We don't build the lives we want / by saving time. // We build the lives we want, / and then time saves itself. // Here's what I mean. // I recently did a time diary project / looking at / a thousand and one days in the lives of extremely / busy women. // They had demanding jobs, / sometimes their own businesses, / kids to care for, / maybe parents to care for, / community commitments --/ busy, / busy / people. // I had them keep track of their time for a week / so I could add up / how much they worked and slept, / and I interviewed them about their strategies, / for my book. // One of the women whose time log I studied / she goes out on a Wednesday night for something. // She comes home to find that her water heater has broken, / and there is now water all over her basement. // If you've ever had anything like this happen to you, / you know it is a hugely damaging, / frightening, / sopping mess. // So / she's dealing with the immediate aftermath that night, / next day she's got plumbers coming in, / day after that, / professional cleaning crew dealing with the ruined carpet. // All this is being recorded on her timelog, // winds up / taking seven hours of her week. // Seven hours. // That's like / finding an extra hour in the day. // But I'm sure if you had asked her at the start of the week, / "Could you find seven hours / to train for a triathlon?" // "Could you find seven hours / to mentor seven worthy people?" // I'm sure she would've said what most of us would've said, / which is, / "No -- / can't you see how busy I am?" // Yet when she had to find seven hours because there is water all over her basement, / she found seven 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 management / is treating our priorities / as the equivalent / of that broken / water heater. // And to get at this, / I like to use some language from one of the busiest people I ever interviewed. // By busy, / I mean she was running a small business with 12 people on the payroll, / she had six children in her spare time. // I was getting in touch with her to set up an interview on how she "had it all" -- / that phrase. // I remember it was a Thursday morning, / and she was not available to speak with me. // Of course, / right? // But the reason she was unavailable to speak with me is that she was out for a hike, / because it was a beautiful spring morning, / and she wanted to go for a hike. // So of course this makes me even more intrigued, / and when I finally do catch up with her, / she explains it like this. // She says, / "Listen Laura, / everything I do, / every minute I spend, / is my choice." // And rather than say, / "I don't have time to do x, y or z," / she'd say, / "I don't do x, y or z because it's not a priority." // "I don't have time," / often means / "It's not a priority." //