TED演讲--何掌控你的自由时间.docxVIP

How to Manage Your Free Time When people find out I write about time management, They assume two things. One is that Im always on time, and Im not. I have four small children, and I would like to blame them for my occasional tardiness, but sometimes its just not their fault. I was once late to my own speech on time management. We all had to just take a moment together and savor that irony. The second thing they assume is that I have lots of tips and tricks for saving bits of time here and there. Sometimes Ill hear from magazines that are doing a story along these lines, generally 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 question the entire premise of this piece, but Im always interested in hearing what theyve come up with before 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-and-a-half minutes on the package, were totally getting in on the bottom side of that. And my personal favorite, which makes sense on some level, is to DVR your favorite shows so you can fast-forward through the commercials. That way, you save eight minutes every half hour, so in the course of two hours of watching TV, you find 32 minutes to exercise. Which is true. You know another way to find 32 minutes to exercise? Dont watch two hours of TV a day, right? Anyway, the idea is well, save bits of time here and there, add it up, we will finally get to everything we want to do. But after studying how successful people spend their time and looking at their schedules hour by hour, I think this idea has it completely backward. We dont build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want, and then time saves itself. Heres what I mean. I recently did a time diary project looking at 1,001 days in the lives of extremely busy women. They