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 to think about the arc of a month.
Speaker 1: Taking a few moments at the beginning of the month
Speaker 1: to think about what you need to do and what
Speaker 1: you are looking forward to can make any stretch of
Speaker 1: time feel more doable and interesting. Longtime listeners know that
Speaker 1: I believe most people live their lives in weeks. A
Speaker 1: week is the unit of repeat in the pattern of
Speaker 1: our lives, and by looking at one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: eight hours, you will have a pretty good sense of
Speaker 1: what someone's life truly looks like. I generally plan my
Speaker 1: life in weeks, but lately I've been thinking a little
Speaker 1: bit more about months. By taking a few minutes at
Speaker 1: the beginning of a month to think about what's going on,
Speaker 1: what I need to do, and what I'm looking forward to,
Speaker 1: I can plan time more holistically. Maybe I can move
Speaker 1: something to a lower key week, or maybe I need
Speaker 1: to add something to a time that's looking kind of dreary.
Speaker 1: A key thing this practice does is remind you what
Speaker 1: the weekends are for any given month. The last weekend
Speaker 1: of the month can seem a ways away from the
Speaker 1: vantage point of the first, but if there is something
Speaker 1: more elaborate you would like to do, getting a rough
Speaker 1: idea far ahead of time makes it more likely to happen.
Speaker 1: You also keep yourself from getting blindsided by big stuff.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know on some level that you have a
Speaker 1: big deadline on the twenty seventh of a given month
Speaker 1: that seems far away, but you are not actively thinking
Speaker 1: about the fact that you're going to that conference from
Speaker 1: the nineteenth to the twenty third, and you've got family
Speaker 1: visiting the week before that. Knowing you to have all
Speaker 1: that on your plate can remind you to work ahead
Speaker 1: earlier in the month, so you're not quite so crunched
Speaker 1: at the end. Alternately, you might see that you're going
Speaker 1: to get slammed in the first week or two, but
Speaker 1: the last two weeks of the month are pretty open now.
Speaker 1: You know to try to keep them that way so
Speaker 1: you can recover after going through the ringer, rather than
Speaker 1: simply putting things there without thinking about it. There might
Speaker 1: also be days that it's just wise to know about.
Speaker 1: I know I sometimes forget about the random half days
Speaker 1: at my kids' schools. Looking ahead a month reminds me
Speaker 1: to get those on the calendar, and if things are
Speaker 1: looking kind of grim, well, it's always good to put
Speaker 1: something fun into the near future. I know the early
Speaker 1: days of January felt much better for me when I
Speaker 1: decided to put two fun Friday night activities on different
Speaker 1: weekends through the month. It was not just a cold
Speaker 1: and dreary month. January was a month where I went
Speaker 1: to see a Sixers game and I went to Boston
Speaker 1: with a friend. You don't need to spend much time
Speaker 1: on this. I don't, and if I forget to do it.
Speaker 1: Planning life just in terms of weeks and then seasons
Speaker 1: is fine. But I know a lot of people do
Speaker 1: get some sort of fresh month energy as they at
Speaker 1: least metaphorically flip their calendar pages. If that is true
Speaker 1: for you, then there's no harm in treating a month
Speaker 1: as a unit and looking at all of it. You
Speaker 1: just might wind up with more fun on the calendar
Speaker 1: or more space if that's what you want by looking ahead.
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.