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 figure out how long your weekday evenings
Speaker 1: are so you can make the most of them. One
Speaker 1: of my core beliefs of time management is that evenings
Speaker 1: are a real time of day. Whenever you leave work,
Speaker 1: and even if you have a commute, you probably have
Speaker 1: at least a few hours before bedtime. Sure, that time
Speaker 1: may need to include meal prep and clean up, bathing
Speaker 1: kids and putting them to bed, and chores like laundry,
Speaker 1: but the evening is still a significant chunk of time.
Speaker 1: Desires can exist alongside requirements, and so it pays to
Speaker 1: be intentional about where that time is going. I am
Speaker 1: convinced that almost everyone can build in meaningful time for
Speaker 1: relationships and hobbies in the evenings with a little planning.
Speaker 1: For many people, the first step in the process of
Speaker 1: enjoying their evenings more is figuring out how much time.
Speaker 1: We are actually talking about. How long are your evenings?
Speaker 1: This might seem like a straightforward question, but I am
Speaker 1: guessing that you have not really counted this out. Consider
Speaker 1: when you typically finish work and when you typically go
Speaker 1: to bed, then do some math. How many hours do
Speaker 1: you have in a typical evening. If you end work
Speaker 1: at five o'clock and go to bed at ten thirty,
Speaker 1: that is five and a half hours. If you end
Speaker 1: work at eight and go to bed at eleven, that
Speaker 1: is still three hours. Now, when I do these calculations,
Speaker 1: one of the first objections people have is, well, what
Speaker 1: about the commute. The good news is that the average
Speaker 1: commute is less than half an hour. It doesn't actually
Speaker 1: change the calculations all that much. I also think that
Speaker 1: commuting time is real time that can be used for
Speaker 1: personal pursuits if you want, but that is a different topic.
Speaker 1: So if you are generally commuting, let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: subtract that time from your evenings. If you finish work
Speaker 1: at five thirty and have an hour long commute and
Speaker 1: go to bed at ten thirty, your evenings are four
Speaker 1: hours long. Once you know the average length of a
Speaker 1: weekday evening for you, you can figure out how much time
Speaker 1: you have each week. There are four weekday evenings Monday
Speaker 1: through Thursday, so if your evenings are four hours long,
Speaker 1: then each week you are clocking sixteen evening hours. If
Speaker 1: you work forty nine weeks per year. We are looking
Speaker 1: at seven hundred and eighty four hours, and I can
Speaker 1: tell you that in my time diary projects, many people's
Speaker 1: weekday evenings are longer than that. For many people, we
Speaker 1: might be talking almost one thousand hours a year. It
Speaker 1: is a fair chunk of time. Knowing the cumulative number
Speaker 1: can nudge us to start thinking about how we would
Speaker 1: like to use this time. Yes, there are half to dos,
Speaker 1: but probably not seven hundred to one thousand hours worth
Speaker 1: of half to dos. When we are looking at this
Speaker 1: block of time, we can become intentional about our choices.
Speaker 1: Probably there is space to plan in fun things and
Speaker 1: develop some hobbies beyond the electronic hobbies that I know
Speaker 1: feel a lot of this time. What would you like
Speaker 1: to do? Maybe you can schedule an outing with friends
Speaker 1: on occasion and find something like puzzles or art to
Speaker 1: do quietly at home. You can have good books available
Speaker 1: to make this time pleasant as well, and honestly, even
Speaker 1: the have to do is don't have to be terrible.
Speaker 1: You might think through pain points. If you don't like cooking,
Speaker 1: maybe you can make meal prep quicker and easier. Or
Speaker 1: if you do like cooking, maybe you can arrange to
Speaker 1: be undistracted some nights so you can really relish it,
Speaker 1: read stories to your kids that you like too. But
Speaker 1: all that happens after figuring out the volume of time
Speaker 1: we are working with. Many people assume that in the
Speaker 1: busyness of weekday life, there is no space at all.
Speaker 1: It is true that when we get to the evenings
Speaker 1: we are often tired, but that doesn't mean that the
Speaker 1: time isn't there. So figure out how long your evenings are.
Speaker 1: Figure out how much time you have each week over
Speaker 1: the course of the year. I think seeing these numbers
Speaker 1: will nudge you to be intentional with this time and
Speaker 1: a little more present during these hours. 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.