168 Hours summary

Jackie Camborde loves group fitness – a passion that led her to open the Santa Fe Fitness Studio in New Mexico. But Camborde wasn’t always into exercise. Her journey began in the 1990s, when she wanted to lose the weight she’d gained after she quit smoking. She was so enthusiastic about group fitness that her instructor encouraged her to become a certified teacher. Not long after that, she realized that teaching was her true calling. And a few years later, she left her fundraising job to launch her own studio. 

The most successful businesses are the ones that focus on areas where they outshine the competition. It’s the same with successful individuals. If you invest in the skills you’re really good at and love, you’ll end up living your best life.

After 40 years of working as a marine biologist, Sylvia Earle was still passionate about her job. She’d endured demanding hours, grueling travel, and blatant sexism in the science sector. But at 62, Earle was still thrilled by the prospect of living in an underwater ocean lab, 60 feet below the surface, so she could study marine life. She’d reached the average age of retirement in the US, but retirement wasn’t on Earle’s agenda. Her job was a source of intense joy.

Books like The 4-Hour Work Week might be best sellers. But in 2002, the General Social Survey found that most people would still choose to continue to work in some capacity, even if they didn’t need to. If, like Earle, you’re passionate about your job, you’ll want to work more than four hours a week. Now you just need to find that job.

Biologist Carol Fassbinder-Orth makes a habit of excusing herself from meetings. Many of us would be too nervous to speak up, but Fassbinder-Orth takes another view. If she realizes a meeting isn’t relevant to her, she recognizes that it’s a waste of her time. And that time would be better spent pursuing activities that advance her career.

Fassbinder-Orth is a master at effectively using time to achieve goals. She earned her PhD in avian immunology without putting in the usual 80 hours a week. Since she’d had her first child during her first year at graduate school, she simply couldn’t spend every hour in the lab. Instead, Fassbinder-Orth learned how to structure her schedule to maximize her progress. Within five years, she’d completed her PhD, secured a professorship, and was eight months pregnant with her second child. 

Leah Ingram is the author of Suddenly Frugal, a book that explains how American families can save $25,000 a year. To an outsider, her journey of getting published may look sudden. In November 2008, her agent pitched her book to publishers; by the end of the month, she’d landed a contract and attained the breakthrough she wanted.

But this “breakthrough” came after two years of blogging every day about living frugally. Back when her family moved to their dream home in New Hope, Pennsylvania, they discovered they were facing huge maintenance costs and had to tighten their belts. Bored of her usual gig covering weddings and etiquette, Ingram decided it was time for a change and committed to blogging about living on a budget.

In the 1950s and 60s, chores like “iron electric blankets” and “vacuum ceiling” appeared on the to-do lists of everyday women. During this time, most American mothers spent 34.5 hours a week cleaning. Thankfully, today this figure is closer to 16 hours.

With many mothers now also in paid work, there simply isn’t time to clean with the same vigor. And while parents spend more time with children now than they did in the 1950s and 60s, it might surprise you how little time that actually is. In the US, full-time stay-at-home moms spend about 22.5 hours a week caring for children under the age of six. This amounts to just over three hours a day. So if that’s all the time you have to nurture your child, you’ll probably want to make the most of it.

Software developer Sid Savara is great at playing the guitar. What he’s not great at is grocery shopping and cooking. The health-conscious 30-year-old was doing his best to avoid the pitfalls of takeout. But because he wasn’t planning ahead, he was wasting hours after work going to the store or waiting for chicken to defrost.

So Savara came up with a plan. He posted an ad in Craig’s List for a personal chef. A mom who’d recently quit her day job responded, and they agreed she’d make him 12 to 15 basic meals for $60 per week, plus the cost of groceries. While this added another item to his budget, Savara’s credit card bill decreased because his chef knew how to shop economically and didn’t impulse buy. More importantly, Savara won back almost ten hours of time per week! That’s ten hours he could use to play the guitar.

Take a moment to estimate how many hours of leisure time you have each week. For some, this figure may be zero. For others, maybe it’s just one or two. Most people will say they don’t have enough – that with the pressures of work, parenting, and chores, there’s barely any time left to socialize, let alone follow a dream or volunteer for a cause.

But studies have shown that the average American has 30 hours of leisure time a week. That’s four whole hours a day! The problem is, it doesn’t feel that way. Because we don’t plan our leisure time carefully, we end up slumped in front of the TV. And we do this for an average of 20 hours a week. Imagine what you could achieve if you invested even half that time in doing something you love.