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 that when a need comes up urgently once,
Speaker 1: it is an emergency. When it comes up twenty times,
Speaker 1: it is a systems problem, and that is something you
Speaker 1: can address so you can hopefully avoid the apparent emergency
Speaker 1: in the future. Today's tip, like some other recent ones,
Speaker 1: comes from my other podcast, Best of Both Worlds, where
Speaker 1: my co host Sarah Hart Hunger recently interviewed Laura May Martin.
Speaker 1: Martin is Google's in house productivity expert and the author
Speaker 1: of the new book up Time, A Practical Guide to
Speaker 1: Personal Productivity and well Being. Martin noted that some job
Speaker 1: abs are by their nature about responding to urgent things.
Speaker 1: An er doctor, for instance, doesn't really know what injury
Speaker 1: or illness she is going to see next. A journalist
Speaker 1: who handles breaking news may also not know what the
Speaker 1: next big story is going to be. But even in
Speaker 1: these jobs, I would point out there are often some
Speaker 1: predictable aspects. An er doctor is probably going to see
Speaker 1: a lot of potential heart attacks. If it is January,
Speaker 1: there are probably going to be a lot of flu cases.
Speaker 1: She can definitely anticipate those things. Journalists know big events
Speaker 1: that are coming up that might have news associated with them.
Speaker 1: Most obituaries for older famous people have been largely written
Speaker 1: long before these people die. All that is left is
Speaker 1: filling in the date. As for the rest of us,
Speaker 1: emergencies truly should be rare. If something urgent is coming
Speaker 1: up often, Martin advises, look at the process. An emergency
Speaker 1: is a one off thing. If the same thing happens
Speaker 1: twenty times, there is likely a problem with the system
Speaker 1: that you need to address. I think this seems relevant
Speaker 1: for our personal and professional lives. If every Friday night
Speaker 1: you have to do an emergency load of laundry so
Speaker 1: your kids have soccer socks on Saturday, that is a
Speaker 1: system's problem. Either they don't have enough soccer socks or
Speaker 1: your family needs to adjust the laundry schedule. If every month,
Speaker 1: the night before the monthly report goes to your boss,
Speaker 1: you wind up working till midnight, that is a system's problem.
Speaker 1: Maybe you need to get the constituent parts from your
Speaker 1: team earlier, or maybe the report needs to be due
Speaker 1: the tenth of the month instead of the fifth to
Speaker 1: leave more time for processing. The results. If you are
Speaker 1: late to a team meeting every Wednesday morning because the
Speaker 1: client meeting immediately before it always runs over, that is
Speaker 1: a system's problem. You could consider starting the client meeting
Speaker 1: a little earlier, or booking it for fifty five minutes
Speaker 1: instead of forty five since it always lasts fifty five
Speaker 1: minutes anyway, or maybe the team meeting moves later. But
Speaker 1: this is all unlikely to just magically change on its own.
Speaker 1: If you have an urgent problem that keeps coming up,
Speaker 1: investigate whether there is a way you could adjust your
Speaker 1: systems to be able to handle it routinely and without
Speaker 1: drama in the future. Sometimes emergencies just happen to everyone,
Speaker 1: but if you avoid the avoidable emergencies, you can reduce
Speaker 1: your stress and run your life more smoothly. 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.