by Jennifer Hemmerdinger

Jane Theriault leads a group of JL Boston members in a discussion of time management strategies.

Time. It’s something we arguably all want more of. More time to focus on our careers. More time to exercise. More time to spend with family. More time to spend on a vacation. More time to spend with friends. But many of us struggle with how to squeeze in everything within a limited amount of time.

The good news is there are a whopping 168 hours in each week. The tricky part is, how do we successfully find the time to do what matters most into those 168 hours?

This training kicked off a new series of trainings that share influential TED Talks followed by facilitated discussion. Jane Theriault, Ph.D., JL Boston’s Director of Community and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Salem State University, led a large group on October 17 at JLB headquarters through a conversation about time management.

Attendees watched writer and author Laura Vanderkam’s “How to Gain Control of Your Free Time” TED Talk to help guide the discussion.

One of the key takeaways from Vanderkam’s talk is that we don’t build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want and then time saves itself. She talked about how time is highly elastic. At the end of the day, we can’t make more time, but time will stretch to accommodate what we chose to put into it.

When we say “I don’t have time” to do something, it translates into “It’s not a priority.” Time is a choice. We have the power to fill our lives with the things we want.

The group had a robust discussion around several of Vanderkam’s points from her talk and which strategies were practical and applicable to each of our daily lives.

JL Boston members can learn about and register for future trainings on the member calendar.