Key Messages
How to Take Control of Your 168-Hour Week and Live a Happier, More Fulfilled Life
Are you tired of wishing there were more hours in the day? Do you want to make more time for your loved ones, do more exercise, get more done, or just take a break now and then without feeling guilty? You can–you just need to prioritize and learn how to fit everything that matters into your life.
The 168 Hours Book Summary offers a revolutionary way of looking at your time in order to help you make better use of each week.
You can finally revisit childhood dreams, end the meal prep madness, and stop battling through mundane tasks.
You’ll be able to focus on what truly matters.
You’ll learn about why it’s important for you to understand your relationship between dreams and childhood, why outsourcing meals is beneficial, as well as which unrewarding chores that are no longer necessary.
Everything fits within 168 hours every week – so look beyond endless working days, and start living life according to what makes you happy!
Maximizing Our Time for What Matters Most: How to Take Control of Your Life and Live a Fulfilling One
Theresa Daytner leads a full life.
This successful businesswoman and mother of six owns Daytner Construction Group, coaches soccer, goes for massages, does trail rides, and finds time to watch her favorite TV show – without ever compromising on sleep.
So how does she do it? The answer lies in her mindset: Daytner takes full ownership of her time.
She prioritizes the things that she values – like family, business, and herself – while letting go of the rest.
This key message has been tried and tested – You’re not too busy; you’re just not in control of your time.
Modern life can make us feel chained to our work schedule with hardly any time left for ourselves; but the truth is far from this impression: most people have more than enough time if they’re smart about organizing their lives.
To accurately assess where all your time is going each week, it’s important to log every hour via an activity report or a “time grid” in order to give yourself clarity on where your priorities lie and how they can be optimized effectively.
You may find that it only takes small adjustments here and there to create a much better balance and enable you to regain control over your life once again.
Focus on Your Strengths to Live a Fulfilling Life
Jackie Camborde knows first-hand the importance of focusing on your core competencies for a fulfilling life.
Following her journey from an overweight smoker to the owner of a successful fitness studio, Camborde emphasizes that success both professionally and personally comes from investing in the areas you are best at and enjoy.
By understanding your own skills and talents, as well as what brings you joy, you’ll not only be happier but able to achieve more than ever before.
By evaluating how you spend your time — whether it be at work or home — with these competencies in mind, you can really make progress towards your goals and dreams.
It’s extremely important to remember that everyone has their own unique list of core competencies; the key is to identify yours!
To do this, create a list of 100 things you’d like to do in your lifetime– incorporate everything from personal experiences and milestones gained to skills developed and places visited.
Once you have identified two or three main areas where these activities come under, then you can begin cultivating them.
With practice over time, it’s possible to live a truly meaningful life: one where all passions can be pursued while moving towards goals set out by yourselves!
Finding the Right Job Can Transform Our Lives from a Necessity to an Experience We Love
Choosing the right job can have a profound impact on your life.
You must take the time to find a job that utilizes your core competencies and offers you room to learn and grow.
A job that fits this criteria will not only energize your work life, but also your entire life as well!
This was evident in Sylvia Earle’s experience as a marine biologist.
After 40 years in the field, Earle remains passionate about her job and is still enjoying it with enthusiasm at the average retirement age of 62.
She speaks of her joy in living an underwater ocean lab for her studies, which she attributes to the fact that she chose something she loves doing, which uses her skills and creativity while also speaking to her values.
Finding meaningful work is more than just a way to make money — it provides purpose and renewed energy.
Many people know what their ideal job should be, but struggle with taking the leap towards it.
To help combat this, take some time to reflect on passions from childhood; these often become important signs pointing us towards our interests later in life.
Also look out for moments where you experience deep enjoyment or “flow” while doing a certain activity – this might give you clues as to what type of work would bring meaning into your life!
Carol Fassbinder-Orth’s Time Management Strategies Can Teach Us How to Make the Most of Our Working Hours
Biologist Carol Fassbinder-Orth shows us how to make the best use of our time by controlling our work calendar.
She achieved her PhD in avian immunology without putting in the usual 80 hours a week due to already having a first child during her first year of graduate school, and she did it by carefully structuring her schedule.
To become time-rich, you must identify what you want to achieve in your career and set an annual goal as well as monthly milestones that breakdown that goal.
Each Sunday, write out a goals list for the upcoming week and schedule them into your calendar with estimated times for each task – then commit yourself to doing it.
It helps if you can delegate tasks to others who are better suited or have more experience than yourself.
Paired with ditching activities that aren’t relevant or fall outside of your core competencies, this structure will really help you maximize and focus on productivity for whatever tasks need to get done each workday.
Combining Strategy With Story Is the Key to Achieving Career Breakthroughs
Leah Ingram is an example of what can happen when you combine strategy with story.
When her agent pitched her book Suddenly Frugal to publishers, they did not expect to have a deal signed within the month!
However, Leah had laid the groundwork for success long before that pitch took place.
She had spent two years blogging about living frugally and deliberately building her audience.
With numbers to show her potential publishers of the impact she was making online – up to 5,000 visitors a day – they were more likely to take a chance on her.
This proves that if you want to achieve your career breakthrough, strategizing and storytelling are both important tools in organization’s belt.
Whether it be impressing employers with a portfolio full of accomplishments or captivating your audience with an interesting story, understanding what catches one’s eye will give you the competitive edge you need.
It’s also why networking can also play a part in helping secure opportunities for yourself.
What matters most is that you keep at it and continue putting yourself out there until that breakthrough comes – it’ll be worth it in the end!
Strengthen Your Bond With Your Kids by Prioritizing Quality Time
When it comes to improving your relationships with your children, the key is focusing on your core competencies.
In today’s world, parents often feel the need to go above and beyond, doing things like sending their four-year-old to Pee Wee football or making their own baby food from scratch.
But this doesn’t necessarily translate into a loving relationship with your child.
So instead of trying to go that extra mile and potentially feeling exhausted, you can focus on the things that you and your child both enjoy together.
You can ask them to write their own list of 100 dreams or go swimming together if that’s something you both like – it doesn’t have to be overly complicated.
An important part of this is also being mindful when spending time as a family and turning off any smartphones or other distractions that threaten to take away from quality time with each other.
Ultimately, an improved connection with your children will come through investing in core competencies – finding what makes the two of you tick, taking meaningful time out of each day for each other, and treating this time as truly valuable by removing any outside distractions.
Outsource Household Chores to Create More Time for What Matters Most
As someone who wants to make the most out of their time, it is important to identify tasks that are not aligned with one’s core competencies and outsource them.
This was exemplified in Sid Savara’s story as he outsourced his weekly meal preparation.
By doing this, what used to take Savara ten hours per week only took his chef four.
Savara prioritized time with his guitar instead of spending it on grocery shopping and waiting for chicken to defrost.
Consequently, he won back almost ten extra hours a week.
It’s the same concept for parents with full-time jobs.
More often than not, they spend nine hours per week on housework (meal preparation, laundry, etc.), while only three hours playing with their kids – meaning that there is opportunity to shift this balance by outsourcing household tasks if feasible.
By outsourcing housework that doesn’t align with one’s core competencies and freeing up more time, better quality moments can be spent either honing one’s own skills or creating connections with loved ones – which may prove just as rewarding in the long run.
Plan Your Leisure Time to Make the Most of Your Hours and Live a Richer Life
The key to having a happy and fulfilling life is allowing time for leisure activities.
Unfortunately, many of us don’t realize that we have four hours of leisure time each day and instead spend our valuable time in front of the TV watching twenty hours a week on average.
However, it’s possible to reclaim this valuable time by planning our leisure activities properly.
Take Laura Vanderkam as an example; she not only dedicates her leisure hours to her favourite hobby – choral singing – but also uses them to stay fit through running.
The most important things to remember when planning your leisure time are: choose one or two activities you’re passionate about, be conscious of which timeslots work best for you, and consider combining leisure activities with socializing.
Planning will help ensure you get the maximum value out of your precious free time and help create joy-filled moments throughout your week.
Don’t let your life pass by without taking advantage of these wonderful opportunities!
It’s all up to you; plan your leisure time wisely and see how it increases the value of life!
Wrap Up
In his book, 168 Hours, author Laura Vanderkam highlights the importance of evaluating which activities are most important and beneficial to our lives in order to make the most out of our time.
If something is not a priority, we can choose to minimize it or abandon it so that we have more time for meaningful activities.
Additionally, Vanderkam recommends creating work-life balance by implementing a mini night shift for parents who struggle to find family time during the week.
By blocking off 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. as sacred family time, parents can spend valued moments with their children while also working a bit later into the night on other tasks.
Overall, Vanderkam’s book serves as a reminder that it is possible to create meaningful moments and come up with strategies to make the most out of our 168 hours per week!
