Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip is to think of time as a blank slate. Yes,
Speaker 1: it will be filled with something, but what it is
Speaker 1: filled with is largely up to you. I have been
Speaker 1: tracking my time on weekly spreadsheets for over five years now.
Speaker 1: The spreadsheets have half hour blocks running down the left
Speaker 1: hand side from five a m. To four thirty a m.
Speaker 1: With the days of the week Monday to Sunday along
Speaker 1: the top. Every Monday, for more than five years now,
Speaker 1: I have finished the previous spreadsheet and opened a new one.
Speaker 1: When I do, I notice something interesting. The new spreadsheet
Speaker 1: is blank. The next week is completely blank. It hasn't
Speaker 1: happened yet. Eventually it will. Of course, eventually I will
Speaker 1: be on the other side of the next one hundred
Speaker 1: sixty eight hours, But that blank spreadsheet is not yet filled.
Speaker 1: What I fill the cells with will depend on the
Speaker 1: choices I make, both now and in the future, and
Speaker 1: of course they will be filled based on choices I
Speaker 1: have made in the past. That doesn't mean all of
Speaker 1: it is discretionary by any means. Life also deals us
Speaker 1: things that we have to deal with. However, sometimes those
Speaker 1: surprises show us how elastic time can truly be. I
Speaker 1: have had thousands of people track their time for me
Speaker 1: over the years, and one particular log really showed this
Speaker 1: to me. So forgive me if you've heard me tell
Speaker 1: the story before. This busy woman who tracked her time
Speaker 1: for me worked in finance and had two young too.
Speaker 1: One she went out for a Wednesday night for something
Speaker 1: and came home to find that her water heater had broken.
Speaker 1: There was now water all over her basement. Her time
Speaker 1: log showed her dealing with this giant wet mess, the plumbers,
Speaker 1: the cleaning crew. All this took seven hours of her week,
Speaker 1: which is quite a bit of time. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like finding an extra hour in the day. We talked
Speaker 1: about this afterwards and said, well, hey, at the start
Speaker 1: of the week, do you think you would have been
Speaker 1: able to find those seven hours. Let's say you needed
Speaker 1: to find seven hours to train for a triathlon, or
Speaker 1: mentor your younger colleagues at work, or read a fifth
Speaker 1: of War and Peace. Would you have been able to
Speaker 1: do it? Well, of course not. We can all see
Speaker 1: how busy she was. But when she had to find
Speaker 1: seven hours because there was water all over her basement.
Speaker 1: She found seven hours. Time is highly at last stick.
Speaker 1: We cannot make more time, but time stretches to accommodate
Speaker 1: what we need or want to put into it. And
Speaker 1: so the key to time management is treating our priorities
Speaker 1: as the equivalent of that broken water heater. We choose
Speaker 1: to put them into the blank slate of time first,
Speaker 1: we put them in with urgency. Now, of course, this
Speaker 1: seldom works perfectly, since time keeps passing. It has a
Speaker 1: way of getting away from us. But I find this
Speaker 1: image of the blank slate hopeful. My blank spreadsheet is
Speaker 1: full of possibility. I can dream and plan about how
Speaker 1: I will arrange the tiles. Every week is a new opportunity.
Speaker 1: Every week offers a new chance to ask if I
Speaker 1: am spending my time as I wish to be spent
Speaker 1: in my time. Every week offers a new chance to
Speaker 1: fill that blank slate with hard work toward meaningful goals,
Speaker 1: towards creating new things, and to fill the slate up
Speaker 1: with joy. So as you look forward to the next week,
Speaker 1: and the next month, and the next year, and to
Speaker 1: the coming decades, remember how much of this time is
Speaker 1: a blank slate. It will be filled with something. Eventually,
Speaker 1: all time will pass. But what this time will be
Speaker 1: filled with is still open. It can be shaped, it
Speaker 1: can be changed. Even if you believe that all of
Speaker 1: our days are preordained in some place, we don't yet
Speaker 1: know that script, and so we can still approach time
Speaker 1: as if it were that blank slate. How about we
Speaker 1: all fill it with some ng marvelous in the meantime.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 1: the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can send me your tips, your questions,
Speaker 1: or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod. That's B the number four,
Speaker 1: then Breakfast p o D. You can also shoot me
Speaker 1: an email at Before Breakfast podcast at i heeart media
Speaker 1: dot com. That Before Breakfast is spelled out with all
Speaker 1: the letters. Thanks so much, I look forward to staying
Speaker 1: in touch. Before Breakfast is a production of I Heart Radio.
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