For my last response post, I watched the TEDTalk “How to gain control of your free time” by Laura Vanderkam. I thought this was a really interesting thought that made me change the ways of how I perceive my time. The first thing that really struck me was her quote, “We don’t build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want and then time saves itself.” Often times in the past I have found when I am pressed for time, I will look for little ways to save time by multitasking or figuring out ways to be more efficient. While Vanderkam believes it is important to use time elastically since we cannot make more of it, it is more effective to consider time as a choice. Vanderkam describes how people use the phrase “I don’t have time” as an excuse all too often to not do things when in reality, a more useful way of thinking of things is to not recognize those tasks as priorities. When people default to claiming they “don’t have the time,” much more time is wasted, and tasks we consider to be priorities are left unfulfilled.

One tip Vanderkam gave that I thought was very insightful was to look at how you want to spend your time ahead of you instead of focusing on how you’ve spent it in the past. She gave two examples which I thought were very useful. The first is to plan the following week on Friday afternoons. Friday afternoons are considered to typically be a low opportunity cost, as many of your goals for the current week are already fulfilled and you have a sense of what meetings, classes or assignments will take up your following week. Vanderkam described the time as a good reflection time on what you achieved the past week, and create goals for the next one. This goes into her second example, of asking what personal and professional goals we have a year from now, and try to incorporate ways to accomplish them with the pockets of free time we have. I thought both of these points were useful to people regardless of what extent their schedules are packed. I think planning out free time decreases the likelihood of wasting it, and our goals will be much more likely to be accomplished when they are planned and makes us feel more fulfilled. Coming into Finals, time management can be more important now than ever, so I am grateful I was able to come across this video and will implement these ideas into my daily life in the coming weeks.