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 tiny bits of time do add up.
Speaker 1: Rather than hoping for a long stretch of perfect time,
Speaker 1: challenge yourself to do a little bit at a time
Speaker 1: and just keep going. You may eventually get at the
Speaker 1: exact same thing. So I sometimes hear from people that
Speaker 1: they are feeling behind on various personal to dos, like say,
Speaker 1: cleaning out the basement or attic. The task feels huge,
Speaker 1: and everything else in life also feels demanding, So people
Speaker 1: say things like I just need to take a week
Speaker 1: off work to get organized. But if you think about it,
Speaker 1: this is not likely to happen. You are not going
Speaker 1: to take a week off work to tackle personal projects
Speaker 1: like this. If you do take a week off work,
Speaker 1: I guarantee you are going to want to do other
Speaker 1: things that don't involve organizing your attic. So instead think
Speaker 1: of it like this. Taking a week off work is
Speaker 1: like saying you want to devote forty hours more or
Speaker 1: less to a project. After all, you will still have
Speaker 1: your regular life before and after your work hours even
Speaker 1: if you did take the time off. So you're saying
Speaker 1: you need forty hours to do whatever it is that
Speaker 1: is weighing on you. Is there another way to find
Speaker 1: forty hours in your life? Here's a little realization. If
Speaker 1: you devote ten minutes a day to something five days
Speaker 1: a week, that is fifty minutes a week. If you
Speaker 1: do that for forty eight weeks, which is just a
Speaker 1: little under a year, you will have logged twenty four
Speaker 1: hundred minutes doing this task. Divide by sixty because there
Speaker 1: are sixty minutes in an hour, and you get forty hours.
Speaker 1: In other words, over the course of eleven months or so,
Speaker 1: ten minutes a day is like taking a week off work.
Speaker 1: If you find ten minutes a day, five times a
Speaker 1: week to tackle a big project, you will basically have
Speaker 1: devoted the same time you'd get in a week off
Speaker 1: work to it without actually having to take a week
Speaker 1: off work. Now, is ten minutes a day as efficient
Speaker 1: as devoting bigger chucks of time to a project. Probably not.
Speaker 1: You'll likely have some amount of startup time and figuring
Speaker 1: out what to do next. But I can tell you
Speaker 1: in your forty hours of a week off work, you
Speaker 1: would have taken breaks and such too. You can reduce
Speaker 1: some of the inefficiency by making lists of what needs
Speaker 1: to happen and choosing things that are pretty easy to start.
Speaker 1: For some days, you could likely spend the first two
Speaker 1: weeks of your ten minutes a day schedule throwing out
Speaker 1: trash and see incredible progress without too much thought. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Eleven months seems like a long time,
Speaker 1: but it will pass one way or another. If you
Speaker 1: devote ten minutes a day to a big project, you
Speaker 1: will in fact see a lot of progress. Will it
Speaker 1: be as swift as if you had taken a week
Speaker 1: off work? Of course not. But you aren't going to
Speaker 1: take a week off work, so it's just silly to
Speaker 1: hold that out as the solution when there is another
Speaker 1: one available. If you are willing to be patient, ten
Speaker 1: minutes a day over the long haul is the same
Speaker 1: as a week off work, but the former will actually happen,
Speaker 1: so it might be the better choice. In the meantime.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 1: the most of our time. Thanks for listening to before breakfast.
Speaker 1: If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
Speaker 1: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
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