Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to say yes to an open hour, even
Speaker 1: if there is work you could be doing. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: good to see what you fill time with in the
Speaker 1: absence of doing obvious to dos. So a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: I went to Boston for about twenty four hours. I
Speaker 1: chose to leave my laptop at home. A lot of
Speaker 1: this was about having really light bags, since I knew
Speaker 1: I would be going to a concert right after getting
Speaker 1: off the plane. I brought a magazine to read on
Speaker 1: the plane, and of course I had my phone with
Speaker 1: me for checking email. But I was still kind of
Speaker 1: kicking myself on Saturday when I wound up getting to
Speaker 1: the airport quite early due to the checkout time of
Speaker 1: my hotel and the happy lack of traffic. If I'd
Speaker 1: had my laptop, I could have gotten ahead on my
Speaker 1: podcast scripts or my newsletters and so forth for the week.
Speaker 1: What a waste to have a kid free ninety minutes
Speaker 1: and not use it. But then I figured I could
Speaker 1: challenge myself to do something else with this time. I
Speaker 1: was in an airport which had several bookstores. As a
Speaker 1: book author, I should be seeing what book titles are
Speaker 1: being prominently displayed in bookstore front tables. I should see
Speaker 1: what cover designs catch my eye as I am figuring
Speaker 1: out the art for my next book. So I spent
Speaker 1: a leisurely thirty minutes perusing one of those bookstores and
Speaker 1: doing some research. Then I looked closer at a shelf
Speaker 1: of nonfiction titles and saw one title called on Time
Speaker 1: and Turtles by Si Montgomery. I'd read her book The
Speaker 1: Soul of an Octopus, so I thought i'd pick this
Speaker 1: other book up. I paged through and saw there were
Speaker 1: some interesting quotes about as you would imagine time in turtles,
Speaker 1: which was randomly something I was going to write about
Speaker 1: in my next book. Believe it or not, there is
Speaker 1: a brief turtle mention, And now I had more material.
Speaker 1: So I bought that Montgomery book, spent a fun time
Speaker 1: on the airplane reading it, and got some fodder for
Speaker 1: my writing projects. Anyway, So it was work, even if
Speaker 1: it wasn't the work I was thinking I was going
Speaker 1: to do, and it was work that I tend to
Speaker 1: not do enough of anyway. Now, obviously you could go
Speaker 1: overboard here. I mean, I can't spend all my time
Speaker 1: looking through books at bookstores, or I'd never write my
Speaker 1: own book. But it was a reminder that sometimes it
Speaker 1: is okay to say yes to an open hour. You
Speaker 1: will fill that hour with something, But if you don't
Speaker 1: fill it with the most obvious thing, you will no
Speaker 1: doubt come up with something else. And sometimes that something
Speaker 1: else might be worth spending time on. So think about
Speaker 1: when you might have an open hour and be open
Speaker 1: to a new way to spend that time. You never
Speaker 1: know what might happen, and sometimes that is a good thing.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
Speaker 1: you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.