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Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics

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Speaker 1: used by leading innovators to get so much out of

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Speaker 1: their day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imbach. I'm an

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Speaker 1: organizational psychologist, the founder of innovation consultancy Inventium, and I'm

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Speaker 1: obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work date. This

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Speaker 1: episode is another my favorite Tip episode. The title is

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Speaker 1: probably pretty self explanatory. It's about my favorite tip from

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Speaker 1: each of the interviews I conduct. So my guest today

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Speaker 1: is Laura Vandercam. Laura is a global expert on time

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Speaker 1: management and helps people spend more time on what matters

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Speaker 1: and less on what doesn't. She's the author of a

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Speaker 1: bunch of best selling books, ranging from Off the Clock,

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Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty eight Hours, What the Most Successful

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Speaker 1: People Do Before Breakfast, and her latest book, Juliet School

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Speaker 1: of Possibilities. Her work has appeared in The New York Times,

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Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fortune, and Fast Company,

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Speaker 1: and her ted talk How to Gain Control of Your

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Speaker 1: Free Time has been viewed more than five million times.

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Speaker 1: So I follow Laura's work for several years. I've always

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Speaker 1: felt that she takes a really novel view of the

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Speaker 1: whole time management concept. So in this extract, Laura talks

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Speaker 1: about why she has tracked her time in thirty minute

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Speaker 1: blocks for the last four years.

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Speaker 2: So there are one hundred and sixty eight hours in

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Speaker 2: a week. That is twenty four times seven. You know,

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Speaker 2: people say twenty four to seven all the time, but

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Speaker 2: surprisingly few people multiply it through. I think this is

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Speaker 2: a better way to think about time than just twenty

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Speaker 2: four hours, because you know, a week is the cycle

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Speaker 2: of life as we actually live it. So I track

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Speaker 2: my time, and I track it on one hundred and

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Speaker 2: sixty eight hour spreadsheets. It's actually half hour blocks, so

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Speaker 2: three hundred and thirty six cells representing a one hundred

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Speaker 2: and sixty eight hour week. I encourage everyone else to

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Speaker 2: try tracking a week. I've actually been doing this for

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Speaker 2: four years now, which I don't mean anyone else needs

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Speaker 2: to do. But you could track for a week and

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Speaker 2: you learned all kinds of year full stuff about your life.

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Speaker 2: You know, when you work, when you don't work, when

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Speaker 2: you sleep when you don't sleep, but what you do

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Speaker 2: with your family, what you do when you have free time,

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Speaker 2: what you do when you haven't noticed you're going to

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Speaker 2: have free time, And so it kind of sneaks up

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Speaker 2: on you. These are all useful things to know about

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Speaker 2: your life. So, yeah, time tracking.

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Speaker 1: What have been the biggest learnings for you? For tracking

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Speaker 1: your time for four years?

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Speaker 2: Well, I had a couple of key insights, you know.

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Speaker 2: The one was that I work less than I think

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Speaker 2: I do. And this happens to a lot of people,

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Speaker 2: actually is we sort of have in our minds our

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Speaker 2: longest weeks as typical. So if somebody asks you, oh,

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Speaker 2: what's a typical day, what's a typical week, you describe

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Speaker 2: a week where you are kind of at work a lot,

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Speaker 2: which happens sometimes, but it doesn't happen every week. And

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Speaker 2: I found that out when I started tracking a lot

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Speaker 2: of my time that you know, I had been telling

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Speaker 2: people I worked fifty hours a week, and it turned

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Speaker 2: out I worked, on average a lot closer to forty

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Speaker 2: hours a week, which is a different number than fifty

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Speaker 2: turns out. But you know, there are smaller insights too

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Speaker 2: which were interesting to me. One is that I spend

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Speaker 2: a lot more time in the car than I thought

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Speaker 2: I did because I work out of a home office,

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Speaker 2: so I don't have a daily commute. And for a

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Speaker 2: lot of people, their daily commute is most of the

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Speaker 2: time they spend in the car, and since I didn't

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Speaker 2: have that in my mind, I was never in the car.

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Speaker 2: But that's not true. I do a lot of short

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Speaker 2: trips here and there, or you know, I meet someone randomly.

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Speaker 2: It's not an ever given day thing, but here and there,

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Speaker 2: and you know, I wound up spending on average, more

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Speaker 2: than an hour a day in the car. And once

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Speaker 2: I realized that, I was like, Wow, I should probably

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Speaker 2: be a little bit more mindful of what I'm doing

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Speaker 2: in this time than just listening to Top forty radio,

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Speaker 2: given that I don't even like Top forty radio, and

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Speaker 2: yet wind up spending an hour of my day listening

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Speaker 2: to it. I guess that's how I know all the

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Speaker 2: Taylor Swift songs. At the same time, I had also

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Speaker 2: noticed from tracking my time that I have this small

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Speaker 2: chunk of time in the morning on weekdays that is

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Speaker 2: very difficult to use well. So usually I have either

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Speaker 2: brought my middle schooler in the carpool to his middle

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Speaker 2: school and I'm back by eight ten, or I've been

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Speaker 2: having breakfast with some of my younger children and have

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Speaker 2: left the table by about eight ten. I can go

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Speaker 2: into my office. I have a nanny who comes and

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Speaker 2: helps with the kids, and so you know, she's with

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Speaker 2: the kids eight ten, I'm in my office. However, I

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Speaker 2: also help get my middle two kids out to the

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Speaker 2: bus at eight twenty five. So I've got fifteen minutes

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Speaker 2: there and I can never use it for anything useful,

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Speaker 2: like it's good morning time. But I was always just

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Speaker 2: deleting emails pretty much. And then I said, wait a minute,

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Speaker 2: I could combine these two things, like that I have

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Speaker 2: this chunk of time and that I want to do

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Speaker 2: strength training, this would be a perfect time. So I

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Speaker 2: have a kettlebell and resistance bands in my office, walk

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Speaker 2: into my office at eight ten, start doing stuff with

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Speaker 2: the kettlebells and the resistance band, do some plank poses,

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Speaker 2: and then eight twenty five, get the kids out to

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Speaker 2: the bus. And so I've actually stuck with it for

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Speaker 2: about a month and it's just a perfect cue, Like

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Speaker 2: I know when I walk into my office that's the

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Speaker 2: time to do it, and I know I'm not doing

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Speaker 2: anything else, so it's not taking time away from some

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Speaker 2: other high value activity. I'm not trying to find some

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Speaker 2: time the rest of my schedule. This is when I

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Speaker 2: do it, and so it's actually been relatively easy to

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Speaker 2: stick with.

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Speaker 1: Hello me again. I love the idea of finding regular

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Speaker 1: dead time that you have and thinking constructively about how

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Speaker 1: best to feel it. I love what Laura said about that,

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Speaker 1: and I wonder are you feeling inspired to perhaps track

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Speaker 1: your own time, maybe just for a week. I've done

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Speaker 1: this several times, and it's always been surprising. I think

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Speaker 1: it's so useful to look at how you spend your

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Speaker 1: time and to ask yourself, does this represent my values?

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Speaker 1: Like if health is a core value, it's definitely one

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Speaker 1: of mine. How many hours out of the one hundred

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Speaker 1: and sixty eight that you have in a week do

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Speaker 1: you spend exercising? So that is it for today. If

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Speaker 1: you like this excerpt, you might want to listen to

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Speaker 1: my full chat with Laura, which I link to in

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Speaker 1: the show notes. And if you're enjoying How I Work,

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Speaker 1: why not share podcast or this episode with other people

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Speaker 1: that you think could benefit. That's one of the ways

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Speaker 1: that How I Work has grown so quickly over its lifetime.

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Speaker 1: So thank you for everyone that's shared it, And if

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Speaker 1: you haven't, maybe do that today. So that's it for

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Speaker 1: today and I will see you next time