TED Talk - “How To Gain Control Of Your Free Time”

Daily Resource / January 4th, 2023

“Looking at the whole of one’s time and seeing where the good stuff can go.”

I started taking goal setting seriously when I started teaching K-12. I had just completed a grad program in English and was just about to finish my second degree in education and I realized that I had not read for fun in years. My life was a mess of professional goals and obligations (conferences, new courses, lectures) and lists of books that I needed to read, not wanted to read. So, after a few adjustment months, I started reading for fun again.

The first book I can remember from this period is Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, a massive sci-fi epic. It was riveting. I remember being on crap overnight in the Denver Airport without a hotel room, but being completely happy because I was deep into the follow-up The Dark Forest. Over the course of the next few years, I prioritized my own reading, then started tracking it, set goals, and now I am reading more than I ever have.

Goals are important, but only if goals are spread across the different domains of our day-to-day life. Laura Vanderkam’s TED Talk is a great reminder of this. Deep in the talk, she challenges the audience to make a Friday list of 1-3 goals in three domains: professional, relationships, and personal. These goals are meant to be accomplished throughout the week when you can best achieve them so that they build up week-to-week towards a year that you can be proud of. She also, adeptly, points out that we have 168 hours in a week. After 40 hours of work and 56 hours of sleep, each of us has 72 or roughly 10 hours a day available on average. What you do with that time can provide joy and fulfillment in life.

So, at a time in the year when many of us are trying to set goals, often unmet, knowing when to put down time-filler and fill time with joyous activities even during the worst parts of our day can make the difference.