Tranquility by Tuesday

9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

By: Laura Vanderkam

Narrated by: Laura Vanderkam

“An indispensable manual...Tranquility by Tuesday offers plenty of inspiration for a more serene life, and down-to-earth and evidence-backed advice for actually making it happen."
--Oliver Burkeman, New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks

For anyone who’s sick of letting to-do lists dictate their time, Laura Vanderkam, the bestselling author of What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, shares nine strategies for reclaiming your hours

Do you find yourself hoping that someday, life will be less hectic? One day, you say, you’ll finally have time for the activities that you love – writing that book, completing that triathlon, traveling with friends. But if the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that life is unpredictable. If we’re not careful, dull, unfulfilling tasks can quickly occupy our precious hours, derail our best-laid plans, and make life feel like a slog.

In Tranquility by Tuesday, Laura Vanderkam explains that if you want something to happen, you need to design your life to make it happen. Work crises, childcare emergencies, and home repairs are inevitable, and the mundane tasks of life – cooking, cleaning, laundry – aren’t going anywhere. To make time for what matters, you need a resilient schedule, not a perfect schedule. Based on a time diary study of over 150 people, Vanderkam shares nine strategies for building opportunities for joy, nourishment, and fulfillment into your week, such as:

• Three times a week is a habit

• One big adventure, one little adventure

• Effortful before effortless

This is more than a time management book about “how to do it all.” It’s a look at how real people changed their lives using Vanderkam’s nine rules, and how you can do the same. It’s about intentionally living the life that you want to live, and becoming an autonomous steward of life’s possibilities.

Great Tips, Easy to Implement

I really do love her narration. I feel like I get something different in every single one of her books, and I enjoy them all.

great time/life tips for everyday people

I love this author. She provides a refreshing look at the weekly timetable. And makes me feel like I can do it, too.

The tips she shares are not only great for managing tine dedicated to business but for managing life. because what good is having success at work while you're miserable and unfulfilled at home?

We work to make time for the home life and this book addresses the aspects that will lead to a more fulfilling life.

A guide for better planning

I am a procrastinator at best, and will spend a lot of time on small tasks that fall into my lap unexpectedly. I’ve an aversion to planning my day or even week. Every attempt I’ve made previously did not last long enough to make an impact on my productivity or work and home planning activities. Basically, I’ve survived on using my memory, small notebook on to-do that’s not followed to a T and winging it. However, I decided to improve my productivity this year. Juggling school, work, side hustles, family and personal life is stretching me out. I found this book as I was researching the best books to read about productivity and I am glad I gave it a chance. It’s too early to say whether the lessons have made an impact, seeing as to how I just finished listening to it, but I am ready and willing to put all the lessons into action. That’s what matters, right? Taking action.

I loved the narration; very soothing, but not so much as it’d put you to sleep. Easy to follow along.

Practical and Actionable Strategies

I’ve been reading Laura Vanderkam’s books for a decade, since her book 168 Hours changed how I view time. This is her best work yet — with 9 easy to remember actionable strategies that are practical as well as life-changing. Laura has solved the problem of making a change in one’s life without resorting to drastic measures— tweaks and shifts in mindset that make a profound difference in how we enjoy our time. I also appreciate that these are strategies that can be modified and applied differently by different people rather than one-fits-all “tips” that may or may not help. I love the questions at the end of each chapter to help me implement and then reflect on each strategy. I feel like I’m taking a workshop rather than simply reading a book. I highly recommend it!

Wish someone else narrated…

I really love Laura Vanderkam’s books, but her narration style drives me up the wall. If you’ve ever listened to her podcast called Before Breakfast, you know what I’m talking about. I would recommend listening to that podcast to see if you can handle her style of speech before purchasing this book.