it up. I want to keep it up because the benefits are incredible so far.

Fantastic. Linda?

Yeah, my overall impression of the book is I enjoyed parts of it. I don't think I'm her target audience, so I did skim some parts because they just didn't apply to me. I'm not a parent, so it's very aimed towards parents and I'm not one. But the first part of the book I found extremely helpful. And the tracking— this is the first time I was able to track time without getting overwhelmed. So for me, the idea of having the blank slate instead of doing the time blocking that everybody talks about, but starting with the blank slate and then filling it in as you go. I've been doing that for 2 weeks and I'd have to say it's completely changed the way I deal with my time. And it's made me very mindful about my time and looking at time in 15-minute increments instead of an hour or a half hour also was extremely helpful to me because now I'm like, oh, do I want to spend— when I put something in and I'm using Google Sheets and I just do it on my phone or on the computer, every time something changes, I log what's, what's happening. And then I say to myself, oh, do I want to spend an hour on this? No, I want to spend 15 minutes on this. So I'm aware, like, oh, now it's 10:15. I need to change to another thing. So it's made me mindful of my time, which nothing else has ever done before. So that was very helpful for me.

Great to hear. Rhonda? I think the—

well, I didn't read the entire book. I must confess, but I think that the book does an excellent job of debunking this myth that everybody hides behind and avoids doing what they have to do. And I think the biggest lesson is that you need to be transparent first with yourself of how you spend your time. And once you yourself are transparent with that, then it becomes much easier to cooperate with everybody else. And in terms of it being like motherly focused, all of these issues are on the top of everybody's list right now: healthcare, childcare, all of that stuff. We have to be transparent about it. And, you know, I think it's a real changemaker book. I like it.

Good to hear. Good to hear. Any other first impressions? And then we'll move on to some other topics I want to discuss.

Yeah, just to piggyback on something Robert said, and this is Frank Buck, and then also that Linda talked about a little bit, you really have to Track— you get to the end of the day, you can't remember what you did. But as you change activities, just log, what did I do the last 15 minutes? I've been working with a little app for the last several weeks. First time I've ever really done a time log sort of thing. I've been doing it with a little— you know, unless I'm on it, as soon as I change activities, it's like, you know, where did the day go? What did I do over these last 4 hours? As you try to go back and log it— You're muted, Ray.

Sorry. Thanks, Linda. Frank, we lost you for a moment there. What was the app that you are using?

Well, I didn't mention the name of the app, but it's called—

Oh, okay. You can throw it in the chat. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. I'll just type it in there. All right.

Cool. It's called Mana.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I've heard of it. Any other initial impressions and then we'll make our way forward in the discussion. This has been really great. So, uh, so let's, let's start. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Oh, it just allows, I guess, in the getting things done mindset to move from like just putting out fires of the day to day to going to the someday maybe list or the someday list. Cause those are the ones that often matter more than, uh, do the dishes all the time type of thing, or just realizing also I like the part of like, actually do the dishes for me is a big one that I resent, but, um, like being conscious of how little time it actually takes, it's just a repeatable task, made it a lot, uh, uh, something I could engage with a lot better now.

Fantastic. Fantastic. All right. So my next question is really around the idea of I'm just actually curious from the folks that typically read books for Productivity Book Group, we're already pretty productivity-minded, but I'm really curious, were you surprised by the time use diaries or the survey data that showed that people underreported free time and overreported work hours? And how do you feel about time scarcity versus time abundance? And how does that impact how you manage your time generally. From my perspective, Vanderkam comes with the premise that most people believe in the myth of being in a time crunch. I didn't come to the book believing that even back when I first read it. You know, the book is more than a decade old. And so, I didn't come at the book that way. So, I was curious if others came at the book with a perspective that they did have time scarcity. And what that time scarcity really meant for them as they made their way through the book, and the fact that obviously the time use research tells us very differently.

I particularly— sorry, this is Linda— I particularly didn't— I don't particularly have a busy life, but I did find the book helpful in addressing my time scarcity. So adopting that cultural idea that there's like not enough time, not enough time, I don't have time, that kind of mantra, um, you know, just creates this kind of anxiety. And also, um, it just— it does actually create time scarcity because you're spending so much time thinking about how, how busy or how much time you don't have that you're wasting time doing that. And it actually does create time scarcity. And I feel like that's kind of where I was at, not, um Not that I thought, oh, I'm so busy, but that I would overestimate how much time some things take. I found out it only takes a minute to make my bed. I looked at the clock and I was like, whoa, that only took 1 minute. And I normally think, oh, I don't have time to do these small things, but they don't take as much time as I thought. And other things take more time than I, you know, it really helped that. But yeah, for me, it was a mind shift. Even though I don't completely buy into it, I could see the places where I was actually buying into it.

I find it kind of fascinating that there was a book called Overwhelmed. Is it Overwhelmed by Bridget? Help me out here, Dr. Buck. Bridget—

Oh, let's see. I'll look it up.

You can look it up in the meantime. Either way. Yeah. But the idea behind Overwhelmed was kind of like a look on how this particular author saw the world in terms of her time scarcity and really arguing against what Laura Vanderkam is saying. She went to a time-use researcher, did the time diary, and still rejected the outcome, which is that she had this extra time that she could repurpose. And in essence, she was making kind of a pro-feminist view on the the dialogue around really roles in society and responsibilities in society. And I feel like VanderKam makes some of that statement here as well, where we as a society have had some traditional roles, those roles are breaking down, and that has allowed for greater capability of what we consider liberalism, free life. And with greater liberalism creates this ability for us to manifest what is our present and future. And I find it to be Bridget Schulte. I believe it's Bridget Schulte is the name that comes to mind. It is. Yeah. Thank you. Bridget Schulte. It just like, it clicked into my head. I was like, what Bridget was saying. And so she's a brilliant reporter. And so What Shulte is really arguing and how I see Vanderkam kind of playing those two pieces are kind of a dialogue in terms of how the science is really validating something that we have to consistently challenge ourselves by, which is, as you noted, Linda, there's this like, there's this tone that is somehow that busyness is equal to a fruitful life. And I've almost removed busy from my lexicon. I've tried to use the term active or hyperactive as a mechanism for how I term my activity throughout a week. And I will tell people it's been an active week or it's been a hyperactive week. There is another tier, which is insane, but it's usually active to hyperactive to insanity. And so that helps me remove this concept of busyness and how we perceive that there's a negative connotation around the term now, especially in productivity circles, and that sometimes muddies the waters when it comes to really what is going on in our worlds. And so having been an associate member of the International Association for Time Use Research myself, I happen to be really focused on how people actually spend their time as opposed to how people actually report their time abundance versus their time scarcity. I'm very much on the scientific side of this and I'm more appreciative of the fact that when women report time and fall in line gender lines, it ends up being a muddy water because it's difficult to understand without being a woman, without having kids, without having the of the societal components there to really understand what's going on there. And so it ends up being a very unique case-by-case basis. You could have a CEO tech founder who's female and runs a company, has, you know, multiple kids and is well-balanced in their life. And then you have folks who are and who can find time to do all of these things. And Vanderkam makes this point in the book. You know, she talks about this particular person who has a big company, has made balance and all those kinds of things in life. And it's really wonderful. And then of course, on the flip side of that, which is if you're a little bit lower income, if you feel societal or cultural mores that feel oppressive, then all of a sudden all of those things crumble away and time scarcity becomes a greater and larger factor. So I want folks who maybe feel that to hopefully push back against that, like break the bonds and really understand that if you do this kind of time diary, you can start to see where you don't actually have to abide by the norms that you feel anxiety about. And I think that's just really, really powerful. It was a long way of me saying, you know, like, you know, we understand to some extent and you can understand your time better and therefore kind of be counterculture in that sense and get back time. I mean, I really think that you can get back your time if you think about it that way.

Anyway, um, you know, Ray, one of the points you made, you know, that I think affluence plays a lot into this, you know, because there's, there's some things that have to get done. My grass has got to get cut. Now I can do it, or I can pay someone else to do it, which I choose to do, and he does a great job. Um, and, and I'm glad that I have the ability to do that. Not everybody does. Not everybody has the money to pay somebody else to clean their house, mow their grass, keep the kids, so forth and so on. So the ability to have the money to delegate some things to other people actually is buying time that you would not ordinarily have. There's a lot that just goes into running your life. You know, somebody's got to load the dishwasher for And all those little things take time.

Right, you're absolutely right. There's a gender role and gender culture issue, and there is an economic issue that we all have to kind of face in all of these dialogues. And it's not necessarily for us to have to kind of determine for anyone else. It's more the fact that we have to determine that for ourselves. And I might, as one of the anecdotes in the book talks about, I might want to make less money— or use more of the money that I make for purposes of getting back time because it makes the values that I have, which are spending time with my family, capable. And so I might take less take-home pay because of that, because I want to love what I do and get those types of benefits, but it really will require you to make some trade-offs. And, you know, those are things that we just all have to consider. And I just don't want us to kind of glaze over that point, which is that Certainly, there are gender-based and economic-based issues that certainly kind of thread throughout the book. And I think we all have to deal with them in our own unique worlds and ways. Moving forward in the book, I'm curious if anyone actually— I've heard so far, Linda did and Robert did so far— of going through the time tracking practice. I'm curious what you learned. And if you didn't do the time tracking exercise, why not? And I know that we can talk a little bit about the technologies that you can use to maybe get there. But I'm curious, who did the practice? What did you learn from doing the practice beyond what Linda and Robert have already talked about? And maybe some of the ways in which you can overcome the challenges of doing this kind of time diary, because I know that it's a huge challenge for a lot of folks. I mean, I meet a lot of small business executives in my work and the first thing I do is I ask them to track their time and that is the first time they hate me. And it's time after time after time that I ask them to do that work and it's incredibly difficult for them. And so over time I've come up with my own solutions for being able to do that, but I'm curious what others have thought about, what you've done, how you've manifested kind of doing Time Diaries or what you feel like are the big challenges to doing it. Why, why wouldn't you do this?

I think the wouldn't would be just the, it's kind of a chore. You know, it's, it's just something you gotta keep doing all day long, every day, as long as you keep it up. So in addition to all the things you have to do and all the things you're planning to do, then you've got to log what you actually did. On some other something other than checking it off on your to-do list or checking it off in your planner. It's just one more thing to do.

For me, it was very different than the other times I've time tracked, and I've been time tracking for a while, but it's hit or miss. It's not as consistent. And my time tracking before was by the half hour. So the big switches for me were tracking every 15 minutes. That changed everything. Doing it on a Google Sheet that's accessible on my phone and on my computer so that I don't have an excuse. I don't have my bullet journal next to me or my phone's generally close by. So I was able to jump to it and just quickly open that sheet and put it in each time. So I made it resistance-free and it was not difficult. I had one day where I was like, oh, I forgot to track. And I went back quickly and filled in the blanks. Just for like 3 or 4 hours that I got lost doing something. But other than that, it's like it— I made it more resistance-free than ever before. And for me, it was very easy and enjoyable. And I'm going to continue to do it because it's really helping me. Yeah.

One other point, this is Robert, that both Matthew and Linda reminded me. So I always do wash the dishes after every meal. My sweetheart cooks and I wash. And it takes more time than, than I thought it would because it's not just the dishes. I clean all the counters and make the place look very tidy. And in doing that, knowing that the place is nice and clean and then documenting it, it gives me a kind of a sense of satisfaction there that that's something that I've done. And similarly with the 15-minute piece, I often look at the clock and now would plan things on that top of the hour, quarter after, bottom of the hour, quarter to, so that I kind of gear up for the transition to this other action. Whereas like what Linda said, I'm not waiting on the half hour or the hour to start something.

So I'll insert here that I have been tracking every working waking hour since about 1999. And so I have copious years of data tracked about myself. And that is a— it's just a function of who I am. It's not necessarily something that I recommend to everyone. Actually, I don't recommend it to anyone. So we'll leave it at that. But What I have learned over time in periods where I have stepped away from tracking and left it to passive tracking, so passive tracking is basically automated tracking tools that will track your movements both on computer and mobile so that you can grab this ambient data from having a smartwatch that can track data, say even Fitbit, those kinds of devices to what you're actually doing on your computers and analyzing the data from there. What I found in the active tracking state is that I'm capable of providing greater and granular detail as it relates to what it is that I was working on at that time, and I'm actually capable of placing more layers. So for example, affect, that is your emotional state at the time, and/or the category of work, because I might be in Google Docs,, but that Google Docs might be writing up a letter to a friend and may not be writing a proposal for work. So, you know, since those contexts aren't really known to the system, it's easier to do those things when you are active tracking. But if you, if you are really challenged by that, there are some really great tools there. My number one recommended tool is Toggle Track. Toggle doesn't have an E. So it's T-O-G-G-L, and Toggl Track allows you to, in essence, use the browser extension along with the mobile and desktop applications for tracking across your world. You can have it installed on everything that you're using, and it makes it really simple to be able to track time, and then you can slice and dice it after the fact. But I've just found Toggl to be a really great tool. Like Linda, I had been— I mean, for 15, 16, 17 of those, you know, 20-odd years of time tracking, I was just using Microsoft Excel workbook and then going to Google Sheets once I made the transition over. And I've been tracking in that for years and years. And then only in the past maybe 2 or 3 years, I can't remember, but I've transitioned to Toggl. And then Toggl became Toggl Track. And so Toggl Track is a really great tool for being able to do that. But there are tools like RescueTime, And in— what is the name of it? Instant.today. There are several tools that are out there that do passive tracking. In essence, you install it on your phone, you install it on your computer, and it does that tracking in the background. Most operating systems, mobile operating systems, the Apple iOS as well as Android operating systems, actually have some data tracking going on in the background, whether that be sleep, but steps and movement and other kinds of activities. The digital wellbeing apps within, within both of the platforms also give you some stuff there. So to answer a little bit of Usha's question to me from earlier about how to kind of overcome some of that time tracking stuff, you can patchwork that stuff together by getting some passive tracking done along with some active tracking to be able to get a full picture of what you're doing with your time.

I find it really interesting because the active tracking for me, I like it because it's, because it's mindful. And maybe someday when I become a ninja like you, Ray, I will be able to just passively track and my day will still— but I think part of it for me was, do I want to, do I want to be honest with myself and write down that this is what I'm doing during this 15 minutes? No. So let me do this thing instead. So like, I don't want to write down that, you know, I spent— I don't look on Facebook, but let's just use Facebook because it's so common. You know, I don't want to write down that I spent 15 minutes or an hour on Facebook. So when I'm actually writing it down is when I'm beginning the activity, not after I've done it. So my brain says, what am I doing now? And I'm making choices that are better. So my actual time tracking was less— it was skewed, but not the way everyone else says, oh, this isn't a typical week. It wasn't typical because I was so mindful that I was doing more of what I wanted to do rather than just what was automatically happening in my world because I just let myself do what happened to come to my mind at that moment.

Exactly. Yeah, you're steering the ship incrementally. And you're basically doing that kind of course correction incrementally, which is fantastic. That's great.

Yeah, and that concept, like I did shopping this morning. I said, I'm gonna go shopping. I started to write it down. I said, I'm going shopping. Okay, that's what I'm doing. I'm shopping and I'm gonna take responsibility for doing that. I'm not gonna just— I'm actually consciously doing it. It's not just because I got an idea in my head that I wanted to buy something, that I decided consciously, yes. But it makes that— it adds that conscious layer to what we actually are doing as opposed to this automatic, habitual, just doing whatever you happen to do through your life that your brain has run these neural pathways and you keep repeating them even though it's not necessarily the choice you want to make.

Did anybody do the 100 dreams exercise that Vanderkam recommended? Did anybody do that and Why? Why not? I'm still curious from those of you who have not done the time tracking exercise, the practice, why you haven't. Go for it, Rhonda.

Okay, I haven't done the time tracking exercise, although I did use Toggle a few years ago and it was a good, good app. But I have experience with doing food diary. And I'm just going to say this is not about myself. I'm a caregiver. You know, the person has diarrhea. So, you know, the doctor says, or the nutritionist says, do your food diary. Let me see you in 3 weeks and show me 3 weeks of everything you ate with what the result was, what your bowel movement was. So that's sort of like time tracking, you know, you kind of keep the diary, the food diary until you've resolved your diarrhea, and then you don't have to do it anymore. But when you feel like you have diarrhea again, you could pick up the food diary and do it again and show it to your doctor and see what you can do.

Yeah, there are all kinds of ways in which we can track both health data as well as our time use, and it is both useful in what Linda was talking about, which is in basically proactive decision-making and also in reflection and being able to take a reflective perspective on it and being able to say, oh yeah, let me review this data and see what happened. And that will help inform hopefully better future decisions for your health. So that's all good there as well.

All right. But I got a comment. So thank you all for your comments. And this makes me want to try it again. I tried this on and off for over 5 years and gave up. Tried over 7 or 8 different apps, just didn't work for me. For me, what I found the issue was, I also tried the Excel thing, different templates, didn't work for me. The root cause, I think, for me was when I would start the activity, I would forget to mark it, or when I finished the activity, I would forget to mark it off, 'cause then I'm onto something else. And so the data then became, worthless. And again, that was the same thing with the different apps. So much as I would love to do it, I think the motivation is there. I just haven't found something that works for me yet. So I, I am open to ideas here from the group.

So, so Lucia, one of the things I'm doing is I mark the beginning of the activity, um, and a lot of times I'm doing it on my phone and I'm not very fluent with Google Sheets in my phone. So I mark the beginning and then I mark the next beginning and then I'll go back on the computer and merge those cells so that the span of time is covered. So I'm not necessarily, um, filling in the gaps. So let's say I, I write for 2 hours. I'll put it at the top of the hour when I start writing, and then when that 2 hours is over, I'll go to that next cell that starts that time and put in the next thing, and then go back later and fill in the colors and the merging and all that as a separate activity. I don't do all that during my day. That takes up too much time. It's just getting in what's happening during that 15 minutes. When I switch an activity, I just put it in. I'm switching an activity, this is the activity I switched to. And sometimes there's more than one activity in a 15-minute period, like making the bed and, you know, and I'll just kind of give things a generic, like, wake-up time, you know, the things you do. I'm not putting my brushing my teeth, making my bed, you know, it's all going in there. But, you know, it's like, so I just, I'm not, um I'm not doing the finesse of the time tracking while I'm time tracking. I go back later and fancy it up and merge the cells and all that. But I don't know if that helps, but it, to me, it's been pretty resistance-free.

It does. And I think maybe when I consistently do it for 2 weeks or 3 weeks, maybe I'll get to where you are, Linda. But what I'm finding right now is I can go back and say, okay, I know I had this meeting at whatever, 9 o'clock, and after that I know I started on this, and now it's like 3 hours after, and I'm like, wait a minute, I didn't spend 3 hours doing that.

So, so you can block that time as don't— I don't know, like you could just say question mark or whatever you want and just put that in the category of time you don't have tracked. Because I understand I have the perfectionist thing myself, and it's like I want everything to be perfect, but if if you don't know what you did with that time, then that should be tracked as a time that you didn't track— untracked time. And then once you let yourself do that, you'll have more— you'll get more consistent about it, and you'll have less of those times, especially if you're like me where you— I don't want that. I don't want to have untracked time. I want to know every minute, you know. So I let go of that, like it being perfect. I'm just trying to figure out what I'm spending my time and be more mindful about it.

Something to also keep in mind, Usha, is that over the course of day after day, your goal is to be able to figure out what you're doing with that time and why, why you want to know what is fit into that time. So for example, for me, my whole reason for being able to track my time is actually to manage a couple of things. One is anxiety. Just generally, I want to know where my various levels of anxiety are. And That really, there's like a Goldilocks zone for me where if I'm anxious enough but not too anxious, it's like that is the moment when I'm most focused and most creative. And I want to take advantage of that time. And because I know that, I want to be able to consistently be tracking where I am in the ebbs and flows of my week to be able to take advantage of that time. Some people consider that a biological prime time. Where we have a block set of time throughout any given day where our metabolism, or what they call the ultradian rhythm, is at its peak for mental alertness, where you can get into flow and do other kinds of things of that nature. If you track enough time, even if you have, as Linda noted, untracked time over the course of several different blocks of time throughout any given day, in the aggregate, as you track more and more time, I can tell you with high levels of accuracy because I've tracked enough time over time with even blocks of time that I don't know what I did, but because of that aggregate, I'm now able to see when things tend to happen. I tend to write at this particular time of the day because I've chosen to write at that time of day, but it also is that I show up to do it. So, you know, there's one thing to want to do something and there's another to actually do it. And being able to see those two what I've put in the calendar as something that I want to show up to versus what I do show up to do, right? There's a difference. And so using your calendar as well as enough aggregate data to be able to fill in the gaps starts to kind of inform what you wanna learn from your time use. What is it that you wanna learn from your time use? And then enough data will start to answer those questions, not any given untracked block of time. Dissimilar to me where I track my time for a number of reasons. One, I bill my hours, you know, to clients. So I want to make sure that I know what I'm doing throughout my day and making sure that I'm billing on average enough billable hours every day to be productive in the business. But the other side is that I really do truly want to do the best work at the best time, which means I need to limit when I meet with clients and when I do work, right? When I do work on those things, I want to make sure that I'm actually doing that work in the time when I'm going to do that work my best and not be stuck in a meeting, you know, having to interact with people when that's really the best time for me to be able to be immersed in the work that's generative and that's productive. So I hope that helps. All right. So the 100 Dreams exercise sounds like it was a dud.

Nobody wanted to do it. I didn't do it because I've done that exercise so many times. And also I was trying to finish the book in time to, I mean, I was trying to finish the book is what I was saying. I think I unmuted myself. But yeah, that's why I didn't— I probably will do it in some form, but I have done it. I mean, it's everywhere, right?

Yeah, I have a healthy— go ahead, Nancy. Did you do it? I have a very healthy someday maybe list. So I literally just looked at my someday maybes and I immediately had over 100 items. And so I was like, check and went on with the book. I mean, it was so simple for me to do. And I think it's just because I've been tracking my someday maybes for 20 years now. So, you know, it's— I've been tracking, you know, big goals for more than that. But being able to just segment a list and look at what I want, could, should do, it's always going to be more than I'm ever capable of doing. But that also means that I'll never be idle in life, which is my goal. You know, my contentment is never feeling like I don't have an aim. And so the 100 Dreams exercise is quite simple for me in that sense, 'cause my somedays and maybes are, my cup runneth over in that category, so.

Yeah. Yeah, I feel much the same way.

This is Frank.

You know, as soon as something hits my radar that I wanna do sometime, it goes on the list with a date way in the future. I review it regularly. So I just didn't feel the need either. And then of course, going from a to-do app that when you do something, you check it off and timestamps when you completed it, that's really also given me as much of the time diary as I've ever wanted to have.

So not to spend too much time on time use and time tracking, I wanted to move us forward in the conversation around the idea of core competencies. And so Vander Kam uses the corollary from business management theories about, you know, the three concepts of, of defining core competencies in a business. And she translates that over to how you would define a core competency as an individual. And I just want to pull this up here on my Kindle and read how she defines core competency. And so she says here that an individual's core competency— I'm quoting here— an individual's core competencies are best thought of as abilities that can be leveraged across multiple spheres. They should be important and meaningful, and they should be things we do best and that others cannot do nearly as well. End quote. Did you find that you were able to determine your core competencies in reading the book immediately, did you feel like that was something that jumped out at you? And did you feel like you were able to do that just generally? And I'm curious from you, from your perspectives and in ways in which you determine what your core competencies are.

Yes, for me, this is Usha. For me, yes. I knew it. I thought about it for a few minutes after I read that section. And yeah, I did not have questions in my mind. So I would qualify that as two things. One, where were my competencies? And the second bucket was, where is it not, but where would I like it to be? And then that goes on to the kinds of things I want to put on my working on list so I can develop competency in that.

I could tell that I am a control freak because I sat down to write down my core competencies and I was like, yes, these are all my core competencies and no one else can do these things. And then I had to slowly but surely remind myself that yes, other people can do these things, both in the business and outside of the business in my personal life. And I think that's a real challenge. And I bring it up because there are probably people who will listen to this after the fact and feel that same sense of feeling like they are, are the only one who can do these things. And if VanderKam didn't convince you. It's going to be very difficult to convince yourself that if you have high levels of desire to be in control of your world, and there are a number of reasons why that would be the case, it's going to be very difficult to get yourself into that place where you find a core competency ultimately. So just know it's difficult. I know that I had difficulty with it. And what I ended up thinking through, like the way in which I threaded the needle of like, what are my core competencies? I got to a— I basically brought myself up to a level. So like in GTD lingo, I kept taking myself up to higher horizons to start thinking about what are the activities that I do that are runway activities or ground-level activities? Again, using some GTD lingo here. So like, what are the actions that I'm doing, physical actions that I'm doing and how do they actually compete with the higher level things that I'm doing in my world and the value that they actually bring to me and the people that I care about. And so that ended up being really helpful for me to be able to say, yeah, you know what, I want to do everything related to bookkeeping and accounting in the business, but that is not at all useful to me or my community or anything. Someone else can do that. And when I transfer that time to another activity, that is going to be more useful to people generally. And so then that core competency, which is currently delegated and outsourced in my business anyway, but now I know, okay, yes, it's not a core competency of mine. Just because I have those skills doesn't mean that someone else cannot do them. And that it's vital for me to be doing them as a part of my 168 hours. And that helped me step up a couple levels, which is like, you know, me being a good brother, you know, I'm a part of a large family. I love my siblings and I want to be a great brother. And I can't do that if my biggest concern every week is bookkeeping. You know, it's just not in that category. And I'm using that as one example, but of many that I made in that list of core competencies. And being a highly competent person is great, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't be ruling out things that you shouldn't be doing, because that's not actually creating a fulfilling life. It's not contentment for me in the same sense as another category of activities that really do make my world better and richer. In that sense. You know, like instead of bookkeeping, I'd rather be here with you all and talking about productivity books. So, you know, that's a far more useful, you know, area and space of time than it is for me to be doing bookkeeping.

So Ray, you're saying— So, go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. So did you just— to understand, you said things that you can do that other people can't do, but in the book she's saying what I do best that other people cannot do nearly as well.. And those to me are two completely different things. So I think what she's saying is like a core competency. These are things I do well that most people don't do well. And then, you know, I can obviously sell these things because other people need them. But the things that you do that no one else can do is your voice. So you have a particular voice in the world that no one else, absolutely no one else in the world can have. That is, to me, voice. That's not core competency. So to me, those are two different things. Like, core competency are things you do better than most people, and voice is your unique way you mix things together that no one else can do because you are uniquely yourself.

Absolutely. And I think the— I think you're— I think I might have misspoke then if I— if that's what you heard, but I'm thinking we're on the same page. I'm absolutely there with you. I think it's the things that on a higher level I'm capable of doing that no one else can do, and the things that other people can do and can do probably better than me because of efficiencies are things that I compete with. I tend to compete with myself over because I want to still do them, because I want to get better at them, right? I think if I do bookkeeping enough or if I do our accounting and I put together our profit and loss statements and I analyze our our balance sheets enough, I'm going to get better at those skills and that's only going to help me in helping clients when they come to me with their issues. I'm going to be able to help them in those capacities. So there is this competing force for me, which is that skills development is a core value of mine. I want to always be learning and developing better and greater skills, but it's not enough to overcome the things that are really going to create a fulfilling life for me. And I need to balance those pieces out. And so my message is really for the person who is listening and having a really, really difficult time identifying core competencies, as opposed to, I think, the general population where we can get that pretty well. For those of us who are control freaks, we tend to have a little bit more difficulty.

But once you know your core competencies, if you can take those and put those together and see how they interact, then you're creating your voice. And that makes you extremely unique. And if you can identify that, then that gives you this kind of potent power of— because you are unique. So your voice might be, you know, because you can combine these core competencies, that, that's what that creates. But anyway, I'll let Matthew talk because I know he had—

yeah, so it's a fun, it's a fun Venn diagram of your core competencies and the things that make you—

yeah, to me it's like taking it to the next level, you know. You can take the core competencies and then see how they interact with each other because that makes makes you the unique person you are.

Yeah, that gets into some Dr. Stephen Covey stuff, The Eighth Habit, and finding your voice and helping others find their voice.

So absolutely. Matthew? Might just be a clarification question, and that is, if you don't understand your core competencies, and it sounds like those of you who do, it's from experience and knowing myself. Is it just following the higher-level needs or following the big goals, and then they kind of just coincidences?

So if I understood your question, Matthew, I would look at some of the YouTube videos on ikigai. And ikigai is the Japanese concept of what it loosely translated to why you get up in the morning. And that might be helpful. The the workbook that— oh goodness, what is his name? Start with Why, Simon Sinek. He has a workbook that helps you go through that process of like understanding those pieces that might also be helpful, kind of helping if you shore up some of those higher-level components, then driving down to what are the core competencies necessary to do those things. Will then be helpful. And identifying your core competencies then equate to what are the things that you're doing in furtherance of the higher-level stuff. And if those are things that you are doing, those are the core competencies that you already have. You may also want to be developing core competencies. And that's also another thing, right? You know, if you want to become a really great X, then you need to do Y, Z, A, B, C. So you want to be able to be going through the process of developing core competencies or even new core competencies over time if you want to be able to make that happen. So I think that's also a way to get at the point from kind of the opposite end.

My suggestion would be to ask someone who knows you well. That's where I got mine, honestly. I mean, a lot of the things that I now see as my core competencies, I was told by someone who knows me well, who is supportive, and, you know, would be honest with me. And, or you could ask multiple people if you don't have someone like that, but gave me surprising information about myself that I didn't— wasn't aware of because of low self-esteem. And so, yeah, so now I see them and I say, oh, those are my core competencies, but I would never recognize them if I hadn't got them from someone else who was seeing them in me.

Also, the book is Find Your Why, not Start With Why. Start with Why by Simon Sinek was the first book he wrote, or one of the first books he wrote. But Simon Sinek partnered with another gentleman who, who wrote Find Your Why. And it is an interesting practice. I've actually done it. And the idea is you pair up with someone and you do this kind of interview process to walk yourselves through finding your quote unquote why. I think Definitely having some of those higher-level components organized and developed out really does help structure the underlying core competency concepts.

If you have, if you have struggled with that. I wanted to jump in here. This is Robert. First of all, I, on the core competencies, I had just gone through Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog, and he has a similar, similar question. Segment. So I had done that there and found it very helpful. But my question for the group here is, did anyone do— I know most of you, it sounds like, have apps, but did anyone do a physical log of writing things down? Because as much as I like technology, I also like to get away from it and just live in the analog world. As often as possible. And I'm just curious, anybody, any thoughts on that?

I've done that in the past. I've been tracking my time in my bullet journal for a year now or so. My problem was, is that because of the size of my journal, I'm doing half hours, and it wasn't as compelling for me as the being able to do the 15 minutes. But yeah, I've done it that way myself.

Robert, I've tried the paper, and for me, I think in some ways I'm like Ray and a few of the others, I think, where we like to have things on any device accessible to us anyway. And so I tend to gravitate back to the digital method. And also because I can do analysis and graphs and charts and trends and things like that, that I know Ray probably does.

And I have that mindset too. I love my data analytics. No, I haven't tried, I haven't tried paper time tracking in quite some time, although I do have several clients that have over time. There is the heat map that was designed by, I'm pretty sure it is Charlie Gilkey on the Productive Flourishing website. So if you check out productiveflourishing.com and look up the heat map, what he does is he creates a clock. He has a clock face and splits the clock face up into slices of pie, just like, you know, an actual clock. And you actually color those times in for purposes of seeing where your levels of energy or focus might be in any given part of the day. And so he uses that. You could potentially use that clock face for being able to track your time. You know, print off 7 of those and then you, for each day, you can kind of fill in the clock along the day and even fill in the color to match that up. So there are some really unique ways in which you can use that. I find the power of being being able to have a calendar view in, say, Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel and have conditional formatting so that as I'm entering things, if, for example, the past half hour I was angry and I checked that box off, it turns it red. You can do those kinds of things. If I was happy, I could turn it green or orange or whatever colors. You can kind of have that kind of formatting done automatically for you as opposed to having to do it manually. But just like with bullet journaling, there's a lot of creativity that can be done in the paper physical space. And so if that's something that really appeals to you, I say if it attracts you to do it kind of à la David Allen, then do it, right? That's the thing that's— if you are going to be repelled by doing it as I am with tracking on paper, then I shouldn't do it. But if it's going to appeal to you, absolutely adopt.

How do you get away from, I guess, the distractions that technology provides and focusing solely on the productive aspects?

Yeah, so it's about meaningful work for me. And the fact of the matter is, is that I don't have value in— like, my values are just different than others, right? And I've laid out those values very strictly, which is that I don't care what people are doing on Facebook. I don't particularly care what your thoughts are on most matters in life, and that's not because I'm a callous, horrible human being. It's just because I have a very clear mission and purpose. And if I have that clear mission and purpose, which is to manifest the life that I want, That requires me to have to kind of put the horse blinders on. And if I don't have those horse blinders on, then every little doodad shiny bauble will catch my attention and I will be down that rabbit hole. And I'm a very interesting— interested person. Like, I think I'm an interesting person, but I'm also a very interested person in all things, right? So if something really captivates me, I can go down that rabbit hole very easily. And so I have to remember those— the due north, the compass needs to be very strong for me in terms of what I want to accomplish in any given day. And so I know that like Dr. Buck, he has the Fab Five, right? He has those top 5 things that he wants to accomplish in his day. I'm looking at that from the perspective that the tasks that I put on my list are things that are moving forward, higher-level projects in combination with things that need to be done on any given day because a client needs their marketing plan or their business plan reviewed and they need that back so they can start their loan process with the SBA loan they're trying to get. You know, like there's all of these competing things, but I know meshed in between that are the activities that are moving higher level kind of Q2 important, not urgent projects. And those, that's what it's like having the Easter egg kind of tucked in with the rest of it makes the whole list valuable to me. And that may just be my own perspective on it, but I really do believe that having the task list be a true task list, not a wish list. I'm not going to pretend that I'm going to get certain things done on the list. The list will be accomplished that day or within this week. And I will know that I'm always placing things from weekly review to weekly review, that which is moving forward those projects. And if they're not, then I need to reassess my values, right? Reassess my system based on those values. So, one is you have to have meaningful work, work that really you care about, and then you need to put that work into your system. And then it's much easier to say that Twitter can be interesting or Snapchat or for younger folks listening, TikTok. And, but, you know, like those things can be interesting, but the reality is, is that for my life to be full, I need to actually focus on on the work that's at hand because the work that's at hand will truly make me feel better about everything by virtue of feeling kind of that sense of being all used up, right? You know, you wanna have that sense of ending the day feeling like you did something worth living for.

I think that was really the point of her book is like you do have enough time and you're just making, what you're spending your time on is your priority. Most of us are unconsciously doing that. It's like we're just going through our lives and we're just doing what we think needs to be done or has to be done or what comes up, and then we're exhausted and we sit in front of the TV. Or like, that is kind of like that life of just kind of unconscious living and doing whatever's habitual or whatever, you know, we were raised to do. Or whereas what Ray's talking about is consciously sitting down and saying, okay, this is what I want my life to be, and I'm going to, I'm going to be consciously aware that what I choose to do with my time is my priority, which it is for everybody, but we just aren't— we're unconsciously doing it. We're not, you know, she says if you're not reading to your children, it's because it's not a priority. It's not because you don't have time, because you are doing these— like, she obviously doesn't like TV, but you're watching TV or whatever it is. But, you know, so I think that shift of mindset of, I wanna spend my time doing, like how I use my time shows my values. So the choice I'm making now, is this my value? Like this morning I made the choice to shop. Was it my value? Yeah, 'cause what I was shopping for, I really wanted. So I'm gonna do it. I wanted to get that thing and I wanted to have it. And Amazon said they could send it to me today. So I wanted it now, but that was a choice. And it was a conscious choice as opposed to just kind of falling into that rabbit hole that you're talking about, right? Where you just kind of start down that rabbit hole and it's not conscious. So I think that's the real— to me, that was the real takeaway of this book is like, you have choice, you're setting your priorities by how you make— what choices you make, and to kind of give some forethought to what you want out of your life will help you to make better choices in the future.

Yeah, it's the corollary to "you are what you eat." The way in which I read the book was "you are how you spend your time." And if you look at your time and you see something that you don't like, you have the ability to change that. And how you spend your time is who you are. And when that doesn't look like how you want it to look, change.

If it doesn't match who you think you are, Like, we all have a, uh, we all have a narrative about who we are, right? I'm this kind of person, I like these things. But are you actually doing those things? Are you actually spending your time being that person, or is it just in your head and you're spending your time doing something completely different? If you think you're an artist but you're spending your whole day, you know, I don't know, I don't know what, but anyway, doing something, actuarial work, doing actuarials, then maybe you're not spending enough time doing art to be an art, you know, like Do we have that disconnect of who we actually want to be or how we think of ourselves and what we're actually doing?

I bet you there are some actuaries who are listening right now who will say that their actuarial work is very creative and it is artwork.

And I don't agree. Yeah, to me, art and creative are two different things. So, I just want to make that clear that it's not— they're not— art does not have the exclusivity on creativity.

Absolutely. So, of all things, I've lost track of time and we are running up on our hour together and so are running over it now. So any final thoughts that you have about 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam before we close out the conversation? No? Good.

Would you recommend the book?

I would recommend the first 2 chapters. Yes, yes, yes.

Linda? First 2 chapters and the last 2 chapters.

If, unless you're a parent, then you could read the middle. There you go. There you go. And yeah, I certainly think that the book is useful and interesting in this area of productivity books because most productivity books really don't focus on kind of the female experience and many times the female family experience. And so I felt it was a unique book to include in our discussions this year because I have heard from a lot of folks that it's a lot of male-focused and non-family-focused material. And so it was good to have something that was a little bit more focused on that for those who are out there and are managing a family and wanting to have a fulfilling life. And I think 168 Hours provides a little bit of that for all of us. And so I'm really appreciative of all you joining the conversation. And so with that, that brings us to the end of our book discussion about 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam. I have a few comments and announcements before we end this episode for you. So here we go. We host quarterly live discussions of personal productivity books, just like the one we just discussed. We host quarterly live discussions of personal productivity books, just like the one we just discussed. And of course, you're invited. Simply head over to productivitybookgroup.org, visit the upcoming books page for full details. It has all the dates for the year, has a handy Google Calendar that you can subscribe to. And of course, that will put events automatically into your calendar if you subscribe to it. There on productivitybookgroup.org, You'll also find all past book discussions, summary reviews, and author interviews under episodes in case you can't find it in the Productivity Book Group podcast app area that you're looking in. So sometimes Productivity Book Groups inside the podcast apps, they'll only list a certain number of them. So you can go ahead and find those all under episodes on productivitybookgroup.org. Directions on how to subscribe or follow Productivity Book Group is on the website. Just click on the subscribe or follow tab. And it'll show you how to subscribe or follow in your favorite podcast app. Finally, we have a digital community where we can discuss the books we're reading. You can access it on the web, Android, and iOS apps, and we're excited to have you join us there. So visit productivitybookgroup.org/community, and you'll be taken to the digital community to join. So see you there. And with that, thanks everyone for listening to us here on Productivity Book Group. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith. Here's to your productive life.