I’ll start off by saying that 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think is not a new book. It was written in 2010, but I happened to come across it in January of this year. It seemed like the perfect thing to read as I was thinking about what I wanted to accomplish in 2019 and how I wanted to spend my time.

I loved, loved this book! It gave me so much to think about and some solid strategies to manage my time a little better (desperately needed, especially with a new baby due in a few weeks).

The book starts off with a discussion about the common modern narrative about how nobody has enough time. Laura Vanderkam, the author, kind of pokes fun at an article in a magazine that asked people what they would do with 15 extra minutes in their day (relearn how to play the flute! write thank you letters! read a book!). She points out that if we’re scrambling for 15 extra minutes to write a thank you letter, no wonder we feel completely overwhelmed and crunched for time when it comes to achieving big things like building a career, spending quality time with our kids, or exercising consistently.

Needless to say, she strongly disagrees with this narrative and argues that the 168 hours we have in a week is plenty of time to achieve our career goals, spend enough time with our families, fit in exercise and hobbies, AND get enough sleep every night. And then she gives some pretty convincing examples of people who do all of that.

If you’re raising an eyebrow and feeling like that’s impossible, I highly recommend reading this book! The reason she comes up with 168 hours is that 24 hours seems like such a short amount of time to try to cram everything in, but the reality is that our natural rhythms and schedules are often made up of weeks more than individual days. Plus 168 hours gives us so much more flexibility than one day.

This book was so helpful to me (I’m still thinking about it months after I finished it). So I decided to share some of her main points here:

• Keep track of your time, hour by hour, for a week or two so you can see how you’re actually spending your time. This was both gratifying and rather eye-opening for me. On the one hand, I was like “Oh hey, I’m doing tons of stuff!” (things that by the nature of spending most of the day at home with very little kids are immediately undone, you know, but still). But I also realized that I was spending way too much time online. I love Instagram, but I hadn’t realized I was using Facebook much more than necessary (especially since it’s an app that I don’t even particularly like). I immediately put screen time & app limits on my phone and was amazed at how much it helped.
• Figure out what you’re best at doing— your core competencies— and spend your time doing that. Nobody is better than you at nurturing relationships with your kids and partner, so maximize your time doing that. Laundry on the other hand? That can probably be done by someone else just as well as by you. Most of us do it because we have to, not because we really enjoy it, so it’s a perfect example of something you can spend a minimal amount of time doing. What are you really great at and what can you outsource?
• “Busy” does not = “productive.” I think most of us feel like we’re doing a lot, but being busy doesn’t mean we actually did much that was important during our 168 hours. I love the term “procrasticleaning” because it describes what I find myself doing so often— clearing my kids’ junk off the floor or organizing emails in my inbox to avoid doing what I actually should be doing. She also slams inefficient meetings that could be finished in 20 minutes if everyone stayed on task, time spent at your desk multi-tasking between screens, and doing fairly unimportant busy work. All of this, she says, leads to us feeling like we’re ALWAYS working, when in reality if we were more efficient and focused with our time, we’d probably get the same amount of things done in a lot less time. These days, instead of making a massive to-do list every morning, I write down 1-3 things I absolutely need to do for work during quiet time. Then I put my head down to focus on those completely for the two-ish hours I have while my youngest daughter naps.  
• Outsource! She’s a big fan of outsourcing housey things like house cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking and lawn care. Not sure I totally agree with her here. I mean, I do agree that it would be ideal, just not that it’s possible for every family; if you’re struggling to pay rent, you probably aren’t going to be hiring someone to come mow your lawn. And also some people really like cooking!
• Schedule time for hobbies. One really great activity she advises doing is to come up with a “list of 100 dreams.” These can be anything from “run a marathon” to “always have fresh flowers in the house.” Once you know what you’d like to be doing with your leisure time— read more books, volunteer with an organization you care about, take a class— then you can choose 2-4 at a time and schedule a time for them to happen. I thought this was really key, because it’s easy to say “I wish I had more time to practice the piano,” but then spend any free time you DO have doing things like watching TV or scrolling on your phone (neither of which is nearly as rejuvenating or fun as we think). She’s especially hard on TV watching, because apparently the average American watches 20-30 hours of TV a week (enough for a part-time job!).

One thing I appreciate about this book is that she doesn’t make it seem like it’s easy to live the life you want. It definitely takes a lot of planning and discipline to organize your days so you don’t spend time doing things like scrolling on social media, checking your email, or running errands.

I think that no matter what your life looks like— and even if you aren’t able to implement all of her suggestions, like hiring out your laundry— we can all benefit from looking critically at how we use our time (both our leisure time and our work time). And her examples of people who have organized their life more efficiently to be able to do everything they want to were really inspirational for me (thinking specifically of the CEO mom of 6 who coaches soccer on the weekends and sleeps 7 hours a night).  

Whether or not you’ve read the book or not, I’d love to know: what things do you want to fit in your life right now? My big ones are reading consistently, exercising most days and practicing the piano for a couple of hours each week.

(Photo of the book by @madelinessummerlife on Instagram.)

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I heard about The Read-Aloud Family a while ago because I follow the author, Sarah Mackenzie, who does the Read Aloud Revival podcast. If you’re interested in reading out loud to your kids more (or even interested in WHY you should be interested, ha), her podcast is a great place to start.

Before I started the book, I wondered if it would be useful to me since, as the owner of a children’s book subscription service, I already highly value reading to my kids and do spend a lot of time doing it. I have to say that I still found it very motivating and inspiring!

I think this book would be helpful for any parent, since it’s packed with ideas and encouragement for making reading out loud actually happen. So I thought I’d share a few of the key things I learned— that way you can see if you’d like to read it yourself! (Or, you know, just read this summary and call it good… that works too!)

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Read Aloud Family is divided into three sections. The first one covers why reading aloud to your children is important. The second section is more of a tool-kit on how, exactly, to make reading aloud happen, and also how to make it fun and meaningful. Finally, the third section is all book suggestions, divided up by ages (0-3, 4-7, 8-12, and teenagers).

The most helpful parts for me were the first two sections, since we still mostly read in Spanish here at home, but I can see how her book lists are GOLD. I’m definitely planning on using them as we incorporate more English books into our read aloud time!

THREE GREAT TAKEAWAYS FROM THE READ ALOUD FAMILY

#1. If you want your family to be a reading family, you have to have books in your home. Mackenzie says that we send a clear message to our kids when we spend some of our hard-earned cash on books: they matter, they’re a part of who we are, and they’re important to our family.

She recommends gifting your kids books for holidays and birthdays, as well as giving them a book allowance to grow their collection. I love that last part, because some of my best childhood memories are of getting to go to Barnes & Noble after a long day of shopping in El Paso, TX (3 hours from my hometown in Chihuahua, Mexico) to pick out a book to read on the drive home.

#2. How to help books compete with screen time. Mackenzie compares a book to a watermelon (juicy, sweet, refreshing), and screen time to candy (possibly more tempting, but ultimately much less nourishing). Most kids love eating sticky, delicious watermelon, but if they’re offered a piece of candy, they’ll choose that almost every time.

So she recommends that instead of setting certain times of day when screens are not an option, set times of day when screens are. This makes screen time the exception in your home, not the rule, which frees up the rest of the day for other things (including reading!). As she says, it’s so much easier to enjoy the watermelon when we aren’t tempted by the candy.

#3. How to choose great books: the 3 question test. I loved this part because I often get asked how I choose books for Sol Book Box, and basically my answer is that I use her 3 question test (before I even knew about it!).

Here are the things you should pay attention to as you figure out if a book is worth reading.

• Images: Can you picture the scene in your mind’s eye? This works with illustrations, of course, but even if the book is just text, it should be capable of transporting you so you can see it in your own imagination.
• Vocabulary: Do the words seem rich and varied? No dumbed-down books, please! And no badly translated books, either!
• Curiosity: Are you interested in finding out what happens next? If not, it’s probably not worth reading.

Whew! As you can see from this mega-post, I thought this book was really helpful. There’s a lot more I could have shared, but hopefully this summary gives some useful ideas to encourage you to read aloud to your kids!

P.S. If you’d rather listen than read (or don’t have time to read), The Read Aloud Family also comes in audiobook form (and is narrated by the author!).

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