In this article, we’ll discuss:

• Why 168 hours is more than enough—if you know how to use them
• How the 168 Hours Technique helps eliminate wasted hours.
• The biggest time management mistakes that silently drain productivity and cause burnout.
• Why remote employee time tracking software is the secret to making the 168 Hours Technique work.

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Each day has the same set of hours, but it doesn’t always feel like that, especially in the workplace. Tasks get sidelined, deadlines are breached, and employees burn out. Learning about effective time management is your best bet for achieving workplace productivity.

The 168 Hours Technique is one way you and your team can maximize your resources. Instead of speeding through the workweek in 24-hour chunks, the technique proposes a more strategic approach. 

In this article, we’ll show you how to introduce the 168 Hours Technique into your workplace by relying on employee time tracking and management software—the tools you need to stop "frittering and wasting the hours in an offhand way," to borrow from Pink Floyd's wisdom.
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What is the 168 Hours Technique?

Laura Vanderkam, bestselling author and expert on time management, first presented the method in her 2010 book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. The main idea is to break free from the daily grind and instead segment your activities into well-planned blocks. 

In short, the 168 Hours Technique is all about categorizing your activities. To learn to divide your activities into work, personal, and leisure, giving each its own time slot. The technique is big on tackling high-priority tasks first making sure the important stuff gets its due attention, which is why it’s useful within the workplace.

Many highlight the following perks:

• Ramped-Up Productivity: Conscious planning and time allocation crank up employee focus and efficiency, making your team a productivity powerhouse.
  
  
• Balanced Work-Life Action: The technique ensures a well-rounded spread of time, meaning neither you nor your employees get burnt out.
  
  
• Less Stress: Clear planning and task prioritization lift the weight of uncertainty and chaotic schedules, allowing your team to cruise through the week with a sense of control.
  
  
• High Achievements: Professionals from different industries swear by disciplined time management. They credit their achievements to strategic weekly planning that lets them juggle work and play.
  
  
• Added Bonus: Folks living by the 168 Hours Technique often find it's a game-changer for personal relationships. Allocating dedicated time for loved ones ensures those connections stay strong. 

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Vanderkam calls it a transformative, game-changing strategy that empowers you to prioritize and navigate your week intentionally. And yes, task prioritization can help you estimate how much time is needed for a certain project to avoid the so-called planning fallacy. 

Overall, the 168 Hours Technique gives you a more realistic view of time on a larger scale and thus prevents you from wasting it. 
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What Happens When You Don’t Prioritize?

When time isn’t managed well, the effects ripple through every part of work and life. Work piles up faster than it gets done, stress levels rise, and the line between work and personal time starts to blur. Employees feel like they’re constantly working, yet somehow, never getting anything meaningful done.

This isn’t just frustrating, it can cost your business. Research shows that the average worker spends only 39% of their time on meaningful work, while the rest disappears into meetings, emails, and admin tasks that add little value. 

Without clear priorities, schedules fill up with low-impact work, making it nearly impossible to focus on what actually matters. And the longer this goes unchecked, the worse it gets. Productivity slows, burnout creeps in, and businesses lose billions. Statistics show that $300 billion a year in lost efficiency, to be exact.

The toll on employees is just as severe. Chronic stress caused by poor time management is dangerous. Burnout leads to serious health risks, including a 57% higher chance of extended sick leave, a 180% increase in depression, and even an 84% greater risk of developing conditions like Type 2 diabetes. People end up overworked, overstretched, and overwhelmed.

The 168 Hours Technique forces you to rethink how time is being used. Instead of letting hours disappear into distractions and unnecessary tasks, it helps teams structure their time strategically, ensuring that every hour is accounted for. 

But for this to work, you need visibility. You need to know where time is going before you can take control of it.
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How to Make the 168 Hours Technique Work in Your Workplace

The 168 Hours Technique is all about using your time intentionally. Every hour of the week should serve a purpose, whether it’s work, rest, or personal time. However, applying this method in the workplace requires more than good intentions. You need structure, clarity, and real insights into how time is actually being spent.

That’s why you need workforce analytics. Instead of relying on assumptions, employee time tracking systems provide real-time insights into focus trends, workload distribution, and overall productivity. With this kind of insight, you can eliminate wasted time, create more balanced schedules, and ensure that employees are actually able to focus on their most important work.

The key to making this technique work is understanding how work actually happens and using that knowledge to build a system that supports both productivity and balance.

Here’s how to do it:
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Categorize Time with Data, Not Guesswork

The first step is categorizing time into different types of activities—deep work, meetings, administrative tasks, breaks, and personal time. If these categories aren’t clearly defined, work tends to blend together, leading to constant context switching, inefficient workflows, and employees feeling like they’re always busy but never productive.

However, simply blocking out time on a calendar isn’t enough to make this work. Employees need to understand how their time is currently being used so they can make informed changes. 

Instead of relying on assumptions, use Insightful to analyze real work patterns. The employee monitoring tool provides real-time data on work patterns by tracking which apps and websites employees use, when they are most productive, and how much time is being spent on different activities. 

After analyzing this data, managers can see if too much time is being wasted on unnecessary admin work, if meetings are eating into deep focus time, or if employees are working beyond their capacity. These insights make it easier to prioritize and adjust schedules to reflect what actually drives results.
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Prioritize Work During Peak Productivity Hours

Not all tasks are created equal. The key to maximizing your team's 168 hours is ensuring the most important work gets done when employees are at their most productive. 

Everyone has natural productivity peaks throughout the day, and the goal is to align high-impact tasks with these windows. Instead of treating all hours equally, you must identify when employees do their best work and structure schedules around those patterns. For some, the first few hours of the morning might be ideal for deep work, while others hit their stride later in the afternoon. 

This is where Insightful’s productivity tracking is especially useful. The platform can analyze work activity and productivity trends, identifying when employees are most engaged and focused. 

Rather than assigning tasks arbitrarily, you can use real-time data to schedule high-priority work during peak performance hours and push lower-value tasks, like meetings or admin work, to less productive parts of the day. With this approach, employees will get more done in less time, and their workload will feel more manageable because they’re working in sync with their natural rhythms.
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Build a Weekly Schedule Based on Real Productivity Trends

One of the biggest challenges in time management is that schedules often don’t match the way work actually happens. You might plan out an ideal week, but unexpected tasks, last-minute meetings, and shifting priorities can quickly derail even the best-laid plans. 

To make the 168 Hours Technique work, schedules need to be flexible enough to adapt to real-world demands while still maintaining structure.

You can use Insightful’s advanced reporting features to analyze productivity trends and pinpoint peak performance periods. The platform provides an ongoing view of employee activity, allowing you to see if planned schedules align with actual work patterns. Are mornings more productive for deep work? Are afternoons better for collaboration? 

With this data, you can create schedules that align with natural workflow rhythms, improving efficiency without forcing rigid structures. 
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Use Time Blocking to Support Work-Life Balance

Time blocking is one of the most effective ways to ensure that important work gets done without distractions. The idea is simple: dedicate specific periods of time to specific tasks, minimizing interruptions and allowing employees to fully focus on one thing at a time. 

However, for time blocking to work, it needs to be properly balanced: too much deep work without breaks leads to burnout, while too many interruptions kill productivity.

Insightful’s Workload Management feature helps you balance tasks fairly, ensuring no one is overloaded while still keeping the team productive. By tracking workload trends, you can spot when employees are at risk of burnout and adjust schedules accordingly. You can set up automated reports to monitor workload distribution and make adjustments in real time.
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Implement Task Prioritization Strategies with Data

To get the most out of 168 hours, you need to focus on the work that actually adds value. Many teams rely on prioritization frameworks like the Eisenhower Matrix, which divides tasks into:

• Urgent and important
• Urgent but not important
• Important but not urgent
• Neither urgent nor important

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While this method is effective in theory, it only works if there’s clarity on what tasks actually fall into each category.

Without real data, prioritization often becomes a guessing game. Employees might spend hours on tasks that feel urgent but don’t contribute to long-term goals, while truly important work gets pushed aside. 

Insightful provides clear visibility into how time is being spent, making it easier to assess whether employees are focusing on the right priorities. By tracking productivity trends, you can identify which tasks drive results and which ones are taking up unnecessary time. With this insight, you can refine workflows, eliminate unnecessary tasks, and ensure that employees are dedicating their time to high-value work.
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Conclusion

Poor time management leads to missed deadlines, burnout, and wasted hours on low-impact tasks. The 168 Hours Technique helps structure time more effectively, but without real data, it’s hard to make meaningful changes.

Insightful’s employee time tracking software gives you real-time insights into productivity, focus trends, and workload balance—so you can eliminate inefficiencies and optimize schedules.

Start your free 7-day trial today and take control of your time!

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Updated on: April 8th, 2025