$0.00$0.00
- Click above to get a preview of our newest plan - unlimited listening to select audiobooks, Audible Originals, and podcasts.
- You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
- $7.95$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel online anytime.
-12% $22.56$22.56
168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think Audible Audiobook – Unabridged
There are 168 hours in a week. This book is about where the time really goes, and how we can all use it better. It's an unquestioned truth of modern life: we are starved for time. With the rise of two-income families, extreme jobs, and 24/7 connectivity, life is so frenzied we can barely find time to breathe. We tell ourselves we'd like to read more, get to the gym regularly, try new hobbies, and accomplish all kinds of goals. But then we give up because there just aren't enough hours to do it all. Or else, if we don't make excuses, we make sacrifices. To get ahead at work we spend less time with our spouses. To carve out more family time, we put off getting in shape. To train for a marathon, we cut back on sleep. There has to be a better way - and Laura Vanderkam has found one.
After interviewing dozens of successful, happy people, she realized that they allocate their time differently than most of us. Instead of letting the daily grind crowd out the important stuff, they start by making sure there's time for the important stuff. They focus on what they do best and what only they can do. When plans go wrong and they run out of time, only their lesser priorities suffer. It's not always easy, but the payoff is enormous. Vanderkam shows that it really is possible to sleep eight hours a night, exercise five days a week, take piano lessons, and write a novel without giving up quality time for work, family, and other things that really matter. The key is to start with a blank slate and to fill up your 168 hours only with things that deserve your time. Of course, you probably won't read to your children at 2:00 am, or skip a Wednesday morning meeting to go hiking, but you can cut back on how much you watch TV, do laundry, or spend time on other less fulfilling activities. Vanderkam shares creative ways to rearrange your schedule to make room for the things that matter most.
- Listening Length7 hours and 48 minutes
- Audible release dateJune 16, 2010
- LanguageEnglish
- ASINB003SGYNHE
- VersionUnabridged
- Program TypeAudiobook
Read & Listen
Get the Audible audiobook for the reduced price of $7.49 after you buy the Kindle book.
People who viewed this also viewed
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast: And Two Other Short Guides to Achieving More at Work and at HomeAudible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
People who bought this also bought
- 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management: The Productivity Habits of 7 Billionaires, 13 Olympic Athletes, 29 Straight-A Students, and 239 EntrepreneursAudible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
Related to this topic
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Getting to 50/50: How Working Parents Can Have It All by Sharing It All - and Why It’s Good for Your Marriage, Your Career, Your Kids, and YouAudible Audiobook
- The Secrets of Happy Families: Surprising New Ideas to Bring More Togetherness, Less Chaos, and Greater JoyAudible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
Product details
Listening Length | 7 hours and 48 minutes |
---|---|
Author | Laura Vanderkam |
Narrator | Elizabeth London |
Whispersync for Voice | Ready |
Audible.com Release Date | June 16, 2010 |
Publisher | Gildan Media, LLC |
Program Type | Audiobook |
Version | Unabridged |
Language | English |
ASIN | B003SGYNHE |
Best Sellers Rank | #58,147 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #79 in Time Management (Audible Books & Originals) #237 in Time Management (Books) #465 in Personal Time Management |
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book helpful for understanding how they spend their time. They appreciate its insights and useful tools for thinking through priorities. However, opinions differ on the writing quality - some find it well-written and concise, while others mention poor editing and rambling.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book helpful for understanding their time use. It helps them think through their priorities and align their week's activities. The time-diary study is a valuable tool that forces them to face overwhelm and manage their life better. Readers say it's a rewarding and eye-opening experience to complete the study.
"...All in all, it is very helpful, and not just for working moms. I am a single man, and I find the ideas a huge game changer...." Read more
"...calendar that allows you to accomplish your core competencies, be more productive, and achieve what you want...." Read more
"...Either way it's worth the time to read. It's a very rewarding and eye opening experience to complete the exercises in this book and to reflect on..." Read more
"...gives great tips on how to make the most of your time and how to schedule your time based on your family's needs...." Read more
Customers find the book insightful and helpful for shedding light on how they spend their time. It offers helpful ideas on how to open up space in their day and reflect upon their own lives. The mix of storytelling and research provides readers with an interesting perspective on how much time they really have. They appreciate the tips for finding time to do what they want with their lives and track their activities.
"...The author also gives tips for finding time to do what we want with out lives...." Read more
"...The author helps you understand how you are best motivated, employing the ideas from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian psychology professor and..." Read more
"...It's a very rewarding and eye opening experience to complete the exercises in this book and to reflect on how I could use the ideas to improve my..." Read more
"...Overall, the book was a good read. I thought the author gave good advice on how to track your time and see where you could make changes in your..." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the writing quality. Some find it well-written and concise, making it an easy read that makes one think about how their time is being spent. Others mention it's poorly edited with typos and repetitive content. There are also complaints about rambling and wordiness, which make for an exasperating read.
"...That's why we spend 30 hours a week watching television: it's simple, easy, and available...." Read more
"...Overall, the book had some interesting stories but I feel it was written hastily with the purpose of getting to print quickly...." Read more
"Ms. Vanderkam has a very personal, believable and straight forward writing style that I really appreciated...." Read more
"...However, the book was at least 3x longer than necessary (lots of rambling, tangents, and unnecessary repeating of points)...." Read more
Reviews with images
The basic principles of this book are applicable to anyone
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2019I hesitated to buy this book because of the negative reviews, especially the one that says all the useful info is in the TED talk. I finally decided to buy it because someone quoted a useful line from it that wasn’t in the talk, and I’m glad I bought it and read it.
The thesis: If you work 8 hours a weekday and sleep 8 hours a night, you still have 72 hours a week for all other purposes. Even if you work 12 hours a weekday, that still leaves 52 hours. Yet we all complain about not having enough time for anything we want to do. So, where do those free hours go? Track your time over the course of a week and find out. In this context, it becomes absurd to say you don’t have time for something. It’s more accurate to say it’s not a priority. Your priorities are not what you want to do, but what you actually do.
The author gives inspiring examples of people who manage to do it all. One is Theresa Daytner, who manages a business full time and is a mother of six but still finds adequate time to sleep. Even President Obama was shocked. I like these examples; I don’t like to read books by mere speculators.
The author also gives tips for finding time to do what we want with out lives. We need to focus on our core competencies—the things no one else can do for us (like time with our children). For every task we would rather not do, we can at least see if we can eliminate it, automate it, or delegate it (check in that order). Examples include shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Before women joined the workforce, they actually spent less time with their children than they do now, despite having more children. The extra free time was taken up by these tasks; cultural rules developed to fill all that time with housework (like—actual examples cited by the author—having to chop up raisins and vacuum the walls and ceiling). Some say delegating these things costs too much money, but money has to be prioritized like time. If you spend x hours a week cleaning, how much would you pay to have that time back? Isn’t that more important than the money you spend on expensive toys? It would be interesting to see a money management book like this.
All in all, it is very helpful, and not just for working moms. I am a single man, and I find the ideas a huge game changer.
I disagree with a few things, though. I disagree with the idea that finding a job one loves enough to want to do more than full time is so easy; many of us have to take what we can get. I disagree with the idea that parents need to find fulfillment in careers instead of their children, or that the raising of children should be farmed out as the author seems to be implying. I disagree with the idea that we shouldn’t want to work fewer hours; personally, I like the idea of implementing these ideas in tandem with those of The 4-Hour Work Week (which the author believes to be misguided). The author seems to be buying into the “quality time” myth (I would have preferred to have more time with my parents than not, regardless of activity level), but this can be easily ignored by applying the principles to trying to have more time with one’s children.
Still, apart from these minor quibbles, the book is great, and I recommend it to everyone.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2010Seriously. You do.
When I was a programmer, I thought I worked so many hours, even up to 100. I have come to realize that while I may have sat at my computer that long, or been in the office that long, I really didn't work that long. And as much as you think that you do work a lot hours, chances are, you really don't.
If you don't buy that idea, you really need to read Laura Vanderkam's new book, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. If you want to be able to train for a marathon, and don't think you have the time, you need to read this book. If you want to read the latest novel, but don't think you have the time, you need to read this book.
We all have 168 hours. The key is how you use them.
It's an unquestioned truth of modern life: we are all starved for time. With the rise of two-income families, extreme jobs, and the ability to log on to the world 24/7, life is so frenzied we can barely breathe. But what if we actually have plenty of time? What if we could sleep eight hours a night, exercise five days a week, and learn how to play the piano without sacrificing work, family time, or any other activity that is important to us? According to Laura Vanderkam, we can. If we re-examine our weekly allotment of 168 hours, we'll find that, with a little reorganization and prioritizing, we can dedicate more time to the things we want to do without having to make sacrifices.
The book's author is Laura Vanderkam. Laura is also the author of Grindhopping: Building a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues. She is a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors. She is also a freelance writer and her work has appeared in Reader's Digest, Scientific American, Wired, The American, Portfolio and other publications.
Knowledge is power, and when it comes to understanding how we use our time, we often lack the knowledge. Laura opens the book with the myth of the time crunch, helping the reader realize that too often we overestimate the hours we spend on a task, whether it is work, or housekeeping or parenting. The real problem is that most of us do not have any idea how we spend our 168 hours.
To solve that, she suggests that we begin to keep a time diary. This was a real eye-opener for me. I had no idea how much time I wasted searching the internet, reading social media sites, watching television, etc. You cannot change what you do not know. I was surprised a couple of years ago when I made note of everything I ate. I was shocked at how much I ate just walking through the kitchen as I was heading to the bathroom or to the home office. A handful of chips here, another snack there. When I wrote it all down, it changed the way I thought about food, making me think about what and how I ate. By keeping track of our time, down to the minute, we get to see how much time we waste!
Once we see how much time we are wasting, we can begin to reprioritize our time to accomplish what we want to accomplish, whether its playing the piano or writing that next novel.
Vanderkam offers some very practical advice for helping you find your core competencies, which are often the things you love to do. And if you love what you do, you will have more energy for the rest of your life as well. If you are trying to build a career while raising a young family, you will have more energy for your children if you work 50 hours a week in a job you love than if you work 30 hours in a job you hate. Therefore, you need to be in the right job. While the book is not a book on career advice, Laura does offer thoughts on finding the perfect job for you, and it is often a job that does not have a traditional job description.
In addition Vanderkam offers suggestions for creating a calendar that allows you to accomplish your core competencies, be more productive, and achieve what you want. In a competitive work environment, we think we need to be in the office late. But is it possible to leave at 5 pm and have time with the family and then work later, after the kids have gone to sleep? And still get the eight hours of sleep we need? And the exercise we need? Yes, it is possible, and Laura shows you how.
Vanderkam then offers suggestions on managing your time at home. There was a very interesting stat I came across as I read this section of the book: more parenting takes place today than in the 1950's by both mother and father. In the 1950's stay at home mothers spent less time with their children, despite the fact that they were home, than mothers do today. Why? More housework. Today's parents, and mothers in particular, are willing to let the housework go so they can spend more time with their children.
That does not mean that your house needs to be dirty and messy. It means that if you prioritize your time toward parenting, then you need to be willing to forego you doing the cleaning. The same with laundry. She suggests that you outsource those tasks by finding people who will do it for you. Often the monetary cost is less than we think and the time savings it provides us allows us to do more of the things at which we are most effective and love.
Creating a full life and aligning your time is not an easy task. But if you do, you can have the time to achieve what you want to achieve out of life.
I really enjoyed this book. It is extremely practical while being more than just challenging you to count your minutes and hours. The author helps you understand how you are best motivated, employing the ideas from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian psychology professor and author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. At the end of each chapter, she challenges you through questions that cause you to consider the possibilities rather than being stuck in the box you create for yourself. At the end of the book, she provides a look into real case studies of how people used their time, how they changed their time usage, and the impact this had on their life. Finally, this is a book of experience. Laura provides interviews of people who have achieved much through their core competencies, time management, and outsourcing. It is not a book of facts, though it includes some potent ones, but a book of experiences. It empowers you to say, "I can do this!" And you can.
With a little work and a little change, you can make the best use of your 168 hours.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2013I can't believe the negative reviews on this book. They are way off. However to give you a fair warning - this books isn't for everyone. If your not open minded, not looking to improve the use of your most valuable resource (time), you're absolutely in love with how you currently spend your time, looking for a easy done for you shortcut with no work or thinking, or you think that you have no control over your life and would rather have others control your time than this book is NOT for you. It's a book for people that want to "own" time rather than be victimized by the passing of it.
School is never out for the "pro" so as a small business owner I find myself always working to improve my time management skills. One of the ways I do this is by reading a time management book every 12 months and have been doing this since 1999. Having read a handful of these books I'd recommend this book near the top of the list. It'll either be a great introduction to time management or it very good refresher. Either way it's worth the time to read. It's a very rewarding and eye opening experience to complete the exercises in this book and to reflect on how I could use the ideas to improve my life. The key to this book is to put the time into the exercises in the book and you'll get a huge value back out.
Top reviews from other countries
- FrankReviewed in Brazil on May 18, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars Timely, practical, creative advice
This book has been a catalyst to filling my 168 hours with the things that really deserve to be there.
- StephanieReviewed in Canada on October 19, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Especially good book for working moms
I've read this book many times and gifted it to friends and clients many more times. It's rare to find a book on personal development, especially time management from a working mother. Most of the popular books seem to be written by dudes with little home life responsibilities. They have their place but this one really takes the cake for me because it's that much more relatable. Easily my favourite book on personal development.
-
ElisaReviewed in France on August 15, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars Bien
Très bon livre. Ça fait réfléchir à la manière de gérer notre temps.
Pas tout est applicable, mais c'est un bon point de départ.
- WitteReviewed in Germany on July 14, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Mindset changing
168 h is a very insighhful read. It helps to open the mind for what is possible and stop focusing on what's not with regards to time.
I like the book a lot!!! Awesome!
- Mr. JJ OBEIRNEReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 3, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Encouraging and insightful
Great breakdown, reassurance and actionable ideas around why you feel “busy” and how to properly leverage the time you have. Some great takeaways and an easy reading style that led me to finish it in a couple of days. Would recommend.