TED Talk: ‘Laura Vanderkam: How to gain control of your free time’

Beginning in September 2016 and up to now, March 2017, I’ve found myself saying, “I am so busy.” I do have a busy schedule; I’m enrolled in 17 credit hours, spend 18+ hours a week on homework and work at my job 10+ hours a week.

But am I really that busy? I watched a TED Talk that made me think otherwise.

Courtesy photo

Laura Vanderkam is an author of time management and productivity books, her most recent being “I Know How She Does It.” She gave a TED Talk in October 2016 and spoke about how to gain control of our time when we are “too busy.”

One point Vanderkam makes that really hit me is, “We cannot make more time, but time will stretch to accommodate what we choose to put into it.” She goes on to explain the sentence “I don’t have time,” often means “It’s not a priority.” Unfortunately, I found this to be all to true for me. With school being a top priority for me right now, I often forget to prioritize other aspects of my life, and in turn forget about them completely.

Vanderkam says “time is a choice” and “we have the power to fill our lives with the things that deserve to be there.” We get to decide how we spend our time. Like right now, I’m deciding to spend my afternoon writing this post because it is a priority of mine. But spending most of my time on school or work makes for a very unbalanced life. There are things that deserve my time. Does 4 hours of Gilmore Girls or The Office deserve my time? Sure, but probably not 4 hours. I can make better choices on how I spend my time.

Toward the end of her talk, Vanderkam asks the audience and views to pretend it’s the end of next year and give yourself a performance review. She says it’s been an amazing year for you professionally. She asks, “What three to five things did you do that made it so amazing?” She asks the same about yourself and the people you care about.

By writing a performance review for 2017 or 2018, you now have a list of six to 10 goals you can work on in the next year.

My lists would look something like this:

Professional

1. Get more involved on campus
2. Build relationships with more peers and professors
3. Gain more experience in my desired career field

Personal

1. Strengthen familial relationships
2. Spend more time bettering myself (read more, exercise, relax, eat right)
3. Explore more places

To make these goals a priority, Vanderkam suggests putting them in our schedules first. Think about the week before it starts. She advises taking time on Friday afternoons to make a three-category list: career, relationships, self. Make a short list for each (two to three items). Then look through your schedule for the next few weeks, see where you can plan them and write them in.

Vanderkam finishes her talk with numbers. There are 168 hours in a week. Roughly 42 hours of my week are dedicated to school or work. I sleep for about 6 hours a night, which totals 42 hours. I’m left with approximately 81 hours of free time per week. Some weeks are harder than others so that number varies, but still. That is way more time than I thought I had.

Vanderkam finishes her talk by saying: “It’s about looking at the whole of one’s time and seeing where the good stuff can go. I truly believe this. There is time. Even if we are busy, we have time for what matters. And when we focus on what matters, we can build the lives we want in the time we’ve got.”

After listening to her speak about time, it made me realize how much time I waste procrastinating, on my phone, watching Netflix, etc. Now, I’m probably going to think twice before watching 1 hour of cute dog videos or an entire season of Gilmore Girls in one day.

For another TED Talk similar to Vanderkam’s, I suggest Tim Urban’s TED Talk on procrastination.