The 56-Hour Method: How to Master Your Week and Take Back Your Time

by Chris Jennings

What if you could transform your entire life in just 56 hours a week?

You have 168 hours every week. Most people feel like they have lost control over those hours. The 56-Hour Method gives you a framework to find time—and to take them back.

Built for busy professionals, parents, and leaders who feel stretched thin but underbuilt, this practical system teaches you to divide your week into intentional buckets—career, relationships, health, growth, and rest—so nothing important gets neglected and nothing wasteful goes unquestioned.

You'll learn to audit where your time actually goes, eliminate the commitments that drain without returning, and design weeks that build toward the life you want, not the one that just happens to you.

Stop sleepwalking through your schedule. Start building a week worth living.

240 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 9, 2026

Reviews

[Steve Sarner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forget the 56 hours. You can read this book in far less time, and in doing so save yourself 20+ years of trial and error.

The 56-Hour Method: How to Master Your Week and Take Back Your Time feels like advice from the friend you wish you'd had 20 (or more) years ago: someone who has already made the mistakes, learned the lessons, and is generous enough to share with you what matters.

I realize there's no shortage of books about productivity, time management, priorities, and living a more intentional life. What made The 56-Hour Method stand out for me was that while many of the topics are familiar ones, Chris Jennings presents them in ways that feel fresh, and insightful, plus immediately applicable and actionable too.

What I particularly appreciated is how much ground this book covers. It’s a book for pretty much any age and not narrowly focused on just the workday. Jennings looks at the bigger picture with life, career, relationships, health, personal growth, rest, priorities, commitments, and all the competing demands that can make us feel as though we're on a treadmill and headed for burnout (or worse!)

The result is much more than a collection of productivity tips. It’s actually a thorough, well written and engaging practical playbook for life.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the book is its voice. Reading it feels like having a conversation with a seasoned, trusted friend who has been there, made the mistakes, had the victories, learned the lessons, and is now there for you. And I appreciate the author’s vulnerability, honesty and humble approach throughout. There’s a ton of wisdom here that never feels academic or preachy but rather very supportive.

One of my favorite of many quotes and pieces of advice was this:

“The more you focus on the problem, the bigger it gets while the more you focus on the solution the bigger the solution gets.”

Simple, logical and I had never even consider this until The 56 Hour Method

The book is filled with these easy to remember and practical to implement gems and nuggets.

It's thoughtful without being complicated, practical without being simplistic, and ambitious in the scope of what it tackles. It reminded me that managing your time isn’t really about finding more hours in the day. It’s about becoming more intentional about the hours you already have.

If you feel stretched thin, constantly busy, overly streseed or simply want to be more deliberate about how you spend your life, this is a book worth making time for, for sure.