168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

A day has 168 hours. How do you spend them? Laura Vanderkam invites you to explore your time usage. People tend to do a poor job estimating where they are spending their time. Often those that claim to work crazy amounts of hours do much less actual work. (Much of the "work" is actually personal or social behavior.) Multitasking can result in little progress in either task. However, "intelligent multipurpose behavior" can be beneficial. (For example, combining service and social work.) Little things like responding to a new email alert can end up sucking a large amount of time before you are able to get back to where you were. Trying to work form home and watch kids at the same time can be a recipe for not doing a good job at either. Finding a job that you truly enjoy makes the work less "work".
The author tends to be more focused on females balancing work and job, though there is material for everyone. It was also written during the "great recession", and thus has plenty of examples of "forced" job changes.
It is important to look at what you are doing and how that accomplishes your goals. Often people will say they would love to have a little more time to do something, but given the time they don't do it. If there is a strong desire to accomplish something, we can often find time to do it. (But alas, we will often spend more time on the phone or TV.) Switching from full time to part time work often does not significantly change the amount of time spent with family. Ironically, stay at home parents only spend a little more interactive time with their children than working parents. (The extra time is often spent doing other activities while the children are on their own.) It is useful to look at our core competencies and considering outsourcing other things. It is fine to do things that we are not great at because we want to. But, even things like laundry may be more efficiently done by others than us.