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: episode is going to be a longer one, just like
Speaker 1: we do every Wednesday, only because this episode is first
Speaker 1: running on New Year's Day. Today, we are going to
Speaker 1: do something just a little bit different. I am going
Speaker 1: to be sharing my thoughts on the first step to
Speaker 1: spending your time better. Lots of people resolve to be
Speaker 1: better about managing their time and their life in the
Speaker 1: new year. I have some thoughts about how to do
Speaker 1: just that. I'll also be sharing some news about a
Speaker 1: challenge that I am running in mid January that will
Speaker 1: help you make the most of your time. My goal
Speaker 1: is that by the end of listening to today's episode,
Speaker 1: you will have a plan for getting some data, celebrating
Speaker 1: what is worth celebrating, and making some changes in your
Speaker 1: life if that is what you would like to do.
Speaker 1: I am excited to talk about this topic, so thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. All right, Well, here we go. So
Speaker 1: people sometimes say to me, Laura, I would like to
Speaker 1: spend my time better. What is the first thing I
Speaker 1: should be doing? And I always say, well, let's figure
Speaker 1: out where the time is going now, Because if you
Speaker 1: don't know where the time is going now, how do
Speaker 1: you know if you're changing the right thing. Maybe something
Speaker 1: you thought was a problem really isn't. Maybe something you
Speaker 1: haven't even considered is taking more time than you've imagined.
Speaker 1: We want to make sure that we are working from
Speaker 1: good data. Same as any business decision. Right if you're
Speaker 1: figuring out where to open a new store, you'd be
Speaker 1: looking at foot traffic and how neighboring retailers are doing,
Speaker 1: and anything else you could figure out. You wouldn't just decide, well,
Speaker 1: I think this is a good spot, so here we go.
Speaker 1: You want to make sure you're working from good data,
Speaker 1: and it is the exact same thing with our time.
Speaker 1: We want to figure out where the time really goes,
Speaker 1: and the only way to do that is to actually
Speaker 1: try keeping track of our time. There are lots of
Speaker 1: ways to do this. I track my time on weekly spreadsheets.
Speaker 1: I know that makes me sound like a ton of fun,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure there are a few people listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast who really enjoy a good spreadsheet. Kind of
Speaker 1: an art form. It gets even worse. I've been doing
Speaker 1: this since April of twenty fifteen, tracking my time, but
Speaker 1: I promise it is not too onerous and you don't
Speaker 1: have to do it for ten years. Just a week
Speaker 1: would be good. But I track on weekly spreadsheets with
Speaker 1: the days of the week across the top Monday through
Speaker 1: Sunday half hour blocks down the left hand side five
Speaker 1: am to four thirty am, so we have three hundred
Speaker 1: thirty six cells representing the one hundred and sixty eight
Speaker 1: hour week. If you'd like to use one of these
Speaker 1: spreadsheets yourself, you can just go to my website, Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com and you'll be able to find and
Speaker 1: download one. But that's not the only way you can
Speaker 1: track your time. Some people use one of dozens of
Speaker 1: time tracking apps that are on the market these days.
Speaker 1: Or you could even walk around with a little notebook
Speaker 1: if you want to look all artsy writing down what
Speaker 1: you are doing. The tool itself doesn't actually matter. What
Speaker 1: matters is that you do it. And when I suggest
Speaker 1: that people track their time for a week, you may
Speaker 1: or perhaps may not be surprised to hear that I
Speaker 1: get a little bit of pushback to this idea, Like, hmm, right,
Speaker 1: if that is the first thing I should do to
Speaker 1: spend my time better, What is the second thing I
Speaker 1: should be doing? So I have explored this resistance with
Speaker 1: people over the years, and I think it's a couple
Speaker 1: of things. Sometimes people have worked in legal or accounting
Speaker 1: fields and other places where they have to track their
Speaker 1: time and six minute increments, and the experience has left
Speaker 1: them a little bit traumatized. But I promise you don't
Speaker 1: have to do it forever, and it will be helpful
Speaker 1: to even look at your time outside of work. You
Speaker 1: may know exactly where your work time goes in those
Speaker 1: six minute increments, but my guess is that you don't
Speaker 1: know where the other you know, one hundred some plus
Speaker 1: hours of the week happened to go, and that might
Speaker 1: be useful information for you to figure out. So, even
Speaker 1: if you have had to bill your time in excruciating
Speaker 1: detail for work, just try this for a week. I
Speaker 1: promise it will be useful. Sometimes people tell me, well,
Speaker 1: I'm too busy to try time, and I guess that
Speaker 1: is its own special problem. But I really really promise
Speaker 1: it is not that difficult. I would not have stuck
Speaker 1: with this for almost ten years now if I found
Speaker 1: it challenging. What I tend to do is just check
Speaker 1: in three times a day write down what I've done
Speaker 1: since the last time I checked in, and it's fine
Speaker 1: to use broad strokes, or even if you forget, sometimes
Speaker 1: you just approximate and keep going on. Three minutes a
Speaker 1: day to do this is the exact same amount of
Speaker 1: time that I spend brushing my teeth. That is an
Speaker 1: activity that I have yet to declare myself too busy
Speaker 1: to do. But I think that the most common reason
Speaker 1: that people resist tracking time, it's the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: If anyone has ever resolved to lose weight or to
Speaker 1: eat more healthfully, you know that a nutritionist will tell
Speaker 1: you to keep a food journal, and that is because
Speaker 1: it works. Like there is pretty good evidence studies and
Speaker 1: pure reviewed journals finding that people who write down what
Speaker 1: they eat lose significantly more weight than people who do not.
Speaker 1: So you think we'd be all over that, but the
Speaker 1: truth is that we often don't want to know. We
Speaker 1: don't want to know that we grabbed six chocolate chip
Speaker 1: cookies from the kitchen next to our home office over
Speaker 1: the course of a day, which is purely a hypothetical example,
Speaker 1: and it is the same thing with time. We don't
Speaker 1: want to know how much time we are wasting. So
Speaker 1: let's get this out of the way right now. We
Speaker 1: all waste time. Everybody wastes time. I waste tons of time.
Speaker 1: No one spends all their time on things that are
Speaker 1: meaningful or enjoyable for themselves or the people they care about.
Speaker 1: Figuring out where the time really goes is not about
Speaker 1: making sure that we're not wasting time here or there,
Speaker 1: like oh you think you are so busy and I
Speaker 1: saw you watch Netflix. It's not about playing gotcha. It
Speaker 1: is about making sure that we are not telling ourselves
Speaker 1: stories about our lives that aren't actually true. And when
Speaker 1: it comes to time, we have all sorts of stories
Speaker 1: we tell ourselves, not all of which are one hundred
Speaker 1: percent accurate. So We're going to take a quick ad
Speaker 1: break and then I'm going to come back and talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about what people find when they
Speaker 1: actually track their time. Well, I am back. This is Laura,
Speaker 1: and this is a longer episode of Before Breakfast as
Speaker 1: we run every Wednesday these days. But instead of bringing
Speaker 1: you a guest this week because it is New Year's Day,
Speaker 1: and decided to do something a little bit different talking
Speaker 1: about the first step to spending our time better, which
Speaker 1: is figuring out where the time really goes. So before
Speaker 1: the break, I mentioned that keeping track of our time
Speaker 1: is not about figuring out how much time we are wasting,
Speaker 1: because all of us waste time. It's about making sure
Speaker 1: we are not telling ourselves stories about our lives that
Speaker 1: aren't actually true. When it comes to time, we have
Speaker 1: all sorts of these stories. I've seen many of these
Speaker 1: over the years as I have explored thousands of people's
Speaker 1: time logs. One of the most common stories we tell
Speaker 1: ourselves that may not be one hundred percent accurate is
Speaker 1: how many hours people are working. Now. To be clear,
Speaker 1: I know everybody is working hard, everybody is working long.
Speaker 1: But we also live in a competitive world, and so
Speaker 1: often there is a tendency to try to one up
Speaker 1: each other over just how many hours we happen to
Speaker 1: be working. Perhaps you have I've heard some of these
Speaker 1: scintillating conversations over the years. People are comparing how many
Speaker 1: hours they happen to be working, like, oh, I worked
Speaker 1: sixty hours last week, ooh sixty, I wish I work sixty.
Speaker 1: I work seventy, ooh, seventy is my light season, and
Speaker 1: so on it goes. I once met a young man
Speaker 1: at a party who told me he was working one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty hours a week at his startup. Now
Speaker 1: that is pretty impressive if you actually multiply twenty four
Speaker 1: times seven. There was once a study comparing people's estimated
Speaker 1: work weeks with time diaries. I found that people who
Speaker 1: were claiming seventy five plus hour work weeks were off
Speaker 1: by about twenty five hours. And you can guess in
Speaker 1: which direction they were off. Now, I find this all
Speaker 1: a little funny, although it's also a little tragic at
Speaker 1: times too, because I'm sure there are jobs that people
Speaker 1: have not taken because everyone says, oh, it's an eighty
Speaker 1: hour a week job. Now, if you knew it was
Speaker 1: actually a fifty five to sixty hour week job, maybe
Speaker 1: people would consider things differently. But even though I laugh
Speaker 1: about it, I know I am guilty of this too.
Speaker 1: So many years ago I used to talk about my
Speaker 1: fifty hour work weeks, and that is because I had
Speaker 1: tracked my time here and there various points over the
Speaker 1: years when I was writing my books or in solidarity
Speaker 1: with other people as they were tracking their time, and
Speaker 1: I usually worked about fifty hours a week. But then
Speaker 1: I started tracking my time continuously in April of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: and I realized something quite quickly, which is that in
Speaker 1: the past I had chosen very specific weeks to track,
Speaker 1: namely weeks when I was working fifty hours a week,
Speaker 1: because I wanted to see myself as the kind of
Speaker 1: person who was working fifty hours a week. When I
Speaker 1: tracked all my time, all my weeks, I saw that
Speaker 1: it was just as likely that I might have a
Speaker 1: short week. I was off for some reason, there was
Speaker 1: a vacation day, somebody was sick and I was dealing
Speaker 1: with it. There was something that had to happen during
Speaker 1: the workday, so many weeks were shorter, which means that
Speaker 1: the long term average was a lot closer to forty.
Speaker 1: I now know, over ten years or so, that my
Speaker 1: average is pretty solidly between thirty five and forty. When
Speaker 1: I look at all fifty two weeks of the year,
Speaker 1: I think if I subtracted three or four vacation weeks,
Speaker 1: it would be a little closer to forty. But it
Speaker 1: is not fifty. And here I write and speak about
Speaker 1: time management, and there were ten hours going somewhere completely
Speaker 1: different than I thought there was. And again, this is
Speaker 1: not about playing gotcha, Ooh, you thought you worked fifty
Speaker 1: hours a week and you were working thirty eight. It's
Speaker 1: that when we are trying to decide how to spend
Speaker 1: our work weeks, if we don't know what a work
Speaker 1: we can, truly looks like we're just guessing with how
Speaker 1: much time we assign to different things. How much time
Speaker 1: should you spend on administration? How much time should you
Speaker 1: spend on the stuff of your job, or on drumming
Speaker 1: up new work, or on mentoring younger colleagues or anything
Speaker 1: like that. I don't know what the answer is, but
Speaker 1: if you don't know the denominator for your work week,
Speaker 1: it's pretty hard to make rational choices of what the
Speaker 1: numerators should be. Of these different proportions of things that
Speaker 1: we are assigning to different tasks. We want to make
Speaker 1: sure that we are working from good data. Incidentally, people
Speaker 1: do this in the opposite direction. With free time. People
Speaker 1: will tell you I have absolutely no free time whatsoever,
Speaker 1: and you can be having this conversation at a party.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, maybe just a tiny amount of free time.
Speaker 1: But what people mean when they say I have no
Speaker 1: free time whatsoever is that they don't have as much
Speaker 1: free time as they want. Now, that is a true story. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we don't have as much free time as we want,
Speaker 1: but not as much as I want is a very
Speaker 1: very different story from none. Not as much as I
Speaker 1: want implies some very good questions right there, like how
Speaker 1: could I scale this up over time? How could I
Speaker 1: make good choices within the limited leisure time I do
Speaker 1: have so I feel most rejuvenated, whereas none is just defeatist.
Speaker 1: Everyone has some amount of discretionary time, even if it
Speaker 1: isn't much. Sometimes people get a little bit funny about this.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite examples of this is someone who
Speaker 1: wrote in Too Real Simple many years ago. Real Simple
Speaker 1: magazine asked their time starved readers to tell what they
Speaker 1: would do if they had an extra fifteen minutes in
Speaker 1: the day, and someone wrote in that fifteen minutes of
Speaker 1: uninterrupted writing time would be a priceless gift, which of
Speaker 1: course left me wondering how she found fifteen minutes to
Speaker 1: write Real Simple with this elusive dream of hers. Right,
Speaker 1: we have some amount of leisure time, but it's probably
Speaker 1: not as much as I want, and that's fine. But
Speaker 1: when we track our time and see how much time
Speaker 1: we do have, we can make good choices with this
Speaker 1: limited time. We're going to take one more quick break
Speaker 1: and then I'll be back talking a little bit more
Speaker 1: about how we can track our time. Well, I am back.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. This is one of the longer episodes
Speaker 1: of Before Breakfast as we run every Wednesday, but today,
Speaker 1: since it is New Year's Day, instead of bringing you
Speaker 1: a guest, I'm talking a little bit about one of
Speaker 1: the best ways to spend your time better in the
Speaker 1: new year, and that is to figure out where the
Speaker 1: time really goes. We're going to try tracking our time
Speaker 1: for a week. In the last segment I talked about
Speaker 1: all the stories that people tell themselves about their time
Speaker 1: that may not be entirely true. We want to make
Speaker 1: sure we are working from good data. So it's not
Speaker 1: about playing gotcha. It's about making sure that we really
Speaker 1: know what our lives look like. I think the truth
Speaker 1: sets us free. So if you decide to do this,
Speaker 1: and I really hope you will, that is tracking your
Speaker 1: time for a week. It's pretty simple. You can just
Speaker 1: write down what you're doing as often as you remember,
Speaker 1: in as much detail as you think will be helpful.
Speaker 1: You try to keep going for a week and then
Speaker 1: at the end. You can add it up if you
Speaker 1: would like. How much time do you spend on the
Speaker 1: major categories? How much time do you spend working, sleeping
Speaker 1: in the car, hanging out with family members, watching television, reading, exercising, volunteering,
Speaker 1: doing housework, errands, all the things you happen to do.
Speaker 1: If you'd like, you can make really cool pie charts
Speaker 1: of all this. But I promise you don't actually have
Speaker 1: to make pie cart charts for it to look decent.
Speaker 1: But anyway, keep going for a week and see what
Speaker 1: you think. I really hope you will try this, And
Speaker 1: if you would like a little bit of accountability, then
Speaker 1: you might consider participating in my annual time tracking challenge
Speaker 1: Every January. Thousands of people usually track their time together
Speaker 1: for a week. This year, the challenge will be running
Speaker 1: from Monday January thirteenth to Monday January twentieth. You can
Speaker 1: sign up to get a time tracking spreadsheet and daily
Speaker 1: emails from me at my website, Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: Just go right to the homepage and there will be
Speaker 1: a big box where you can sign up. You will
Speaker 1: also be able to read my time logs by following
Speaker 1: along on my blog that week. Each day I will
Speaker 1: post how I am spending my time and you can
Speaker 1: read it and comment and see what you think. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, if you'd like to track your time before
Speaker 1: January thirteenth to January twentieth, you are welcome to do that.
Speaker 1: You could certainly track the week starting Monday, January sixth,
Speaker 1: and then you will be a real pro by the
Speaker 1: time January thirteenth rolls about. I can tell you from
Speaker 1: doing this for ten years now that it absolutely does
Speaker 1: get a lot easier over time. Many people are not
Speaker 1: used to describing time in words, and so the first
Speaker 1: few days are a little bit rough. But that's why
Speaker 1: it might be helpful to be getting those reminder emails
Speaker 1: from me. I will have lots of tips, and I'll
Speaker 1: also be reminding you to check in. You might want
Speaker 1: to set an alarm a couple times a day so
Speaker 1: that you know to go back to your spreadsheet. It
Speaker 1: can be a little bit challenging on the weekends. I
Speaker 1: definitely suggest people track their time on the weekends, because
Speaker 1: weekends are real days too, and this time really counts.
Speaker 1: But of course you might not be with your spreadsheet
Speaker 1: all the time on the weekend. I often just jot
Speaker 1: down notes somewhere or email parts of my time log
Speaker 1: to myself, just notes on what I was spending my
Speaker 1: time doing, and then I can reconstruct it after the fact.
Speaker 1: It absolutely does not need to be perfect. If you
Speaker 1: forget what you are doing for a while, it's okay.
Speaker 1: You can just approximate it later. It is far better
Speaker 1: to keep going for a week than to only have
Speaker 1: a day or two because you are obsessed with it
Speaker 1: being perfect. I really hope you will try it after
Speaker 1: you do. After the week, you add up the questions,
Speaker 1: you know the categories, how much time did I spend
Speaker 1: on all these different things? And then you can ask
Speaker 1: yourself a few questions about your time. First, what do
Speaker 1: I like most about my schedule? It is your life.
Speaker 1: Hopefully something is going really, really well. Maybe you have
Speaker 1: a regular date night with your spouse. Maybe you love
Speaker 1: your early morning exercise routine where you listen to before breakfast.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have good systems for checking in with your
Speaker 1: direct reports and meeting with them regularly and making sure
Speaker 1: that nothing goes off the rails. We should celebrate whatever
Speaker 1: is working well in your life. Then you can ask
Speaker 1: the second question, what do I want to spend more
Speaker 1: time doing. And then the third question, what do I
Speaker 1: want to spend less time doing? You know, what do
Speaker 1: I want to get off my plate? As I look
Speaker 1: at my schedule, people often have lots of thoughts about
Speaker 1: that things we want to spend less time doing. Whether
Speaker 1: it's emptying the dishwasher even though you'll probably see it
Speaker 1: only takes five minutes each day time, or driving around
Speaker 1: in the car. Maybe there would be ways to shave
Speaker 1: off a trip here or too in the course of
Speaker 1: the week. You know, I think we spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time thinking about that, and both questions are important,
Speaker 1: but the first is probably more important. Even the best
Speaker 1: you know email management system for spending less time cleaning
Speaker 1: out our inboxes in the world won't suddenly give you
Speaker 1: an amazing life, right. We don't want to just build
Speaker 1: our lives by spending less time on the bad stuff.
Speaker 1: We want to figure out what the good stuff is
Speaker 1: and then put that in first. My experience is that
Speaker 1: when you put the good stuff in first, that will
Speaker 1: naturally make the less fun stuff just take less time.
Speaker 1: And I am a big fan of that. So today's
Speaker 1: tip has been to track your time for a week.
Speaker 1: If you want to figure out where the time really goes.
Speaker 1: That will help you spend your time better because you
Speaker 1: will be working from good day and you can make
Speaker 1: rational choices instead of simply assuming that you must be
Speaker 1: spending your time a certain way based on how you feel,
Speaker 1: or even based on how you spent today, because today
Speaker 1: is not the only day in your life. We tend
Speaker 1: to live our lives in weeks, and so we want
Speaker 1: to track an entire week to see where the time
Speaker 1: really goes. So today we have been talking about time
Speaker 1: tracking and why it is so important and why it
Speaker 1: is the first step to spending our time better. It's
Speaker 1: really not that hard. And here's the thing. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to do it for ten years like
Speaker 1: I have been doing. But the fact that I have
Speaker 1: been doing it for ten years now is actually kind
Speaker 1: of cool in its own right, because having a complete
Speaker 1: time log for a week really helps cement your memories
Speaker 1: of that week. If you track your time from January
Speaker 1: thirteen to twenty, or any other week, you will remember
Speaker 1: what happened during that week. When you look at your
Speaker 1: time log in the future, some random date in the future,
Speaker 1: you want to pull up January thirteen of the year,
Speaker 1: you can see what you were doing, what did life
Speaker 1: look like. I mean, maybe you'll have particular memories of
Speaker 1: what you did with your family or things that were
Speaker 1: going on with work, and that can be really cool.
Speaker 1: These days, I can call back up a week from say,
Speaker 1: seven years ago, and see what I was doing with
Speaker 1: every half hour. Now. Of course, I know full well
Speaker 1: that the rest of the world does not care at
Speaker 1: all what I was doing with a half hour on
Speaker 1: January sixth, twenty seventeen, at two thirty pm. But I
Speaker 1: guess I could look it up and I could tell you.
Speaker 1: It's just a complete sort of memory keeping that is
Speaker 1: turning priceless the longer I keep doing it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: no one is saying you have to track your time
Speaker 1: for ten years. Just do it for a week. I
Speaker 1: promise you will learn something. I've seen thousands of people
Speaker 1: doing this now, and everyone finds at least something they
Speaker 1: might want to tweak a little. I promise it will
Speaker 1: be helpful, because when you know where the time is
Speaker 1: going now, you can make wise choices about how to
Speaker 1: spend your time in the future. So thank you for
Speaker 1: listening to this longer episode, even though it has just
Speaker 1: been me. We we'll be back with guests soon, but
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.