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 it is a bad idea to turn
Speaker 1: a thirty minute task into an hour long one. You
Speaker 1: are almost universally better off focusing on one task fully
Speaker 1: rather than trying to fit it into something else. So,
Speaker 1: as I am recording this episode, people are marking the
Speaker 1: fourth anniversary of COVID uprooting daily life for so many
Speaker 1: of us. At this point four years ago, my kids
Speaker 1: had been out of school for a few weeks already
Speaker 1: we were starting to realize that they weren't going back
Speaker 1: for the rest of the school year. I know so
Speaker 1: many parents had to work remotely with their kids around
Speaker 1: them for many months. Wise families soon figured out that
Speaker 1: if it was at all possible to swap coverage for
Speaker 1: little kids between parents, or with older kids or other relatives,
Speaker 1: or with neighbors that you decided to form a pod
Speaker 1: with everyone was going to get more done. You can
Speaker 1: get more done in four focused hours, then you can
Speaker 1: get done in eight hours when you are being interrupted
Speaker 1: every few minutes. Plus, there are no good ways to
Speaker 1: meet the needs of a four year old and a
Speaker 1: client simultaneously. You wind up feeling frustrated and cranky. No doubt,
Speaker 1: the four year olds and the clients get frustrated and
Speaker 1: cranky too. Better to switch off and be fully present
Speaker 1: for one at a time. I mention this because I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time pre COVID trying to convince
Speaker 1: people that while working from home was great, it was
Speaker 1: not a smart way to save money on childcare. I
Speaker 1: would see parents trying to build businesses with toddlers underfoot,
Speaker 1: and in many cases they would wind up feeling like
Speaker 1: they were failing at everything, so they would come to
Speaker 1: me and ask me for help with time management. But
Speaker 1: I would note that this wasn't a time management problem,
Speaker 1: it was a focus problem. Even if money was a
Speaker 1: little tight, it was best to figure out this focus
Speaker 1: problem first by paying for a few hours of childcare
Speaker 1: each day. These entrepreneurial parents could focus on building their
Speaker 1: businesses to the point where the revenue could pay for
Speaker 1: the childcare and then some. Thanks to that focus, they
Speaker 1: could also be more relaxed and play with the kids
Speaker 1: when they weren't working, rather than trying to respond to
Speaker 1: client emails at the same time. So it goes for
Speaker 1: much in life. Trying to manage too many things at
Speaker 1: once is a great way to turn a thirty minute
Speaker 1: task into an hour long one. If you are trying
Speaker 1: to answer a few emails while you are on a
Speaker 1: zoom call, it is going to take twice as long
Speaker 1: to get through those emails. If you are trying to
Speaker 1: write a report while answering slack messages as they come in,
Speaker 1: that report is going to take twice as long. I
Speaker 1: know that it often feels efficient to try to cross
Speaker 1: two things off the list at once, particularly if you
Speaker 1: are stuck in a really boring meeting. Sometimes the problem
Speaker 1: is that we don't want to acknowledge what you're doing.
Speaker 1: We need to catch up with work on the weekend,
Speaker 1: but we don't really want to be officially working on
Speaker 1: the weekend, so we try to flit in and out
Speaker 1: of it. Then our families are annoyed and we have
Speaker 1: taken twice as long to get everything done. Better to
Speaker 1: go to a coffee shop for two hours and then
Speaker 1: come home and be present verse being on your phone
Speaker 1: for the entire day while you are theoretically with your family.
Speaker 1: There is absolutely nothing efficient about having something take longer
Speaker 1: than it should. Just because you can theoretically manage more
Speaker 1: than one thing at once doesn't mean it's a great idea.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we have no choice, as happened for many people
Speaker 1: during COVID, but when we do have a choice, fully
Speaker 1: focusing is the way to go. In the meantime, this
Speaker 1: is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the
Speaker 1: 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,
Speaker 1: please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.