Think 168 hours, not 24

Never enough hours in the day? No problem. We don’t live our lives in days. We live our lives in weeks. Change your mindset to feel better about work, family, and everything in between.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is to think a hundred sixty eight hours,
not twenty four. When I first started writing about time
many years ago, I realized something. A lot of people
said the phrase seven, but no one multiplied it through.

(00:24):
I certainly hadn't. I had to get out a pen
and some paper to do the math. It turns out
there are a hundred sixty eight hours in a week.
This number is important for a few reasons. First, a
week is the cycle of life as we actually live it.
This is the smallest unit of time that offers a
representative picture of life. If I chose a random twenty

(00:45):
four hours of your life, it would look very different
if I chose a Tuesday or a Saturday. If I
choose a random a hundred sixty eight hours, though the
odds are much better that my next pick of a
hundred sixty eight hours would look at least reasonably similar. Second,
look can get A week shows us how much time
we have. Things that appear to consume a lot of
time don't in the context of a week. Regular listeners

(01:09):
of this podcast will hear me say this equation A
lot with a hundred sixty eight hours in a week.
If you work a regular full time job, so forty
hours per week and sleep eight hours a night, so
that's fifty six hours per week. That leaves seventy two
hours for other things. If you work fifty hours, you
still get sixty two hours. This might not be a
parent on a Tuesday when you're in the office from

(01:32):
eight am to seven pm, but those sixty two hours
show up when you plot out the whole week. But
it's not just about the math. I think the hundred
sixty eight hours number is important because it helps us
see that things don't have to happen daily, nor do
they have to happen at the same time every day
in order to count in our lives. I call this

(01:53):
belief that things have to happen every day at the
same time the twenty four hour trap. I see it
most often with wait for it, exercise. You may have
fallen into this trap yourself. People often tell me they
want to exercise more, and then they tuck themselves out
of it because there's not a perfect time every single day.

(02:15):
You know how these conversations go, Oh, I'd love to exercise,
but I'm not the kind of person who can just
leave for an hour every day at lunch. Or I'd
love to exercise, but I have a family I want
to see. I can't go to the gym for an
hour every night after work. Or I'd love to exercise,
but I wake up early enough as it is. I
can't stomach the thought of waking up at five am
every day. So don't wake up at five am every day.

(02:39):
Stop looking for the perfect time every single day. Instead,
look at the whole of the week and see where
you can fit it in. Maybe one morning you get
up early and exercise. If you're co parenting with someone,
you could trade off and each of you gets one
night off. You could go to the gym, then do
something on each of the two weekend days, and wow,

(02:59):
we've just exercised four times a week. It didn't happen
daily at the same time every day, but it didn't
have to. And funny thing, because I write about time management,
people often want to tell me about their great daily habits.
This is one of these occupational hazards I didn't foresee.
But I'm like, okay, great, tell me about your great

(03:19):
daily habit. And then I realized after a while that
the person does this awesome habit Monday through Thursday. But
that is not daily, that is four times a week.
So rather than fall into the twenty four hour trap,
look at the whole week. I find this is especially
helpful when it comes to issues of combining work and

(03:41):
the rest of life. People sometimes fret to me that
their balances out of whack because they had to stay
late at work, or maybe they travel frequently. So we
look at their timelogs and we find out let's say,
on average, they stay late past their kids bed time
at work two times per week, but that means their
home five nights a week. Five is greater than two.

(04:03):
So rather than look at the one night where it
appears work and family are pitted against each other, or
the two nights where it appears work and family are
pitted against each other, why not look at the whole week.
Then we see that we have space for both. People
often say to me, you know, there aren't enough hours
in the day, and I agree, but we don't live

(04:23):
our lives and dates. We live our lives in weeks,
and when we think of a hundred sixty hours, not
twenty four, we see that we can build the lives
we want in the time we've got in the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's to making
the most of our time. Hey, everybody got a tip

(04:49):
or a question. You can share them with me on Twitter,
Facebook or Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod. That's be the
number four, then breakfast p o D. You can also
email me at Before Breakfast Podcast at iHeart media dot
com for the email to spell those words out. I

(05:09):
look forward to connecting and learning how you make the
most of your time.