168 Hours

Laura Vanderkam

Book cover for 168 Hours

As the author rightly points out, most productivity books are written by men. It's good to see this book tackle things from a slightly different perspective - a woman who's trying to balance both her career ambitions as well as raising a family and running a household.

Vanderkam reasons that in order to have enough time to do the things we need, we should outsource the things we aren't good at, like household chores. Since people spend so much money on cars, etc., what's a little bit more money spend on outsourcing your laundry, etc.? Not sure I completely agree with this concept, or that outsourcing is as cheap as the author claims it is (maybe that's because I don't live in America).

Standout point for me was the author's mention of “flow” states and how a study was done that shows that people who spend more time in flow (focused on challenging yet doable work) are happier. Heard of being in a state of “flow” before but didn't know that it actually makes you happier (but that makes sense). Going to go research that more.