TED演講--如何掌控你的自由時間

1、How to Manage Your Free TimeWhen people find out I write about time man ageme nt. They assume two thin gs. One is that rm always on time, and rm no t. I have four small childre n, and I would like to blame them for my occasi onal tard in ess, but sometimes its just not their fault. I was once late t

2、o my own sp eech on time man ageme nt. We all had to just take a mome nt together and savor that irony. The sec ond thing they assume is that I have lots of tips and tricks for savi ng bits of time here and there.Sometimes ril hear from magaz ines that are doing a story along these lin es, gen erall

3、y on how to help their readers find an extra hour in the day. And the idea is that well shave bits of time off everyday activities, add it up, and well have time for the good stuff. I questi on the en tire p remise of this pi ece, but rm always in terested in heari ng what theyve come up with before

4、 they call me.Some of my favorites: doing errands where you only have to make right-hand turns 、 Being extremely judicious in microwave usage: it says three to three-a nd-a-half minu tes on the p ackage, were totally gett ing in on the bottom side of that. And my personal favorite, which makes sense

5、 on some level, is to DVR your favorite shows so you can fast-forward through the commercials.That way, you save eight minu tes every half hour, so in the course of two hours of watch ing TV, you find 32 minu tes to exercise.Which is true.You know ano ther way to find 32 minu tes to exercise? Dont w

6、atch two hours of TV a day, right? Any way, the idea is well, save bits of time here and there, add it up, we will fin ally get to everyth ing we want to do. But after study ing how successful people spend their time and look ing at their schedules hour by hour, I think this idea has it compi etely

7、backward. We dont build the lives we want by sav ing time. We build the lives we want, and the n time saves itself. Heres what I mean. I rece ntly did a time diary p roject look ing at 1,001 days in the lives of extremely busy wome n. They had dema nding jobs, sometimes their own bus in esses, kids

8、to care for, maybe parents to care for, com mun ity commitme nts.busy, busy people.I had them kee p track of their time for a week, so I could add up how much they worked and sle pt, and I in terviewed them about their strategies, for my book. One of the wome n whose time log I studied.she goes out

9、on a Wed nesday ni ght for someth ing. She comes home to find that her water heater has broke n, and there is now water all over her baseme nt. If youve ever had anything like this happen to you, you know it is a hugely damagi ng, frighte ning, sopping mess. So shes deali ng with the immediate after

10、math that ni ght, next day shes got plu mbers coming in, day after that, pro fessi onal clea ning crew deali ng with the ruined carp et. All this is being recorded on her time log. Winds up tak ing seve n hours of her week. Seven hours.Thats like finding an extra hour in the day.But rm sure if you h

11、ad asked her at the start of the week, Could you find seve n hours to train for a triathlo n?Could you dind seve n hours to men tor seve n worthy peopi e? rm sure she wouldve said what most of us wouldve said, which is, No.ca nt you see how busy I am? Yet whe n she had to find seve n hours because t

12、here is water all over her baseme nt, she found seve n hours. And what this shows us is that time is highly elastic. We cannot make more time, but time will stretch to accommodate what we choose to put into it.And so the key to time man ageme nt is treati ng our p riorities as the equivale nt of tha

13、t broke n water heater. To get at this, I like to use Ian guage from one of the busiest people I ever in terviewed. By busy, I mea n she was running a small bus in ess with 12 people on the p ayroll, she had six childre n in her spare time. I was getti ng in touch with her to set up an in terview on

14、 how she had it all.that p hrase. I remember it was a Thursday morning, and she was not available to sp eak with me. Of course, right?But the reas on she was un available to sp eak with me is that she was out for a hike, because it was a beautiful spring morning, and she wan ted to go for a hike. So

15、 of course this makes me eve n more in trigued, and whe n I fin ally do catch up with her, she explains it like this. She says, Liste nLaura, everyth ing I do, every minute I spen d, is my choice. And rather tha n say, I dont have time to do x, y or z, shed say, I dont do x, y or z because its not a

16、 p riority. I dont have time, ofte n means Its not a p riority. If you thi nk about it, thats really more accurate Ian guage.I could tell you I dont have time to dust to dust my bli nds, but thats not true. If you offered to pay me $100,000 to dust my bli nds, I would get to it p retty quickly. Sinc

17、e that is not going to happen, I can ack no wledge this is not a matter of lack ing time, its that I dont want to do it. Using this Ian guage reminds us that time is a choice. And gran ted, there may be horrible con seque nces for mak ing differe nt choices, I will give you that. But we are smart pe

18、ople, and certa inly over the long run, we have the po wer to fill our lives with the things that deserve to be there. So how do we do that? How do we treat our p riorities as the equivale nt of that broke n water heater?Well, first we n eed to figure out what they are. I want to give you two strate

19、gies for thinking about this. The first, on the pro fessi onal side: rm sure many people coming up to the end of the year are giv ing or gett ing ann ual p erforma nee reviews. You look back over your successes over the year, your opportun ities for growth. And this serves its purpo se, but I find i

20、ts more effective to do this look ing forward. So I want you to p rete nd its the end of next year. Youre givi ngyourself a performanee review （績效評估），and it has been an absolutely amazing year for you p rofessi on ally. Write n ext years review: What 3-5 things would make it a great year for you pro

21、 fessi on ally. So you can write n ext years p erforma nee review now. And you can do this for your person al life,too.rm sure many of you, like me, come December, get cards that contain these folded up sheets of colored paper, on which writte n what is known as the family holiday letter. Bit of a w

22、retched genre of literature, really, going on about how amaz ing every one in the household is, or even more scin tillat ing, how busy every one in the household is. But these letters serve a purp ose, which is that they tell your friends and family what you did in your personal life that mattered t

23、o you over the year. So this years kind of done, but I want you to p rete nd its the end of n ext year, and it has bee n an absolutely amaz ing year for you and the people you care about. Write the family hollday letter: What three to five things did you do that made it so amaz ing? So you can write

24、 next years family holiday letter now. Dont send it. P lease, dont send it.But you can write it.And now, betwee n the p erforma nee review and the family holiday letter, we have a list of six to ten goals we can work on in the n ext year. And now we n eed to break these dow n into doable ste ps. So

25、maybe you want to write a family history. First, you can read some other family histories, get a sense for the style. Then maybe thi nk about the questio ns you want to ask your relatives, set up appoin tme nts to in terview them. Or maybe you want to run a 5K.So you n eed to find a race and sig n u

26、p, figure out a training plan, and dig those shoes out of the back of the closet.And the n.this is key.we treat our p riorities as the equivale nt of that broke n water heater, by pu tti ng them into our schedules first.We do this by thi nking through our weeks before we are in them, I find a really

27、 good time to do this is Friday after noons. Friday after noon is what an econo mist might call a low opportunity cost time. Most of us are not sitt ing there on Friday after noons say ing, I am excited to make p rogress toward my personal and p rofessi onal p riorities right no w. But we are willi

28、ng to think about what those should be. So take a little bit of time Friday after noon, make yourself a three-category p riority list: career, relatio nships, self. Making a three-category list reminds us that there should be someth ing in all three categories. Career, we think about; relati onships

29、, self. not so much.But any way, just a short list, two to three items in each. The n look out over the whole of the n ext week, and see where you can plan them in. Where you plan them in is up to you. I know this is going to be more comp licated for some people tha n others.I mean, some peop les li

30、ves are just harder tha n others. It is not going to be easy to find time to take that p oetry class if you are cari ng for mult iple childre n on your own. I get that. And I dont want to mini mize anyon es struggle. But I do think that the nu mbers I am about to tell you are empo weri ng. There are

31、 168 hours in a week. Twe nty-four times seve n is 168 hours. That is a lot of time. If you are work ing a full-time job, so 40 hours a week, slee ping eight hours a ni ght, so 56 hours a week.that leaves 72 hours for other things.That is a lot of time. You say youre work ing 50 hours a week, maybe

32、a main job and a side hustle .Well ,that leaves 62 hours for other thin gs. You say youre work ing 60 hours. Well, that leaves 52 hours for other thin gs. You say youre work ing more tha n 60 hours. Well, are you sure?There was once a study comparing peopi es estimated work weeks with time diaries.

33、They found that people clai ming 75-pl us-hour work weeks were off by about 25 hours. You can guess in which directi on, right? Any way, in 168 hours a week, I think we can find time for what matters to you. If you want to spend more time with your kids, you want to study more for a test youre taking, you want to exercise for three hours and volun teer for two, you can. And thats eve n if youre work ing way more tha n f