Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 2: Today's tip is that weekends are real days too. Even
Speaker 2: if you only do something on weekends, that means you
Speaker 2: are doing it regularly. When it comes to life, Tuesday
Speaker 2: is not more important than Saturday, and knowing that opens
Speaker 2: up all sorts of possibilities. I have studied time and
Speaker 2: the time narratives we tell ourselves for a great many years.
Speaker 2: One of the most common narratives I encounter is that
Speaker 2: if you have a full time job, you probably don't
Speaker 2: have much time for other things, such as seeing your family.
Speaker 2: People throw around statements like that, like, oh, if you
Speaker 2: work full time, you will never see your kids, and
Speaker 2: maybe on the surface, it seems to make sense. After all,
Speaker 2: doesn't full time mean the full amount of your time?
Speaker 2: But there are one hundred and sixty eight hours in
Speaker 2: a week. If you work forty hours a week, so
Speaker 2: a standard full time job, and sleep eight hours a night,
Speaker 2: which is fifty six hours per week, that leaves seventy
Speaker 2: two hours for other things. To be sure, there is
Speaker 2: commuting and chores and showering, but presumably you see your
Speaker 2: family for fairly large chunks of this seventy two hours too.
Speaker 2: Even if it's only for part of the seventy two hours,
Speaker 2: it is a long way from nothing. When I first
Speaker 2: made this argument many years ago, someone countered with this statement, Well, maybe,
Speaker 2: but a lot of that time occurs on the weekend.
Speaker 2: Whiled through this critique for a while was the implication
Speaker 2: that weekend hours aren't real hours, that if you want
Speaker 2: credit for spending time with your family, the only hours
Speaker 2: that count are ten o'clock on Tuesday. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I do know that many people are walking around
Speaker 2: with these types of assumptions. If you do something on
Speaker 2: the weekend, well that's just the weekend. It's Monday to
Speaker 2: Friday that matter. This narrative plays out in all sorts
Speaker 2: of funny ways. Someone who goes to the gym Monday,
Speaker 2: Wednesday and Friday might talk about their regular exercise routine
Speaker 2: and share how they make time for it. Someone who
Speaker 2: goes to the gym on Saturday and Sunday is a
Speaker 2: weekend warrior, only doing it on the weekend. But that
Speaker 2: is only one fewer times per week than the other person.
Speaker 2: If our weekend warrior managed to exercise at some point
Speaker 2: on Friday, they would be doing it just as many
Speaker 2: times as our regular gym goer. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Speaker 1: Are real days.
Speaker 2: What you do on these days counts as much towards
Speaker 2: your life as whatever you do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Speaker 2: One of the rules I talk about in Tranquility by Tuesday,
Speaker 2: my most recent time management book, is that three times
Speaker 2: a week is a habit. Whatever we do three times
Speaker 2: a week is happening frequently in our lives enough so
Speaker 2: to be part of our identities. Three is often more
Speaker 2: doable than every single day, which most people don't do.
Speaker 2: In any case, people talk about doing something every day,
Speaker 2: but what they often mean is Monday to Friday, and
Speaker 2: that is not every day. It is only five days
Speaker 2: a week. We are skipping two real days. What all
Speaker 2: this means is that if there is something you want
Speaker 2: to have fit into your life and you seem to
Speaker 2: come up short during the work week, simply aim to
Speaker 2: do it Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Many times people have
Speaker 2: at least somewhat more discretionary time on these days. Perhaps
Speaker 2: there is some benefit to spacing things out, but there
Speaker 2: is even more benefit to just doing things whenever it works.
Speaker 2: If that happens to be on the weekends, well so
Speaker 2: be it. I was thinking of this during the past
Speaker 2: week when I got to Thursday and I realized I
Speaker 2: hadn't managed to run at all. I could have lamented
Speaker 2: this that my busy schedule left me no time to run,
Speaker 2: but instead I decided to run when I could do
Speaker 2: it on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And just like that,
Speaker 2: I had run three times a week. I still felt
Speaker 2: like a runner. It didn't happen every day, and it
Speaker 2: didn't happen Monday to Thursday, but it didn't have to.
Speaker 2: So many other things can benefit from this same mindset.
Speaker 2: Even if you can't have family meals Monday through Thursday,
Speaker 2: maybe you could have pizza together on Friday, a Saturday
Speaker 2: pancake breakfast, and hamburgers together on Sunday, and just like that,
Speaker 2: you are a family that eats together. Maybe you often
Speaker 2: travel during the week, but you could be the person
Speaker 2: putting your kids to bed and reading them bedtime stories Friday,
Speaker 2: Saturday and Sunday, and just like that, you are a
Speaker 2: person who does this regularly, even with all you have
Speaker 2: going on. Weekends are real days. Too, and when we
Speaker 2: see that, it opens up possibilities even in very full lives.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 2: here's to making the most of our time.
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear from you. You can
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Speaker 1: Breakfast Pod. That's b E the number four then Breakfast pod.
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Speaker 1: look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a
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