I’ve been following Laura Vanderkam for years. Her writing has shaped much of how I think about time. Not just how we manage it, but how we use it to build lives we actually want to live.
Laura is a bestselling author, speaker, and host of the podcasts Before Breakfast and Best of Both Worlds. She’s spent years studying how people actually use their time, and her latest book, Big Time: A Simple Path to Time Abundance, asks us to reconsider something many of us take for granted: that there simply isn’t enough of it.
Naturally, I had questions.
So I asked.
What are you not waiting for anymore?
I’m not waiting to do adventurous travel. Because my work involves giving speeches in various places, my family has invested in childcare that allows me to be gone overnight. But since I have that support available, I’ve been able to take advantage of it to travel with individual kids over the past few years. For instance, my daughter and I went to Paris to see Taylor Swift when she was touring, and this spring I took my 16-year-old son to Japan. My job is flexible, and so there’s no need to wait until the kids are older or I’m retired to see the world.
You write in Big Time about moving from a mindset of time scarcity to one of time abundance. I think a lot of women have internalized the idea that there simply isn’t enough time. What changed for you when you stopped treating time as something you were constantly running out of?
I’ve tracked my time for over 11 years now. I realize that makes me sound a bit intense, but the upside of seeing, week after week, how I spent all 168 hours of the week is that I can’t tell myself a story that I have no time. I can see that work, caregiving, and sleep do not take up all 168 hours. There is time for other things. And so I’ve done my best to take advantage of it. For instance, I’m currently singing in two choirs because I love singing. Because I view time as abundant, I don’t feel the need to do the mental gymnastics of claiming (as I see in a lot of self-care literature) that spending time on my hobby makes me a better mother. Who knows if it does or doesn’t, but it doesn’t matter because there’s more than enough time to sing and to hang out with my kids too. 168 hours is truly a lot of time.
I write a lot about the idea that you can love the life you have and still want more from it. How do you make room for “more” without turning your life into one more thing to optimize?
I like to leave room for serendipity. I leave room in my schedule to pursue things that interest me, to go to events that sound intriguing, and to have conversations with people I find fascinating. A lot of this doesn’t work out, but some does. When we have a mindset of scarcity, the default answer is no -- and sometimes that is the right answer. I don’t want people to say yes to things they don’t want to do. But most new opportunities and relationships come from saying yes to things you don’t know will work out. After all, if you knew how to make something happen, you’d be doing it already! Being open to what we don’t know is how we welcome “more” into our lives.
We hear “I don’t have time” constantly. I’m certainly guilty of saying it! How often do you think “I don’t have time” really means “this isn’t important enough to me right now”? And is there actually freedom in admitting that?
Years ago, one of the busiest people I’ve ever interviewed told me that rather than saying “I don’t have time for X, Y, or Z,” she would tell herself “X, Y, or Z isn’t a priority.” I love that language, because it reminds us that time is a choice. There may be consequences to making different choices, but we are smart people, and over the long haul, we have the power to fill our lives with the things that deserve to be there. If something isn’t a priority for you right now, best to admit that and spend your time on the things that are priorities. But if you cringe at saying something isn’t a priority for you, then that’s a good sign that it’s time to change your schedule to make space for what you are claiming matters.
What’s something that brings you an unreasonable amount of joy?
I collect miniatures. I had always thought that miniatures were supposed to go in dollhouses, and I didn’t really have a dollhouse, so for years I didn’t make any progress on this interest. Then a few years ago I realized that I could construct miniature scenes on the shelves next to my desk in my home office. No dollhouse needed! Now I have a living room, a bathroom, a kitchen, a primary bedroom, a nursery, and the beginnings of a library. A friend recently gave me a miniature copy of Big Time for my miniature shelves. Looking at this makes me unreasonably happy.
When I asked Laura to do this interview, I knew we were going to talk about time. I didn’t expect quite how much we’d end up talking about permission.
Permission to take the trip now. To spend time on something you love without having to explain how it makes you a better mother. To admit what actually is and isn’t a priority. To leave enough room in your life for something unexpected to happen.
And that, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the part that feels especially familiar around here.
I am a big believer in saying yes to things that sound interesting, even when I have absolutely no idea what is going to come from them. Take the trip. Try the class. Meet the person. Pursue the opportunity. See what happens.
Not because every yes will turn into something amazing. Plenty of them won’t. But I’d rather make room for the possibility than decide ahead of time that I don’t have time for it.
Turns out, 168 hours leaves a lot of room for possibility.
You can find Laura at LauraVanderkam.com, where she writes about time, productivity, work, family, and making room for the things that matter. Her newest book, Big Time: A Simple Path to Time Abundance, is available now.
And if there’s another writer you’d love to see featured in a future installment of “So I Asked...”, let me know in the comments.
Oh this was great Amanda. Thank you 🙏 for introducing me to Laura. Love finding new and inspiring people to learn from. X
Thank you for introducing me to Laura Vanderkam's work! The whole subject of time is so interesting, and I'll be looking up her website and her new book. I absolutely love Oliver Burkeman's 4,000 Weeks, have you read that? Some similar themes, and it's helped me a lot with prioritising the things that are important to me. The concept of 'paying yourself first' has been a game changer for me. It just means doing the thing you say matters to you first each day, before you crack on with trying to clear the never ending to do list. Burkeman's saying 'the decks will never be clear' has helped me prioritise an hour's writing, nearly every day, with a consistency I've never managed before.