Speaker 1: Good morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Every weekday morning, I'll be sharing a strategy to help
Speaker 1: you take your day from great too awesome. In future
Speaker 1: episodes we'll dive right into the tips, but in these
Speaker 1: first few episodes, I'm introducing myself and talking about why
Speaker 1: time matters and what time management really means. Today, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about wasting time. What does it mean
Speaker 1: to waste time, how does it happen? What should we
Speaker 1: do about it? Different people have different definitions. Generally, wasting
Speaker 1: time sounds like a bad thing. You're squandering something precious,
Speaker 1: but precisely because it has a negative connotation, some people
Speaker 1: like to show how clever and contrary they are by
Speaker 1: assigning a certain romanticism to wasting time. Spend enough time
Speaker 1: online and you'll notice that a lot of the people
Speaker 1: write very similar essays. They proudly note that they don't
Speaker 1: buy into puritan notions that all time must be productive.
Speaker 1: They describe a scene of them doing some allegedly frivolous thing,
Speaker 1: staring at the clouds. Oh, the world groans in protest,
Speaker 1: but our essayist is proud of such wasted time. Some
Speaker 1: of this writing is much better than others. It's also
Speaker 1: got a lot of historical precedent. When I first started
Speaker 1: writing about time management, a friend sent me John Keats's
Speaker 1: poem Owed on Indolence, which was written in eighteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: He talks of being visited by the shadow of ambition,
Speaker 1: but sending her off, noting that you cannot raise my head.
Speaker 1: Cool bedded in the flowery grass, Keats just wants to
Speaker 1: lie there staring up at the sky, to which I
Speaker 1: say great. I think taking breaks to clear our heads
Speaker 1: as smart. If we took breaks by going outside and
Speaker 1: staring at the clouds, we would be rejuvenated and energized.
Speaker 1: That's not wasted time at all. Unfortunately, when most of
Speaker 1: us take breaks, what we do is read arguments between
Speaker 1: people calling each other names on Twitter, or we look
Speaker 1: at photos on Facebook of people we didn't like in
Speaker 1: high school. Anyway, we don't emerge inspired. So I want
Speaker 1: to offer a different definition. Being productive means spending your
Speaker 1: time in ways that are meaningful or enjoyable for you
Speaker 1: are the people you care about. Wasting time means spending
Speaker 1: time in ways that aren't advancing you towards the life
Speaker 1: you want. This definition sounds reasonable at first blush, though
Speaker 1: if you think about it, it's kind of radical. All
Speaker 1: sorts of things that sound productive don't meet this definition.
Speaker 1: Spending an hour before bed picking up toys that will
Speaker 1: just come out again the next morning is wasted time
Speaker 1: unless you really love doing it. If you don't love it,
Speaker 1: you would have been better off doing something you would enjoy,
Speaker 1: like reading a book. Under this definition, work is responsible
Speaker 1: for all sorts of wasted time. For instance, I firmly
Speaker 1: believe that the point of a meeting is to change
Speaker 1: something in the world. So if that Tuesday morning staff
Speaker 1: meeting changes nothing beyond rendering everyone in the room ninety
Speaker 1: minutes older, that is wasted time. Email can be like
Speaker 1: this too. In Juliett's School of Possibilities, my time management fable,
Speaker 1: the main character falls into the trap of responding to
Speaker 1: all emails as quickly as possible. This seems productive, but
Speaker 1: of course it isn't, because the reason so many people
Speaker 1: email her is that they think she has good ideas.
Speaker 1: Her obsession with her inbox crowds out all time to
Speaker 1: think up the good ideas that will serve her clients,
Speaker 1: So this is wasted time. This is a tough definition,
Speaker 1: but don't feel bad by this definition. Most of us
Speaker 1: waste tons of time. I know I do. I spend
Speaker 1: all kinds of time on things that don't feel particularly
Speaker 1: meaningful or enjoyable to myself or the people I care about,
Speaker 1: or like Twitter. They feel enjoyable for the first three minutes,
Speaker 1: but not the next forty five. Thanks to the screen
Speaker 1: time feature on the iPhone, I am now confronted with
Speaker 1: my statistics un wasted time in a little moment of
Speaker 1: reckoning every Sunday morning. Since I study my time, I
Speaker 1: know what leads to these Internet rabbit holes, or to
Speaker 1: time spent puttering around the house moving paper from one
Speaker 1: pile to another. It's actually a bit of a paradox.
Speaker 1: I think most of us waste time because we assume
Speaker 1: we have no time. Because we assume we have no time,
Speaker 1: we don't think about what we'd like to do with it.
Speaker 1: When a spot of time does appear, we do the easiest,
Speaker 1: most effortless thing, which is often picking up the phone
Speaker 1: or some other pointless means of busting boredom. When I
Speaker 1: think about it, then I do better. If I'm facing
Speaker 1: an empty weekend afternoon of sibling squabbles, I load everyone
Speaker 1: in the car and go to the y m c
Speaker 1: as indoor pool, or after the kids go to bed,
Speaker 1: I make sure I have a really good book, so
Speaker 1: this low energy time can be spent on something slightly
Speaker 1: more edifying than Twitter insults. Thinking about time is the
Speaker 1: antidote to wasting time. You can think I'd like to
Speaker 1: go lie cool bedded in the flowery grass, just like
Speaker 1: John Keats, and then go do it and enjoy yourself immensely.
Speaker 1: That's not wasting time at all. This is Laura. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, and here's to making the most of our time. Hey,
Speaker 1: everybody got a tip or a question. You can share
Speaker 1: them with me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at Before
Speaker 1: Breakfast Pod that's be the number four then Breakfast p
Speaker 1: o D. You can also email me at Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: Podcast at iHeart Media dot com. For the email, just
Speaker 1: spell those words out. I look forward to connecting and
Speaker 1: learning how you make the most of your time.