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 don't play jump or Dive with your schedule.
Speaker 1: Make plans with adequate lead time so you don't have
Speaker 1: to do too much on the fly. If you grew
Speaker 1: up with access to a backyard pool, you may have
Speaker 1: played the pool game jump or Dive. One person stands
Speaker 1: on a diving board, and after that person launches himself
Speaker 1: into the air, his friends shout either jump or dive.
Speaker 1: Then the person, who is by now mid air maneuvers
Speaker 1: to either jump or dive in accordance with his friend's directions.
Speaker 1: You can probably guess that this usually results in a
Speaker 1: belly flop, which is kind of a cross between a
Speaker 1: jump and a dive. Now, this doesn't sound like my
Speaker 1: idea of fun, and I think most adults would agree
Speaker 1: with me, but a lot of kids find it hysterical.
Speaker 1: That said, I have noticed that plenty of adults played
Speaker 1: jump or Dive with their schedules. When you leave things
Speaker 1: undecided until the last minute, you are often setting yourself
Speaker 1: up for stress or wasted time, or an otherwise suboptimal situation.
Speaker 1: But you usually don't have to do that. Suppose you
Speaker 1: are planning to run with a friend tomorrow morning at
Speaker 1: six am, but there is a seventy percent chance of rain.
Speaker 1: You could wake up at five point forty and then
Speaker 1: decide whether or not to run. But wouldn't you be
Speaker 1: happier if you decided the night before that you will
Speaker 1: cancel so you can sleep in. Or you could agree
Speaker 1: that you will run together if it's not raining, but
Speaker 1: get together at Starbucks to hang out if it is.
Speaker 1: Either way you avoid the early wake up at half
Speaker 1: asleep text exchange and deciding whether or not to run.
Speaker 1: If you're planning to go out with a colleague for
Speaker 1: a drink after work but realize you will almost certainly
Speaker 1: have to work late because a big project just landed
Speaker 1: on your desk, you could make a call at five
Speaker 1: point fifteen about whether or not you can pause your
Speaker 1: work for drinks, but it might be more considerate to
Speaker 1: reach out in advance to see if you can shift
Speaker 1: drinks to another day, or maybe go a little later
Speaker 1: that day. You can skip this avoidable pivot. I know
Speaker 1: plenty of people who make plans that are vague, which
Speaker 1: is a variation on jumper dive. They'll plan to meet
Speaker 1: up with a friend for brunch on Saturday, but what
Speaker 1: does that even mean? Ten o'clock one o'clock and where
Speaker 1: the specific location might add thirty minutes of time for
Speaker 1: travel and parking. Depending on the options in your town,
Speaker 1: your attire might need to be different. Will you be
Speaker 1: eating indoors or outdoors? Instead of planning on brunch on Saturday?
Speaker 1: Make specific plans with the time and place so you
Speaker 1: are not holding each other's Saturday's hostage and figuring out
Speaker 1: whether to jump or dive on the fly. Now to
Speaker 1: be sure, there are some occasions when leaving things vague
Speaker 1: on timing for at least a little while might be
Speaker 1: the way to go. Lots of you let me know
Speaker 1: that you enjoyed my interview with Kristen the Frugal Girl
Speaker 1: on this podcast a few weeks ago. Both of us
Speaker 1: generally like to make our plans ahead of time, but
Speaker 1: the week I was looking to interview her, she had
Speaker 1: jury duty, so we agreed that she would text me
Speaker 1: in the evening if she found out that she didn't
Speaker 1: have to go in for her duty on the next day,
Speaker 1: since her day would suddenly be completely free. In this case,
Speaker 1: we could choose a half hour block that happened to
Speaker 1: be free for me. I almost always have one of
Speaker 1: those somewhere. Being flexible on timing worked out for us there.
Speaker 1: But even in that case, we weren't truly playing jump
Speaker 1: or dive. That would be like trying to figure out
Speaker 1: where six people can go eat dinner when you are
Speaker 1: all hungry and a lot of the restaurants are full.
Speaker 1: In most cases, you know that people get hungry at
Speaker 1: regular intervals, So if you have got a group, best
Speaker 1: to plan for that, and in general, if you need
Speaker 1: to adjust plans, doing it as soon as you know
Speaker 1: means that no one is left lurching as they jump
Speaker 1: off the diving board. Best not to schedule a meeting
Speaker 1: right after another meeting that always runs over, and just
Speaker 1: hope that everyone can move the second meeting forward when
Speaker 1: that's needed. You want to know if you are jumping
Speaker 1: or diving before you get to the edge of the
Speaker 1: diving board. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to before breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.