Mark: The average American watches over 20 hours of TV a week. That’s a part-time job. Michelle: Whoa. A part-time job you don't get paid for. And yet, if you ask anyone how they are, the answer is always the same: "So busy." "Swamped." "No time." Mark: Exactly. What if that feeling of being constantly time-starved is a collective illusion? What if the time to build the life you actually want is already there, hidden in plain sight? It's not about finding more time; it's about seeing the time you're already wasting. Michelle: That’s a bold claim, but it’s one that gets right to the heart of our discussion today. Mark: It is. And it’s the radical premise of Laura Vanderkam's book, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. Michelle: And Vanderkam is the perfect person to make this argument. She's a journalist, a renowned time management expert, and a mother of five. If anyone understands feeling busy, it's her. Yet her whole career is built on showing people that 'busy' is a choice, not a fact. Mark: A choice. That's the key. Her first big move is to completely reframe our relationship with time. She argues we don't live in frantic 24-hour cycles; we live in 168-hour cycles. Every single one of us gets 168 hours a week. That’s a lot of time. Michelle: It sounds like a lot when you say it like that, but my daily to-do list would disagree. It feels infinite and impossible at the same time. How does anyone actually live that way? Mark: Well, Vanderkam is a journalist, so she doesn't just give you theory. She gives you stories. And the one that opens the book is a showstopper. It’s about a woman named Theresa Daytner.

Michelle: Okay, I'm ready. Tell me about Theresa. Mark: So, Vanderkam is trying to schedule an interview with her. Theresa is the owner of a construction company with seven-figure revenues. She's also the mother of six children, including a set of twins. Michelle: Hold on. A CEO and a mom of six. I’m already stressed just hearing that. I can’t imagine what her calendar looks like. Mark: That’s what Vanderkam thought. So she calls her up on a weekday morning, expecting to maybe get five minutes of her time between meetings. But Theresa can't talk. She's out hiking. Michelle: Hiking? On a weekday morning? With that life? Come on, Mark, how is that even possible? What's the catch? What is she not doing? Is her house a complete disaster? Are her kids raising themselves? Mark: You're asking the exact right questions. And the answer is, she’s not doing the things that don't matter. When people ask her how she does it all, she has this incredible mindset shift. Instead of saying, "I don't have time for that," she's trained herself to say, "That's not a priority." Michelle: Oh, I like that. That is a powerful reframe. "I don't have time to go to the gym" becomes "The gym isn't a priority." It forces you to be honest with yourself. Mark: It's total honesty. It transforms you from a victim of your schedule into the architect of it. Theresa Daytner even met the president, who asked her the question everyone asks: "When do you sleep?" And she does sleep, about eight hours a night. The secret isn't that she's superhuman; it's that she knows what she's in charge of. She says, "I know I’m in charge of me. Everything that I do, every minute I spend is my choice." Michelle: That’s a level of personal responsibility that is both terrifying and incredibly liberating. But it feels like you'd need an iron will to live like that. To constantly be making those choices. Mark: You do, but it's a muscle you build. The first step, according to Vanderkam, is just to see where the time goes. She has people keep a 168-hour time log. Not just for a day, but for a whole week. You write down everything. 40 hours of work, 56 hours of sleep... that leaves 72 hours. That's a lot of time. Even for someone with a demanding job and family. Michelle: And most of us fill that 72 hours with... what? Scrolling on our phones, running errands we hate, and watching TV we don't even really enjoy. Mark: Precisely. The data shows most people wildly overestimate how much they work and underestimate how much leisure time they have. That feeling of being "time poor" is often just a feeling, not a reality. Once you see the hours on paper, you can't unsee them. You realize you have the power to fill them with things that deserve to be there. Michelle: Okay, so the first step is a mindset shift. Stop seeing time as a daily deficit and start seeing it as a weekly abundance. But once you've accepted you have this time, what do you do with it? How do you decide what "deserves" to be there? Mark: That's exactly it. She's not doing everything. Vanderkam says successful people, like successful companies, focus on their 'core competencies.' They figure out what they do best and what truly matters, and they are ruthless about everything else.

Michelle: Okay, 'core competencies' sounds like something straight out of a business school textbook. What does that actually mean for a regular person, not a Nobel laureate or a CEO? Mark: It's simpler than it sounds. Vanderkam defines it with a few questions. What do I do best? What brings me the most satisfaction? And, crucially, what can I do that others cannot do nearly as well? It’s about finding your unique contribution. Michelle: So for a parent, a core competency might be reading bedtime stories or having deep conversations with your teenager. Something a babysitter can't replicate. Mark: Exactly. And at work, it’s the specific skill that creates the most value. It’s not answering every email; it might be negotiating deals, or writing brilliant code, or mentoring your team. To make this idea really land, Vanderkam tells another incredible story, this time about a man named Roald Hoffmann. Michelle: I'm intrigued. Let's hear it. Mark: Roald Hoffmann had a harrowing childhood. He was a Jewish boy in Poland during World War II, and he and his mother survived the Holocaust by hiding in the attic of a schoolhouse for over a year. He couldn't make a sound. All he could do was watch. He watched the patterns of light on the floor, the behavior of the mice, the way the seasons changed through a tiny crack in the wall. Michelle: Wow. I can't even imagine. Mark: After the war, he immigrated to America, went to Columbia and then Harvard, and became a chemist. In 1981, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on understanding chemical reactions. A true genius in his field. But that's not the end of the story. Michelle: There's more? After a Nobel Prize? Mark: Much more. Later in life, Hoffmann started writing poetry. And he wasn't just dabbling. He got serious, attended workshops, and has now published multiple collections of poetry and several non-fiction books about the connections between art and science. He is a celebrated poet. Michelle: Wait. A Nobel Prize-winning chemist and a published poet? Those two things seem like they come from completely different brains. How is that possible? Mark: That's the magic of a core competency. When asked about it, Hoffmann said his real skill, the thing that connects his science and his art, is something he learned in that attic. He said, "I’m a watcher. I look at how things interact. It interests me." His core competency is patient observation. He applies that same skill to molecules and to human emotions. Michelle: Wow. So a skill he learned hiding in an attic helped him win a Nobel Prize and write poetry? That's incredible. It reframes the whole idea of what a "skill" is. It's not just about being good at Excel; it's a deeper way of being in the world. Mark: Exactly. It's about finding that golden thread that runs through the things that you not only do well, but that you love to do. And once you identify it, the goal is to redesign your life to spend as many of your 168 hours as possible engaged in that competency. Michelle: But how does a normal person, who isn't a Nobel laureate, figure out their core competencies? It still sounds a bit abstract. Mark: Vanderkam has a very practical exercise for this. It's called the "List of 100 Dreams." You sit down and write a list of 100 things you want to do in your life. Big or small. Learn Italian, run a marathon, visit Japan, start a podcast, perfect a sourdough starter. Michelle: A hundred sounds like a lot. Mark: It is! And that's the point. It forces you to move past the obvious and tap into forgotten passions and curiosities. As you start trying things from the list, you'll discover activities that give you energy, that you excel at, that feel like you. That's where you find your core competencies. It’s a process of discovery, not just introspection. Michelle: I see. So it's about experimenting your way to self-knowledge. That feels much more doable. But this brings up a huge practical problem. Even if I know my core competency is, say, creative problem-solving, I still have to do laundry. I still have to cook dinner. I still have to clean the bathroom. How do you make space for the important stuff when the urgent, boring stuff is always there? Mark: And that brings us to the most practical, and for some, the most controversial part of the book. It becomes very concrete when you apply this principle to the place we feel we waste the most time: at home.

Michelle: Okay, I'm ready for the controversy. How do we escape the laundry? Mark: Vanderkam calls it "The New Home Economics." The argument is simple: your time is a valuable, finite resource. You should not spend it on tasks that are not your core competency and that you don't enjoy, especially if someone else can do them more efficiently. In other words: outsource aggressively. Michelle: Ah, yes. The part where we all hire a staff. This is where the book gets some pushback, right? It can feel a bit out of touch. Mark: It can, and we should definitely talk about that. But let's look at the story she uses to illustrate it, because it's not about a millionaire. It's about a 30-year-old software developer in Honolulu named Sid Savara. Michelle: Okay, a software developer. I'm listening. Mark: Sid was feeling burned out. He was working his job, trying to stay fit, playing in a rock band. He felt like he had no time. So he did the 168-hour log. And he had a horrifying realization: he was spending up to 15 hours a week just on food-related tasks. Grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning up. Michelle: Fifteen hours! That's almost another part-time job. I can totally believe that. Mark: Right? So Sid decided this was not his core competency. He posted an ad on Craigslist. It basically said, "I'm looking for someone to cook for me. I'm a single guy, I eat anything." He got a bunch of responses and ended up hiring a woman, a mom who was starting a personal chef business. For $60 a week, plus the cost of groceries, she would come to his house and prepare a week's worth of healthy lunches and dinners. Michelle: Sixty dollars a week? That's... surprisingly affordable. That's like two nights of takeout. Mark: That's the point! And it gets better. He found his grocery bills actually went down, because she was a more efficient shopper and he wasn't making impulse buys. He saved about 10 hours a week, which he used to practice guitar and build his website. He even outsourced his laundry to a wash-and-fold service. He said it was the best money he ever spent. Michelle: I love this story. But I can already hear the objections. This is where some readers push back. They say this advice is for the privileged. Not everyone can afford a personal chef or a laundry service, even a cheap one. Doesn't this advice come from a place of privilege? Mark: It's a valid and important critique, and one the book has faced. Vanderkam's perspective is that we need to think about it in terms of opportunity cost. The question isn't just "can you afford to pay someone $60?" It's also "what could you do with the 10 hours you get back?" Could you use that time to build a side hustle? To study for a certification that gets you a raise? To simply rest so you're more productive at your actual job? Michelle: So it's an investment in your own time. And maybe it doesn't have to be a personal chef. It could be using a grocery delivery service to save two hours on a Saturday. Or hiring a teenager in the neighborhood to mow the lawn. Mark: Exactly. It's about identifying the tasks that drain you the most and finding creative ways to get them off your plate. Vanderkam argues that we, especially women, often feel a moral obligation to do these domestic tasks ourselves. There's a layer of guilt associated with outsourcing them. Michelle: Oh, absolutely. The guilt is real. I can just hear my mother's voice if I told her I was paying someone to do my laundry. But Vanderkam's point is that nurturing your family—a core competency—is not the same as scrubbing the floors. Mark: Precisely. You can't outsource loving your kids. You can outsource cleaning the toilet. And by doing so, you free up time and mental energy for the things that only you can do. It's about building a "home team" to support your life, just like you'd have a team at work.

Michelle: You know, as we talk through this, it becomes so clear that this book isn't really about time management 'hacks' like the Pomodoro Technique or inbox zero. It's a fundamental identity shift. You stop identifying as 'a busy person' and start identifying as 'a person who chooses how to spend their 168 hours.' Mark: That is the perfect synthesis. It’s a move from a reactive posture to a proactive one. And that choice has a ripple effect. Vanderkam's most powerful idea, I think, is that a lifetime is simply 168 hours, repeated again and again. The life you want isn't something you build in the distant future. It's available to you right now, hidden inside the 168 hours of this week. Michelle: That's both a huge responsibility and a massive relief. It means you don't have to wait for retirement or for the kids to grow up to start living the life you want. You can start this week. Mark: You can start today. By making one different choice. By deciding one thing is not a priority, and using that time for something that is. It’s not about a perfect, hyper-optimized schedule. It's about creating a life that, hour by hour, feels like your own. Michelle: So maybe the first step isn't to overhaul your entire life, or even hire a personal chef. Maybe it's just to track one day. Just for 24 hours, write down where the time actually goes. You might be surprised by what you find. Mark: A powerful and maybe even liberating thought. It’s about being the author of your own life, one hour at a time. Michelle: I love that. A great place to end. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.