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 you drive a car, not a time machine,
Speaker 1: so best to plan accordingly. Today's tip comes from a
Speaker 1: participant in one of my time tracking challenges. She told
Speaker 1: me that she had a tendency to underestimate how long
Speaker 1: various things would take, so her husband would remind her
Speaker 1: tongue in cheek, that she drives a car, not a
Speaker 1: time machine. If something is thirty minutes away, you will
Speaker 1: not magically get there in fifteen, and if you leave
Speaker 1: ten minutes late, the distance is not going too magically
Speaker 1: become shorter. She's not the only one who sometimes forgets
Speaker 1: that we live in the real, non magical world, where
Speaker 1: the laws of physics are strictly enforced. Wanting something to
Speaker 1: take less time will not make it take less time.
Speaker 1: In general, it is better to face this reality. Since
Speaker 1: I study time and look at a lot of people's
Speaker 1: time logs, I've come to see that time estimation is
Speaker 1: challenging for many people. This stems from a few things.
Speaker 1: Sometimes bad estimates come from looking at insufficient evidence. Maybe
Speaker 1: you once drove to your kid's daycare and onto the
Speaker 1: office in twenty minutes, so you budget twenty minutes routinely. Once,
Speaker 1: you wrote a five hundred word newsletter article in half
Speaker 1: an hour, so you assume you can write a similar
Speaker 1: article during a thirty minute break between meetings today. But
Speaker 1: maybe there were extenuating circumstances for those situations, like there
Speaker 1: was literally no one else on the road because it
Speaker 1: was a major holiday that your family just didn't happen
Speaker 1: to have off, or maybe that newsletter was mostly a
Speaker 1: reprinted memo from a colleague. The best case scenario tends
Speaker 1: not to be the normal scenario, so it may not
Speaker 1: be realistic to expect to write a newsletter when you've
Speaker 1: got thirty minutes between meetings, as you probably won't even
Speaker 1: get the full thirty minutes if the meeting run's late,
Speaker 1: or you need to go to the bathroom, or you
Speaker 1: find yourself answering a hot email. You can start, but
Speaker 1: your work isn't getting done by a time machine. We
Speaker 1: also underestimate with time because we forget about some of
Speaker 1: the steps. Unlike time machines, cars need to be parked,
Speaker 1: Maybe the time between the actual key and the ignition
Speaker 1: moment in your driveway to the entrance to your office
Speaker 1: complex is twenty minutes, but you have to put on
Speaker 1: your shoes, walk to your car, get in, put on
Speaker 1: your seat belt, and start up a podcast. Of course,
Speaker 1: on the other end, you need to find a spot,
Speaker 1: grab your things, tap your badget security, and walk to
Speaker 1: your desk. If you put your shoes on twenty minutes
Speaker 1: before your first meeting, you will in fact be late.
Speaker 1: But honestly, I think the biggest thing going on is
Speaker 1: some fantasizing. The truth is we don't want it to
Speaker 1: take forty minutes to get to work, or for that
Speaker 1: full on grocery store trip to take ninety minutes, so
Speaker 1: we don't budget the proper amount of time and just
Speaker 1: hope it will work out. Alas we drive cars, not
Speaker 1: time machines. Wanting something to be different doesn't make it change. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's better to face reality and see what can be
Speaker 1: done to actually change what's going on while observing the
Speaker 1: laws of physics. Maybe you can split daycare drop off duties,
Speaker 1: maybe you can work from home twice a week, maybe
Speaker 1: you can order groceries online. But there is nothing gained
Speaker 1: by routinely underestimating how much time things will take other
Speaker 1: than a lot of frustration and frenzy. Better to be
Speaker 1: more accurate and get done what we intend to do.
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
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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.