# Tranquility by Tuesday by Laura Vanderkam - Blinkist

What’s in it for me? Nine steps to organizing your weeks into chaos-free days.

We’ve got some great news. You can have it all: a productive, rewarding career; a loving, happy family; and an energizing personal life. And you can even have it all at the same time – if you plan your time wisely.

In her practical guide to achieving tranquility in life, author Laura Vanderkam sets out nine simple yet deeply effective methods you can use to reclaim pockets of time for yourself while getting even more done. Doing more in less time might sound like a magic trick. But it really just comes down to planning.

By breaking down your life into week-long sections and consciously allocating buffer time, you’ll be able to pursue passions and interests – and work better rather than harder. Going through these processes won’t only help you become more organized; it’ll teach you to live better by prioritizing yourself, your goals, and your well-being.

This Blink to Tranquility by Tuesday will give you a quick overview of Vanderkam’s methods. Whether you’re a CEO or in between jobs, there’s wisdom here for everyone trying to create tranquility out of chaos.

Time management is the key to peace, happiness, and success.

“I’m so exhausted.” “Bedtime with my kids takes so much time that I can never relax before I go to sleep.” “I’m so busy doing chores, but I feel like I never accomplish anything.”

Sound familiar?

When you’re stuck in the daily grind, it can be difficult to feel as though you’re truly living a successful life. Success is often defined by its trappings: the chic house in the right zip code, the child in an Ivy League school, the corner office. But rather than seeking success in these so-called big accomplishments, what if you started to look for it in the ordinary parts of your days instead?

Success doesn’t have to live in a tangible end result; it can reside in the well-lived everyday experience. And how do you make those days well-lived? By being intentional. There are nine specific steps you can use to achieve a more peaceful, productive, and mindful life. By dividing your time into weeks and being deliberate in how you arrange them, you’ll be able to achieve both results and tranquility. 

Time management is both an art and a craft. The nine methods we’re going to lay out here involve taming this beast. The first step may look familiar to parents – but it might not be something you enforce on yourself. It’s a little thing called setting a bedtime.

A typical adult needs between seven and nine hours of sleep. Although many people report sleeping between seven and nine hours a night, most are still tired and groggy the next day. That’s because the quality of that sleep didn’t necessarily match up to the quantity. 

Instead of going to bed at 10:00 p.m., maybe you dozed off with your toddler at 8:00 p.m., startled awake at 9:00 p.m., finished kitchen chores, and then stayed up watching a movie – only to fall asleep on the couch at 11:30 p.m. That sleep, although it may add up to eight hours, won’t have the same restful impact as going to bed at 10:30 p.m. and waking up at 6:30 a.m.

To achieve more restful sleep, implement this simple strategy. Count backward from your desired wakeup time to figure out when you need to go to bed, and aim for between seven and nine hours of sleep. Set an alarm for 15 minutes before that bedtime, so you can begin winding down. This strategy may seem obvious, but it has far-reaching results.

Set clear, manageable goals – and think a week ahead.

Let’s take this time-planning further by instituting the second step: on Fridays, plan out the following week, from Monday to Sunday.

Why Friday? For one thing, late Friday afternoons are when most people have started that slide into weekend relaxation – and aren’t in the frame of mind to push through intense work. So planning is the perfect project for this pocket of time. 

Setting up the following week and weekend also helps in another way: the immediate weekend ahead has already been planned, so you have things to look forward to. Also, because you’ve already accounted for that time, you can enjoy the entire weekend without having to set aside planning time on Sunday – and losing an evening of your weekend.

Planning this far ahead means you’re more likely to do robust and fulfilling activities rather than quick, last-minute things – for example, dinner at a new restaurant that requires reservations in advance rather than a trip down to the same place you’ve already tried a dozen times.

Now let’s look at step number three. By 3:00 p.m., make sure you’ve moved your body – even if it’s just a short walk or a 10-minute hop on your treadmill. It’s a simple way to feel a glow of achievement, wake up from the sleepy mid-afternoon slump, and yield huge benefits for your health and mindset.

Working out is a habit almost everyone aims for – but, as we all know, life gets in the way of even the best intentions. Here’s a reassuring tip, which also happens to be rule number four: to build a successful habit, it’s not necessary to do it every day. Just doing something three times a week makes all the difference.

And here’s the best thing: when you look at your schedule, you’ll probably see that you’re already engaging with that wannabe habit at least twice a week.

Take the much-lauded family meal, for example. Maybe you’re beating yourself up about not gathering everyone around the table for an idyllic family dinner. But you’re probably already grabbing dinner together on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. And maybe every Friday night you do pizza and a movie – that counts! Add in Sunday pancake breakfasts, and voila! You have your three meals together. 

The best part? Once you’ve noticed and prioritized the thing you want to set aside time for – and this could be exercise, a hobby, or spiritual practice – you’ll find yourself doing it even more. And because you’ve set a manageable goal of pursuing this little passion just three times a week, you’ll no longer feel guilty about not doing it.

Schedule in buffer time to stay relaxed and on track.

In their book Scarcity, authors Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir write about an acute-care hospital in Missouri that boasted a 100 percent booking rate of its operating rooms. However, this success came at a price. Whenever an emergency arose, schedules had to shift to accommodate it. Scheduled surgeries were moved so the emergency could be tackled, creating frustrating delays.

A consultant came up with a solution: keep one operating room free for emergency surgeries only. Everyone balked. It sounded counterintuitive. They were already so busy – how would removing a chunk of time help?

But as it turns out, this small change made a huge difference. All emergencies were routed to that special room. Not only did the hospital reduce delays – they were also able to handle more surgeries overall.

That’s the same thinking behind our fifth rule, which involves building flexibility into your schedule by setting aside “backup” blocks of time. Intentionally schedule in buffer time each week to catch things that pop up, as well as things that may have gotten moved due to unforeseen circumstances.

Let’s say you have a Pilates class scheduled for Tuesday evening. That afternoon, though, your partner starts to feel ill. You call a babysitter to take care of your toddler while you’re in class, but she’s already booked. You can’t make it to the Pilates class and have to cancel. But if you’d implemented the fifth rule and set aside Friday mornings from 10:00 a.m. to noon as your backup time, you could simply move your Pilates class to that time. 

Here’s another scenario. Imagine a relative calls you up and asks you to write a speech for a graduation party the following weekend. This could cause you to panic – writing a speech will take some time, and all of your days are totally packed. But having an extra two-hour time slot means you can work on last-minute requests without them interfering with any of your other activities.

Simply knowing that you have this built-in buffer will help you be more relaxed and productive. Think of your Friday mornings (or whatever time you pick to be your free slot) as that special operating room. You’ll soon find yourself worrying less about getting things done – and freeing up time to really live!

When scheduling your life, commit to quality.

Want to live longer? It’s simple: make new memories – literally! 

When we’re young, we’re always doing new things. We move through different schools, go off to college, meet new people, learn new things. And our brains read these memories as units of time. So if you have more memories, your brain stretches the time. If you’ve ever turned to your friends and said, “Time seems to be flying by these days,” it might be because your brain hasn’t had many new memories of things to grasp onto.

But mired in work, family life, and other responsibilities, how do you create these new memories? The answer to this question lies in rule number six: every week, plan one big and one small adventure, and build it into your schedule.

This doesn’t mean setting aside time to climb a mountain or splurge on an expensive outing. Big adventures can mean exploring a new part of your city or trying a new cuisine. Small adventures can include watching fireflies in your garden or switching out the photo in a frame on your desk. What you do is not as important as the fact that you intentionally planned and set aside time for it. This puts you in an anticipatory frame of excitement, which creates a sense of adventure more than the activity itself.

The key lies in planning – and committing to yourself. That’s why the seventh rule is to take one night out of the week for yourself.

For some reason, this is the hardest step for parents to stomach. A whole night off? For something as frivolous as a night out with friends, a book club meeting, a standing tennis date, or a community theater practice session? Yes! You wouldn’t think twice about taking your child to an activity they enjoy, so why not carve out the same time – and grace – for yourself?

It’s important to schedule that night off for yourself rather than making it contingent on everyone else being free. If it’s something you’ve planned and signed up or paid for, you have to do it! Grabbing a whole evening to yourself might feel like an indulgence, but giving yourself that kind of break can have unquantifiable and long-lasting benefits.

You’ll notice that when you make room for your interests and growth, time stretches in a wonderful way to accommodate them. And who knows? You may be ready to turn those evenings into a day for yourself – socializing at a friend’s house, thinking at a library or café, or enjoying a mini retreat.

Learn how not to waste your time.

Imagine you’re tackling a big project, and a text flashes across your screen reminding you to schedule a dentist visit. As you glance down, you notice that the floor under your desk is gathering dust. Oh, and speaking of which, you need to schedule the cleaning service. 

If you actually call your dentist and cleaner to schedule those appointments, and then grab a broom to have a quick sweep under your desk, you’ve not only wasted a valuable chunk of time – you’ve also derailed your thoughts and concentration.

We’ve already discussed ways to manage your days and weeks by scheduling and carving out specific slots for specific functions. Now let’s talk about how not to waste time by employing rule number eight: set aside a block of time during which you’ll take care of all the little things that pile up.

Batching small jobs helps you prioritize what you’re doing at the time. It makes you realize that the other things can wait. To do this effectively, you’ll first have to train yourself to recognize which tasks are small – and how much time they’ll take. Beware the tricky small tasks that are mere tips of the iceberg for more complex work that lies beneath. Emailing a response to a party invite can turn into cleaning out your inbox, which can turn into perusing a sale from a store that emailed you a coupon, and on and on. So estimate your tasks wisely.

Our final rule – rule number nine – is this: have “effortful” fun before you totally relax, turn off your brain, and do something “effortless.” In short, focus on quality when choosing your leisure activities. Don’t spend all of your valuable free time idly scrolling through social media. Choose a book, puzzle, crossword, or small art project over hours on Instagram. If you feel like these activities will take up too much of your relaxation time, set a timer so you can move on to the effortless fun of a reality TV show at some point. Engaging in effortful fun will increase your sense of optimism and energy.

All of these time-management rules have something in common: they involve prioritizing yourself. Planning your weeks serve to protect your time rather than simply fill it up. The result? Many meaningful hours that lead you to not just become more productive, but happier and more fulfilled.

Final summary

Here’s one final piece of actionable advice: If you’ve set a good bedtime for yourself (and stuck to it) you’ll find that you’re waking up fresh and early in the morning with some time to spare. So now, create a mini morning routine! Choose activities – like journaling, drinking your coffee outside, or watering your plants – that will carry you through the day in a positive way.