By Kelly
Juliet’s School of Possibilities, by Time Management Expert Laura Vanderkam, is “a little story about the power of priorities.”
At 113 pages, it’s similar to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in tone and length.
It’s about a workaholic, Riley, who’s spread so thin that all her personal relationships are slipping and she’s in danger of losing her job, too.
She visits Juliet’s School of Possibilities for a company retreat, and Juliet singles Riley out and magically shows her two possible futures, one based on her current priorities and one made with better priorities.
“How we live our hours is how we live our lives,” Juliet tells Riley.
Then Juliet shares her priority past. She was a successful inn manager and single mother who wanted to start her own business, but at the end of the day, she couldn’t even think about her potential business. “There just wasn’t any time leftover,” Juliet told Riley.
As a self-published novelist, who aspires to be traditionally published, but works 40 hours a week, exercises at least three hours a week, sleeps at least 42 hours a week (That’s six hours a night. And, yes, I wish it were eight!), and spends a good amount of time with my spouse, friends and family, I know what that feels like.
But as Juliet points out, “’I don’t have time’ means ‘It’s not a priority.’ We always have time for what matters to us.”
She also goes on to say that expectations are infinite, but time is finite, so you have to make hard choices about how to spend your time.
By the end, Riley’s life improves quickly by taking Juliet’s advice of only saying yes to what you really want to do.
Then there’s a helpful workbook in that back that helps you apply what you learned in the fable. Just answering those thoughtful questions made me feel like a more centered person.
So if you’ve got some time for a helpful fable, pre-order the book or pick it up when it comes out March 12.