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Laura Vanderkam19 November 2022

9 Strategies To Better Control Your Time - Laura Vanderkam - #554

2Frameworks
12Insights

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Frameworks in this episode

Productivity4 steps

The 168-Hour Week

Know your true weekly time denominator, then track a week to find where it goes

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Productivity9 steps

Tranquility by Tuesday

Nine time rules, adopted one week at a time, to take charge of your week

Read →

Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 1

Myth Buster

Every generation has blamed modern life for feeling busy

Vanderkam pushes back on the idea that smartphones and the 21st century uniquely broke our time. She collects 1950s and 60s magazines full of articles about how impossibly busy modern life felt — long before the internet. The biology hasn't changed, only the options; blaming novel distractions is a 'get out of jail free card' every generation uses.

  • Old magazines complained about busyness with no smartphones or internet
  • Bosses called homes, people got stuck at the office — distractions just differ
  • We've always wasted time and felt life happening to us
  • There are still 24 hours in a day, as there always have been

“It's a very easy get out of jail free card for every generation to lay their challenges at the feet of something that previous generations…”

Chris Williamson
#busyness#history#distraction#modern-life

Hot Take· 1

Hot Take

We confuse a comfortable activity for a worthwhile one

Riffing on a Seth Stephens-Davidowitz line, Williamson and Vanderkam frame the core tension of leisure: the path of least resistance is what current-you wants but future-you regrets. Truly enjoying leisure takes work — you have to take leisure seriously, and that effort is what makes it rewarding rather than default screen time.

  • The comfortable default is what current-you wants and future-you regrets
  • Properly using leisure time takes real work and planning
  • Taking leisure seriously produces a much better experience of it

“We often confuse a comfortable activity for a worthwhile one.”

Chris Williamson

“Imagine this, you know, properly using our leisure time takes work, but I think it's worthwhile work.”

Laura Vanderkam
#leisure#discipline#delayed-gratification

Explainer· 4

Explainer

Discipline is meaningless without a goal to serve

Williamson relays Ryan Holiday's point that discipline is never in service of anything unless you have a goal to posit yourself against. Until you decide what you want to spend time on, you'll inevitably fill it with whatever is most convenient — the path of least resistance.

  • Without a goal, discipline has nothing to aim at
  • Different goals demand entirely different disciplines
  • With no chosen aim, time fills with the most convenient option by default

“Unless you have a goal that you're working toward, discipline is never in service of anything.”

Chris Williamson
#discipline#goals#motivation
Explainer

Why a softball team beats a bubble bath for self-care

Vanderkam explains why committing to something with other people makes self-care actually happen. A bubble bath or 'read more' can always be pushed to tomorrow, so it never happens. But if a softball team needs a second baseman, you show up even when tired or busy — the external commitment gives the active self-care structure.

  • Solo intentions like bubble baths get endlessly postponed
  • A commitment where others depend on you actually gets honored
  • External accountability delivers a more active form of self-care

“Your bathtub isn't going anywhere. You can always push it forward. So then you wind up never doing it.”

Laura Vanderkam
#self-care#commitment#accountability#habits
Explainer

Why identity is the real payoff of a three-times-a-week habit

Vanderkam explains why framing a habit as identity matters: it gives you a self-image beyond your job or caregiving — an aspect of you with autonomy and visible progress, both linked to well-being. In the 'busy years' of building careers and raising families, people often feel they've lost the identity they wish they had, and a regular practice restores it.

  • Identity gives a sense of self beyond job and family duties
  • Autonomy and visible progress both correlate with well-being
  • In the busy years people feel they've lost the identity they want
  • 'I'm someone who plays guitar' comes from doing it regularly, not perfectly

“There is this other aspect to you that is a different identity... something that you can feel more control over, more autonomy, you can see…”

Laura Vanderkam
#identity#habits#well-being#autonomy
Explainer

Why time speeds up with age — and how memories slow it

Our perception of how much time we had is shaped by how many memories we hold of it: more memories of a stretch make it feel longer. Adult life accelerates because routines blur days into 'memory sinkholes' and we stop leaving our comfort zone. Novelty, intensity, and adventures create the distinct memories that make time feel slower and fuller.

  • Perceived duration tracks the number of memories of a period
  • Routine blurs days; youth felt long because so much was new
  • Adults stop pushing outside their comfort zone, so time compresses
  • Deliberate novelty and adventures manufacture memorable markers

“The more memories we have of a particular stretch of time, the longer it feels like it was.”

Laura Vanderkam
#time-perception#memory#novelty#aging

Story· 1

Story

Relinquishing control and the fear of 'what's the point of me?'

Vanderkam names the arrogance and fear that stop people delegating — the belief only they can do their work, or that if things function in their absence they have no worth. Williamson confesses to 210 Saturdays straight setting up a nightclub he could have paid a student £30 to run, driven by neurotic perfectionism and a desire to feel important.

  • People resist delegating out of arrogance or fear of being unneeded
  • We have inherent worth apart from what we do; the world spins without us
  • Williamson worked 210 Saturdays in a row rather than delegate a £30 task
  • The same overcontrol shows up in never letting anyone touch the presentation

“If I allow for the possibility that I don't have to do everything, like what's the point of me?”

Laura Vanderkam
#delegation#perfectionism#control#self-worth

Tool· 2

Tool

Turn screen-time and sleep into daily home-screen widgets

A practical awareness hack: instead of only getting the weekly screen-time report that depresses you one day a week, add screen-time and sleep as home-screen widgets so the feedback is constant. Seeing your numbers every time you open your phone either rewards good habits or nudges you to do better.

  • The weekly screen-time report is easy to ignore; a widget makes it constant
  • Sleep data from a Whoop or Fitbit can feed an Apple Health sleep widget
  • Constant, ambient feedback reinforces or corrects daily habits

“It's a nice reminder, whenever you go on your phone, it just reminds you like, oh yeah, you did good last night.”

Chris Williamson
#screen-time#wearables#self-tracking#iphone
Tool

Add friction to make bad defaults harder

The mirror image of 'effortful before effortless': make effortless activities harder to reach. Williamson forces himself to stand up whenever he wants to use his phone after 8pm, because staying seated keeps you scrolling longer. Small deliberate friction interrupts the low-value default, since nothing good happens on the phone that late anyway.

  • Make effortless activities more effortful to curb them
  • Standing to use the phone after 8pm shortens scrolling
  • The more sedentary you are, the longer you stay on the phone
  • The same friction trick works to limit low-value bits of work

“The more sedentary that you are, the longer that you're going to stay on the phone.”

Chris Williamson
#friction#phone-habits#behavior-design

Takeaway· 3

Takeaway

Ask what you'd actually enjoy, not what would be advantageous

Many people — especially parents — can't answer what they'd do with two free hours without defaulting to chores or getting ahead on tasks. Vanderkam distinguishes the advantageous from the genuinely enjoyable and argues people must give themselves license to have things they simply want to do, then force life around them.

  • Asked what they'd do with free time, many people list chores
  • 'Advantageous' is not the same as 'what you'd enjoy'
  • Some study participants couldn't even name a want they'd never asked themselves
  • Give yourself permission to want things; the dishes will wait

“I didn't ask you what would be advantageous to make the remainder of your time more easy. I said, what would you like to do?”

Chris Williamson
#self-care#leisure#parenting#intentionality
Takeaway

Time in bed is not sleep — the wearable wake-up call

Williamson urges anyone who's never tracked sleep to wear a device for 90 days. Sleep efficiency runs well under 100% — around 80-85% for him — so eight hours in bed can mean only six and a half hours of actual sleep. If you only allow seven hours in bed, you can easily drop under six hours of sleep.

  • Sleep efficiency is far below 100% for almost everyone
  • Eight hours in bed can yield only ~6.5 hours of real sleep
  • Seven hours in bed can drop you under six hours of sleep
  • Track for 90 days to internalize how much bed time you truly need

“You will be disgusted at how little sleep you get from the amount of time that you spend in bed.”

Chris Williamson
#sleep#wearables#sleep-efficiency#recovery
Takeaway

Your to-do list is a contract, not a wish list

The biggest to-do-list error is making it too long — a wish list of anything you might ever do, with no order or urgency. If you list 50 items and finish seven, you can't tell if they were the right seven. Consciously choose only a few things you truly intend to do; an item left undone is exactly as undone as if you'd never written it.

  • Overlong lists become unordered wish lists with no sense of priority
  • Finishing 7 of 50 tells you nothing about whether they mattered
  • Choose a short list you truly intend to complete
  • Leave the list shorter than available time because things always come up
  • One task may drive 50% of progress; most items barely move goals

“Better to think of the to-do list more as a contract with yourself that if you're putting something on the to-do list... you really truly…”

Laura Vanderkam
#to-do-lists#prioritization#productivity