Afford Anything - Why You're Not As Busy As You Think, with Laura Vanderkam

Episode Date: August 15, 2016

#38: There are 168 hours in a week.   If you work 40 hours per week and sleep 8 hours per night, you’ve accounted for 96 hours. You have an additional 72 waking hours per week.   What are you doing with this time?   That’s the question today’s guest, Laura Vanderkam, tried to answer by analyzing more than 1,000 time logs kept by full-time professional workers. Our collective narrative says that Americans are overworked, sleep-deprived and don’t have enough time for family or personal lives. That’s our emotional truth. But statistics paint a different picture. When more than 1,000 professionals track their time in 15-minute increments over the course of a 168-hour week, the data doesn’t point to time deprivation.    In today’s episode, Laura describes this surprising fact: we have more time than we think.   She also shares tactics on how to reduce chores and errands, stay focused and productive at work, and recognize the difference between efficacy and diminishing returns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to the Afford Anything podcast. I'm your host, Paula Pant. If you work 40 hours a week and you sleep eight hours a night, which is 56 hours a week, then you've accounted for 96 hours of your week. But a week is 168 hours long. This means that you have an additional 72 waking hours that are unaccounted for. What are you doing with this time? Let's pause and explore this for a second. and let's use math, real numbers, to walk through this. Let's assume that you work a 50-hour week instead of 40 hours. Let's also assume that you spend 10 hours a week commuting to and from work.

Let's assume that you spend five hours a week, showering and getting dressed. And then let's assume that you spend another 10 hours a week doing housework, chores, and errands. We'll also assume that you sleep 8 hours per night, which is 56 hours a week. Do you think that sounds like an incredibly jam-packed schedule? Well, guess what? Even with all of this, you still have an additional 37 waking hours per week. That's practically the equivalent of another full-time job's worth of time. And that is assuming that you work 50 hours a week and commute two hours a day,

which for most listeners is probably not going to be the case. It's also assuming that you spend another two hours a day, five days a week doing housework, which some listeners may do more, some may do less. The point that I'm trying to make is that what sounds and feels like a busy schedule is actually more free than we might assume. Business may be an emotional truth, but it's not a numerical truth when we start adding up the way that we spend our time. So it's not that no one ever has bad nights, right? We do. All of us do. And those, stand out in your mind and so they become slightly more typical. It's the night that you are up

with the toddler and then catching an early morning flight that you're going to talk about and remember, whereas another night that week where you slept perfectly fine just doesn't come to mind. This is something that I learned from Laura Vandercam, the author of the book 168 hours, you have more time than you think, and the guest on today's show. Laura is also the author of many other books about time management, including the book, I Know How She Does It, How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time. She is a Princeton graduate, a contributor to magazines like Fast Company and Fortune, and the author of guides around what the most successful people do before breakfast, on the weekends, and at work. She has studied time logs kept by more than

a thousand professional workers, some of whom have very demanding high-ranking positions. to analyze exactly where people spend their time and how they manage their schedules. She herself is a mother of four who has tracked every minute of her day for over a year in order to find out how much she really works, how much she really sleeps, and where the rest of her time is going. She has some amazing insights about time management that she's going to share in today's interview. Before we do, I want to take a a second to thank our sponsor FreshBooks, which is a company dedicated to helping you save time. If you are an entrepreneur or a small business owner or if you have a side hustle and you spend a lot of time invoicing, tracking, following up with clients, bookkeeping, dealing with the financial side of managing a small business or a side hustle, you can eliminate and automate that piece of your workload by using FreshBooks.

Try them for free. You don't need to use a credit card. You can just go to the website and sign up without inputting any financial information whatsoever. Try them out for free for a month by going to freshbooks.com slash Paula. That's freshbooks.com slash p-a-u-l. And if they ask, how did you hear about us? Mention this show. With that being said, let's talk to Laura Vandercombe about the most effective ways

that we can use our time. Because remember, time isn't just money. Time is also family, relationships, fulfillment, and the platform on which we build a happy life. Here's Laura. Hi, Laura. Hi, thanks for having me. Thank you for coming on to the show.

Now, Laura, I want you to know that in preparation for this interview, I recorded a log of how I spent my time over the span of a week in 15-minute increments. Oh, wow, good for you. And the results are embarrassing. I'm mortifying. Before I share my incredible embarrassment, tell me a little bit about how you came up with the idea of time tracking.

I think the idea is broadly out there. Lots of people like to track different aspects of their life. Certainly, anyone who's listening to this who's ever tried to lose weight, know that nutritionists will tell you to keep the full. Food Journal, like we know it works. That's why we do it. And so it's much the same with tracking time. I think I was also drawn to the idea that how we think we spend our time has very little relation to how we actually spend our time, that we have very stories we tell ourselves about our lives that may not be true. And that had come out very clearly in some data I had seen from

larger time diary studies. And so I wanted to see that on a personal level as well. And so I have tracked my time many times over the years. I've had hundreds of other people keep track of their time for me. And yes, it is always enlightening. You've mentioned that we repeat common phrases without thinking about it. Americans are increasingly overworked or I'm a busy working parent, therefore I never sleep. You know, we repeat this as part of the narrative myth and yet the statistics show otherwise. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, certainly. These are phrases you see all the time in the popular media. Some of it may be based on seemingly legitimate research.

Like if you call up a thousand Americans and ask, are you increasingly overworked? They will tell you they are, right? And so it's not that these surveys you're citing aren't correct in that sense. It's just that people don't know how they are spending their time. And so when you look at historic time diaries that have had people record, talk through how they spent a day,

Americans aren't, in fact, increasingly overworked. The average full-time worker is working about eight hours less per week now than about two generations ago. We are not increasingly sleep deprived. That is good news in my mind. I just was interviewing some economists over at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It does the American Time News survey every year. If they have people talk through the previous day, thousands of Americans rolling over the entire year. from 2003 to 2015, there's actually been a statistically significant increase in average sleep. It is well over eight hours a day. Most people do not believe that, but the average American does in fact sleep well over eight hours a day. And it has increased in the past dozen years. And so there we go. I mean, this is pretty good research.

I tend to believe it. But these stories are so compelling that we repeat them and then we base our perception of life on them. What makes these stories so compelling? Why do we have this narrative myth that we are more overworked than we are? Well, bad news sells. I mean, that's the reality of it. In general, humans have a negativity bias that things that are negative stand out in the mind more than things that are positive. And so they tend to expand in the mind, too.

So it's not that no one ever has bad nights, right? We do. All of us do. And those stand out in your mind. And so they become slightly more typical. So it's the night that you are up with the toddler and then catching an early morning flight that you're going to talk about and remember, whereas another night that week where you slept perfectly fine just doesn't come to mind. And so one is no more typical than the other, but one is more memorable than the other. And so that's why we have that story.

And the good thing about tracking time is that you can then put these stories in context. And so I tracked my time for an entire year, I'm a bit of a time freak, I guess. But I found that I did have a lot of really, really bad nights. This was a year when I had a, my youngest child was between the ages of three months to then 15 months when I ended that year. And yet, over the entire year, I averaged 7.4 hours of sleep per day. Like, that's not horrible. Right.

It's not horrible at all. And so it's good to know that. And that doesn't mean I'm feeling badder on any given night when it wasn't that. But I do know that over time, I'll make it up in some way. Right. And I am actually, when I look at the way that you describe your life and the way that you manage your time, I'm amazed by it because you have four children. You've said that you start work at 6.30 a.m. and end at 5.30 p.m., which sounds like an 11-hour day, although there's a little bit more to the story than that. So my initial reaction when I hear that is, wow, how between an 11-hour chunk of time that is devoted to work, even if there's breaks for lunch and transitions in there, between that and raising four children, I mean, where is the time for all of the in-between stuff?

It's funny that you mentioned that because the 11-hour day is sort of the perfect work day. And that's one of the things I talk about that in my mind, I have in the past had this story of like, well, I get up early in work and then I deal with the kids. But in my mind, maybe that's not as big a chunk of time as it turns out to be. And then, you know, I keep working during the day working so hard, but there's breaks within that too. So even within that 11 hours, there would be often some sort of physical activity. There's some personal stuff that gets done. So it's not that stuff doesn't go into that block. of time and I think that's one way that my work hours wound up being less than I thought they were. I like everyone, I think I work fewer hours, think I work more hours than I actually do. But, you know, where things fit in is that I think about what I want to do and I do my best to make time for it. And the good thing about running your own business is that you can to a degree get rid of a lot of stuff that doesn't need to happen. And being mindful about personal time can also increase the chances that it's spent well. I tend not to watch much television. And I think for a lot of people,

that frees up an incredible amount of time. And it's a choice. And I'm not saying that it's a good or bad choice. There's a lot of amazing television programs on. And I'm not saying that everything I choose to do instead. A lot of is great. A lot of the reading I do is pretty lowbrow. But it's a choice. And so when people say they have absolutely no time, I mean, looking at time spent on social media and television and things like that is often a good place to start. Right. One of the key ideas that I've learned from you is the notion of focusing on your core competence and letting go of the rest. You know, there are certain things in our personal lives that only we can do. like strengthen our relationships with other people.

And then there are certain things within our personal lives that other people can do, like the laundry. Can you talk a little bit about, particularly for the listeners whose first reaction is, well, how do I get non-core competence tasks off my plate? What does that execution look like? Yeah, well, it helps to think about what you do at work. I mean, if you are in any sort of organization that is beyond just you, and even if it is just you, you probably don't do certain things. Maybe it's that you don't file your

organization's accounting papers, right? You don't necessarily book all the travel. You're probably not the one who submitted all your employment documentation to the labor department. I mean, there's just all sorts of things that you do not particularly do. It's somebody else's job to do. Yeah. I don't do tech troubleshooting, for example. Yeah. You don't feel bad about the fact that your organization has an IT department because you should be able to do everything. thing, right? And yet in our personal lives, we often have that sort of guilt about not being able to do absolutely every single thing, whatever we decide absolutely every single thing is. And I think what's fascinating about that is it's really a social norms question of where the

dividing line is between what's normal to do for yourself and what's not normal to do for yourself. Most people, for instance, don't sew their own clothes. 200 years ago, people did, right? So that has changed as something that we've just. decided we can outsource. Most people don't grow their own food. Again, 200 years ago, people did grow their own food. We're okay with outsourcing that. So then it's a question, well, what else are we okay with outsourcing? Interestingly, lawn care seems to be the thing that people are most comfortable with outsourcing, possibly because it tends to be a typically more masculine chore. And men may be better about understanding the value of their time. They want to have their time off

when they're home. There's something just to consider with all that. I think an easy thing for people to start with is not doing as many errands. Online shopping is great. Lots of stuff can be set up to be reordered easily, if not automatically, which means that you spend less time in traffic, getting to stores, hunting for items that a store may not have anyway. So even if prices are slightly higher online, which they may or may not be, it saves you enough time that it is probably worth it because then you can invest that time in your relationships, in doing things that are energizing for you so that you can bring your best self to the various things you have going on. Right. I thought before I tracked my time in 15-minute increments over the span of a week,

I thought that I was pretty good at not doing too, not spending a lot of time on domestic tasks. For example, I order everything on Amazon. Amazon Prime Pantry, Amazon subscribe and save. I just, you know, that is the source of my everything from kitchen sponges to laundry detergent. And I don't do any deep cleaning. You know, I'll admit, like I've got splotches all in the inside of my microwave. I've certainly lowered my standards. But when I actually logged my time, I discovered that I spent over the course of a week 16.25 hours on a combination. of cleaning chores, errands, and life management. So everything ranging from tidying and decluttering to buying some fresh groceries. That was the one errand I ran to just opening and processing the mail.

16.25 hours. That's a lot. And that does not include cooking, which was another 3.25 hours. So that was almost 20 hours in a week, 19 and a half. And that shocked me. I would have guessed that I spent three or four hours a week on that. Well, now you know. Once you know, then you can do something about it, right? Right. You know that if you do need more time for something, that is an easy category for it to come out of. Right. And so you don't even need to tell yourself like, oh, well, I've got to cut out the TV if I'm going to do X, Y, or Z. It's like, well, no, you could just stop decluttering. You'll probably be, you'll probably open up some time. But how do you outsource? I mean, I understand outsourcing heavy cleaning, like vacuuming.

How do you outsource things like tidying up after dinner, putting the dishes away? Well, on some level, it's hard to do that, right? I would encourage people to get other family members involved, and that children, for instance, can often do much of the stuff that parents just automatically do for them. But a lot of stuff like that is about being on the simpler side with cooking, for instance. Dishes that make fewer pots dirty are probably wiser than dishes that make a lot more pot's dirty. I would also think that you might reconsider your definition of what is cleaned up after dinner, that it could be you don't need to wipe down all the counters or sweep

the floors or whatever else it is that you might be doing after dinner. As long as things look reasonable, then it's probably fine. And, you know, I think that figuring out, and with the decluttering thing, it's a lot of it's about having less stuff in the first place just because it's not all over the place. So trying to really think before you bring something into your house, building into the cost of an object, how much of your time is going to be required to take care of it. But partly that, the tidying aspect, I think people need to learn to be okay with having stuff on the floor. I mean, this is something I often tell women in particular that there is no 11 p.m. home inspection. No one is coming to your house at night and making sure everything is up off the floor.

you know, that you get points for this because it's just going to come out again the next morning, right? Like, those toys are just going to come right back out. But you will never get that time back. So just let it be. Let it sit there. You know, that stuffed elephants coming right back out. So let them sit. What would you say to people who have a hard time letting go of their standards or dropping their standards? I think, you know, again, this is sort of personality driven. And I would I would encourage people to maybe do a little bit of self-examination to see where these stories are. are coming from. Like if you've been telling yourself that, you know, a good wife always picks up the house before her husband gets home from work. Like, does your husband care? Like my guess is he really doesn't. He probably doesn't even notice, right? And so if you have these stories, asking the people who are key figures in this narrative for their perspective is probably important. There are kind of ways to deal with your own quirks. For instance, keeping one room completely free and

clear as an oasis and then shut the door and go hang out in there. Oh, I like that. And one of the things that when we move from our apartment in New York out to a house outside Philadelphia, that really was a selling point for me, was having the basement. And the basement is where the children's toys go. And I don't really care what it looks like down there because when the door is shut, I can't see it. Like, I don't need to go down there. There's toys all over the floor, but it's not bothering me in a way where if I was stepping over them in my apartment, you know, between like the table and the stove, yeah, that bothered me. Now it doesn't bother me.

So, you know, we can actually tolerate a lot more toys without it being an issue. So not that everyone needs to move to a house with a basement, but figure out if there is a room that you can decide that's the messy room. And here's another room that is the clean and serene room. And at the end of the day, I would go hang out there. Ah, the sanctuary room. That makes a lot of. of sense. I like that. I also found when I was tracking my time, the good news is that there's many

things that I am doing right. Watching TV took up one hour over the course of a week. I was sleeping seven and a half hours a night. I worked 43.25 hours that week. Hey, you're good. All of these are great. Yeah. You know, I spent two hours in like deep thinking, like planning and journaling and another two and a half hours reading books. And that doesn't include audiobooks, but just reading books for fun. So I was happy about all of that. But then I spent nine and a half hours in what I can only describe as puttering around, which that's a generous description.

I would more accurately say like a time of vortex just opened up and swallowed me whole. And I first saw an example of this. The first morning that I logged my time, it took me exactly 15 minutes to brush my teeth, brush my hair, get dressed, and another 15 minutes to make coffee and eat breakfast. And then another 15 minutes just disappeared. Like, magically, it just, I don't know where it went. Do you see things like that when you look at time diaries? I do. Is this common?

Well, and especially like on weekends. I mean, you know, weekday mornings are actually among the more. regimented times in people's lives, whole hours can disappear on weekends. And that would be fine if they were spent in, like, awesome ways. I mean, I think, you know, lying out on the grass daydreaming would be an amazing way to spend an hour, but it's often not that. It's kind of going back to the mail pile and then flipping through a magazine that was sitting there, but then getting distracted by one thing on the counter, so you put that away, and then you see something out in the corner, you go do that. Yeah, that's exactly what I do. That was nine and a half hours of my week.

Yes, time vortex, as you put it. I like that phrase. I think that there are two things to think about with this. One is that it is impossible to have 100% efficiency. Everybody is going to have some time that is non-optimally spent. You can't account for every single minute in the sense of having it all blocked to high-value activities. Like there's transitions, there's energy is low, whatever it is. You're not going to have 100% efficiency.

That said, if you are feeling like there are things you would like to do more of with your time, it helps to identify where these vortexes occur, and then have little things that are enjoyable to you that you can easily start doing during one of these times. So reading is a great thing for this, right? If you have books that you are into, that time vortex will often disappear for that particular week if you're reading a real page turner because you want to read it every sense, you know, every minute that you can read it. And so once you recognize that, you say, oh, well, I need to have good books around. So I have something to read when this open time appears.

Or maybe it's a hobby that you can get into really quickly. I don't know what that happens to be. Maybe it's crossword puzzles or a game you really like to play or just something you can do in small bits of time that you enjoy. And then when you find yourself going into this vortex mode, you say, oh, well, I've got something I can do for five minutes. Let me do this. I like that. Part of the key to finding happiness is having a sense of progress. We need to be working enough to be able to create progress towards our goals, whatever those goals may be, whether it's career goals or personal goals, but not so much that we hit the point of diminishing returns. Can you kind of elaborate on this idea or explain? Yeah, I mean, one of the more frustrating things

for people who have a lot going on in their personal lives is that there really is more returns to working more hours in many jobs. And it's not up around 80 hours a week. It's just that for many people, there is a huge difference between working 30 hours a week and 40 hours a week in terms of career options, like forward motion being promoted. And so knowing that, you may decide, well, it might be worth it to put in those extra hours to make sure that I am moving forward so I can keep getting access to these better jobs, more pay, but I can make my personal life easier because I have this extra money. So you want to do that. So you want to be able to be able to work. I'm want to do that. Of course, there's a point of diminishing returns for everything. And so I'm guessing

that if you are working 70 hours a week, getting up to 80 is probably not going to help matters. And in fact, it may hurt matters quite a bit because you start getting exhausted and distracted and all that. So figuring out that optimal point and working up until that point is key for being effective, both at work and then at home because you know, you want to make sure you have enough time in your personal life to enjoy yourself and to rejuvenate yourself. But you also don't want to necessarily shortchange your career out of this idea that, well, I don't know, I can't work that many hours. There might be a way to work it flexibly and fit it into your life. How do you recognize when you're hitting the point of diminishing returns? What often happens is you get tired, you make mistakes, you're not excited about

things. And you can find, like, after you've taken a break when you come back more refreshed and renewed, like, that's a good sense. So, you know, oh, yeah, I was flitting back and forth between things, doing the work equivalent of puttering around. They discuss the time vortex that happens at work, too. And often mid-afternoon, you go back and forth between your email and they get distracted by something online. And then, you know, before you know it, like, the whole hour you had between meetings got sucked up. And where did it go? I don't know, somewhere. Nothing got accomplished really during that time.

Often that means that you need a break. And if you don't take a real break, your brain will take a fake one. And you'll wind up online shopping, checking headlines, looking at stocks, whatever it is you do. So better to get away from the desk, take a real break, and you'll come back feeling better. And it's the same thing with the work week overall. Like if you find yourself doing a lot of that probably means you need to stop, go home, refresh yourself, and then start again the next day. If you don't take a real break, your brain will take a fake one. What would you say to the listeners who work in a traditional office?

What is an effective way for them to take a break if they need it without, you know, in a way that might be socially acceptable in a traditional workplace? Yeah. Well, I mean, I would say that breaks are always acceptable. Like, you're allowed to go to the bathroom, for instance. I am guessing in your office place. I mean, maybe not. But most workplaces you are allowed to go to the bathroom. And you don't make a big deal about it, right?

like you don't announce, hello, everyone, I'm getting up to go to the bathroom now. Like, you just do it. And you do the same thing. Like, you know, if you need to go grab a cup of coffee, just go do it. I mean, if you want to go walk outside for five minutes, I mean, maybe put your headset on for your phone and act like you need an excuse. Like you're just walking around taking a phone call or so. You know, that's sort of a silly subterfuge that we honestly tend to think other people are paying a lot more attention to us than they actually are. My guess is no one cares. Like, no one notices. If your supervisor says something to you about it, like I've noticed that every day at 2.30, you walk outside for 15 minutes. And I'm quite concerned about this.

If the person says that, then you can have that conversation about, you know, well, I feel like I function better afterwards. And I'm happy to, you know, if there's something you need right at 2.15, tell me. But I'm guessing that will never come up. Yeah, I think you're right. And one of the things that I've learned the hard way over the span of my career is that when I'm at a computer zoning out and get distracted by Facebook or by internet shopping, it's time to walk away. You know, there's nothing productive about sitting and looking at a laptop like a zombie. No, there really isn't. And it's definitely cheaper versus the online shopping to walk away, take a quick break, chat with someone, walk around the building, whatever it is.

all of those things will add to your energy levels and then you'll be more focused when you get back. Right. I've got two final questions. The first is that you've talked in several of your books about this false and very disempowering narrative about nobody can have it all, so don't even try. This narrative that career and family is either or. You cannot have both. Can you talk about why you think that that is both a fake and a disempowering kind of idea? Well, one reason it's fake is just pure math. I mean, there's 168 hours in a week. If you are working 50 hours a week, which is more than the vast majority of people do,

and you are sleeping eight hours per night, so that's 56 per week, that leaves 62 hours for other things. So the idea that you cannot have a fulfilling personal and family life in 62 hours a week seems a wee bit speculous to me. I mean, it's just not, you know, doesn't make sense. Right. Most people have never run those numbers. So they have no idea. They don't know that there's 62 hours if they're working 50, which again, most people are not. And those are 62 waking hours. Yeah, waking, non-working hours. If you are working 40 hours a week, so that's a basic full-time job,

that leaves 72 hours for other things. Like that is 10 hours a day, averaged over the entire week. It is a lot of time. It is way more time than you are working. I always love when people have this story of like, well, no one will ever achieve balance, you know, and just understand that work takes a lot and it's okay. I'm like, well, that's interesting because with 168 hours a week, again, if you sleep for 56, of your waking hours, you would have to be working 56 hours a week in order to have equal time waking not at work and waking at work, like to be in that sort of balance. Right. So the adage that you spend most of your waking hours at work is not true. It's completely untrue for the vast majority of people. So one of it is just the numbers. The other is, though, how we're looking at time.

We often look at time day to day, but we don't live our lives in days. We live our lives in weeks. A week is the cycle of life as we live it. And so people are like, oh, well, today, I, you know, I can't have it all. Like, it was a long day at work. And then I had to deal with some crisis with whatever else. And I didn't get to see much of my family. No one can have it all, right? But it's like, well, okay, maybe you didn't today, but let's expand the right. Let's look at the whole week. Did you spend time with your family this week? Unless universally, the answer is yes.

So, you know, with stuff like exercise, people are trying to find a perfect time every single day. There's not a perfect time every single day. But if you look at the whole of the week, you can find three or four spots in the whole of a week you can fit it in. It didn't happen every day at the same time, but it didn't have to. It was still part of your life. So by looking at the whole of the week, I think you could probably find that. space for whatever matters to you. Well, thank you, Laura.

What are you working on now? And where can the listeners find you if they want to learn more? Yeah, well, I'm trying to figure out what my next book topic will be, hoping to figure that out soon and get started on it. And if people would love to like to connect with me, I'm at laura vandercam.com as my website. I blog close to daily there. I love to interact with readers. Also on social media, Twitter, at L. Vandercombe or Facebook, Laura Vandercambe

author. Love to connect with your listeners. Absolutely. And I would just say I love your Twitter feed. You'd recently tweeted that when people say, I don't have time, what they really mean is it's not a priority. Your Twitter feed just has gems like that that come out all of the time. I enjoy seeing what you share. Thank you so much. So what have we learned from all of this? Well, first and foremost, be aware of time vortexes. Those periods in your life where you're neither working nor relaxing, you're just losing time. Before I started tracking my own time, I bought into the myth that I was super busy. I had no idea that almost 10 hours a week were getting lost to just nothingness, vortexes,

times when I might pick up a magazine and read a few words and then move over to put a few dishes away and then bounce around to do something else. You know, these are not productive hours. These are not hours that I'm spending focused on driving a singular task forward, whether that task is hanging out with a friend or exercising or working. These hours are just being puttered away, frittered away. And I imagine that many of you are experiencing the same thing and you might not know it. So that really leads us to lesson number two. In order to be aware of time vortexes, as well as aware of any other unexpected uses of your time,

keep a time log. Now the way that I did this was I literally printed out a spreadsheet that allowed me to track my time in 15 minute increments over the course of a week. I printed it out and for a week carried a piece of paper and a pen around with me everywhere I went. You don't have to do this. You could track it on your phone, for example. I chose to carry a physical piece of paper and pen, number one, as a reminder to do it, because that piece of paper is more of a reminder than a phone is. And number two, in order to avoid the temptation of turning on my phone and then getting sucked into phone distraction land. So that's the reason I chose to do it that way, but you can choose to do it in whatever way works for you. I do highly recommend tracking your time in 15-minute increments over the span of 168-hour week

because the results might be surprising and in my case very embarrassing. I had no idea I was wasting almost 10 hours a week, which is time that I could be deepening relationships, progressing towards my various work or personal goals, or just basically being more intentional about creating a life that I want to lead in that wasted time. And that leads us to realization number three, which is that the highest and best use of your time is to focus on those areas of core competence. There are certain things that you and only you can do. You cannot outsource calling your mom. You cannot outsource exercising. But you can outsource vacuuming. And if you're not in debt, if you have the space in your budget to be able to do that, that can be one of the best uses of your money.

One thing that I loved about Laura's approach to understanding the value of your time is that in the personal finance community, there tends to be a linear thought process around the time and money relationship. A lot of people say, well, it's okay to outsource a given task if you spend that time working. And they calculate this as a straightforward return on investment. You pay $10 to outsource a task. You then spend that same hour producing $40 worth of value and you're left with a net profit, quote unquote, of $30. While this is the formula that people in the personal finance community tend to use, it's never been a very satisfying formula because the fact of the matter is you cannot work 168 hours a week. In fact, after a certain point of time, you hit diminishing returns. Once you reach maybe 60 hours a week, you might not be productive

anymore. You have a very limited amount of mental energy and focus that you can bring into your work life. And given the fact that people's working hours are naturally limited by the extent of their energy, a lot of people then conclude, well, in the time that I'm not working, I could quote unquote save money by spending that time washing dishes or driving to the grocery store or running errands at Target. But Laura's approach to this problem is a little bit different. Rather than assuming that time and money have a very linear transactional trade-off, she encourages people to think about their core competencies. What are the things that you and only you can do? and what are the things that others can do?

Only you can exercise. Only you can spend time playing with your children. But other people can buy groceries or come into your house once a week to prepare a week's worth of lunches and dinners in advance. And so when we think about how to value our time, we shouldn't necessarily be thinking of it in transactional terms. We should be thinking of it in,

what should I keep in my own life and what are the activities that I do that I don't necessarily need to do? In essence, you're managing your personal life in very much the same way that you would manage your business life. You focus on your unique abilities and you enlist the help of others for tasks that are not your core unique abilities. That makes a lot of sense to me. I would love to hear what you think. Please share your comments by going to podcast.offordainthing.com and leave your comments and thoughts under today's episode.

That's podcast.afordanything.com. Please also go to iTunes and leave a review for the Afford Anything podcast. These reviews are extremely helpful in helping us grow our audience, reach more people, and book excellent guests. If you'd like to learn more about Laura, please visit our website. Again, that's podcast.orgataworthanithing.com, where we've linked to several of her books.

Finally, I'd like to take one more moment to thank our sponsor, FreshBooks, for keeping us on the air. Please show your support by signing up for a free 30-day trial at FreshBooks.com slash Paula. That's FreshBooks.com slash Paula. And when they ask, how did you hear about us? Mention this show. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Paula Pant, the host of the Afford Anything podcast. I'll catch you next week.

Jay, you've been gone from the show for a long time, but you're not. still on the blooper reel. Yeah, that's so strange. Are you voicing from beyond? Beyond podcasting. Yes, I'm in my boxers, too. That's just life as a blogger.