New year, new habits: Fixing time management mistakes in 2025
Dec 18, 2024
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Laura Vanderkam, a time management expert and author, shares her insights on making more intentional decisions in the new year. She critiques popular time-saving hacks that often miss the mark and encourages prioritizing activities that bring joy. Vanderkam highlights the importance of tracking time to uncover true patterns and celebrate small victories. She discusses how different personality types handle time management amid life changes and teases new habits for 2025, hinting at exciting upcoming content.
Common time-saving hacks often fail to create genuine time management improvements and can instead lead to lost leisure time.
Tracking weekly time allocation enables individuals to reassess their priorities and dedicate more time to meaningful activities.
Deep dives
Challenge of Time-Saving Hacks
Many common time-saving hacks are ineffective and merely rearrange tasks rather than eliminate them. For instance, activities like packing lunches the night before do not actually save time; they simply shift the workload to a different part of the day. This often results in lost leisure time that could be used for relaxation or other meaningful activities. To genuinely improve time management, it is crucial to evaluate what tasks are truly valuable and to identify opportunities to spend more time on things that bring joy and fulfillment.
The Value of Time Tracking
Tracking time over a week provides valuable insights into where time is actually spent, allowing for a more accurate assessment of activities. This practice often reveals unexpected amounts of available time and challenges preconceived notions about how busy life is. By recording a full week's activities, individuals can better understand their schedules and see areas where they can make adjustments to prioritize meaningful pursuits. Ultimately, this awareness can guide more intentional choices about how time is allocated moving forward.
Intentional Goal Setting
Successfully achieving personal goals requires breaking down larger aspirations into specific, actionable tasks that fit into daily life. For example, wanting to eat healthier involves determining concrete steps like deciding on which fruits and vegetables to include in meals and planning grocery trips accordingly. This detailed approach paves the way for lifestyle changes to take root, ensuring that intentions translate into habits. By being explicit about time usage, individuals increase their chances of prioritizing and sticking to their goals.
A new year is a fresh opportunity to take control of our time, but a lot of hacks don't actually help us prioritize and focus. In this special bonus episode, time management expert Laura Vanderkam shares her best strategies for making decisions with more intention—so you have time for the things that truly matter. Laura Vanderkam was featured in the episode "Flip the Script."
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