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 expand your time horizon. Anytime you are
Speaker 1: feeling crunched for time, or like you are neglecting one
Speaker 1: area of your life, you might try looking at time
Speaker 1: a little more broadly. It is quite possible that you
Speaker 1: will feel like time is more abundant. So whenever someone
Speaker 1: wants to talk about how pressed for time they are,
Speaker 1: they tend to recount a crowded weekday as evidence for
Speaker 1: this narrative. They're up early to get ready for work.
Speaker 1: This is then followed by a commute, It's a long day,
Speaker 1: making dinner, maybe getting kids to bed. Then, if the
Speaker 1: person's going to do anything else, like exercise, or write
Speaker 1: a novel, or learn French or talk with a partner,
Speaker 1: it's going to need to happen alongside the tidying up
Speaker 1: in that forty five minutes before lights out. No wonder
Speaker 1: people feel starved for time, and trust me, I get it.
Speaker 1: My life looks like that plenty of days too. Yet
Speaker 1: I know that that is only one way we can
Speaker 1: look at time. I remember when I first figured out
Speaker 1: that a week has one hundred sixty eight hours. That
Speaker 1: is twenty four times seven, something people say all the
Speaker 1: time twenty four to seven and yet don't multiply it
Speaker 1: through twenty four time seven is one hundred sixty eight hours.
Speaker 1: Looking at time in terms of one hundred sixty eight
Speaker 1: hours rather than twenty four suggests a slightly different arithmetic.
Speaker 1: We are not looking at slivers of forty five minutes. Instead,
Speaker 1: we might note that if you work forty hours and
Speaker 1: commute even an hour each way, that comes out to
Speaker 1: fifty hours. If you sleep eight hours per night, that
Speaker 1: is fifty six hours per week. Subtract fifty and fifty
Speaker 1: six from one hundred sixty eight and we get sixty
Speaker 1: two hours for other things, and that sounds like quite
Speaker 1: a bit of time. It suggests that at least it
Speaker 1: might be possible to exercise for three hours and maybe
Speaker 1: devote two hours to a hobby alongside one's other responsibilities.
Speaker 1: Broadening the time horizon helps us see possibilities. Here's another
Speaker 1: number to remember, eight thousand, seven hundred sixty That is
Speaker 1: the number of hours in a normal year. There are
Speaker 1: eight thousand, seven hundred eighty four hours in a leap year.
Speaker 1: So in a regular year, if you work two thousand
Speaker 1: hours and sleep two thy nine hundred twenty hours, that
Speaker 1: leaves three thousand, eight hundred forty hours for other things.
Speaker 1: Even if you subtract a case mute and showering and
Speaker 1: whatever else, starts to seem like a fair chunk of time.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about the math. It's about recognizing
Speaker 1: that life isn't just lived in the crunched moments. Parts
Speaker 1: of life are more expansive too. What seems typical is
Speaker 1: often more of a story than anything else in the
Speaker 1: context of life. I see this all the time in
Speaker 1: the laments people share about their business. Consider someone who
Speaker 1: needed to travel for work Monday to Thursday two weeks
Speaker 1: a month. Now, that might feel like a fairly heavy
Speaker 1: travel schedule. At first glance, it looks like fifty percent
Speaker 1: of your work time, and so this story can become
Speaker 1: that I am never home, and I agree it is
Speaker 1: a pretty heavy travel schedule. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: three nights per week twice a month is about six
Speaker 1: nights per month, or seventy two per year, maybe a
Speaker 1: bit less if you exempt holiday and vacation weeks. Out
Speaker 1: of three hundred and sixty five nights you are actually
Speaker 1: home or with your family, pretty close to three hundred
Speaker 1: of them. That is the vast majority. Everything feels different
Speaker 1: when you zoom out or consider people who have very
Speaker 1: busy phases of the year. Someone who teaches might find
Speaker 1: the month of September to be frenzied, but perhaps July
Speaker 1: is less so. An accountant might find February in March
Speaker 1: to feel like a marathon run at a sprinting pace,
Speaker 1: but November feels more open. A year contains all these multitudes.
Speaker 1: Even very intense and big projects feel smaller in the
Speaker 1: context of big chunks of time. Lots of folks will
Speaker 1: participate in National Novel Writing Month in November, when people
Speaker 1: attempt to writ a fifty thousand word novel in thirty days. Generally,
Speaker 1: people spend about two hours each day on this undertaking,
Speaker 1: so sixty hours. But in the context of three thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred and forty non working waking hours in a year,
Speaker 1: sixty hours doesn't really sound like that much. Maybe you
Speaker 1: can even write more than one novel, who knows. When
Speaker 1: it comes to time. On the one hand, it makes
Speaker 1: sense that everything is a trade off. Time is absolutely limited.
Speaker 1: We have eight thousand, seven hundred sixty hours in a year.
Speaker 1: Time spent on one thing is often time not spent
Speaker 1: on something else. But when we view time from a
Speaker 1: limited perspective, like only looking at twenty four hours, we
Speaker 1: often pit things against each other as trade offs that
Speaker 1: in the grand scheme of things, really aren't. You know
Speaker 1: how this goes. If I go out to drinks with
Speaker 1: my team, then I am not putting my kid to bed.
Speaker 1: I'm a terrible parent. But if I don't go out,
Speaker 1: I'm a terrible team member. No one can have it all.
Speaker 1: But if we look at a week and you're going
Speaker 1: out one night and home six nights, this seems a
Speaker 1: little less harsh. You can be a social team member
Speaker 1: and be the kind of parent who is home almost
Speaker 1: every night. And if we're talking going out with the
Speaker 1: team twenty times a year or so, well, we get
Speaker 1: to truly build relationships with our colleagues. But out of
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty five days, the vast majority are
Speaker 1: spent doing the bedtime routine. Broaden the horizon and trade
Speaker 1: offs don't look the same at all. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: this is Laura, Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 1: the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 1: If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
Speaker 1: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
Speaker 1: please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.