Think 8760, not 24.

Most Fridays, I craft a family schedule for the upcoming week. This documents who needs to be where and when, and who is driving. On weeks when a parent is traveling, or there are special events in addition to the regular activities, this schedule can be complicated. When I print it out (for the benefit of children who are literate but not on email) there are often multiple pages.

But this last week, after each day’s camp driving schedule, I wound up writing “No activities.” With the older two boys away at overnight camps for multiple weeks, the camp schedule wasn’t that complicated either!

It’s a very different feeling. If someone asked me to describe a “typical” week for my family, I might point to the complex ones. But this past week also happened. It is no less a part of life than any other week. An accurate picture of life requires looking at all of time in context.

Longtime readers know that I like to tell people to “Think 168 hours, not 24.” There are 168 hours in a week (vs. 24 hours in a day). People often tell me that there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get to everything they want to get to. And it’s true. But we don’t live our lives in days. We tend to repeat the pattern of our lives in weeks.

If you look at a single squeezed workday, you can convince yourself that there isn’t time for much of anything. But looking at 168 hours suggests a different story. If you work 40 hours (full time) and sleep 8 hours a night (56 per week) that leaves 72 hours for other things. Have-to-dos tend not to consume all of that. If someone wanted to find 30 minutes a day to exercise (3.5 hours per week) and an hour a day to read (7 hours per week) it feels like that might be possible, even amid time devoted to bathing children or doing the dishes.

But the more I think about time, the more I believe that even looking at a week can be limiting. Life tends to come in seasons. In my family, the three weekends before Christmas are often packed full. The weekends in January and February are more open. An April week probably features a lot of kid activities. A July week, not so much. I could tell a story of my life being harried, but I am not particularly harried right now. A year (8760 hours) features all of this.

As you look at your life, and particularly as you think about the balance between different priorities, or about potential conflicts, it might help to zoom out farther. Someone who was traveling for work Monday-Thursday twice a month might talk about being on the road “all the time.” And perhaps it is a lot. But it is also 6 nights a month, or 72 a year. Subtract a few vacation days and we might be talking 65 nights. There are 365 nights in a year. This road warrior who is on the road “all the time” is also home 300 nights a year, which sounds like close to “all the time” too. Both of these stories can be true when viewed from a broader perspective.

So try looking at your life in terms of 8760 hours (8784 this year!) and see what happens. My guess is that it will make any given moment feel less fraught. I can take busy weeks in stride knowing that there will be less busy ones at some other point.

This article originally appeared in an email to my newsletter subscribers. You can sign up at https://lauravanderkam.com/contact/ .