说「不」已经成了一门大生意，每年都会出现半打措辞冗长的书名，包括《The Power of a Positive No》、《Stop People Pleasing: How to Start Saying No, Set Healthy Boundaries, and Express Yourself》，以及《The Art of Saying No: How to Stand Your Ground, Reclaim Your Time and Energy, and Refuse to Be Taken for Granted (Without Feeling Guilty!)》。去年，Sunita Sah 的《Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes》登上了 USA Today 畅销书榜。12月在纽约举行的 DealBook 峰会上，几位执行长谈到拒绝会议、不必要的承诺以及其他耗时的事情，Southwest Airlines 的 Bob Jordan 说：「在 2026 年，我正努力让星期三到星期五的下午完全空著。」

Laura Vanderkam 的《Big Time: A Simple Path to Time Abundance》是她第七本书中的最新一本，主张人们其实已经有时间，只要加以整理就能找到。她说，一年有 8,760 小时，并建议以半小时为单位追踪时间，涵盖工作、通勤、接送孩子、看手机和做饭。文章指出，许多人把一天想成 24 小时，其中 9 小时在工作、6 小时睡觉，若运气好才有；而一位追踪自己工时的会计师说：「我对自己的时间掌控得越多、越是主动选择它，我就感到越不紧张。」

文章将 Vanderkam 的充裕观点与 Oliver Burkeman 2021 年的《纽约时报》畅销书《Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals》形成对比，后者从「如果人能活到 80 岁，就大约有 4,000 周」这一想法出发。文章还说，智慧型手机使用和社群媒体会偷走 7 分钟和 13 分钟这样的小片段时间，而且有些人可能在 Threads 上不知不觉就流失 15 分钟。文中引用了 2019 年出版的 Jenny Odell《How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy》，并说萤幕时间真正的受害者是原创思考，而不是生产力。

Saying no has become a large business, with a half-dozen wordily titled books appearing every year, including The Power of a Positive No, Stop People Pleasing: How to Start Saying No, Set Healthy Boundaries, and Express Yourself, and The Art of Saying No: How to Stand Your Ground, Reclaim Your Time and Energy, and Refuse to Be Taken for Granted (Without Feeling Guilty!). Last year, Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes by Sunita Sah was a USA Today bestseller. At the DealBook Summit in New York in December, several chief executives discussed saying no to meetings, unnecessary commitments, and other time sucks, and Southwest Airlines’ Bob Jordan said, “In 2026, I’m trying to hold the afternoons of Wednesday to Friday completely open.”

Laura Vanderkam’s Big Time: A Simple Path to Time Abundance is her latest of seven books and argues that people already have time that can be found with organization. She says there are 8,760 hours in a year, and recommends tracking time in half-hour increments across work, commute, picking up kids, looking at a phone, and cooking. The article notes that many people think in 24-hour days with 9 hours at work and 6 hours sleeping if lucky, while an accountant who tracked her hours said, “The more I have control over my time, the more I’m actively choosing it, the less stressed I feel.”

The article contrasts Vanderkam’s abundance view with Oliver Burkeman’s 2021 New York Times bestseller Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, which starts from the idea that if people live to be 80, they have about 4,000 weeks. It also says smartphone use and social media steal small blocks of 7 minutes and 13 minutes, and that one person may lose 15 minutes on Threads without noticing. The piece cites Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, published in 2019, and says the real casualty of screen time is original thought rather than productivity.