Wallman - Time and how to spend it the 7 rules for richer, happier days

James Wallman is a cultural commentator and trend forecaster, and the international bestselling author of Stuffocation. He has written for GQ, the New York Times and the FT, and appeared on the BBC, the ABC and MSNBC. He runs a boutique trend forecasting firm whose clients range from KFC to KPMG, Yell and Eventbrite. He has studied at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He has spoken at Google HQ in California, the Collision Conference in Las Vegas, the London School of Economics, the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of the Arts, and 10 Downing Street. He has hosted Guardian Masterclasses, and run courses at the School of Life in London and Antwerp. He is an ambassador for the charity Global Action Plan. He has lived in France, Greece and California, and he currently lives in London with his wife and two children.

I love James Wallmans principles for spending your time wisely. This isnt just a book about how to be more productive, its a guidebook for living an awesome life!

Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable

A perfect combination of engaging, profound, and instructive. Its changed how I think of and spend my own personal time. The time you spend reading Time and How to Spend It will reward you a hundredfold with weeks, months, and years better spent.

Adam Alter, Professor of Marketing and Psychology, New York University, New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible and Drunk Tank Pink

If youre one of those people who feels they arent taking a big enough bite out of life, youre likely to find the perfect antidote in this easy-to-read tour of the academic literature on happiness and well-being.

Tom Gilovich, Professor of Psychology, Cornell University

The puzzle we all face today is how to best to spend our time. This book provides an entertaining and insightful guide for how to spend our weekends, vacations, and life. Its definitely worth your time!

Cassie Mogilner Holmes, Associate Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Decision Making, UCLA

Follow James Wallmans advice, and we will change our days, and in turn, our lives. For once, this book deserves the description life-changing.

Rachel Kelly, author of Black Rainbow and Walking on Sunshine

Our modern lives whizz by in a digital din of pings and dings leaving us frazzled and short of time. Jamess entertaining and brilliant book helps us get much more from our most precious resource, time. A timeless classic for navigating 21st century life.

Michael Acton Smith OBE, author of Calm

James Wallman is the Malcolm Gladwell of todays Experience Economy. He brings together the best of social science research with insights and stories relayed with wit and verve.

B. Joseph Pine II, co-author of The Experience Economy: Competing for Customer Time, Attentions, and Money

Unlike money, time must be spent: 24 hours of it, every day. James Wallman distills behavioural science into a set of actionable guidelines to help us make the most of the time we have to spend.

Michael Norton, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and co-author of Happy Money

Our happiness is determined by how we choose to spend our time. This book is an inspiring call for us to prioritise experiences over things and focus on what really matters.

Dr Mark Williamson, Director of Action for Happiness

James Wallmans treatise on time contains some awesome solutions for the ancient conundrum of what it means to live a good life. Drop what youre doing right now and read this book.

Scott Carney, New York Times bestselling author of What Doesnt Kill Us

Fresh, fun, provocative and practical. James Wallman gets you thinking, deciding and acting. Reading Time and How to Spend It is time very well spent.

Julia Hobsbawm, Honorary Visiting Professor at Cass Business School and author of Fully Connected

One of those rare books that can make you think seriously about how you could live a better life not one thats superficially appealing and Instagram-worthy, but one filled with satisfaction, joy, and yes, time well spent.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of Rest

If theres one book to read to make sense of todays I cant put my phone down culture (and how to live better in it) this is it. Smart, well-researched and very readable. I didnt want to put it down.

Marianne Cantwell, author of Be a Free Range Human

For Jenny and Alan, for showing me how to spend time.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

Annie Dillard

Any references to writing in this book refer to the original printed version. Readers should write on a separate piece of paper in these instances.

Once upon a time there was a girl who moaned so much about a one-night stand she inspired a movie that won an Oscar. This was more than two decades ago now, and the details about the girl her name, the colour of her hair, and what she looked like have faded like the colours on an old T-shirt. They havent been deliberately erased, just, like so many memories, forgotten.

But the night shed rather forget will live on because it sparked a thought that would grow wings and carry her friend all the way from France, across the Atlantic, to the USA: to 6801 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, California, and on to the stage at the Kodak Theatre on 27 February 2005, to accept an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Theres a far more important outcome than her friend winning an Oscar, though. Details like the colour of her hair may have faded, but thats nothing compared to the tangerine-bright, vital question she raised.

The girls friend, the one she was complaining to, is a man by the name of Pierre Bismuth. Bismuth is an artist. Born in France in 1963, he looks like a stockier version of the comedian Omid Djalili: balding with glasses and a bushy, salt-and-pepper beard.

Shed just had sex with some guy two nights before, and she was a little ashamed, Bismuth says now, a typical French air in his accent, remembering fragments from that conversation in the mid-1990s. I wanted to torture her a little, you know. To show that it was impossible to resolve this problem simply by erasing the memory.

So, when the girl kept moaning, and said, I wish I could just forget it ever happened, Bismuth had an idea.

If you were able, he said, curious, to wipe this adventure from your memory, would you do it?

What would you have said? Youve probably done something youve regretted in the past. Perhaps you said something, did something. We all have, havent we? We all make mistakes. Things go wrong. Bad things happen, even to good people like you and me and Bismuths friend. We have to just shrug cest la vie and move on.

But what if we didnt? What if you could not only sweep your bad memory into a corner, but clear it out completely? We tidy up our homes and our lives. We discard things as we outgrow or lose interest in them. Why not clean up your past too? Why not wipe your memory, and make your past pristine?