Speaker 1: Good morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip is to think a hundred sixty eight hours,
Speaker 1: not twenty four. When I first started writing about time
Speaker 1: many years ago, I realized something. A lot of people
Speaker 1: said the phrase seven, but no one multiplied it through.
Speaker 1: I certainly hadn't. I had to get out a pen
Speaker 1: and some paper to do the math. It turns out
Speaker 1: there are a hundred sixty eight hours in a week.
Speaker 1: This number is important for a few reasons. First, a
Speaker 1: week is the cycle of life as we actually live it.
Speaker 1: This is the smallest unit of time that offers a
Speaker 1: representative picture of life. If I chose a random twenty
Speaker 1: four hours of your life, it would look very different
Speaker 1: if I chose a Tuesday or a Saturday. If I
Speaker 1: choose a random a hundred sixty eight hours, though the
Speaker 1: odds are much better that my next pick of a
Speaker 1: hundred sixty eight hours would look at least reasonably similar. Second,
Speaker 1: look can get A week shows us how much time
Speaker 1: we have. Things that appear to consume a lot of
Speaker 1: time don't in the context of a week. Regular listeners
Speaker 1: of this podcast will hear me say this equation A
Speaker 1: lot with a hundred sixty eight hours in a week.
Speaker 1: If you work a regular full time job, so forty
Speaker 1: hours per week and sleep eight hours a night, so
Speaker 1: that's fifty six hours per week. That leaves seventy two
Speaker 1: hours for other things. If you work fifty hours, you
Speaker 1: still get sixty two hours. This might not be a
Speaker 1: parent on a Tuesday when you're in the office from
Speaker 1: eight am to seven pm, but those sixty two hours
Speaker 1: show up when you plot out the whole week. But
Speaker 1: it's not just about the math. I think the hundred
Speaker 1: sixty eight hours number is important because it helps us
Speaker 1: see that things don't have to happen daily, nor do
Speaker 1: they have to happen at the same time every day
Speaker 1: in order to count in our lives. I call this
Speaker 1: belief that things have to happen every day at the
Speaker 1: same time the twenty four hour trap. I see it
Speaker 1: most often with wait for it, exercise. You may have
Speaker 1: fallen into this trap yourself. People often tell me they
Speaker 1: want to exercise more, and then they tuck themselves out
Speaker 1: of it because there's not a perfect time every single day.
Speaker 1: You know how these conversations go, Oh, I'd love to exercise,
Speaker 1: but I'm not the kind of person who can just
Speaker 1: leave for an hour every day at lunch. Or I'd
Speaker 1: love to exercise, but I have a family I want
Speaker 1: to see. I can't go to the gym for an
Speaker 1: hour every night after work. Or I'd love to exercise,
Speaker 1: but I wake up early enough as it is. I
Speaker 1: can't stomach the thought of waking up at five am
Speaker 1: every day. So don't wake up at five am every day.
Speaker 1: Stop looking for the perfect time every single day. Instead,
Speaker 1: look at the whole of the week and see where
Speaker 1: you can fit it in. Maybe one morning you get
Speaker 1: up early and exercise. If you're co parenting with someone,
Speaker 1: you could trade off and each of you gets one
Speaker 1: night off. You could go to the gym, then do
Speaker 1: something on each of the two weekend days, and wow,
Speaker 1: we've just exercised four times a week. It didn't happen
Speaker 1: daily at the same time every day, but it didn't
Speaker 1: have to. And funny thing, because I write about time management,
Speaker 1: people often want to tell me about their great daily habits.
Speaker 1: This is one of these occupational hazards I didn't foresee.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, okay, great, tell me about your great
Speaker 1: daily habit. And then I realized after a while that
Speaker 1: the person does this awesome habit Monday through Thursday. But
Speaker 1: that is not daily, that is four times a week.
Speaker 1: So rather than fall into the twenty four hour trap,
Speaker 1: look at the whole week. I find this is especially
Speaker 1: helpful when it comes to issues of combining work and
Speaker 1: the rest of life. People sometimes fret to me that
Speaker 1: their balances out of whack because they had to stay
Speaker 1: late at work, or maybe they travel frequently. So we
Speaker 1: look at their timelogs and we find out let's say,
Speaker 1: on average, they stay late past their kids bed time
Speaker 1: at work two times per week, but that means their
Speaker 1: home five nights a week. Five is greater than two.
Speaker 1: So rather than look at the one night where it
Speaker 1: appears work and family are pitted against each other, or
Speaker 1: the two nights where it appears work and family are
Speaker 1: pitted against each other, why not look at the whole week.
Speaker 1: Then we see that we have space for both. People
Speaker 1: often say to me, you know, there aren't enough hours
Speaker 1: in the day, and I agree, but we don't live
Speaker 1: our lives and dates. We live our lives in weeks,
Speaker 1: and when we think of a hundred sixty hours, not
Speaker 1: twenty four, we see that we can build the lives
Speaker 1: we want in the time we've got in the meantime,
Speaker 1: this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's to making
Speaker 1: the most of our time. Hey, everybody got a tip
Speaker 1: or a question. You can share them with me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: Facebook or Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod. That's be the
Speaker 1: number four, then breakfast p o D. You can also
Speaker 1: email me at Before Breakfast Podcast at iHeart media dot
Speaker 1: com for the email to spell those words out. I
Speaker 1: look forward to connecting and learning how you make the
Speaker 1: most of your time.