7 tips to make the most of your time

Have you ever wondered how to balance the demand of quality time with family, friends, your hobbies, a decent night’s sleep plus a successful career?

Let’s be honest; it’s hard. There is no standard recipe for success, no shortcuts, and it’s a lot of trial and error. Nonetheless, the book from Laura Vanderkam I know how she does it was a big game-changer how to think about time. Instead of relying of stories from pop culture, wonder woman, instagram, I know how she does it adds hard data to the debate. Based on hour-by-hour time logs from 1001 days in the lives of working mothers earning at least $100,000 a year, this book shows how these women spend the 168 hours that every one of us has each week.

Below 7 tips from personal experience, in which I know how she does it helped shape my thinking.

1. Think 168 hours — not 24. We have a funny tendency to think that work/life balance requires having a lot of personal time. This is true, however avoid the 24-hour trap: make sure you squeeze all you activities in 24-hours every day. Rather take the whole week into account when assessing your life. Personally I work the longer hours earlier in the week and preserve more personal time later on.
2. Split shifts — some work happens during the day, some during the night too. After 16.30 I stop working to spend time with my daughter. In the evening, after feeding her, putting her to bed and having dinner with my husband, I often continue work for a hew hours.
3. Work remotely — the benefit of having your phone and laptop, you can work anywhere. I don’t just mean working from home during the pandemic. Even my car outside daycare is sometimes a mobile office, if that allows me to drop off my daughter.
4. Reevaluate meals — meeting with friends does not always have to be for dinner. You can have great quality time in the morning for breakfast or a nice lunch with friends. Also rethink your important family meal time. For some families, breakfast works better than dinner.
5. Rethink Weekends — I think it’s good to keep 24 hours off at some point to clear your head. But look at it this way, working five hours on the weekend translates to an hour less you need to work every weekday. It helps me feel less stressed during the week to get a few hours in during the weekend.
6. Make a week planning — plan your week ahead when it comes to time with the family, dinner, chores etc. I know it sounds rigid, but knowing what happens and agreeing with your spouse on who cooks, who brings the child to daycare, who picks up, not forgetting to put the garbage outside; it prevents many quarrels and disappointments. We use a whiteboard for our weekly planning.
7. Things change, adjust — what works one month, might not work the next month because maybe your child is teething, or you have an investment round to finish. Trial and error is totally fine and routines change all the time. Most importantly, don’t be too harsh on yourself, there are many hours left in the week, don’t stress it’s not worth it.

Let me know what works for you!