Book Review: 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam

This week's book review is on Laura Vanderkam's book, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. She has written several books on time management, as well as interesting articles in venues such as Fast Company.

I read this book some weeks ago and found it eye-opening. I have even referenced it here on the blog before. While I do have a few issues with the book, it's well worth reading for its core insights.

Rating: 4 stars

General Comments: It's an easy-to-read book, peppered with personal stories and examples - definitely a quick read. There are many insights that are surprising, while some others seem difficult to implement, or don't really apply for many people. The book also skips over the notion that lifestyle changes are difficult to implement, and just assumes its a matter of knowing what we need to do, and then plugging it into our existing schedule.

3 Insights From The Book:

1. Think in 168 Hours - The primary insight from the book is that it is more useful to think in terms of the week, rather than the day - 168 hours instead of 24/7.  This insight enables those with busy schedules who can't seem to fit it all in, to find creative ways to expand their schedules. For instance, Vanderkam gives the example of parents who can break up a working day by adding 3 hours of work after the kids have gone to bed, giving the parents time with their children, without needing to work less hours.

2. Focus on your core competencies - Focus your time on doing those things that you are good at, or those skills that you want to improve on. Which also means, you should reduce or remove altogether time spent on tasks that you are either not good at, or that aren't part of your competencies - such as doing housework. As far as possible, try to outsource those elements of your schedule that you aren't good at, to focus on what is important.

3. Plan your leisure time - This is probably one of the most interesting insights from the book - that we have more leisure time than we think, and in order to utilize it well, we must plan the time, or otherwise risk losing it in mindless TV watching or internet surfing. Vanderkam gives the example of extremely busy professionals who nevertheless find the time to train for triathlons and volunteer their time to charity by planning ahead. Even a small amount of time planning some leisure activities ahead of time (including at least 3-4 hours of exercise per week) can dramatically increase our quality of life, health and productivity at work.

Recommend For: Anyone who struggles with making time for leisure, or complains that there isn't time for everything. Especially recommended for those trying to squeeze in creative pursuits around a day job, family and other commitments - gives insights into how we can use our whole schedule.

"From Auden To Yeats" Available in Paperback and Lessons Learned

"From Auden To Yeats" is now finally available as a paperback, after weeks of struggling with formatting and cover issues.

Publishing this book is a reflection of many of the lessons I have learnt lately, and have been chronicled on this blog - the importance of perseverance, of breaking projects into smaller chunks, of iterating until it clicks into place.

For each aspect of the book, which I insisted on doing myself, I had to overcome ignorance (of the various factors involved) and frustration with all the new information that was coming at me, and my inability to keep up with it. I kept asking myself why I was doing this - in Write. Publish. Repeat, the authors argued that print publishing was a 20% activity (as in the Pareto Principle), and should only be undertaken once other 80% activities were done (which for me is writing more books). I was sure this was simply an exercise in time wasting. And yet I was convinced there was some merit in putting myself through these paces - and went ahead with it anyway.

I almost gave up a few times, putting the project aside and working on my new book projects. Something kept pulling me back into it - somehow I sensed giving up would signal something unproductive to my mind, and I decided to doggedly keep going - fixing each mistake and uploading new versions till they were accepted. I had decided to go with Createspace, and while I think they have a great system, it can be highly confusing if you don't know what you are doing, which I certainly didn't.

Nevertheless, writing this blog and reading the books and articles of the writing and productivity communities, some lessons have become embedded in me. For instance, don't give up. Keep trying, keep coming at it from different angles, because most of the time its not lack of talent or knowledge that stops us, but the fact that we gave up too soon. In this case, all I had to lose was time, and potentially my peace of mind. I was hardly risking money or even my reputation. And my writing career could only be benefitted by giving readers an option to buy a print version if they wanted.

I had a stronger motive for following through. I wanted to learn this process for future books, and I know from past experience that each time around, I learned something. The first few covers I created for instance, disastrous. But over time and several iterations, they started to suck less, and look almost professional. Thus another lesson learnt, failure is a temporary condition, made permanent by not trying again.  

Anyway, I did manage to jump through all the hoops and put the book together. More importantly however, I learnt yet another application of these principles - that productivity and creativity aren't so much an inevitable consequence of talent, but of the right mind-set.

From Auden To Yeats: available in Kindle and Paperback.

Book Review: How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big

Starting today, every Friday I will feature a book that has made an impact on me recently, and whose ideas I am trying to incorporate and apply in my life.

I will keep these reviews short - the idea being to convey the gist of why I like this book succinctly, so that you can decide whether to pick it up and peruse over the weekend*.

The first book to kick off this new feature: Scott Adams' excellent new book How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big: Kind of The Story of My Life.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Other books by this author I have read: Read and thoroughly enjoyed The Dilbert Future.

General Comments: It's humorously written, laugh-out-loud funny, and decidedly a very different tone than usual business books. Adams' book is a cross between business and motivational, and although the tone doesn't correspond to either, he gives some very astute insights. I have enumerated 3 of these below, but the book has far more interesting ideas that are definitely worth a read.

3 Insights From The Book:

1. Focus on systems not goals - Adams' believes that instead of pursuing goals, we should focus on systems, something you do regularly, that leads to success. For writers for instance, a system would be to write daily, while a goal might be to hit the New York Times Bestseller List.

2. Simplify rather than optimize - many of us have a tendency to optimize on decisions and tasks, leading to additional stress. Adams' stresses that simplifying rather than optimizing can remove a lot of stress and make certain things more likely to happen. For instance, simplify your exercise routine, and do something active everyday, rather than try to optimize various factors such as the proper nutrition before exercise, and the optimum number of sets of weight training.

3. Focus on maximizing your personal energy - Adams' devotes a number of chapters to various aspects of optimizing one's personal energy - such as eating right, exercising daily, getting enough sleep etc. His belief is that when you have enough energy, you will be able to tackle the truly important items that will advance your career and personal goals.

Recommend For: Everyone, especially those who like to read books on business, self-help, creativity, productivity. There were insights on topics that affect all of us - everyone would find something useful.

 * Book links are affiliate links, which means I would make a small commission if you decide to buy it. This doesn't affect the decision of which books I review or the content of the review.