A review by indoorg1rl
I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time by Laura Vanderkam

3.0

3.5 stars.

The Mosaic project described throughout this book was very interesting. I liked hearing how people tracked their lives in chunks of time (hence mosaic) and learned from them. I also liked the variations people had on the definition and categorisation of work and personal time, how the exact same activity could be categorised as either work or personal depending on each person.

I thought it was quite interesting that Vanderkam pointed out that people had tendencies to focus on productivity hacks to do things more efficiently, but rarely reviewed the entire life as a bigger picture. It was a different take on productivity, and I probably would benefit from applying it to my life as well. Having said that, the book ended with productivity strategies which did feel like productivity hacks previously 'frowned upon'. It did end with a reminder to see the mosaic as a whole though.

I also appreciated the correlation of time and finance, both could benefit greatly from budgeting techniques. I liked the point of view that at the end of the day, productivity hacks would still cram activities into the same 24 hours of our lives, similar to buying heavily discounted things would still eat into our savings, and sometimes it would be better not to spend at all.

It was a good insight - wasn’t life changing, but I got some gold nuggets out of it.