Quotes from Laura Vanderkam

You have to think about each day's landscape—both workdays and days off—and where there might be spots of usable time. You become a general, surveying the battlefield. What can move? What can't? What logistical problems must be solved as you march through your hours?

A mucha de la gente que siempre llega tarde le gusta complacer a otros.

La gente que llega tarde suele ser increíblemente optimista.

Calling something "work" doesn't make it a more noble use of time than anything else. Work that doesn't advance you toward the life you want is still wasted time. You will never get those hours back, and we only get so many. Wrote Shakespeare in Richard II, "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

I would argue that, over the last 40 years, as a higher proportion of parents' time in two-parent families has been compensated at market rates, parental time overall has become more valuable. Consequently, parents allocate this valuable time differently during their nonworking hours than people did in the past.

On deadline days, though, "my best time is around eleven at night. There is absolutely no distraction to be had. You're pretty much shackled to your desk." She pauses. "There's something really nice about that.

They found that people were happiest when they were completely absorbed in activities that were difficult but doable, to the point where their brains no longer had space to ruminate about the troubles of daily life.

Over time, the way parents have allocated their non-market-work hours has shifted considerably. The biggest change in the new home economics has been time devoted to housework. This has fallen precipitously—almost in half over 40 years.

Inertia is always a little bit of a challenge," one person wrote. "It's easier to not do things than to do them." Another person dispatched with potentially conflicting work obligations, but then succumbed to the temptation to do "nothing" once the moment arrived: "I'm such a creature of habit it was hard to deviate from the norm.

What the most successful people know about weekends is that life cannot happen only in the future. It cannot wait for some day when we are less tired or less busy. If you work long hours, then weekends are key to feeling like you have a life that is broader than your professional identity—even if, and probably because, you take that identity very seriously.

autobiographical narrative running through our brains, is really three selves. There is the "anticipating self," who looked forward to that ice skating trip, the "experiencing self," who would do it, and the "remembering self" (a concept Nobel Prize–winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman popularized in his research), who would look back fondly on the memory of those kids zipping around on the ice.

Your turn GIVE YOURSELF A BEDTIME Planning questions: What time would you like to wake up most mornings? About how many hours of sleep do you need on an average night? What time do you generally need to be in bed in order to get this amount of sleep? This is your bedtime.

How to build a resilient schedule Creating a back-up slot for the things that matter starts with figuring out what matters. I asked Tranquility by Tuesday participants to think about things that were important to them but had a tendency to get bumped from the schedule. Maybe it's a Saturday-morning long run with a friend that keeps getting canceled because of rain or complicated family schedules.

Plan on Fridays Expectations are infinite. Time is finite. We are always choosing. Choose well.

Just as an outdoor graduation ceremony needs its own specific rain date, the most important activities in your life need specific back-up slots. That said, creating specific back-up slots can get unwieldy as the priorities stack up. We also don't always know, during Friday planning, everything we'll need to do by the end of the next week. So here's a practical shortcut for this rule: Get in the habit of leaving regularly scheduled open space in your schedule. That

We can see the tension here. The anticipating self gets to don the identity of "cool mom who is going to take her kids ice skating." The remembering self gets to enjoy the memory. It is the experiencing self who actually has to get up off the couch, get misdirected by her GPS to the bus circle above the rink parking lot, and fumble with the change machine to score quarters for her shoe locker rental. This can seem like an unfair division of labor.

To qualify as an adventure, something needs to be enjoyable, awe-inspiring, meaningful, or at least generate a really good story for parties. All of these are worth experiencing in life alongside the wine-and-YouTube routine. So I employed my favorite mental trick that makes anything tough more doable: Picture yourself on the other side.

the abstract, our brains consider our future selves to be strangers. We're naturally less concerned about future needs than current ones. But if you actively picture Future You, this tendency shifts, and you can make better decisions. Some research has suggested that when people see renderings of themselves at future

La diversión que implica esfuerzo es lo que hace que el día de hoy sea distinto y que aterrice en la memoria.

know that discipline isn't exactly a fun concept, but this skill of picturing yourself on

some research has suggested that we become less disciplined as the day goes on. Turning off the TV and going upstairs to brush teeth takes energy at a time

Aparentemente, saborear va de la mano con la sensación de que el tiempo pasa con más lentitud".

26. Es bueno usar el tiempo en la gente.

become deeply engaged in their team's project, and