August 17, 2020
Whillans, a professor of negotiations, organizations, and markets at Harvard Business School, explores in her insightful debut ways to shift one’s perspective away from making money and toward prioritizing one’s time. Whillans uses the terms “time rich” and “time poor” to measure how much time a person has created in their daily routine for things that matter to them. Asking readers to “calculate trade-offs between time and money, and see that many of the decisions we make are suboptimal,” Whillans cautions against “time traps”—such as spending too much time on the internet, habitually checking email, or reflexively saying “yes” to invitations—that prevent one away from using time to its fullest potential. She recommends questions for finding one’s time management “default setting,” documenting the use of one’s time, and “hacking work time” by working from home and roping together necessary but unfulfilling activities. She also shares strategies such as listening to audiobooks during commutes to increase study time, and budgeting which chores to outsource to third-party services. (Granted, many of the tips will need to be reevaluated for a post-covid world.) Anyone looking for novel strategies to make better use of their time will love this.