Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel

Where You’re Losing Time and How to Get It Back

September 14, 2026·26 min
Episode Description from the Publisher

Laura Vanderkam tracks her time in 30-minute increments and has been for over a decade. That’s 336 half-hour blocks over the course of a week. After reviewing thousands of people’s schedules, she finds, again and again, that most of us are sitting on more time than we think. We just have to shift our mindset to believe it. The time management expert and author of the new book Big Time: A Simple Path to Time Abundance returns to Hello Monday to talk about what it actually takes to move from time scarcity to abundance. In this episode, Jessi and Laura discuss: Why "I don't have enough time" is not just inaccurate, it's actively making things worse The math that surprises everyone: what a full-time worker actually has left after work and sleep each week Why we're bad narrators of our own experience and how to get better data The biggest blind spots in a week: weekday evenings and weekends How email and digital communication expand to fill all available space and what to do about it The one-hour a week experiment that could change how you feel about your job Why tiny tweaks beat lifestyle overhauls every time How to carve out "play and possibility time" The right way to think about learning something new at work, including AI How to recast ambition when climbing the ladder no longer feels like enough Laura's September time-tracking challenge and why she's been doing it every year since 2015 Follow Laura Vanderkam and Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn. Join Laura’s time-tracking challenge here Join us for Office Hours, Wednesday at 3pm EST

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