#583 Big Time with Laura Vanderkam (A Career Well Spent Series)

0:00One thing that hasn't changed is there are still 168 hours in a week. Every Monday when you're starting over again, you get to decide how to spend it. We're going to talk about time. How do you make sure your time is well spent in your career? And the expert I'm going to be talking to is Laura Vanderkam. Time is precious. There is only so much of it. I believe we do have a lot of time. Time is big. Time is big enough for what matters to us. but part of having enough space for the things that matter to us is to be very judicious. Tracking your time for a week is one of the best things you can do to change your perception of time.

0:39I've been tracking my time for 11 years now. For somebody that is feeling, sounding a bit like me, like the time victim, and we're moving them to like the big time transformer, what other things could they start doing so they feel a bit more in control?

0:58Hi, it's Helen from the Squiggly Careers Podcast and you are listening to our summer series which is all about a career well spent. Sarah and I thought that summer was a really good moment to reflect. Maybe you're flying somewhere or maybe your colleagues have gone on holiday and you've got a little bit more time to think. And we would love some of that time to be spent thinking about your career, the impact and purpose and that is what this series is all about. we thought it would be even better if we borrowed some brilliance for some experts in this area so in the four conversations that we've got in this series you're going to hear us talking to people about purpose about career longevity about impactful work that really makes a difference about building the right relationships and in today's conversation we're going to talk about time how do you make sure your time is well spent in your career and the expert I'm going to be talking to is Laura Vanderkam.

1:56I've followed her work for a while. She's got a new book out called Big Time. And the reason I love Laura's work is it is just so practical. I mean, like minute by minute, how do you track it? How do you think about where you're spending that? And I think she helps you go from a bit of overwhelm about where your time is being spent right now to crystal clear clarity about what you could do differently. And I really hope that comes across in this conversation, which felt like a personal coaching session for me, if I'm honest. So I hope you can take lots of useful insights from it too. I think we should just get straight to the conversation now.

2:35Laura, welcome to the Squiggly Careers podcast. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Well, I'm very excited to talk about time, but specifically to talk to you about time, because I have followed your work from afar for a while, a long time. And I've really loved it. And I found it really connected with me. It was your first book, 168 Hours. That was the first one that I kind of connected with. And I remember talking to so many people about things. I was like, this is such a good book. It will help you think differently. I used so many phrases and ideas from that book. So it's brilliant to talk to you about time.

3:12But also for our community, time is one of the topics that they are most interested in. So whenever we do episodes around time, it always gets lots of engagement. So the combination of your expertise and their interest. I know this is going to be a brilliantly useful podcast for people. So you've written lots on time and most recently your book, Big Time. And I guess my first question is, since you wrote 168 Hours, which is my first connection with your work, to where you are now, what has changed in how you think about time and perhaps the problem to be solved with time? Well, one thing that hasn't changed is there are still 168 hours in a week.

3:58And this is, I mean, this is a little bit trite, but what I keep coming back to is that we do all have 168 hours in a week, every week. Every Monday when you're starting over again, you've got 168 hours in front of you. And to a large degree, you get to decide how to spend it. There are certain things we have to do, but there's also a lot of choice within that rubric. And so that has not changed at all. You know, I've grown up some. I have grown my family. My sort of opportunities at work have kind of expanded since writing 168 hours, which is wonderful. So there's probably more pieces for me to manage now.

4:45So I've had to be in some ways a little bit more organized about large parts of my time. But I'm happy to report that at least the initial stuff I put out in 168 hours has still been useful as I've moved forward. And, you know, coming into big time, it's been more of an exploration of how we can achieve a sense of time abundance. because I think a lot of us become very good at getting done everything that we need to get done in those 168 hours. But we may not be as focused on feeling like we're not rushed, like time is expansive, like we really do have the time for the things we want to do, not just the things we have to do.

5:29And so big time is all about how we can achieve that sense of time abundance and hopefully in the process fall in love with our schedules. I mean, I would love to fall in love with my schedule. Most of the time I resent it. Or barely tolerate it, right? We're trying to move it into a different level of our relationship with our schedules here. Okay, well, I feel like I'm your case study for how to apply some of the things in big time. So I think, I mean, I genuinely do sometimes resent my schedule, because I feel like I don't have that kind of feeling of abundance. I feel like I, my diary determines what I do, and there doesn't feel like there is space to do much more than it.

6:13Very often, I love what I do, but that is how I feel. And as you were talking about, like, abundance, the thoughts in my head were, how much of that is a psychological construct and how much is a structural? By which I mean, are there practical things I should be doing differently with my diaries that I have this sense of abundance? Or is it more about a mindset, a framing for how I feel about time? It's definitely both. There are certain things we can do with our calendars or diaries, however we want to describe it, to make our schedules allow for the sense of time abundance. You mentioned feeling resentful of the stuff that's on it, which the first question is, how did it get on there in the first place, right?

6:59Was it you putting it on? If so, then you need to have a talk every time you put something on there. You could have a talk with future you in your brain about whether you're going to want to do this when it becomes time for future you to do the thing that past you thought was a good idea to put in your diary. And I would recommend really having that conversation every time you put something on there. You know, a good question to ask yourself is, would I do this tomorrow? Because I think a lot of us have a tendency to, you know, we're recording this in June and it'll be like something will come up for November and you're like, well, I'm going to have tons of time in November.

7:36Like November me is going to, you know, have all the time in the world. I can totally do this in November. And then, you know, Come November and you're the same person you were back in June and still have as much going on and you're feeling resentful that June you did this to November you. So I would suggest before you do this to November you, have a real conversation about whether you do it tomorrow or whether you wouldn't. Because if you would never take it on for tomorrow, if you'd be absolutely no way, I would never want to move things around or cancel things or do anything else to fit this in tomorrow, you probably aren't going to want to do it in November either.

8:10I think you can also be careful to always put things in your schedule that you are looking forward to. So as part of your weekly planning or your daily planning or whatever, you're looking forward to the day. Obviously, there are things we have to do and we want to make sure we have time allocated to that. But, you know, if you've got all the pieces moving, everything's happening as it's supposed to happen, the gears are turning. Is there anything in there that you are personally, genuinely excited to be doing? And if not, you need to go back and work on it again. Because the fact that everyone got where they were supposed to go at the right time doesn't mean that this is a life that you are enjoying.

8:50So think about that. You know, what could you look forward to? Ideally, we have something every day we are looking forward to. But if that seems a bit much and some days are, you know, going to be like that, at least we want to have a couple things each week that we're like, wow, I am really excited to see that in my schedule. And I think that helps with the mindset piece of it. a little bit. Because yeah, it is. I mean, the mindset of time abundance is also being like, wow, you know, I know where my time goes. I can see that there is still some space that I can control. And maybe I would like more.

9:24I'm sure we'd all like more. But a little bit is a long way from nothing. And even in a little bit, we can do things that make life enjoyable and meaningful and remind us that we do have space for what is important. I am I should I really feel like I need to say I do I do most of the time love what is in my diary I should say that I just um and I want to come back to that point you raised about like who's in control of your diary because I think that's an interesting thing but I just wanted to reflect on your like would I do it tomorrow I think that is such a good question and I definitely recognize like the kicking the time cam down the road thing of like oh I'll just put it in for August when it's quieter um so I really see that and I think it's a really it's a really good provocation for people to um play back when they've got like a request that comes in I love it definitely taking that one um but I wanted to go back to your your question about like well who's putting these things in your diary and I guess like two two versions of my career to answer that question so now my lovely PA who might be listening to this puts a lot in my diary and so and I appreciate that that is you know it's a privilege to have someone that manages my diaries and that might not be everyone's situation but I've sort of I guess I've outsourced maybe a bit of outsourced responsibility for my time and maybe I haven't put enough um I don't know rules around it which I'm kind of come back to but if I go back to when I was at Microsoft I didn't have a PA I was managing my own diary but I still felt that my diary was very full and it was often filled by other people But this time, instead of my PA, it was my colleagues.

11:03And so they would put all these meetings in and, you know, all times of the day and constant. And it left me with very little to feel like I had abundance or autonomy over. And so I just wondered what your take on is, if other people are taking your time or determining how your time is spent, what can you do to increase your to I guess to claw back control or to make sure your time has been spent on the things that are right for you to be doing I think there are many things you can do I mean first is having a sense of your time's value um that time is precious there is only so much of it I believe we do have a lot of time time is big time is big enough for what matters to us But part of having enough space for the things that matter to us is to be very judicious about devoting time to things that we are less excited about and are less feeling like they are moving us toward the life we want.

12:01I'm not saying we get out of them, but we want to make sure that it's not taking more of our time than we might desire. So understanding that, reminding yourself that you are ultimately in charge. This is a free society. There are consequences, obviously, to making different choices, consequences in terms of your employment, perhaps in certain circumstances, consequences in terms of how people feel about you in other circumstances. But these are still choices you can make. And sometimes reminding ourselves of that is helpful. It's like, OK, oh, I really don't want to do this. But actually, you know what?

12:37I really, truly do value my relationship with Joan. And it would be helpful to spend some time together in this circumstance. And so I am going into that with my eyes open as I am putting this into my diary. I think you can also have discussions with people that you talk with frequently. I mean, there's obviously one-off things in all of our lives. But if you're working as part of a close team, like you were at Microsoft, for instance, one of the things that effective teams do is help each other manage their schedules in ways that allow for close collaboration, but also don't make people feel that they need to claw back minutes in order to do the focused parts of their jobs.

13:16And so if you are working with, let's say, a team of eight people, you might all agree to be available to each other, like with close follow-up in real time for certain hours of the day, and then also protect a couple hours of the regular workday for everyone to do their individual deliverables. And that's really a hallmark of a good team. That's something I've been learning as I've been talking to experts about team management that you really want to have both. And if it's the eight people that you have the most meetings with that has gotten under control, like that won't get rid of all the one-offs here and there, but it will manage a big chunk of the things that consume most of the time.

13:57It's interesting listening to you, even when you say, I believe there's lots of time. And I think, you know, if you start, because I don't think most people start there. Like when you start in a different place to most people who I talk to about time because most people say um oh I haven't got enough time there's not enough time to do the things that I want but your starting point is we've all got the same time it's 168 hours that is actually quite a lot of time and you have choice and control ultimately there are there are trade-offs but you have choice and control and I think it is it's a much more like empowering transforming place to start with time than the slightly victim-like place that I maybe started in, which was like, oh, I'm so defeated by my diary and my calendar is in control of my life.

14:46Are there any other things across all of your books that you found really, you know, help, I guess, give people that agency over their time? And you've shared quite a few of those. I kind of like that. What would I do? Would I do this tomorrow kind of thing? Is there anything else that you think for somebody that is feeling, sounding a bit like me, like the time victim, and we're moving them to like the big time transformer, what other things could they start doing so they feel a bit more in control? Perhaps this sounds like a bit of homework that people are not going to want to take on. But I do think that tracking your time for a week is one of the best things you can do to change your perception of time.

15:27Because one of the first things people realize is how much time 168 hours truly is. So if you are working a full-time job, let's say you're working, you know, 45, 50 hours a week, you are sleeping eight hours a night. So that is 56 hours per week. If you subtract 50 hours for work and 56 hours for sleep from 168 hours, you've still got 62 hours for other things, right? This is more time than you are working. Even if you are working fairly long hours, I mean, 50 hours is more than most people actually clock when they, when they track their time and see where the time is going. So, I mean, right there, that's going to be like, well, that 62 hours is going to be filled with something.

16:07I don't know what it is, but it's going to be something. It might be good stuff, might be pointless stuff, but it will be there. And as you are documenting where the time goes, it definitely will change your perception of how much time there is. So I can see this. I've been tracking my time for 11 years now, which nobody else needs to do. But I'm very, I'm very into time. Do you check to track your time? Or do you just like at the end of the week, you write down and reflect? So it's a little bit more real time than that, but but not entirely real time. So I have spreadsheets that have the days of the week, Monday to Sunday across the top half hour blocks from 5am to 430am down the left hand side.

16:49So So 336 cells representing the 168-hour week. I check in three to four times a day, usually, and write down what I've done since the last time I checked in. Weekends, it tends to be checking in a little bit less frequently, but I've also trained myself over 11 years to have a pretty good memory of what's going on, so I can reconstruct 24 hours fairly easily. If somebody is just starting this, I would recommend setting some sort of reminder three or four times a day. So you remember to check in and to make sure that you're not making the perfect, the enemy of the good. You can just say in broad brushstrokes, what you're doing work, time in the car, kids, et cetera, making dinner, sleeping, you know, all those things.

17:33But, you know, when you see this and you see how much space there truly is in the course of a week, it just puts you in a much better place for exerting that sense of agency. Like, okay, Even if I have, you know, 45 hours a week that I have very limited control over because I'm working in an organization that I'm low on the totem pole, there may be time outside of that that I do have control over. And yes, maybe I have small kids who are dictating how I spend some of that time. But again, they are tend not to be spending the entire 67 hours on their physical care. So there's some time for other things.

18:06Where is it? I don't know. But when you track your time, you find out. um it reminds me a little bit of um we sometimes talk about like facts versus feelings and sometimes you talk about your feelings and then you kind of project that as your reality so I might be like oh I've got no time I'm so busy and all the other things I'll go on about um and then but actually until you do your time tracking which I've actually not done for a long time I did do it when I read 168 hours I did do it and I loved it but I've not done it for a while and so understanding factually how I'm spending my time and what feels like time well spent and what feels like time wasted and all those kind of things I haven't actually got like the data and we always talk about data for development but I actually think this is this is data that I'm missing just on on that point of kind of tracking and data and I mean what is a conversation without mentioning AI, but I just wondered if you had overlaid the data that you have been tracking with AI to help you analyze it or get to any new insights?

19:11Not for me personally, but I definitely know that some people who have tried this time tracking exercise have fed their logs into, you know, one of the AI programs and asked for insights. And sometimes it's helpful. I mean, certainly if you'd like to see, you know, changes in your sleep patterns or, you know, anything like, you know, Tuesday night versus Thursday night, how much do I sleep? Like, that's the kind of thing that, you know, AI can definitely help with. I've seen people ask for suggestions on spending their time better. And I think sometimes it comes up with good stuff. It's much like having your fortune read, I've got to say, because if you agree with it and think it's insightful, you're oh yeah, that's really good.

19:54Right. We're on it. And then you kind of ignore the stuff that's like out left field. And so then, you know, you're, you're just focusing on the good stuff. And so that's great. You know, I provide analysis of people's time logs, but I'm one person. There's only so much I can do. So I'm happy to have people try that. But, you know, you can add up it on your own too, or you could use the function with like, you don't even need AI, like the functionality within a spreadsheet program can add up. How many cells did you write work in, right? And I think just getting that data is helpful because as you mentioned, the feelings wind up turning into facts in our brain, even though they are not facts.

20:34So if you feel overworked, you're going to put a high number on it. That's why people are like, oh, I work 80 hours a week. Oh, I work 90 hours a week. You feel overworked, so you put a high number on it. Or when you ask people how much they sleep per night, they're not averaging it up over the past six weeks and giving you the tally, you know, of the total divided by 42 to give you an average nightly sleep. No, they're just what stood out in my mind. Okay, Tuesday was crap and I slept six hours. That's how much I sleep on an average night because I'm feeling tired right now. I mean, that is what people do.

21:08They take their feelings and turn them into data, but the data is often not supported by reality. But, you know, I think the truth sets us free. Like when you know where the time goes, then you can make better choices about where you want it to go. We're about to start very soon our PhD. So Sarah and I are both doing our PhDs, which is obviously going to take some time. It's exciting. And to your point is something that is like learning I'm looking forward to, but it will take time. And at the moment on the feelings basis, I go, oh, how am I going to fit that in? But the reality is I did do an MBA whilst I work full time and had a baby um so I did make it work um and it's just making me think that actually taking a new commitment on and mine happens to be that but for somebody else it could be a new project at work or a new responsibility or maybe they've got a family member or a puppy I mentioned to Laura that I'm getting a puppy whatever a new commitment is that actually if you're going to fit a new thing in it's probably a great time just to do the time audit and just kind of say, well, how does this thing fit in, in the time that I've already got?

22:14So you don't feel overwhelmed by it without looking at the facts of a situation. I think that's a great idea. And also, you want to have a realistic sense of how much time a big project will take. And there's certain things, obviously, you could devote, I'm sure, any amount of time to the pursuit of your PhD. But there is also probably a number of hours per week that in general, people who are pursuing a PhD while also managing their adult lives are willing to devote to it, right? And I don't know what that number is. My guess is it's somewhere between 10 and 20 hours a week, just from my sense of what going back to school to earn a degree tends to take people.

22:53But, you know, so if it's 12 hours a week, then, you know, you can track your time and say, well, where would I ideally allocate those 12 hours? and maybe it's that I'm just going to decide that Saturday is a work day. I'm going to ask my family for understanding about this and I'm going to make it up to them. I will be done at 4 p.m. on Saturday and the rest of the weekend is completely family time. I'm going to feel fine about that. But if I've done eight hours on Saturday and then I carve out two hours early morning some day or in the evening some other day and then I've got it. I've got the 12 hours.

23:29And you're going to choose a backup slot because Saturday is going to get taken away from you sometimes. But where is that? Like, where is that slot? But, you know, when you have this reasonable sense of where that time could go and how you could consistently do that over the long haul, you're going to be much more likely to succeed in this and to feel calmer while you are doing it than if you are just randomly trying to throw hours at it. Yeah, I'm definitely going to do it. You've inspired me to track my time starting today. And I was thinking, oh, would I feel brave enough to share that with the community to inspire them.

24:01And I don't think I would. I might keep it to myself for my first insights so I don't attract time judgment about the time I... Well, you could track one week and see where it is and then decide how you feel about it. You could maybe track another week where you're on your best behavior and then... Yeah, okay, I'll do the best behavior week. I have one more really sort of big question in my mind, which is it's connected to Squiggly Careers. So we're often helping people to think about how do they invest in their career development and in the context of a very busy day job. So it's like invest in, you know, building a better relationship with this person today because it's going to pay dividends for your career tomorrow.

24:44And it is often hard to get people to invest time in something today that has a payoff at some point in the future. and I wondered how you have thought about that or advise people on that kind of yeah that time that doesn't pay off today because I think we need to do it for careers one of the things you could do is almost sort of gamify it but turn it into something that does have an immediate sort of requirement to it like you and an accountability partner in your office you both say each of us are going to pay into our career capital account four times this week. All right. And at the end of the week, on Friday afternoon, you each send each other an email, list your four.

25:34And probably they don't have to be huge. It could be I sent an email to an old colleague. I, you know, had coffee with Wanda in accounting. You know, I read this book that people had suggested or this article that people had suggested. And I joined this newsletter list where I'm going to learn more. But if you keep doing this consistently week after week doing four things, something's going to come out of it. And having that sort of immediate sense of accountability with somebody might help turn it from something that's just kind of nice to do but forgettable into something that's actually on your to-do list for the week.

26:08Yeah, it reminds me, again, when I was reading 168 Hours, it really, this kind of like time is a currency and compound effect has really stuck with me from reading that. and yeah the compound effect on your career of taking like four actions a week um and you've also reminded me and made me think oh maybe that's why I really liked it so I did I haven't done it for a year and a half but I had an accountability whatsapp group so it started at the beginning of the year with a vision board for like what do you want your year to look like and those sorts of things and then we broke that down into sort of quarterly things that we were going to spend time on and then a weekly WhatsApp update.

26:44And I was really committed to investing time within a week for something that wasn't going to pay off for, I mean, at least a year. And I think it might have been, A, I like those people and I wanted, you know, I didn't want to let them down. But also that WhatsApp message was an enjoyable moment. So even if I didn't get the payoff of the time spent, I did get the like the positive connection from from talking about it so yeah I might reinstate I might reinstate my little accountability whatsapp and it doesn't take much time though it doesn't like you know sending a short message about what you did this week is just a couple of minutes it's just the consistency of doing it week after week that keeps your mind focused on making sure that you are making those little deposits into your career capital account or that you're focused on learning more to boost your skills over the long haul.

27:38And, you know, you keep doing something, you do four things a week for 50 weeks a year. That's 200 things in a year. That's kind of a lot. That's 2 ,000 things over 10 years. Like, you know, probably it's going to do something for you. Yeah. Yeah. You'd hope. You'd hope one of those will convert into something that's going to create an opportunity for your career. So we kind of talked about, we talked about psychology, how you think about time. We talked about structures and some sort of simple things that you can do um i mean i'm taking i'm definitely taking the time order action away from today but um just as we kind of come to a close for everybody is there anything else that you're like if you're serious about doing this and you want to like you want to feel in control of your time you want to have that sense of abundance is there anything else that you would recommend that people could do to get that outcome i think every busy person needs a dedicated weekly planning time which is time when you sit down, kind of pull yourself outside the general flow of time and ask how you would like to spend your time over the next 168 hours.

28:43So I like to do this late in the week, Thursday or Friday, looking forward to the next Monday to Sunday week and say, well, if that were to be a great week, if that would be a great 168 hours professionally, what would I do? Like what would happen in the course of that week? If it were to be a great week personally, You know, with my relationship with family and friends and for my own physical, spiritual, mental, emotional health. Like what would have happened over the next 168 hours to make that be an amazing week for me? And by identifying just a couple of things and thinking about where those things can go, I mean, it drastically increases the chances that they happen versus if you don't think about this and kind of just take the week as it comes.