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 about borrowing a time management strategy from
Speaker 1: President Theodore Roosevelt. Block out your schedule for the day
Speaker 1: and alternate periods of focused work with completely different sorts
Speaker 1: of activities that advance you towards your personal goals. If
Speaker 1: you do this, you might wind up as the kind
Speaker 1: of person who can run a country while writing a
Speaker 1: book on naval warfare in your spare time, which yes,
Speaker 1: Roosevelt did. I'm grateful to host Aaron McCarthy of the
Speaker 1: History Versus podcast for sending an examples of Roosevelt's schedule.
Speaker 1: Rather than work from a to do list, Roosevelt would
Speaker 1: map out his days. This was a habit he developed young.
Speaker 1: For instance, as a student at Harvard, he would have
Speaker 1: breakfast at eight, study till ten, eleven to twelve, do
Speaker 1: Latin recitation, then boxing at the gym, lunch, studying and
Speaker 1: recitation until four, watching a ballgame, dinner, studying for an hour,
Speaker 1: and then at half past ten reading by the fire.
Speaker 1: One day on the campaign trail, he followed the following schedule.
Speaker 1: Seven am breakfast, seven thirty am a speech, eight am
Speaker 1: reading a historical work, nine am a speech, ten am
Speaker 1: dictating letters, eleven am discussing Montana minds, am a speech,
Speaker 1: twelve pm reading an ornithological work, PM a speech, one PM, lunch,
Speaker 1: PM another speech, to thirty pm reading Scottish novelist Sir
Speaker 1: Walter Scott, and so on. Now, with so much to do,
Speaker 1: I mean, he gave eight speeches that day, it might
Speaker 1: feel strange to stop in the middle to read a
Speaker 1: Walter Scott novel. But by focusing intently on whatever he
Speaker 1: was doing in the moment, and consciously building and breaks
Speaker 1: focused on his passions, Roosevelt was able to read, take courses,
Speaker 1: and exercise something less busy people often claimed to have
Speaker 1: no time to do. Now, to be sure, a rigid
Speaker 1: schedule can be tough when stuff goes wrong. If Roosevelt
Speaker 1: was zooming from place to place but his train got delayed,
Speaker 1: this could throw off the whole day. This is something
Speaker 1: that another great figure in American history, Benjamin Franklin, discovered.
Speaker 1: Anyone who's read his autobiography will recall the disciplined schedule
Speaker 1: Franklin developed to help him as he ran his business.
Speaker 1: And embarked on his ambitious project of achieving moral perfection
Speaker 1: alas he soon realized that the schedule didn't always work.
Speaker 1: People would come see him about doing business together, and
Speaker 1: as a businessman, he wanted to have those meetings. But
Speaker 1: oddly enough, these people did not always show up at
Speaker 1: the exact moment when this was most convenient. So it
Speaker 1: goes I'd probably leave more space than Roosevelt did to
Speaker 1: deal with the unexpected, but it's hard to argue with success.
Speaker 1: For those of us with more normal lives, we might
Speaker 1: intentionally schedule in reading breaks during work, making it through
Speaker 1: ten pages and fifteen minutes or so, rather than losing
Speaker 1: this time to unfocused email checks. We might build in
Speaker 1: space to go for a walk with a colleague, and
Speaker 1: then maybe twenty minutes later in the day to practice
Speaker 1: a foreign language. It's not that twenty minutes is so much,
Speaker 1: but by consistently building in these bits of time for
Speaker 1: other passions, we make them part of our lives, even
Speaker 1: as we get a lot done in our main jobs too.
Speaker 1: So how will you block out your daily schedule and
Speaker 1: be sure to check out the History Versus podcast in
Speaker 1: the meantime? This is Laura. Thanks for listening and here
Speaker 1: to making the most of our time. Hey everybody, I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can send me your tips,
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Speaker 1: forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production
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