How to Hack Time to Be Happier & More Successful: James Wallman (Transcript)

Full text of author James Wallman’s talk: How to Hack Time to Be Happier & More Successful at TEDxManchester conference. In this talk James shares the 7 secrets to spending your time in ways that lead you to be happier and more successful.

TRANSCRIPT:

James Wallman – Author of Stuffocation

So I’m James. I’m super excited to be here today. It’s a real honor.

And I’m going to be talking about time and how to spend it. And our time here is coming to a close, so I’m going to begin by introducing a person with a problem.

His name’s Woody. He’s my son; he’s five years old. And a few weeks ago, he had a specific problem. He fell, he banged his head on this step. And I kind of did as any parent would, and I kind of grabbed him up into my arms. I held him back, and he had blood pouring down here. I thought he’d banged his eyes, I was just sort of panicked.

But my wife calmed me down. We got into the car, and we did what… you know what any good parent would do. We took a picture.

And then as I was putting him into his car seat, you know doing it up, he looked at me, he said, “Daddy, am I going to die?”

And I did…. look to him, just… “Yes, but not today.”

And the reason I tell that story is we all have that same problem. We’re all going to die… hopefully not today. Hopefully not during this talk.