substack.com - You Have More Time Than You Think — Here’s How I Found Mine
How to Find Extra time to Do Things You Love
Section titled “How to Find Extra time to Do Things You Love”Productivity is one of my superpowers. Every year, I read at least one new book on the topic, partly to learn new tricks, partly to remind myself of the old ones. This time it was 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam (her TED Talk is worth a watch too).
Finally, a productivity book written by a working mom!
I’ll happily learn from professors or young Youtubers about productivity hacks, but it’s just not the same when the author is a mom juggling a family and a career. Vanderkam, a journalist, fills her book with stories of real people. She opens with Theresa Daytner, a mother of six (including 8-year-old twins), and owner of the business employing 12 people, who besides this, still finds time for solitary hikes, reading novels and organising surprise parties for her husband.
After reading that, you know this isn’t a book about ordinary mortals. And yet, it makes you believe you might become a little more like them.
The first hurdle is keeping a time log and tracking where you spend your time for one week.
Still reading? All right. You are destined for greatness. 🙂
I, too, dismissed the idea. It sounded painfully boring. Who wants to record life in 15-minute chunks for seven days straight? There is a reason I am not a lawyer.
But as I read on, my curiosity was piqued.
Vanderkam says that when people do these logs, they discover that their time doesn’t go where they think it does.
- Most people overestimate how much they work by about 25%. Think you’re doing 60 hours a week? It’s probably closer to 48. (One of my old Amazon bosses used to say that too. He was well loved - but not for this statement.)
- Devices are eating our time. An average adult spends 3.2 hours a day on their phone. You can easily check your own tally, just Google how.
- And while many of us happily pay for childcare, we hesitate to outsource housework, even as we say we want “more quality time with the kids”.
This last one rings a bell. There is a lot of time in my household spent on grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning up. Some of it is deliberate - my husband lists “cooking” as one of his hobbies and we all enjoy wholesome home-cooked dinners. But some of it is a habit. Both my husband and I grew up in families where parents did everything themselves. Outsourcing still feels… wrong. Somehow you are not “good enough” if you are ordering a take-out or loading a dryer instead of hand-drying your washing.
When I picture outsourcing chores, I imagine a 19th century butler gliding silently around a mansion, something only the very rich could afford. But there’s a middle ground.
In the book, Vanderkam tells a story of Sid Savara, who discovered he spent 15 hours on food-related chores. He hired a personal chef for $60/week plus the cost of groceries (book was published in 2010, so prices may have gone up). Not only did he reclaim 15 hours, but his grocery bill reduced. How? The chef bought in bulk and cooked for many clients at once, hence creating economies of scale. Savara himself was never in the store and hence also skipped the impulse buys.
Another chapter is called “Don’t Do Your Own Laundry”. Surely, I thought, laundry is easy - we have machines. I grew up in a communist country and we had to wash everything by hand (yes, this is my version of ” uphill both ways ” story for my children). But with six people in the house, even with a washer and a dryer, laundry feels like a full-time job. There’s always a load running, one waiting to dry, another to fold. And I’ve yet to meet anyone who claims that washing is their hobby.
Vanderkam uses a wash-and-fold service in New York for about $2.50 a kilo. I doubted such luxuries existed in Luxembourg, but decided to run an experiment. ChatGPT gave me a few options. The first service we booked never showed up, but the second one did. They charge €9 per kilo (quite different from $2.5!) and bedsheets cost a ton, yet the peace at home over the last three weeks has been priceless.
And if anyone wants to start a reasonably priced laundry service for busy parents in Luxembourg, there’s a clear gap in the market. 🙂
I can already hear the protests: Just listen to a podcast while folding! Or Make it a family chore and build grit with kids! Fair points. Pairing chores with something pleasant is one kind of productivity. But given a choice, I’d rather use that hour to write, read with my kids, or dream up a side project.
If I put a price tag on my time: one hour of chores equals minimum wage. Chores while listening to Invest Like the Best? Maybe 3x. One hour spent creating, learning, or truly connecting with my family? That’s worth hundreds.
So what did I learn from my own time study?
As Vanderkam predicted, I worked fewer hours than it felt like. My week was busy: a few evenings, some weekend work, but the total came to 42 hours. I’m happy with that; it’s where I want my boundaries to be.
Exercise, on the other hand, fell short: 3.5 hours over four sessions. As I was tallying this on a Sunday, I grabbed my swimsuit and headed to the pool to make up for it. I have now set longer goals for my swimming sessions.
On the plus side, I logged 37 hours of family time, 20 of them were quality time. The average for quality time is just three, so apparently we are doing better than I thought.
Admin work surprised me too. I thought it would be 15 hours a week; the tally showed only 4. I suspect it’s because I fold it into family time (doing it with my husband) or leisure (listening to podcasts). Those moments don’t feel like admin anymore.
In fact, reframing time is powerful.
I remember an Amazon VP telling us he spent 30% of his time “growing people”. When someone asked how that was possible with his back-to-back meetings, he said: I go into every meeting with the intention of raising the next generation of leaders. Teaching, coaching, listening — that was his mental bucket.
Since doing this exercise, I have become more deliberate about labelling my time. When I change the mental bucket, I stop “laying bricks” and move to “building a cathedral”. And I feel less rushed, more in control. Same work has more meaning.
In case you are interested in data, this is how an average working parent spends their weekly 168 hours:
- Sleep: 56
- Work, including commute: 45
- Family & Home (childcare + chores + cooking + school and extracurricular logistics): 31
- Personal (self-care + exercise + admin): 14
- Leisure & social (incl. hobbies): 12
- Misc / transition: 5
You can do a time study and find what your hours look like. It may sound boring - and it may also change your life.
Thanks for reading! If this resonated with you, send it to a busy parent who deserves a guilt-free hour back. And if you are new here, subscribe - every other week I share an idea or learning that makes our work and life just a little bit better.