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 it might be possible to make a
Speaker 1: little bit more of your time feel usable. Being able
Speaker 1: to use ten percent more of your time can over
Speaker 1: the long haul, mean you can get a lot more done.
Speaker 1: So it is easy to fantasize about long stretches of
Speaker 1: perfectly productive, uninterrupted time. No meetings, no slack messages, no
Speaker 1: quick questions from someone popping their head into the office,
Speaker 1: no plumbers electricians to be let into the house, no
Speaker 1: children wanting a snack, just focus time for our most
Speaker 1: important work. I don't know about you, but I am
Speaker 1: guessing that fantasy bears little resemblance to a lot of
Speaker 1: my listener's lives. I work for myself, and yet I
Speaker 1: know I have limited stretches for focused time. A lot
Speaker 1: of people have much less say over their schedules than
Speaker 1: I do. But if you have been listening to Before
Speaker 1: Breakfast for a while, you know that we all have
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty eight hours in the week. Those
Speaker 1: hours may have a lot of constraints and interruptions, but
Speaker 1: they are ours, nonetheless, so rather than wait for a
Speaker 1: perfect time, we are wise to make the most of them.
Speaker 1: I am sure you can think of plenty of situations
Speaker 1: where big progress might not be possible, but maybe small
Speaker 1: parkas might be. Maybe you are working in suboptimal conditions,
Speaker 1: like on an air plane or while home taking care
Speaker 1: of a sick child, when you are tired, when you
Speaker 1: are waiting for someone else to provide an important piece
Speaker 1: of content you need for a project, or when you
Speaker 1: just have a short amount of time. Maybe you can't
Speaker 1: do a lot, but even in suboptimal conditions, you can
Speaker 1: often do something. Sometimes this may be as small as
Speaker 1: setting up the presentation and putting titles on each slide,
Speaker 1: identifying the documents you'll need for a project, or updating
Speaker 1: your calendar with meetings and deadlines related to the project.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you write two sentences and something larger. Maybe you
Speaker 1: get through three of twenty emails you need to send.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it isn't much, but there are a few benefits
Speaker 1: to taking these small steps. You are a little bit
Speaker 1: closer to your goal. Anything you do now you don't
Speaker 1: have to do later. See you've made life life a
Speaker 1: little easier for future you. In addition, I think this
Speaker 1: is most important you get in the habit of using
Speaker 1: more of your time. I think many of us could
Speaker 1: use about ten percent more of our time if we
Speaker 1: tried and looked hard for it. Rather than not starting
Speaker 1: something new at four forty five pm because the day
Speaker 1: is over, you might be able to do a few
Speaker 1: small things which will make tomorrow feel more focused, Rather
Speaker 1: than doing nothing while sitting in the waiting room at
Speaker 1: a parkour class, which is where I was when I
Speaker 1: wrote the script for this, right next to a seven
Speaker 1: year old's birthday party that was running simultaneously with my
Speaker 1: kid's class. You could write podcast scripts. We don't have
Speaker 1: to pack things in just to pack things in. But
Speaker 1: when you get in the habit of using a bit
Speaker 1: more of your time, eventually you don't assume an awkward
Speaker 1: word fifteen minute stretch of time is unusable. You know
Speaker 1: what kind of work fits well into fifteen minute stretches,
Speaker 1: or what you can do on the sidelines of your
Speaker 1: kid's soccer practice, or what you can do on plane rides.
Speaker 1: When moments like these arise, you do something meaningful with them.
Speaker 1: You don't just scroll on your phone. The work you
Speaker 1: do in bits of suboptimal time also gives you momentum.
Speaker 1: Having momentum and not starting from nothing means that when
Speaker 1: you do have optimal time, you can hit the ground running.
Speaker 1: So the next time you find yourself with a not
Speaker 1: ideal bit of time, try to use it anyway. Take
Speaker 1: the steps you can on the projects you are working on.
Speaker 1: Using ten percent more of our time is like getting
Speaker 1: more than an extra hour in the day, which doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like a bad thing in the meantime. This is Laura,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
Speaker 1: our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
Speaker 1: got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Speaker 1: Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.