5 science-backed ways to use your time more efficiently

You have more time than you think. Here are 5 science-backed ways to find it.

There are 8,760 hours in a year. You can spend them better.

by Bryan Walsh

Let me make a confession: I was late writing this email. I, like many of us, could use a little help with my time management — and I am trying (trying!) to take lessons from my colleague Bryan Walsh. He recently covered the work of Laura Vanderkam, a time management expert and the author of the new book Big Time: A Simple Path to Time Abundance. Her approach takes what seems like a potentially overwhelming project — managing your time better — and breaks it into bite-sized chunks that make it seem achievable even for a procrastinator like me.

Think of it as a science-based strategy for getting more out of your time. As Bryan writes, you probably have more free time than you think you do — it’s just a matter of using it as efficiently as you can. He lays it out in five easy steps, with Vanderkam’s assistance, from tracking your time for a week (you have to know how you’re spending your time in order to spend it smarter) to running weekly planning meetings in which you break your life into its component parts — your career, your relationships, and yourself — and figure out ahead of time how you’re going to split your time between them.

Once you’ve figured out how to better manage your time in the short term, then you can really start to plan for the long term. Read Bryan’s story to find out how Vanderkam actually made the time to read War & Peace — an unrealized project of my own — and you might just find some inspiring ideas for your own life.

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—Dylan Scott, senior correspondent

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