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 how to spend less time getting
Speaker 1: ready in the morning. With a little thought up front
Speaker 1: and more importantly, some mindset shifts, you can figure out
Speaker 1: ways to look great fast. I know that getting ready
Speaker 1: for work or school in the morning can consume a
Speaker 1: lot of time, and unfortunately, the expectations for polish are
Speaker 1: higher for some folks than others. I recently got a
Speaker 1: letter from a Before Breakfast listener who had started a
Speaker 1: new job as an attorney. She had a long commute
Speaker 1: and a family she wanted to spend time with. Because
Speaker 1: I am working in law, I have to always look
Speaker 1: my best, she wrote. She listed various reasons this took
Speaker 1: her a while. I have a curly head of hair,
Speaker 1: so it takes time to tainment and look presentable, she said.
Speaker 1: She also wrote that because of her particular coloring, I
Speaker 1: have a lot of makeup to do. I can't just
Speaker 1: swipe some mascara and I'm good. Because of the amount
Speaker 1: of time it takes to get ready, I feel I
Speaker 1: am always getting ready, driving, working, and not much else.
Speaker 1: This listener asked if I had tips for looking put
Speaker 1: together in less time. This is the biggest deterrent in
Speaker 1: my life, and I just wish I could look as
Speaker 1: naturally pretty as some She wrote, Well, listeners, this letter
Speaker 1: got me. I just hate the idea of anyone, and
Speaker 1: particularly someone who's building a career and raising a family,
Speaker 1: losing big chunks of her life in the service of
Speaker 1: exacting beauty standards. I want to assure our listener and
Speaker 1: everyone that people with all sorts of hair, textures and
Speaker 1: colorings can be naturally pretty, which, by the way, is
Speaker 1: an overrated concept. In general. Most of us are never
Speaker 1: going to be models, and even models don't wake up
Speaker 1: looking like they do in photo shoots. Whenever I do
Speaker 1: on camera work, I'm struck by how long the hair
Speaker 1: and makeup people have to hover over me, touching things
Speaker 1: up between takes. This should never be the standard for
Speaker 1: day to day life. Instead, I think it's more helpful
Speaker 1: for us mere mortals to acknowledge that, yes, people can
Speaker 1: sometimes treat us differently based on appearance, but any given
Speaker 1: person's appearance is going to fall within a certain range,
Speaker 1: and we can aim for the top of that range,
Speaker 1: and doing so can maybe help us project the confidence
Speaker 1: and happiness that make anyone look more attractive. But there's
Speaker 1: also a point of diminishing returns time spent getting ready
Speaker 1: it is time not spent calling clients and meeting their needs.
Speaker 1: And ultimately, a lawyer's success depends more on her being
Speaker 1: a thoughtful and dedicated advocate for her clients versus the
Speaker 1: shape of her eyebrows. So that's today's rant from a soapbox.
Speaker 1: Now onto the practical matter of looking our best while
Speaker 1: optimizing the scarce resource of time. My first suggestion for
Speaker 1: anyone looking to get a grip on this is to
Speaker 1: track how long it currently takes you to get ready.
Speaker 1: How long do you spend in the shower, what do
Speaker 1: you do in there? How long does it take to
Speaker 1: get dressed and do hair and make up if that's
Speaker 1: part of your routine. When you have these numbers, you
Speaker 1: can make thoughtful choices about what to trim. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to nix something that took thirty seconds but had
Speaker 1: a huge impact on your confidence. Something that takes ten
Speaker 1: minutes and doesn't do much for you, well, that's worth cutting.
Speaker 1: I would also recommend investing in some good building blocks.
Speaker 1: A skilled hairstylist can give you a haircut that flatters
Speaker 1: you but doesn't take a whole lot of maintenance. In general,
Speaker 1: you're best off working with your natural hair texture, and
Speaker 1: curly hair can definitely look professional. It might help to
Speaker 1: spend a few minutes looking through online photo galleries of
Speaker 1: people with similar hair to convince you of this and
Speaker 1: to get ideas for your most flattering cut. Makeup can
Speaker 1: likewise be paired down with the help of a pro.
Speaker 1: Seek out a local makeup artist to give you pointers
Speaker 1: and decide on a quantity of time you are willing
Speaker 1: to devote to make up, ideally something lower than your
Speaker 1: current tally. If you decide that you want to spend, say,
Speaker 1: five minutes on daily makeup, then a professional can help
Speaker 1: you optimize within that. The same goes for a wardrobe,
Speaker 1: either on your own or with the help of a
Speaker 1: stylist or a stylish friend. Pare down your work wardrobe
Speaker 1: to say eleven outfits that fit perfectly and look fabulous
Speaker 1: on you. Why eleven, Well, you can cycle through them
Speaker 1: and then you won't always be wearing the same thing
Speaker 1: on a Tuesday meeting. With the right basic pieces, you
Speaker 1: can just pull out the next outfit in line, and
Speaker 1: stop agonizing over this decision. Someone with a big job
Speaker 1: and a family definitely has better things to do. Most importantly, though,
Speaker 1: I'd recommend experimenting with a little mindset shift the hard
Speaker 1: truth people pay far less attention to us than we
Speaker 1: think they do. There's a famous experiment where a college
Speaker 1: student interacted with peers while wearing a very man a
Speaker 1: low T shirt, something the researchers deemed to be humiliating.
Speaker 1: The subject assumed almost everyone noticed. The surveys afterward found
Speaker 1: that almost no one noticed. The other students were too
Speaker 1: concerned with their own appearances and their own lives to
Speaker 1: notice someone else's T shirt. Likewise, if you work in
Speaker 1: a professional environment with clients, you need to look polished,
Speaker 1: But your clients are too wrapped up in their own
Speaker 1: problems and the daily tedium of commutes and such to
Speaker 1: notice the exact shape of anyone's eyebrows. To convince yourself
Speaker 1: of this, try not doing something one day here and there.
Speaker 1: On some morning, challenge yourself to spend two minutes on
Speaker 1: makeup and see where the chips fall. On some other morning,
Speaker 1: just comb your hair, put it in a low ponytail,
Speaker 1: and walk out the door. Does anyone say anything? Does
Speaker 1: anyone notice? I would bet a lot that the answer
Speaker 1: is no. And once you see this, you can be
Speaker 1: empowered to invest sometime in looking decent, but much more
Speaker 1: time and being the sort of person that people want
Speaker 1: to work with. Time is valuable and you don't want
Speaker 1: to invest much of it and something with rapidly diminishing returns. Listeners,
Speaker 1: if you have suggestions for getting ready and less time,
Speaker 1: I'm all ears. You can let me know at Before
Speaker 1: Breakfast podcast at i heeart media dot com. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 1: the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can send me your tips, your questions,
Speaker 1: or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod. That's b E the
Speaker 1: number four than breakfast p O. You can also shoot
Speaker 1: me an email at Before Breakfast podcast at i heeart
Speaker 1: media dot com. That Before Breakfast is spelled out with
Speaker 1: all the letters. Thanks so much, I look forward to
Speaker 1: staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
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