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 about how to stop feeling guilty about how
Speaker 1: you spend your time. For the responsible people listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast, my guess is that tracking your time will
Speaker 1: reveal that you are spending quite a bit of time
Speaker 1: with your family, You are probably sleeping a reasonable amount,
Speaker 1: and even making space for physical activity. Whatever you are
Speaker 1: telling yourself that you never do is probably happening on
Speaker 1: some occasion, so you can let go of the guilt
Speaker 1: and just get on with your life. Today's tip, like
Speaker 1: others this week, comes from my book I Know How
Speaker 1: She Does It, which came out ten years ago. For
Speaker 1: the book, I collected time diary data from one thousand
Speaker 1: and one days in the lives of women with big
Speaker 1: jobs and families. I found that in the one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty eight hours that make up a week, it
Speaker 1: is possible to work, spend time with family, sleep, exercise, read,
Speaker 1: or do anything you truly care about. Lots of people
Speaker 1: are successfully having it all. For the book, I wanted
Speaker 1: to study how people spent their time, so I had
Speaker 1: them track their time for a week. This was straightforward enough,
Speaker 1: but collecting the data had a surprising side effect. Most
Speaker 1: people don't actually know how they spend their time. I
Speaker 1: mean they have ideas. Maybe everyone at your workplace talks
Speaker 1: about their sixty hour work weeks, or maybe people claim
Speaker 1: they're lucky to get six hours of sleep. Maybe you
Speaker 1: have heard people lament that they never see their families.
Speaker 1: People can walk around with these stories, but the data
Speaker 1: often show otherwise. Most of the women who track their
Speaker 1: time for me turned out to be working reasonable hours.
Speaker 1: The average was forty four hours a week. Some work more,
Speaker 1: of course, but the nature of an average is that
Speaker 1: many people work less too. They also turned out to
Speaker 1: be getting a reasonable amount of sleep. It is human
Speaker 1: nature to remember our worst nights as typical, but a
Speaker 1: bad night tends to be followed but not so bad night.
Speaker 1: Most people don't have infants. People slept on average fifty
Speaker 1: four hours a week, which averages out to seven point
Speaker 1: seven hours per day. Subtract forty four and fifty four
Speaker 1: from one hundred and sixty eight and you get seventy
Speaker 1: hours for other things. So it is not surprising that
Speaker 1: people spent a lot of time with their families. That
Speaker 1: is the nature of sharing a home with people. You
Speaker 1: are around them most mornings and evenings, and on the
Speaker 1: weekends and so forth. It would not be unusual for
Speaker 1: people to be spending thirty five to forty hours a
Speaker 1: week around their kids, even with full time work hours.
Speaker 1: This was quite a revelation. After all, people who work
Speaker 1: thirty five to forty hours for pay don't complain that
Speaker 1: they never see their jobs. A lot of women walk
Speaker 1: around with the story that if they're not seeing their
Speaker 1: kids at ten am on Tuesday, it doesn't count, but
Speaker 1: there are a lot of other hours in the week.
Speaker 1: Seeing these numbers changed people's stories. As one woman told me,
Speaker 1: I used to feel guilt. I don't feel guilt anymore.
Speaker 1: If you are worried that you are under investing in
Speaker 1: some area of your life, you might try tracking your
Speaker 1: time too. My guess is that whatever you are worried about,
Speaker 1: you will see that you are doing something at least
Speaker 1: some amount of the time. Maybe you claim you never exercise,
Speaker 1: but you do go to the gym once and went
Speaker 1: for a walk once during the week. That is twice.
Speaker 1: That is not nothing. If you want to do more amazing,
Speaker 1: but there is no reason to tell yourself the never story.
Speaker 1: And if we are worried that you are not seeing
Speaker 1: your kids, you might track that time too. Perhaps it
Speaker 1: might not be as much time as you want, but
Speaker 1: it might be as well. Tracking time often makes people
Speaker 1: feel better about their time. I actually know this to
Speaker 1: be true from my time diary projects, where time satisfaction
Speaker 1: levels rise after a week of tracking. So if you
Speaker 1: want to banish the guilt, maybe you can try tracking
Speaker 1: as well. You just might be surprised at what the
Speaker 1: data show in the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.