Quotes from Laura Vanderkam

Si haces cuentas, puedes pasar entre tres y cuatro horas al día en actividades superfluas

requires changing the narrative. As Daytner explained to me, she doesn't tell herself I don't have time to do X, Y, or Z. She tells herself that she won't do X, Y, or Z because "it's not a priority.

Not only do you have to do what you love, you have to love what you do. That is, the job conditions need to be optimal to coax out your best work.

Pay attention to when you feel most absorbed at work. If you want to be blissful, your job should involve spending as much time as possible in that space where you are leveraging your core competencies, and working in the way you choose on something demanding enough that, as Earle puts it in Sea Change, "one discovery leads to another, each new scrap of information triggering awareness of dozens of new unknowns.

Planning questions: What "big adventures" (taking a few hours) would you like to try in the next month? List at least three. What "little adventures" (taking about an hour) would you like to try in the next month? List at least three.

Life is not going to be less hectic next week. Life probably won't be less hectic next year. We have to make time for what matters now. We need practical, straightforward strategies to make that happen.

This is the paradox of weekends: "You have to set an appointment to go off the grid as surely as to go on it.

so, I have narrowed all these ideas down to nine practical rules with the biggest impact: Give yourself a bedtime Plan on Fridays Move by 3 p.m. Three times a week is a habit Create a back-up slot One big adventure, one little adventure Take one night for you Batch the little things Effortful before effortless

In my previous book, Grindhopping, I told young entrepreneurs to ask three questions: What do I love so much I'd do it for free? How can I get someone to pay me to do that? If there's no obvious job title in an organization doing what I love (and often there isn't), what's a low-cost way I could start a business doing that, and get the cash register ringing quickly?

people, like companies, can have core competencies too. The same Hamel-Prahalad three-part definition can still apply. An individual's core competencies are best thought of as abilities that can be leveraged across multiple spheres. They should be important and meaningful. And they should be the things we do best and that others cannot do nearly as well.

Implementation questions: What big adventure(s) did you experience this week? What little adventure(s) did you experience this week? What effects did you see in your life from doing something out of the ordinary? What challenges, if any, did you face while implementing this week's strategy? Did anything make it difficult for you to plan adventures into your life, or to have the adventures you planned? How did you address these challenges? If you modified this rule, how did you do so?

Broadly, those who get the most out of life try to figure out and focus on their core competencies. They know that at least one key difference between happy, successful people, and those just muddling along is that the happy ones spend as many of their 168 hours as possible on their core competencies—honing their focus to get somewhere—and, like modern corporations, chucking everything else.

can change the experience of a Tuesday, as you stare out at the summer sky, the stars, and the fireflies punctuating the darkness like little adventures can punctuate time.

I feel like I spend much of my energy some days convincing the younger people in my house to go to bed so I can go to bed. There is always something else that has to happen. The toddler wants to be rocked again. Someone else's homework must go in the backpack. Someone has forgotten to tell me something very important, some story that takes meandering minutes

madness. Before the rest of the world is eating breakfast, the most successful people have already scored daily victories that are advancing them toward the lives they want.

Planning one big adventure and one little adventure each week can make life feel like less of a grind. But it's not the only way to lighten up, and many of us could use a lot more cheer in the daily experience of our hours. So, after you've gotten into the rhythm of building in adventures, try adding another component: some weekly note of whimsy too. Whimsy

Diseña un plan y reúne todo lo que necesitas, pero, hagas lo que hagas, nunca pienses que es imposible.

does laughing with people you've known since childhood—and "during the activity you're so focused on it you're not thinking about the to-do list and other stresses in life." Indeed, the first time she returned home after this bout of tennis tranquility, her husband told her, "You look like you're glowing." Not bad for a Tuesday, right?

There's a simple formula in Anner's organizations for getting the most out of work time: no one goes to a meeting who does not need to be there. Every meeting has an agenda, with a clearly defined, short time frame next to each item.

At the beginning of the meeting, the meeting leader spells out the goals. At the end, the participants go back through the agenda and review assignments to be clear on what needs to happen.

Afortunadamente, es posible minimizar todo tipo de distracciones. La mejor manera de lidiar con las distracciones "productivas" que surgen en tu mente de forma espontánea consiste en redactar una lista "para después". Mientras estés haciendo el trabajo

Despite the usual reputation of self-help, the truth is that most self-help readers already have their lives together. People pick up books on time management because their lives are good, and yet they can see in that goodness that there is space for even more wonder.

You can have a great system for organizing e-mail, or scheduling daily conference calls on various projects, but I'm guessing at your retirement dinner, people won't talk about your pristine in-box or packed schedule. They'll want to talk about what you've done. If you're not getting anything that matters done—like, say, lowering Vietnam's infant mortality rate—then you're not really working.

We all have 168 hours a week, but not all hours are equally suited to all things.