We spoke to Laura Vanderkam, renowned author and mother of four, who has written several books with practical and actionable tips on how to get organized and maximize the use of your time and money. She will be at the Business Library on September 13 gracing the stage as part of the CEO Series, and we thought you’d like a sneak peak at some of the topics that we will discuss with her.

Laura is brilliant, and she has a knack for turning things on their head. During our conversation she made us  take a new look and a better approach to established habits and customs.

Take, for instance, the view that we only have 24 hours in a day. While true, it makes us feel limited and always behind in our to-dos, since we cannot cram everything we need in such a window of time.  Stretch that view, however, and see it instead as 168 hours in a week: yay! Even if you work a lot, say 60 hours, and get a full night—8 hours—of sleep every day (56 hours per week), you still have a whopping 52 hours left in a week to do other things you need to do (buy groceries, wash clothes, etc.), and you will also find time for activities with your family, and perhaps even get together with friends. Life looks good now, doesn’t it?

One of her missions in her book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, is precisely this: “to make people look at their time in all spheres of life and say ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way before’.”

Laura tracked her time for a year recently, and she also asked other people to track their time too, in increments of 30 minutes. Then she analyzed it and called it the “mosaic” project.  This gave way to her book I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time.  From the information that she gathered came some interesting observations as to the priorities that people assign to their lives (Is it absolutely necessary to wash clothes every day? Have you thought of doing it once a week?).

Laura’s approach is not that of a self-help or time-management guru. What makes it so relatable is the fact that, as a journalist, she is interested in “how successful, happy people build their lives.”

And how do successful, happy people build their lives? Is it indeed possible to have a balanced life? Laura says “yes!”

Big projects are nebulous when you think about doing them. But they become manageable if you break them up in small, doable steps.  Further, Laura uses a motivationally effective way to keep engaged and enthusiastic with the project at hand: she creates and earns her own merit badges. And you can too with your projects: if you do the steps and demonstrate “mastery” of the topic you get your “badge.”

So if you get your finances in order, you get your personal finance merit badge. If you clean your closets, you get your own clean–and-organized-closet badge. The idea behind this is to celebrate the small wins to keep you going. The badges per se? You can get creative or they can exist just in your mind, the important thing is for you to win them (even if just in an imaginary celebration).

Laura also mentioned the importance of keeping track of our time and a check on our energy. Randomly checking email and social media reading are the result of our brains wanting to take a break, so be kind to your system and give yourself one. Think of the things that add to your energy level: go outside, engage in physical activity, use caffeine responsively… proactively plan for the break.  Otherwise you will end up losing 35+ minutes randomly surfing the Internet due to your lack of focus.

Isn’t this a great, no-nonsense approach?  And you can get more helpful tips and pointers next week at Laura’s event. You can find out more and register here.

Looking forward to seeing you at the Business Library!