In Time Smart, Ashley Whillans asks readers to consider whether they are "time poor" or "time affluent." She also quantifies what she describes as an "epidemic of time poverty." This characterization comes across a bit careless when she later acknowledges policies and systems that prevent wise or joyful time vs. money choices for many among us. The specter of privilege hovers in much of Whillans' storytelling and guidance. And in her steps to find time or fund time, there is a prevailing resource bias mindset. That said, there are helpful strategies for those of us who fall into "time traps" and need help to recognize that the little ways we fritter away our time ("time confetti") do add up in meaningful ways in the long run. And, therein lies the best advice in this book: Play the long game. It's a strategy that will serve in other areas of life as well. I also appreciate that she recognizes natural priority shifts over time and that there is no "one size fits all" answer. While her metaphors could use some sensitivity scrubbing, the usefulness of the content tips the scales for a more favorable review. A solid 3.5 stars, but willing to round up for perceived intent here.

I received a digital pre-publication copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Great book, shows a plethora tips and tricks on optimizing the time you have everyday, would highly recommend, Can't wait for more books from this author.

A great book for everyone who want to start managing their time better. Useful for business people, but also for those who want to use their time wisely - whether it's at home, school or work.

"Time Smart" is a great reminder that money isn't everything. And it is an even better reminder that time is much more precious than most of us realize.

When our time is well-spent, it can actually bring us greater joy than money can.

Speaking of joy, I'm probably happier now than I've ever been because I am making the time to read. You might say I've become much more "time affluent" in the past few years. Really all that means is that I am more intentional. Case in point: I barely consume TV. I canceled Netflix. I've slowed my scroll. I say "no" way more often. And I'm working less (by choice).

The key is that it's taken me decades to get to the point where I value time over money. These days, I'm much more of a "Taylor" than a "Morgan" (you gotta read the book to learn why).

"Time Smart" is a quick, yet interesting read by Ashley Whillans, who earned her PhD as a behavioral psychologist. When she's not teaching negotiation classes to her Harvard students, Whillans studies how people navigate trade-offs between time and money.

This book is for you, if you:
--Find yourself in a constant state of "busyness."
--Currently value money way more than time.
--Wish to track how you spend your time.
--Might benefit from overcoming personal time traps.
--Think it would be cool to calculate the time cost of your daily decisions.
--Could benefit from building a time-centric mindset and time-smart routines.
--Wish you had more free time to read books.
--Want to create some intentions around reading more books.

There are nifty worksheets and end-of-chapter summaries so there's work to do if and when you're ready to dig in. Enjoy your time!



Special thank to Harvard Business Review Press (via NetGalley) for an advanced copy of the ebook in exchange for my honest review.

Time Smart by Ashley Whillans is a quick non-fiction read that outlines the trade-offs on our decisions on our time and money to guide the reader to beneficial decisions. The author provides a variety of "time traps" such as technology and chasing money at the expense of our time. Time traps ultimately diminish the amount of money we have available in a day. The author also gives times on increasing the amount of time you have and provides valuable exercises to help the reader. This was an interesting read and I found the exercises beneficial. Although there was nothing knew from this, I think this would be a good start for those new to productivity.

Many thanks to the publisher Harvard Business Review Press and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

This is a very thorough and analytical book on time management. The author studies the subject in depth and offers lots of suggestions and instructions for better management. It does feel like a PhD thesis in parts especially with the carefully designed diagrams and sometimes it felt a bit over worked. But there is lots of good and practical advice and would be a good read for anyone wanting to claw back some time and better manage their lives. It is a good starting point for analysing how and what you spend your precious time on. It is well structured and easy to read. Overall a good useful book.

This book Time Smart by Ashley Whillans, starts with identifying the time traps and the reasons for time poverty. It suggests some steps, habits and strategies to become time affluent. The book also talks about how to fund the time to get rid of the activities that we do not like.

The author also lays out strategies that can keep us time affluent in the long run and how the government and private companies can help to increase the time affluence of common people and their workers respectively.

Let's start by asking this question, Which is more important between time and money ?

The author says, both are valuable, scarce and measurable. It’s also difficult to gain as much of both as we want. We are often choosing between them and making trade-offs. Vacation or no vacation ? eat at home or go out ? are some of the situations where we have to make a choice. And most of the time we end up taking decisions which favor money.

Since childhood we are told or we see that Money is very important. if one is poor then the only thing he wants is money. Many of us learn that time is money and nobody sees anything wrong if you spend every second of your available time to earn more money. Though, even after earning a significant amount of money you do not stop there, you continue to want to earn more and more and spend countless hours at work ignoring your loved ones assuming that you will make time for them someday and that someday never comes. We do not realize that sitting at home idle or talking to loved ones or spending time with kids is as important as going out and working in an office.

As per the book, We also don't understand that time is finite and is our most valuable resource. Money is valuable to a point, the author says, but it’s an infinite errand which never stops.

This focus on money can cause stress, unhappiness, and loneliness. The cost of getting out of these problems is huge and sometimes you never overcome it.

The book talks about six traps that make us time poor. These traps are -

Trap #1 Constant connection to technology - Cell Phones, Laptops, emails, messages and other technologies constantly interrupt us. This happens both at home and office. It stops us from doing any deep work at the office or complete relaxation at home.

Trap #2 Obsession with work and making money - People wrongly believe that if they work and make money now they will have more time to relax in future. But in reality, making money only leads to an increased interest in making more money.

Trap #3 Limited value placed on time - People often give up large amounts of time to save a very little money. People don’t correctly value their time.

Trap #4 Busyness as a Status Symbol - In many cultures people use their busyness at work as status symbol and are considered of higher status and rich wealthy people.

Trap #5 Aversion to Idleness - People don’t want to sit idle. They simply don’t see any value in being mindful and doing nothing.

Trap #6 Over commitment - people often over commit and then spend extra hours to meet those commitments. They often make over-commitment a habit and they end up working extra hours every day. At the end of the day it doesn’t add any value to their life.

This book has a diagnostic tool which can help you measure how time poor you are and it makes you aware of the traps that are causing your time poverty.

After you have identified your time poverty this book suggests Five ways to alleviate your time poverty and improve your time affluence -

Step 1 - Know your default setting - After doing the exercises suggested by the author you would know where you stand when it comes to giving importance to money and time. if you value money more than time and you are not struggling to meet ends then start moving towards respecting your time more.

Step 2 - Document your time - Be mindful about the activities that you do whether it is productive or unproductive, Pleasurable or purposeful, does it add meaning to your life or not. Identify the Unproductive activities that make you stressed. Once the activities are grouped, reflect on them. Now you should ask yourself if it’s possible to spend less time on the activities that make you unhappy and stressed ? If not, is it possible to make them pleasurable. Think about it.

Step 3 - Find Time - Sometimes we get stuck in activities that we do not like and can’t control. Such activities are the biggest causes of time poverty.The solution for this is that Deliberately spend more time on the tasks that bring you joy and less time on activities that bring misery. The author suggests following activities to find more time or steal more time from your daily routine -
Transform Bad Time - Identify the time that you don’t like and look for ways to improve it.
Augment good time - Knit multiple positive activities together.
Hack Work time - if possible, work from home more often, Take all your paid leaves and vacations and utilize them.
Practice Active Leisure time - the author says that free time spent on active-leisure activities like volunteering, socializing, and exercising promotes happiness far more than free time spent on passive leisure activities like watching TV, napping or online surfing.
Meet New people and help Others

Step 4 - Fund Time
Instead of doing everything yourself you can outsource the activities which can save you time . For example you can order home delivery of groceries, take Uber for office and use that time to read or listen to your favorite music. If you find these expenses are high then you can try to outsource the tasks which you dislike the most and that outsourcing will not cause any big hole in your pocket. If you think you will always find ways to save time.

Step 5 - Re-frame Time
If we change how we feel about our time that can also make us time affluent. The author has given some examples here - if we treat an upcoming weekend as a holiday it can change the mindset of a person how he spends the weekend. One more example is that in physically demanding jobs if one considers them as “Exercise” then he can start liking the job more and feel more physically fit.

Accounting for time and writing down how long you are spending on tasks shows your respect for time.

In this book, the author says that the people who value time are happier, healthier and more productive than those who value money over time. The author suggests to account your time. Spend your time more proactively rather than just let it pass. Daily Reflection on how the day was spent by you can give you ample ideas about what you can tweak in daily routine to make yourself time affluent.

Overall this book is a good book. The book comes with strategies and tool kits to help you build good habits and break away from bad habits to manage the time better. I had been following some of the techniques suggested in this book unknowingly which my family always made fun of and called me lazy. Now I can tell them that I am not lazy. Awesome !

As someone who struggles with time management, I appreciated this book. Gives a lot of helpful suggestions for making the most of time to get things done.

I struggled to get this to work on my kindle but managed to read on my computer in the end. I ironically found it difficult to concentrate on, but I think this isn't necessary a reflection on the book - I think more that I need to read more with my newly freed up time. This book certainly has changed the way that I look at certain 'must do's' in my life and adjusted where I spend my time and how I can get more out of my hours.

I have a lot of realizations on how I use my time as a result of reading this book. It provides compelling reasons why choosing to value time more than money in itself results to greater happiness in the long run.

I was amused and at the same time felt the sense of urgency to improve the way I use my time due to several stories provided in this book. While money is important to acquire our material needs, it does not guarantee happiness.

The strategies provided by the author are really helpful. You can either find time, fund time, or change the way you look at your time.

Fascinating book for me, defitely recommended for all people who wants to improve the use of their time.

Regardless of income, Ashley Whillans proposes that most Americans are time-poor. With not enough time in the day, people are stressed and unhappy. In her new book, Whillans introduces proven strategies to reframe how you think about time to help you move from time-poor to time-affluent. 

With my recent interest (possibly obsession) with productivity books, I gladly picked up a copy of Time Smart. In general, I agree with Whillan's proposition. How we think about time matters, and weighing money as more valuable as time is often a mistake. The outline of the book is perfectly fine, but the execution is severely lacking. However, Whillans fails to engage the reader, telling half-hearted anecdotes of little interest and underwhelming with poorly created worksheets. If you really value your time, I'd skip this one in favor of a better treatment on the subject.

A practical guide to reclaiming your time. Ashley Whillans provides a detailed account of where our time is going and what to do about it. Have you ever felt like you have spent a long time working on something but also feel as though you have gotten nothing done?? Whillans details actionable steps to take to reclaim your time and make the most of the 24 hours you have in a day!

The target audience for this is working adults, mostly those who are employed and lead privileged lives. This book will be a wonderful read for people whose lives are struggling because they don’t know how to say no to work. However, I found the use of the words poor and poverty somewhat careless toward people who struggle financially.
I did not enjoy that right at the beginning they seemed to divide people into just two groups. As someone who did not identify with either, I felt like that disrupted my initial opinion of the book.
I liked how the book approached technology and how it explained how much time we really lose even when doing small things like texting someone back. The emphasis on being aware of your time was also interesting. I also enjoyed how varied the examples were.
Overall, I found that the information given was a bit basic and repetitive. Still, if you read this and take a few notes you may find some useful tips for improving your life and time management.

This is a delightful and scary book LOL. I picked it up with the intention of improving my time management and it did exactly that. It first forced me in a good way to realise what exactly wasted my time to how I can manage it better. If you struggle with time management then grab this book it's a good one