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