Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 2: This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 2: episode is going to be a longer one part of
Speaker 2: the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
Speaker 2: take their days from great to awesome and any advice
Speaker 2: they might have for.
Speaker 1: The rest of us. So today I am excited.
Speaker 2: To welcome Chris Gilibo to the show. Chris is the
Speaker 2: author of a brand new book called Time Anxiety. You
Speaker 2: might also know him from Side Hustle School or the
Speaker 2: Art of non Conformity.
Speaker 1: So Chris, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Laura. I's a huge honor to
Speaker 3: be here. I'm a big fan of you, as you know,
Speaker 3: reading your blog for many years. So this is very exciting.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to have you. So why don't you tell
Speaker 2: our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3: Sure, a little about myself? Well, I was born at
Speaker 3: a young age. It's always like a dangerous question, right,
Speaker 3: So like what is pertinent?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: In my early twenties, I spent a few years as
Speaker 3: an aid worker in West Africa. That was like a
Speaker 3: very transformative time for me. Led to me traveling to
Speaker 3: a bunch of other places and just getting interested in
Speaker 3: like cross cultural things. I'd always kind of worked for myself.
Speaker 3: I was like this classic unemployable, you know, archetype, Like
Speaker 3: I really like to work on things I'm excited about.
Speaker 3: It's very adhd. But if I'm not excited about it,
Speaker 3: then I don't want to work on it at all.
Speaker 3: So you have to kind of work for yourself. So
Speaker 3: did lots of little entrepreneurial projects. Had a project of
Speaker 3: going to every country in the world which I started
Speaker 3: in two thousand and eight and wrote a blog about
Speaker 3: it called The Art of Nonconformity. That's kind of how
Speaker 3: I started writing and sharing online. Been doing some version
Speaker 3: of that ever since. Started writing books, started this podcast
Speaker 3: that I've been doing every day for twenty eight hundred
Speaker 3: days now. And I hosted an event called the World
Speaker 3: Domination Summit, which you were a keynote speaker at an
Speaker 3: opening keynote speaker one year, which was really fun. And
Speaker 3: I have a really wonderful community. So a little bit
Speaker 3: more about neurodivergence and mental health and you know, related
Speaker 3: topics these days. But I try to work on things
Speaker 3: i'm excited about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you actually made it to all of the
Speaker 2: countries I get, yes, including the ones that we are
Speaker 2: not supposed to go to anymore.
Speaker 3: I think, yes, that's right. Yeah, it was actually easier
Speaker 3: a few years ago than it is now. People are
Speaker 3: still doing this quest, but I think it was a
Speaker 3: little bit easier. Yeah, back in the early.
Speaker 2: Early two thousands before there are fewer restrictions. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: is an amazing thing to contemplate doing. But I want
Speaker 2: to talk a little bit about what time anxiety is.
Speaker 2: So what is this concept of time anxiety?
Speaker 3: I'm curious. I mean not to derail, because I'll answer directly.
Speaker 3: But when I first do it, started doing like the
Speaker 3: research for this book, I had this phrase, and I
Speaker 3: started just asking people about it. I'd be curious what
Speaker 3: the concept time anxiety means to you, Laura, without even
Speaker 3: any context of the book and such. But I started
Speaker 3: just checking with people, and like, people are like, what
Speaker 3: are you working on? It's like, I'm exploring this concept
Speaker 3: and I come to it honest, I don't come to
Speaker 3: it as like an academic or a researcher. Like I
Speaker 3: actually felt like my life was kind of governed by
Speaker 3: this sense of like I feel like I'm running out
Speaker 3: of time. There's not enough time to do what I want.
Speaker 3: And I mean, you've written about this extensively, you know,
Speaker 3: from your own perspective and such, And how do I
Speaker 3: decide what to do next in the face of so
Speaker 3: many options and such? So I started asking people, or
Speaker 3: I started telling them, I'm working on this concept called
Speaker 3: time anxiety, and almost everyone would have a really strong
Speaker 3: opinion about it. They would have an experience with it.
Speaker 3: They would say, I have this thing. I talk about
Speaker 3: this with my friends all the time, but we didn't
Speaker 3: have a name for it, you know, like I feel
Speaker 3: like this is like the greatest problem of my life.
Speaker 3: You know, some people would even say so. For me,
Speaker 3: I think it's you know, there are two types of it.
Speaker 3: It's one is this existential type of time is running
Speaker 3: out in my life right and or maybe there's something
Speaker 3: I should be doing but I don't quite know what
Speaker 3: it is, and I have this sense or maybe I
Speaker 3: have some regret over things I done or not done
Speaker 3: in the past and feel like I can't change that now.
Speaker 3: And then the second type is just the day to
Speaker 3: day routine of how do I, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: triage and sequence my work and my life and my
Speaker 3: relationships and my hobbies and all the you know, how
Speaker 3: do I make these choices? In this world of knowledge work,
Speaker 3: even if you have like a somewhat defined job, you know,
Speaker 3: for a lot of people doing knowledge work, there's like
Speaker 3: an infinite array of you know, the task that you
Speaker 3: work on and how you you know, approach and schedule them,
Speaker 3: and so it can be really overwhelming. And so that's
Speaker 3: the second part.
Speaker 2: I think you had talked a little bit about it
Speaker 2: being like the sense that you're always behind in some
Speaker 2: way or another.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, always behind and not sure how to course
Speaker 3: correct or you know, like if you ask people like
Speaker 3: what they really want, A lot of people say, I
Speaker 3: want to catch up, you know, I want like if
Speaker 3: I had an extra day, you know, how would I
Speaker 3: spend How would you spend it? And you expect that
Speaker 3: they would say like, I, you know, would have like
Speaker 3: a vacation, or but it's I would catch up on
Speaker 3: my email. That's my greatest aspiration is I would catch up.
Speaker 3: And I kind of felt like this way myself for
Speaker 3: a long time, and so I felt like it was
Speaker 3: really troubling and like what do we what do we
Speaker 3: do about it?
Speaker 1: But Yeah, it's curious.
Speaker 2: I mean the idea of catching up or being behind
Speaker 2: implies that there's some objective standard of where everyone is
Speaker 2: supposed to be, which I guess I've never figured out
Speaker 2: where that standard was kept or.
Speaker 1: Who decided that.
Speaker 2: So well, we're all suffering from our time anxiety. In
Speaker 2: the book, I wanted to talk you know, you have
Speaker 2: a lot of different tips and hacks of things to try,
Speaker 2: which I loved about The book is very practical, But
Speaker 2: I want to talk about one speecific issue. You mentioned
Speaker 2: time blindness, So now what is time blindness and how
Speaker 2: can people address this?
Speaker 3: So it's kind of a neurodivergent e concept, So for
Speaker 3: anybody with ADHD or autism, or anybody who identifies with
Speaker 3: any conditions like that, but not exclusively, A lot of
Speaker 3: people can have time blindness, which is basically like where
Speaker 3: we kind of chronically misestimate, underestimate, or overestimate how much
Speaker 3: time something takes, and this leads to us kind of
Speaker 3: always feeling rushed, like always feeling rushed, always being behind.
Speaker 3: So if you're the kind of person who's always late,
Speaker 3: you probably don't like that about yourself. You know, it's
Speaker 3: not like, oh, this is just but your friends have
Speaker 3: kind of like gotten used to it, like so and
Speaker 3: so is always late to things, but it's in this
Speaker 3: case it's probably because you are not estimating, you know,
Speaker 3: the amount of time that's required for transitions and such.
Speaker 3: And people will also go the other way and like
Speaker 3: overestimate time too. But a really simple thing to do,
Speaker 3: and this is not like mind blowing, but it can
Speaker 3: actually change your life, is simply to allow like ten
Speaker 3: or fifteen more minutes than you think you need, you know,
Speaker 3: for transitions. And it's going to be the coolest thing
Speaker 3: because now you are like five minutes early to things.
Speaker 3: And what's interesting is when I've shared that with people,
Speaker 3: some people really are worried about, like what will I
Speaker 3: do with the five extra minutes? You know, and like
Speaker 3: this is not a problem. This is a good thing.
Speaker 3: To take a book with you, right, or do something,
Speaker 3: you know, like it's a thing to have extra padding,
Speaker 3: like to have buffer and margin in your life. Is
Speaker 3: actually it provides relief, I think, And I think what
Speaker 3: a lot of people are looking for more than organization,
Speaker 3: And again I'd be curious what you think about it,
Speaker 3: but like more than organization or hyper optimization, what they're
Speaker 3: looking for is relief, a sense of like, help me
Speaker 3: feel better?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and the thing is, honestly, people who are chronically late,
Speaker 2: adding in ten to fifteen minutes is not going to
Speaker 2: make them early.
Speaker 1: They will probably be there right on time.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's really one of those funny things.
Speaker 2: And yeah, people always like but what I could have
Speaker 2: emptied the dishwasher before I left. But we just need
Speaker 2: to nip that thought right there. Well, we're going to
Speaker 2: take a quick ad break and then I will be
Speaker 2: back with more from Chris Guillibo. Well, I am back
Speaker 2: with Chris Gilbo, who's the author of the brand new
Speaker 2: book Time Anxiety. We've been talking about time blindness. If
Speaker 2: you find yourself always late, how you can just add
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen minutes and you will probably be on time.
Speaker 2: You may find yourself early, but that would be a
Speaker 2: happy thing that you could celebrate if that happens. So
Speaker 2: you mentioned people feeling like they would spend their extra
Speaker 2: time getting caught up on email. I know from the
Speaker 2: book Time Anxiety that you find email particularly stressful. In
Speaker 2: case anyone listening to this also suffers from that anxiety,
Speaker 2: I wonder if there's anything you've done to help yourself there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean this kind of ruled my life in
Speaker 3: a negative way for many years, and I felt really
Speaker 3: bad about it. Like I was very bad about getting
Speaker 3: back to people and getting back to people that I
Speaker 3: cared about. You know, you probably wrote me at some
Speaker 3: point and I wrote you back three months later, and
Speaker 3: I would begin almost every email with the same sentence,
Speaker 3: which is like, I'm so sorry for the delay in reply, right,
Speaker 3: you know. And so I have this whole chapter about
Speaker 3: the inbox of shame, and I honestly felt like I'm
Speaker 3: just always letting people down. And it wasn't just a
Speaker 3: matter of like, oh, I need to schedule twenty minutes
Speaker 3: into my I need to Like sometimes I would have time,
Speaker 3: and I would have this great resistance to like there's
Speaker 3: this block over there's something I'm dreading and I can't
Speaker 3: force myself to do it. I think this is also
Speaker 3: like a NERD divergent kind of thing and understanding that
Speaker 3: sometimes really small things can can be difficult, you know,
Speaker 3: to do. And so I think there's a process of it.
Speaker 3: Like I wrote a little bit about radical acceptance, some
Speaker 3: of it is you just accept like there are some
Speaker 3: things that you that you are going to be better
Speaker 3: at than others. You can try to and you write
Speaker 3: about this, like minimizing some of your communication and closing
Speaker 3: off some inboxes so that you don't have, you know,
Speaker 3: the ability to get a direct message on every single
Speaker 3: platform and such. Ultimately, I think you just you do
Speaker 3: what you can. Like you try to do what you can.
Speaker 3: You try to prioritize, prioritize like the important relationships and
Speaker 3: not worry as much about everything else. I also do
Speaker 3: things like the you know, inbox bankruptcy, you know where
Speaker 3: I'm just like, Okay, I've had all these messages there
Speaker 3: forever and I'm not doing anything about it. This is
Speaker 3: probably going to stress you out right, you would never
Speaker 3: do this, but some of your listeners are probably more
Speaker 3: like me, and they've just had all these things there
Speaker 3: for so long. And so the the whole point is
Speaker 3: if you just like you know, archive or delete and
Speaker 3: move on, then yes, you may feel a little bit
Speaker 3: bad about some of that stuff, but you've been feeling
Speaker 3: bad about it and not doing anything about it, and
Speaker 3: now you're going to do a better job moving forward
Speaker 3: with things. So that helps me from time to time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, honestly, I mean, I don't respond to everything
Speaker 2: instantly or anything like that, but I do. I do
Speaker 2: an email triage is what I call it, every like
Speaker 2: two to three days and trying to get myself to current,
Speaker 2: and sometimes that involves deciding that I'm not going to
Speaker 2: respond to something which you know, you have your Friday list,
Speaker 2: you know, which I know the world has not stopped
Speaker 2: spinning yet, so it seems to be okay at this point.
Speaker 1: So, Chris, what is a reverse bucket list? I love
Speaker 1: this idea of a reverse bucket list.
Speaker 3: A reverse bucket list is about celebrating what you've actually
Speaker 3: already done, what you've already accomplished. So obviously listeners know
Speaker 3: that the bucket list is like, oh, here's all the
Speaker 3: things that I want to do. I want to go
Speaker 3: to Paris, and I want to go bungee jumping, and
Speaker 3: you know, et cetera, et cetera, And I'm very future minded.
Speaker 3: I tend to be very goal oriented. But always being
Speaker 3: future minded means sometimes that I don't appreciate the present
Speaker 3: or actually reflect on, Oh, I've been able to do
Speaker 3: some cool things. I have been to Paris. I don't
Speaker 3: actually care about bungee jumping, so the reverse bucket list
Speaker 3: is like, this is a list of things I have done,
Speaker 3: you know, and it can be any It can be
Speaker 3: bucket list like items, it can be accomplishments of any kind.
Speaker 3: It can be relationships that you are proud of, or
Speaker 3: times that you've made good choices in relationships, times that
Speaker 3: you've showed up for yourself. I mean, it's your list, right,
Speaker 3: So it's good. It's a way of like, look, I
Speaker 3: actually have done, you know, a lot, and so I
Speaker 3: think so there's the big picture bucket list reverse bucket
Speaker 3: list kind of thing. But I also think even at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, just a short little because
Speaker 3: we have a to do list, you know, we always
Speaker 3: have like our running stuff that we got to do
Speaker 3: and then we check it off and it's gone. I
Speaker 3: think it can also be helpful, like at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, for example, or a week, to be like,
Speaker 3: what are three things I actually did today, not just
Speaker 3: the three things I need to do going forward, because
Speaker 3: I tend to not I tend to just finish stuff
Speaker 3: and move on. Finish stuff and move on. And I
Speaker 3: think it's really helpful to decide, like what's enough, and
Speaker 3: then I can celebrate that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'm a big fan of daily celebrations. We
Speaker 2: should have more celebrations in general. I mean, I've added
Speaker 2: stuff to my to do list that I've done just
Speaker 2: to cross it off, so you know, I like giving
Speaker 2: that little gold star.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned that when you ask.
Speaker 2: People what they do with an extra day of the week,
Speaker 2: many people suggest that they'd get caught up on their email.
Speaker 2: But you suggest that people actually do an exercise of
Speaker 2: thinking what they would do on an extra day of
Speaker 2: the week. And I presume you don't want them to
Speaker 2: do email, So maybe talk a little bit about that
Speaker 2: exercise and what.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had to take. I had to take catching
Speaker 3: up off the list of options. So the idea is
Speaker 3: instead of thinking about your one single, ideal perfect day,
Speaker 3: which is kind of another thought exercise, and that can
Speaker 3: be helpful, but it also is like pressure inducing, like
Speaker 3: it's like a one day, it's got to be perfect.
Speaker 3: You know, what if you had an extra day every week,
Speaker 3: and so it's the eighth day of the week, you
Speaker 3: got seven days a week, but now there's an extra
Speaker 3: day and on this day, not only can you not
Speaker 3: use it to catch up, you know, presumably you have
Speaker 3: other responsibilities and obligations and such on the other days,
Speaker 3: but on this day, nobody is asking you for anything, right,
Speaker 3: So it's your day. And the key point is it repeats,
Speaker 3: so you know, you get fifty two of them a year.
Speaker 3: So what would you do on that day? And if
Speaker 3: you think of it in that context, I think it's
Speaker 3: more helpful than just thinking about like what do I
Speaker 3: want to do with my life or what's that single day?
Speaker 3: Because sequentially you can do a lot, right, and Lauria
Speaker 3: you're the model of this, right, with like war and
Speaker 3: peace and the bak and everything else that you do.
Speaker 3: So it's like, you know, people can write a book
Speaker 3: in a year, you know, using this framework, they can
Speaker 3: learn a language, they can learn something else, they can
Speaker 3: practice something. So I think it just kind of helps
Speaker 3: you get in tune with what you really want. And
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people don't think very deeply
Speaker 3: about that what is it that I really want to
Speaker 3: get out of life? And what is it that I
Speaker 3: want now? And what do I want in the future?
Speaker 3: And how how can I be kind to my future self?
Speaker 3: What are the choices I need to make now so
Speaker 3: that my future stuff will be able to you know,
Speaker 3: whatever that thing is, and maybe just to give it
Speaker 3: make it even more simple. Just a really practical thing
Speaker 3: is like as you were going through the day, like
Speaker 3: maybe you're doing the trademark Laura VANDERCAM time tracking system,
Speaker 3: which I love and respect and have talked about many times.
Speaker 3: But you can also just intuitively, maybe just notice and
Speaker 3: ask yourself, like what do I want more of and
Speaker 3: what do I want less of? And I think when
Speaker 3: people do that, they tend to just like moving forward,
Speaker 3: kind of interact differently with the world once you know,
Speaker 3: oh I want more of this or I want less
Speaker 3: of this. I don't actually want to talk to this
Speaker 3: person all the time. Maybe I have to talk to
Speaker 3: them some of the time, but you know, I want
Speaker 3: to lessen those interactions. And I'm actually I'm really enjoying,
Speaker 3: you know, these puzzles that I'm working over something else,
Speaker 3: and like, be cool if I spend more time.
Speaker 2: Doing that, Yeah, yeah, on the eighth day of the week,
Speaker 2: we would not be talking to that person that well.
Speaker 1: I think the idea is most people don't.
Speaker 2: We don't really think about what we'd like to spend
Speaker 2: a lot more time doing because people assume they have
Speaker 2: no time.
Speaker 1: So what would be the point of asking what you
Speaker 1: want to do more time?
Speaker 2: But if you think about it, then hopefully we can
Speaker 2: start to build that into the one hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: eight hours we have in the week without actually getting
Speaker 2: one hundred and ninety two hour week.
Speaker 3: Great, right, right, right, very good? Yeah, exactly. I think
Speaker 3: you can do it strategically or you do it intuitively,
Speaker 3: and like both both ways are going to help. Ultimately
Speaker 3: you're going to be better off.
Speaker 1: Excellent.
Speaker 2: Well, We're going to take one more quick ad break
Speaker 2: and I will be back with Chris. Well. I am
Speaker 2: back interviewing Chris Gilibo, who's the author of the brand
Speaker 2: new book Time Anxiety. He's also the author of the
Speaker 2: book The Art of Nonconformity. Been telling us all about
Speaker 2: his amazing projects, like visiting all of the countries in
Speaker 2: the world back in the day. So, Chris, among the
Speaker 2: happy tips in your book is to think about death
Speaker 2: once a day.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Is that great?
Speaker 2: Why should we have this memento Maury every day?
Speaker 1: What's in that for us?
Speaker 3: It's so interesting. I was talking with Ryan Holiday about
Speaker 3: this recently because he has a similar take. I think
Speaker 3: not everybody has the same awareness of mortality. Everyone has
Speaker 3: an intellectual awareness of mortality, which is like everyone dies,
Speaker 3: we know this, but to have a more personal awareness
Speaker 3: is like someday I will die. And when I was
Speaker 3: doing the country quest, I wrote a book about other
Speaker 3: people doing quests of all kinds and such, and one
Speaker 3: of the commonalities I found among them is that they
Speaker 3: often had this more personal awareness of mortality. Maybe they
Speaker 3: had had something that happened to them a close call
Speaker 3: of their own, or they had lost someone close to them,
Speaker 3: or maybe not, but they had this more personal understanding
Speaker 3: of it, and it instead of being like pressure inducing
Speaker 3: or a sad and scary thing, well maybe it is
Speaker 3: a sad and scary thing, but it could also be
Speaker 3: like a purpose inducing thing. And it kind of makes
Speaker 3: you think, well, okay, life is short. We know that,
Speaker 3: you know intellectually, but if I what does it look
Speaker 3: like to like live each day with that understanding? And
Speaker 3: maybe I will make different choices if I just remember, okay,
Speaker 3: I won't get this this day back. Time is precious, right,
Speaker 3: You're right about this a lot. So you know, for me,
Speaker 3: like thinking about death is it's not meant to be
Speaker 3: like overly negative thing. It's meant to be like I
Speaker 3: want to do more. You know, I don't actually want
Speaker 3: to be a minimalist. I don't want to like less
Speaker 3: is not the answer, you know, I want there's some
Speaker 3: things I want to do less of, but actually, like,
Speaker 3: I love my life and I want to do more
Speaker 3: stuff that's exciting, and I want to set goals and
Speaker 3: I want to get closer to people that I care
Speaker 3: about and like try to have as much impact as possible.
Speaker 3: And you know, part of the reason that I want
Speaker 3: that and other people you know want that, is because
Speaker 3: we realize like that time is limited. Right, What is
Speaker 3: it that you say? You know, what was the classic
Speaker 3: phrase that we borrowed? You know, I think at WS
Speaker 3: one year you know it better than me. It's the
Speaker 3: Laura of Andercam phrase.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yes, I don't have time.
Speaker 2: It's not a priority, no, No, it's about the expectations
Speaker 2: are infinite.
Speaker 1: Time is finite.
Speaker 2: You are always choosing, well, right there, you go choose, well,
Speaker 2: all right, we're going to choose. Well, well, one of
Speaker 2: the things you want is to choose. Chris, though, making
Speaker 2: this a little lighter now is a granny hobby. So
Speaker 2: why are we choosing a granny hobby?
Speaker 1: And what is yours.
Speaker 3: Sure, Oh yeah, wow, I wasn't prepared for the second part.
Speaker 1: Other people.
Speaker 3: So a granny hobby, and some people might prefer the
Speaker 3: term cozy hobby, but granny hobby is not meant to
Speaker 3: be disrespectful in any way. Granny hobby thinking of something
Speaker 3: like like crafting or knitting or crochet or baking or gardening.
Speaker 3: You know, we think about like some of the things
Speaker 3: that our grandmothers or grandfathers you know, might traditionally do,
Speaker 3: and like I grew up like gardening with my grandma,
Speaker 3: and it was like this really special time. So there's
Speaker 3: actually a lot of research. It's not just like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is a fun thing to do. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of research that a tactile doing that is tactile and
Speaker 3: sensory and low stakes can actually like increase our cognitive
Speaker 3: you know, attention, our focus, as well as reducing our anxiety.
Speaker 3: So the low stakes is key, right. It's like it's
Speaker 3: relatively easy to learn to do the basics of a
Speaker 3: lot of these kinds of crafts and then you can
Speaker 3: get better of them over time. But it's not that hard,
Speaker 3: and if you mess up, it's okay, right, if you
Speaker 3: if you if the cake gets burned in the oven,
Speaker 3: then you can make another cake the next day. You
Speaker 3: haven't like sent the email, you know, like c see
Speaker 3: the entire office on the wrong email or something right,
Speaker 3: So low stakes, it's tactile, it reduces anxiety, and it's
Speaker 3: also like I think the person that I borrowed this
Speaker 3: idea from Anu mentioned her in the book. She also
Speaker 3: calls it like hands on thumbs down, so your technically
Speaker 3: you're still using your thumb, but you're not scrolling on
Speaker 3: a device, so it's a device free. So I actually
Speaker 3: don't know if I have at the moment a good
Speaker 3: granny or cozy hobby. Yeah. I like some board games,
Speaker 3: but I'm not actively like playing them right now, So
Speaker 3: maybe I need to work on that after the book
Speaker 3: launch and tour. Find my my granny hobby a challenge
Speaker 3: exactly exactly?
Speaker 1: Well, are there any particularly mentioned?
Speaker 2: I mean, among the many things you do, you know,
Speaker 2: your daily podcast for twenty eight hundred days.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a that's a pretty long time.
Speaker 2: I'm curious about your daily routines, if there are any
Speaker 2: routines you have that you feel make you more productive.
Speaker 3: I love this thing about how we all have like
Speaker 3: two to three hours a day of like you know,
Speaker 3: productive energy of like this cognitive focus. And the more
Speaker 3: and more I have thought about it, the more I
Speaker 3: understand how true it is for me. And I've tried
Speaker 3: to be really protective of that time. I think that's
Speaker 3: the biggest thing I do. I do exercise every day,
Speaker 3: run every morning, and so I like to have that
Speaker 3: and then I like to not schedule myself a lot
Speaker 3: in the morning. Typically, I like to have that time
Speaker 3: just for creative work that I can structure however I
Speaker 3: see fit. I do like these repetitive kinds of projects.
Speaker 3: I find a lot of like comfort in making the
Speaker 3: podcast every day. It is you'll understand this perfectly. It
Speaker 3: is easier for me to make it every day than
Speaker 3: it would be to it three days a week, you know,
Speaker 3: And that's something that not everybody understands. They're just seven
Speaker 3: days a week for like seven years. I'm like, no, no,
Speaker 3: that's the secret. It would have been harder, you know
Speaker 3: if it was weekly. So I tend to like a
Speaker 3: lot of those kinds of like building blocks, milestones of things.
Speaker 3: And so I think the trick is to make sure
Speaker 3: you're doing the right things, because I also want to say.
Speaker 3: I try to be very like candid in the book,
Speaker 3: like it sounds like I have all this expertise and
Speaker 3: I've done all this stuff, but I actually really had
Speaker 3: like a mental breakdown and really really struggled and felt
Speaker 3: like I was getting I was so into the productivity
Speaker 3: like industrial complex that I was getting good at doing
Speaker 3: the wrong things, Like I was getting really really efficient
Speaker 3: at being ineffective. And so I think it's you know,
Speaker 3: I think it's just important to mention that that it
Speaker 3: was a little bit of a journey that I've been on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we've all been on our journeys. And I
Speaker 2: guess one last thing about a journey here, Chris. I mean,
Speaker 2: normally I ask people that I interview what they've done
Speaker 2: recently to take a day from great to awesome. But
Speaker 2: I'm not going to let you choose, because I want
Speaker 2: you to talk about the time you walked twenty miles
Speaker 2: to dinner.
Speaker 3: Okay, this was so funny and I'd never done this before. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I just had this idea maybe three or four days
Speaker 3: in advance, so it wasn't like completely spontaneous, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't super planned. There was a restaurant twenty miles from
Speaker 3: me in San Diego, and I was like, I should
Speaker 3: I should walk there, And I was like, how okay,
Speaker 3: was there a good route for that? And how much
Speaker 3: time would that? I mean, I do run every day,
Speaker 3: so I'm somewhat used to, you know, those kinds of things.
Speaker 3: I've done marathons, but I maybe actually walked like for
Speaker 3: hours and hours and hours, and so I just I
Speaker 3: just had this idea and it wouldn't leave me alone.
Speaker 3: And I thought, well, it could be like a really
Speaker 3: dumb thing, but it's also low stakes again, like if
Speaker 3: I don't like it, okay, And so I did that.
Speaker 3: I left it around lunchtime, and I got to the
Speaker 3: restaurant at like right after seven pm. I made a
Speaker 3: seven pm reservation. I showed up like right after ten
Speaker 3: minutes after, and it was so much fun there. I
Speaker 3: ordered this like large pan of cornbread that's supposed to
Speaker 3: be like a shared appetizer, and obviously ate the whole
Speaker 3: thing myself. And then afterwards I took an uber back,
Speaker 3: which took like twenty five minutes, you know, and I'm
Speaker 3: passing like all the ways that I had, all the
Speaker 3: things that I had passed on my course. It's funny
Speaker 3: because I thought when I went on this long walk
Speaker 3: that I was going to be productive, you know, it's
Speaker 3: just how I think. I was like, I'm gonna make
Speaker 3: some phone calls, I'm gonna do some stuff. But then
Speaker 3: like my phone battery like charged down, like within the
Speaker 3: first couple of hours because you're using GPS, and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, okay, so I really do just have
Speaker 3: to I can't even listen to music for most of
Speaker 3: that walk. And so it's just a small, small thing
Speaker 3: that is now a core memory of mine. And it
Speaker 3: wasn't that hard to do. And so the reason I
Speaker 3: did it, I probably should have said this first is
Speaker 3: I just I found myself too much in the routine
Speaker 3: and I wanted to disrupt it a little bit. And
Speaker 3: so I was a chapter in the book about practice
Speaker 3: having fun and how do you actually practice having fun?
Speaker 3: And for me that's that is a little bit of
Speaker 3: a journey because I like to work. So it was
Speaker 3: good for me.
Speaker 1: It was good.
Speaker 2: All right, Well people can try that if they wish, sure,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe just do something else.
Speaker 1: That's a little adventure for well, Chris, where can people
Speaker 1: find you?
Speaker 3: Oh? Thank you, Laura. So the new book is Time
Speaker 3: Anxiety Time Anxiety dot com. There's some information about the book.
Speaker 3: I'm doing a tour across North America, and then I
Speaker 3: write a weekly newsletter. E're of mental health dot com.
Speaker 3: You can read it there. And then I'm on social
Speaker 3: media at Chris killipo, which nobody can spell, but if
Speaker 3: you talk about in something close to that, you'll get
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 2: That sounds good, well, Chris, Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: joining us. Thank you everyone for listening. If you have
Speaker 2: feedback on this or any other episode, you can reach
Speaker 2: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 2: the most of our time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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