Speaker 1: Good morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Every weekday morning, I'll be sharing a strategy to help
Speaker 1: you take your day from great too awesome. In future
Speaker 1: episodes will dive right into the tips, but in these
Speaker 1: first few episodes, I'm introducing myself and I wanted to
Speaker 1: share a little bit about how I spend my time.
Speaker 1: You might call it a typical day or a day
Speaker 1: in the life of Laura with this caveat. I've spent
Speaker 1: the past ten years studying people's schedules, and one of
Speaker 1: the first things I learned is that there are no
Speaker 1: typical days. When we describe a day is typical, what
Speaker 1: we're really saying is that this is how we'd like
Speaker 1: to see ourselves. This is the picture we wish to
Speaker 1: share of our lives. It's often not an actual hour
Speaker 1: by our reality. Just as an example, when you ask
Speaker 1: people to describe a typical day, almost no one describes
Speaker 1: a weekend day, even though Saturday and Monday constitute of
Speaker 1: our days. A few people describe Friday either, even though
Speaker 1: this gets us up to our time. I guess typical
Speaker 1: days only happen Monday through Thursday, even though this is
Speaker 1: barely more than half the week. When we think of typical,
Speaker 1: we think of routine. It's just easier to describe something
Speaker 1: we do repeatedly, even if that repetition happens less frequently
Speaker 1: than you might imagine. That turns out to often be
Speaker 1: the case. Indeed, Big time diary studies often find that
Speaker 1: more than half of respondents say the day they tracked
Speaker 1: was not typical. But this can't be true for the
Speaker 1: majority of people, or we need to change the definition
Speaker 1: of the word typical. It's kind of funny, but what
Speaker 1: this means in practice is that any study that asks
Speaker 1: people how much work they do on a typical day
Speaker 1: or how much they sleep on a typical day is
Speaker 1: going to be misleading. That's why I often ask people
Speaker 1: to describe yesterday, not a typical day Yesterday. Maybe yesterday
Speaker 1: wasn't typical for some reason or another, but it was
Speaker 1: a real day. It really happened, and we can learn
Speaker 1: a lot from that. So I'll give you both versions
Speaker 1: of my life. Just as an exercise, on a typical day,
Speaker 1: which by definition seems to be Monday through Thursday, I
Speaker 1: set my alarm for six am, I get up in shower,
Speaker 1: and then my husband and I spend seven to seven
Speaker 1: fifty having family breakfast and getting kids ready for school.
Speaker 1: At seven fifty are nanny shows up and I drive
Speaker 1: my oldest child to middle school. I come back around
Speaker 1: I check email or do administrative work, and at I
Speaker 1: get the middle two kids out to the bus stop
Speaker 1: by Our nanny is fully on with our littlest kid,
Speaker 1: getting him ready for preschool, taking him, picking him up,
Speaker 1: doing activities with him, and I'm in my home office
Speaker 1: to start my work day. I am to do deep
Speaker 1: work projects first, like writing an at NG. Then I
Speaker 1: deal with emails and phone calls. I grabbed lunch somewhere
Speaker 1: around noon, usually eating at my desk. Then I work
Speaker 1: until two thirty or so, at which point I go
Speaker 1: run outside. My goal is three point one miles. That's
Speaker 1: a five K for any runners out there. I come back,
Speaker 1: change and work until four PM, at which point kids
Speaker 1: start getting off buses. I chat with them and then
Speaker 1: drive to some kid activity or another. We often eat
Speaker 1: dinner somewhere between five and six, depending on the activity
Speaker 1: schedule for the evening. I'm often doing emails or work reading.
Speaker 1: In the middle of all this, my husband comes home
Speaker 1: and hear if he's not traveling. The little guy goes
Speaker 1: to bed between seven thirty and eight. The seven year
Speaker 1: old gets her stories at eight forty five. The big
Speaker 1: boys go up around nine pm to read in the room.
Speaker 1: I may read or work, shut the house, turn the
Speaker 1: boys lights off at ten, and I am to be
Speaker 1: in bed myself before eleven. So that's a typical day.
Speaker 1: Now I'll describe yesterday, which, since I wrote the script
Speaker 1: on a Tuesday, was a Monday. My husband had flown
Speaker 1: to Europe on Sunday night, so he wasn't in the picture.
Speaker 1: I set my alarm for sixty five am, but my
Speaker 1: four year old woke up at five thirty. I was
Speaker 1: definitely not prepared to deal with the day at this point,
Speaker 1: so I got him a snack and let him watch
Speaker 1: YouTube videos from five forty five to sixty five so
Speaker 1: I could go back to sleep. I got up at
Speaker 1: six forty five and spent the next two hours playing
Speaker 1: with kids, getting them breakfast, and doing random household tasks
Speaker 1: that I can't really remember. It was our neighbor's turn
Speaker 1: to drive the car pool to middle school, so there's
Speaker 1: a little extra time in here. I finally got my
Speaker 1: own breakfast at eight fifteen and wolfed it down before
Speaker 1: the bus stop. Fun At eight thirty five, I went
Speaker 1: for a run in my neighborhood since I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: it could happen later. I did not hit three point
Speaker 1: one miles. I came back, got myself cleaned up, and
Speaker 1: did an hour of work before going to my youngest
Speaker 1: child's preschool to celebrate his fourth birthday. I read a
Speaker 1: story and brought snack, and helped everyone get in boots
Speaker 1: and coats to play on the snowy playground. After I
Speaker 1: came home and worked until three, at which point I
Speaker 1: packed my bags and drove to the airport to travel
Speaker 1: to Houston for a speech. I had been told to
Speaker 1: be early because of some potential T s A issues,
Speaker 1: which turned out to be nothing that's good, But then
Speaker 1: I had an hour to kill in the airport. I
Speaker 1: never spend time at the airport well. I got a snack,
Speaker 1: not a virtuous one, and scrolled aimlessly before getting on
Speaker 1: my flight. On the plane, I intended to write something,
Speaker 1: but I wound up reading a magazine for the first hour.
Speaker 1: Then I ate dinner. I read a book I was
Speaker 1: reviewing for the Wall Street Journal, so at least that
Speaker 1: was work, and I listened to a podcast for the
Speaker 1: last half hour while paging through Hemispheres magazine, reading stories
Speaker 1: about United's customer service team. We landed around nine pm
Speaker 1: Eastern time eight pm Central time. I walked through the airport,
Speaker 1: met my driver, and stared out the window at the
Speaker 1: Houston Strip malls as we drove downtown. I checked into
Speaker 1: my room and pretty much crashed, well not really. I
Speaker 1: lay in bed for forty five minutes reading snarky comments
Speaker 1: on Twitter before falling asleep at eleven pm Eastern, which
Speaker 1: was ten pm Central. So there are some similarities between
Speaker 1: a typical day and yesterday, there are also some differences.
Speaker 1: Adding it up, I only did about five hours of
Speaker 1: work yesterday, whereas my description of a typical day easily
Speaker 1: clocks nine or more. Looking at Instagram for an hour
Speaker 1: in the airport isn't work, nor is looking at a
Speaker 1: magazine on the plane. Looking at Twitter in my hotel
Speaker 1: room also isn't work. My description of a typical day
Speaker 1: did not include three hours of low quality leisure time,
Speaker 1: but they happened. On the plus side, visiting my son's
Speaker 1: preschool for an hour isn't typical either, but it happened.
Speaker 1: A typical doesn't mean good or bad. It is what
Speaker 1: it is, just like time itself. This might be an
Speaker 1: interesting exercise for you too. Describe what you think of
Speaker 1: as a typical day and compare it to yesterday. By
Speaker 1: the way, I know exactly how I spent the day
Speaker 1: I just reported because I tracked my time, and I've
Speaker 1: been doing so for the past four years. We'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that in a future episode. But by comparing
Speaker 1: a typical day and a real day, I think you
Speaker 1: can learn a lot about yourself, your life, and what
Speaker 1: matters to you in the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, and here's to making the most of our time. Hey,
Speaker 1: everybody got a tip or a question. You can share
Speaker 1: them with me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at Before
Speaker 1: Breakfast Pod. That's be the number four then Breakfast p
Speaker 1: o D. You can also email me at Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: Podcast at iHeart Media dot com for the email to
Speaker 1: spell those words out. I look forward to connecting and
Speaker 1: learning how you make the most of your time.