Why Does Time Pass More Quickly As You Get Older? | Laura Vanderkam

One of my initial interviews many, many years ago, like, as I was writing my first time management book, I had interviewed somebody about a totally, you know, different thing related to her business at one point and, you know, offhand she mentioned her, like, six children. And I was like, "Oh, well, that's interesting." (laughs)

(laughs)

I was, uh, you know, very new in the parenting journey so I was just like, "Oh my god. How do you do that?" So, I called her back to interview her about that, but she was running a successful small business with many people on the payroll and then also raising her family. And, you know, I had kind of asked her, "Well, like, spill your secrets. Like, uh, the world would love to know." And she said, "You know, everything I do is my choice. And rather than say, 'I don't have time to do X, Y, or Z,'" she'd say, "'I don't do X, Y, or Z because it's not a priority. That I don't have time really means it's not a priority.'" And if you think about it, that is more accurate language. I mean, people will tell you they don't have time to floss. It's not true. They don't wanna floss. You know, using this language reminds us that time is a choice. And so if you just substitute this language every time you find yourself saying, "I don't have time, I don't have time, I'm too busy, I don't have time," just say, "It's not a priority," and, and see how that feels.

(wind blowing) I'm joined by Laura Vanderkam today, and we are talking all things time. Laura, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's a pleasure to have you on. I've absolutely loved Off the Clock, which is your most recent book, and I've pounded through it over the last couple of weeks, not just because we're about to do this podcast, but also because it was a, a genuinely fantastic read. So congratulations on an amazing book.

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

Uh, so yeah. W- we're talking about time and time management, so to begin with, why is time such a difficult, uh, task for people to grapple with? Why is it, why is it so important for people to grapple with?

Yeah. Well, there's a couple things going on there. I mean, one of the reasons time is so challenging for people is that it keeps passing, whether you think about how you're spending it or not. Um, so it, it's so easy to spend mindlessly. Um, you know, whether you make a decision about how you spend today or don't make a decision, eventually we are gonna be on the other side of today. Um, so it, it requires you to really think about it in a way that a lot of other choices are, uh, are more automatic to make a conscious choice about. Uh, but the hopeful thing about time, uh, in, in my opinion at least, is that we all have the same amount of it. Uh, so, you know, a life is lived in hours, and so what we do with our lives is gonna be a function of how we spend our hours, and we all have the same number of hours, and we all have 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. And so when you find people who are doing amazing, awesome things in their lives, they may have many other things going for them, I'm not saying that they're not richer, smarter, better looking than the rest of us, but they don't have more time. And so maybe we can look at how they're allocating their hours, and at least that's something that we can pick up on, uh, even if we can't copy all the other things that they're doing.