So if you have little ones around, grab your headphones now.

Hey, it's Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business

and life you love.

Now, if you're anything like me and you love the topic of productivity?

Stick around, because my guest today is an expert on how to make the most of those 168

hours we each get every week.

Laura Vanderkam is the bestselling author of What the Most Successful People Do Before

Breakfast, I Know How She Does It, and 168 Hours, among others.

Her 2016 TED talk, "How to Gain Control of Your Free Time," has been viewed more than

5 million times.

Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune and other publications.

Laura, thank you so much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

So I think we share a little bit of a similar DNA.

I have been and love talking about productivity and time management.

It's just a topic area I can't get enough of.

We talk about it a lot on the show.

So I'm really curious, where did you develop this love of this topic?

How did this start for you?

Yeah, well I wish there was a really good story of hitting rock bottom and then, that

would make a much better self help book.

But I've always been interested in productivity.

And it really came to a head when I had my first kid several years ago and I was trying

to figure out how I could make the pieces of work and life fit together.

And so I started studying people who were making it work.

And as I looked at their schedules and ask questions about it, I saw that a lot of the

stories we tell ourselves about where the time goes may have some problems with them.

And I find that fascinating.

So I decided to write about it.

Yeah.

And so then it just was...

Because I know for some authors they could go on to a topic and be like, “okay, I kind

of did this,” but there must've been something about it for you that you're like, "I'm going

to do it again and look at it from a different point of view."

Yeah, well I find the topic fascinating because we all have the same amount of time.

Yes.

We all have 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week.

And so when you find people who are doing all these amazing things in their lives, both

personally and professionally, it's not because they have any more time than the rest of us.

They may have other things going for them, but they don't have that.

And so I enjoy studying: what are they doing with their hours?

How are they making the pieces of work and life fit together and what can the rest of

us learn from that?

Yeah.

So being Off the Clock, which is the title of your latest book, as you call it, it implies

time freedom.

Yet time freedom requires discipline.

I want to talk about the time paradox meaning that time is both precious and plentiful.

I thought this was so fascinating.

Why do you feel it's important to really dig into this paradox and like really understanding

both where the minutes go and then almost simultaneously not wanting ourselves to be

obsessed with where the minutes go?

Yeah, there really is this paradox about it.

And I mean the whole genesis of Off the Clock came when I was feeling off the clock while

on a run this morning in Maine where I was there all by myself.

Nobody was expecting me to do anything.

I could do whatever I wanted.

It was this very sort of liberating sense.

And yet I realized in the moment when I was having this wonderful run along the Maine

beach that I had to figure out so many logistics to get me to that place.

I mean, in terms of making sure I didn't have work at that time, the logistics of getting

there, child care, all this other stuff.

And so all that time discipline is what had led to time freedom.

And as I explored this more with people, I saw that many of the people who do feel the

most relaxed about their time are also the people who are most in control of their time.

They have figured out where the time is going.

They have figured out what needs to happen in their life.

They have put the systems in place to make it work.

And when you have that going on, well then you can relax.

Then you can enjoy time, because you're not vaguely worried that something's not happening

that's supposed to, you've got some deadline coming up you're not sure about.

So that's when you can really feel off the clock.

For me, the more disciplined I am, I do feel that's true.

The more freedom I have, and I've seen that in the decades of my career.

It's like the more organized I become, then when it's time for me to be truly off the

clock, I don't need to check into email.

I don't need to pick up the phone.

It's like things are taken care of.

But so many people, I feel like don't do the first basic steps, which we're going to get

into, about figuring out, you know, well where does it all go?

So when it comes to things like money or time, for me it's always about, right, you can't

measure what you don't manage.

And I love the phrasing of Pearson's law: "That which is measured, improves and that

which is measured and reported, improves exponentially."

So let's talk about time tracking.

That's one of your big...

I guess so excited about this.

And for anyone in the audience, who's like, "No!"

Like if they need it, too.

Please don't make me.

Please don't make me, but it's so exciting.

For us, at least.

I'm not sure of everyone.

But I feel like if we can inspire them to do it because there's so much goodness and

benefit and joy that can come from it and the results that can come if you're just willing

to dig in there.

So first let's talk about you.

What inspired you to start tracking your time?

Well, I was curious about where my time went.

And at the time I started tracking my time continuously, which I did in spring of 2015,

so I now know where every half hour block of my time has gone since then, which puts

this right out there.

Nobody else has to do this.

Nobody else has to track their time for three years.

Don't worry.

But you know, I write about the topic, so I looked at thousands of time logs at that

point.

I wanted to really see where my time went.

And I had kept logs of a week here and there over the years.

But I realized when I started tracking my time continuously that I had chosen very specific

weeks to track in the past, like weeks that showed me as I wished to see myself.

You know, the perfect week.

And when you track all your time, of course you can't do that.

And so I got a much more holistic perspective on where the time goes.

But yeah, I mean if you want to spend your time better, you have to figure out where

the time is going now, because if you don't have good data, then your decision will be

flawed.

I mean, it's the same with any business decision.

If you don't know which stores are selling what, how are you going to make right choices

of what you're supposed to be doing with that?

So that's really what it comes from.

And I realized I had plenty of stories I was telling myself.

Let's talk about them cause I thought that was fascinating.

Like, some of the big lies.

And I think that's what's so valuable about being specific and taking the time to track

anything, you know, whether it's money or what you're eating.

Every time I try kind of a new way of eating and I start to learn something new, I'm like,

"Oh my goodness," it shows me so much about how I was kidding myself.

I didn't think I ate late at night.

It's like, oh my goodness, I snack late night all the time.

You start to discover these things.

So with your time tracking, what were some of the lies or stories that you were telling

yourself?

Yes.

The equivalent of the six Oreos from the kitchen next to the home office that magically disappear

on their own in the course of the day.

Yeah, I had thought that I worked about 50 hours a week because the weeks I had tracked

in the past, I'd always worked 50 hours a week.

And it turned out that I had this story I was telling myself that I'm a serious professional

who works long hours.

With writing, sometimes people view it as a bit of a dilettante-ish sort of thing to

do, so I'm very wedded to this idea of myself as a serious professional.

And then when I tracked my time continuously, I realized that the average was a lot closer

to 40 than it was to 50.

And it's not that I never worked 50 hour weeks because clearly I had.

I'd recorded them in the past.

I'd worked 60 hours a week.

It's just they weren't the norm any more than a week working 20 hours was.

And so when I realized, well, the average is 40, not 50, that's 10 hours that even studying

this topic very closely, I had no idea where they were going.

And what did you discover about those 10 hours?

Where did you start to feel like, "Oh, here's where it's sliding off to?"

Well, it's interesting.

I mean, you know, obviously some of it was going to kid-related stuff.

I turned out to spend quite a bit of time in the car, which was just mind boggling for

me because I usually work out of my home office, so there's no daily commute and that is where

most people's time in the car will appear in their schedule.

So, I don't have to worry about that.

It turns out I was spending more than an hour a day in the car, listening to really bad

music much of the time.

And so I realized, I was like, well, I need to be a little bit more intentional about

this hour a day.

But if I didn't know that, like if I didn't know, I'm spending an hour a day in the car...

With crappy music.

With crappy music.

I mean, I could tell myself all sorts of stories, but it turns out that I'm spending more time

in the car, than I am exercising, than I am reading, like all these other things.

That was a big one.

I loved when you wrote, "Exercise takes a lot of time only in our explanations of why

we're not doing it."

Pretty much.

I was like, "Amen."

It was so good.

As a woman who likes to go to the gym, when read that, I was like, yup, because the days

that I'm quote unquote "too busy," and then I really look, “I'm like, oh, but you know

what?

You watch the NBC Nightly News didn't you, girl?”

Yeah.

And I mean it's hard to exercise at night for many people, but that doesn't mean we

couldn't have rearranged the schedule in some other ways so that leisure time would appear

at a different point in the day.

And you know, I've committed to exercising every single day and I've found that's good

for me because then it changes the conversation.

I'm not like, “am I going to exercise?” which is a whole existential debate.

I don't know.

Am I gonna exercise?

It changes it to “when am I going to exercise?” which is a much more useful question.

Yes.

So for anyone hearing, okay, I know time tracking is probably the first step, which would you

agree, right?

Yes.

In order to make any significant and substantial changes if we want to.

If we want to.

If we want to, then a first step is knowing what the hell we're dealing with right now.

So for anyone who's resisting this idea, I feel like one of the big ones that you wrote

about like, well I don't have the time to track my time, can you address that for them?

Yeah.

I see all kinds of forms of resistance to this idea and I'm sure some people are like,

crossing their hands listening to this.

Like, "No, I'm never going to do it."

One category of people who resisted is people who have to track their time for work.

So lawyers, accountants, or you know, anyone who's punching in and out of something, you

may feel like, "I track my time at work.

I can't deal with it for the rest of my life."

You don't have to do it for three years.

Like, that's not expected.

Just one week will give you so much insight into your life that I hope you'll find it

worth it.