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 you might be just a few
Speaker 1: hours from good. Even seemingly big problems can be a
Speaker 1: lot closer to a solution with a few hours of
Speaker 1: focused work. So put in those hours and you will
Speaker 1: be surprised how far you've come. Longtime listeners know that
Speaker 1: my family bought and is renovating a historic house in
Speaker 1: our neighborhood. We are finally putting our current house on
Speaker 1: the market. Our first ordeal of this listing process was
Speaker 1: the real estate photos, getting the house presentable enough to
Speaker 1: look nice in those photos that will be on Zillo
Speaker 1: and everywhere else. We have lived in this house for
Speaker 1: ten years, so let's just say there is a reasonable
Speaker 1: amount of stuff in here. Kid toys, kid clothes, books,
Speaker 1: old artwork. I will admit that I lacked the patients
Speaker 1: to cull through everything. A lot of stuff wound up
Speaker 1: in clear bins that we will store in the new
Speaker 1: house's garage until we can get to them. However, with
Speaker 1: this boxing up and clearing out, plus some good old
Speaker 1: fashioned cleaning, we made a lot of progress in about
Speaker 1: twenty household hours. Most of the rooms reached a state
Speaker 1: where they were about two minutes away from being photographable.
Speaker 1: We just had to clear out the unphotographable stuff of life,
Speaker 1: like waste baskets, and they were good to go. I
Speaker 1: suspect that a great many seemingly intractable projects are like that.
Speaker 1: Organizing your digital photos seems like it could take I
Speaker 1: don't know years, But what if you decided to devote
Speaker 1: three hours to it over a weekend. What do you
Speaker 1: think you could do? My guess it's quite a bit
Speaker 1: same with clearing out the garage or weeding the yard.
Speaker 1: You might not be done, but you would be a
Speaker 1: lot closer to good with a few focused hours than
Speaker 1: you had been before. Even really large projects might take
Speaker 1: fewer hours than you imagine. Every November, thousands of people
Speaker 1: participate in National Novel Writing Month, in which they write
Speaker 1: a fifty word novel in thirty days. In general, people
Speaker 1: devote too to three hours per day to this pursuit.
Speaker 1: That comes out to six in November. In other words,
Speaker 1: if you have an eye idea for a novel that
Speaker 1: you've been kicking around, you might be only sixty to
Speaker 1: nine hours to a first draft, not a great first draft,
Speaker 1: but a draft, and then you can make that something
Speaker 1: into something better. Training for a half marathon might involve
Speaker 1: about five hours of running a week for twelve weeks.
Speaker 1: That's just sixty hours to crossing your first major finish line.
Speaker 1: In many situations we might be only a few hours
Speaker 1: two good. Sometimes it is literally only a few hours,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it is just a few hours a week
Speaker 1: over a slightly longer period. But either way, big goals
Speaker 1: are generally achievable in finite amounts of time. After all,
Speaker 1: other people have done them in finite amounts of time,
Speaker 1: So why not you think about what a few focused
Speaker 1: hours could do for you and your projects, and then
Speaker 1: make those focused hours happen. Your closets might look a
Speaker 1: lot better than before. In the meantime. This is Laura.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
Speaker 1: our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can send me your tips, your questions, or anything else.
Speaker 1: Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast Pod that's b E the number four then
Speaker 1: Breakfast p o D. You can also shoot me an
Speaker 1: email at Before Breakfast Podcast at I hurt me da
Speaker 1: dot com that before Breakfast is spelled out with all
Speaker 1: the letters. Thanks so much, I look forward to staying
Speaker 1: in touch. Before Breakfast is a production of I heart Radio.
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