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 to gain clarity on your goals by
Speaker 1: picturing a realistic, ideal week. From time to time, I'll
Speaker 1: see an exercise in self help literature that involves picturing
Speaker 1: a perfect day. The idea is to ponder, in the
Speaker 1: absence of all constraints, how you'd like to spend your
Speaker 1: time now. I suppose this can be useful in some ways,
Speaker 1: but there are a few problems with this exercise. One
Speaker 1: is that, if your imagination is good enough, a perfect
Speaker 1: day doesn't offer a whole lot of insight into your
Speaker 1: current life. In my perfect day, I'd have a flying car,
Speaker 1: but no one else would, and thus I could skip traffic,
Speaker 1: or maybe there'd be teleportation. I could eat cinnamon rules
Speaker 1: all day and not feel sick. I'd probably cure cancer
Speaker 1: before breakfast while I was at This is not a
Speaker 1: particularly useful thought experiment. The other problem is that we
Speaker 1: don't live our lives in days. We live our lives
Speaker 1: in weeks. So even if I'm going to ponder a
Speaker 1: more realistic good day, should I think of a Tuesday
Speaker 1: or should I think of a Saturday. They both occur
Speaker 1: just as often, even if I spend my time quite
Speaker 1: differently on each day. So that's why I like the
Speaker 1: idea of creating a realistic, ideal week. This is the
Speaker 1: schedule that you, within the current parameters of your life,
Speaker 1: might reasonably expect to live. You don't get a flying car,
Speaker 1: but you do spend your work hours on your favorite projects.
Speaker 1: You take breaks to get lunch with friends or colleagues,
Speaker 1: or to get some fresh air. You leave on time,
Speaker 1: and you do interesting things with your evenings. You spend
Speaker 1: your weekend hours in rejuvenating ways and minimize time devoted
Speaker 1: to things you don't enjoy doing. The most straightforward way
Speaker 1: to picture this week is on a spreadsheet. You can
Speaker 1: go to Laura Vanderkam dot com that's my website and
Speaker 1: fill out the subscription form to be sent a blank
Speaker 1: time log, or you can just create one yourself and
Speaker 1: Excel numbers or Google sheets. I put the days of
Speaker 1: the week across the top Monday through Sunday, and then
Speaker 1: half hour blocks down the left hand side from five
Speaker 1: am to four thirty am. So that is a three
Speaker 1: thirty six cell spreadsheet representing the hundred sixty eight hour week.
Speaker 1: I feel in what time I'd like to wake up
Speaker 1: and what time I'd like to go to bed. I
Speaker 1: fill in my daily runs, maybe a date night with
Speaker 1: my husband, a family adventure reading time. I fill in
Speaker 1: long stretches of uninterrupted writing time, and maybe a few
Speaker 1: walks with individual kids for conversations too. In my realistic
Speaker 1: ideal week, I'd have a social get together, maybe a
Speaker 1: lunch out somewhere. So that's me. I suppose. It's an
Speaker 1: open question of how optimistic this realistic ideal week should be.
Speaker 1: I mean, how realistic are we talking? I guess in
Speaker 1: my realistic ideal week, my four year old would never
Speaker 1: wake up before six thirty am. Alas, judging by the
Speaker 1: past week or so, this is a streak he's unlikely
Speaker 1: to hit. I might aim to go to bed at
Speaker 1: eleven or so and wake up at six thirty. But
Speaker 1: I could leave some flexible time before bed so that
Speaker 1: if he wakes up at five thirty am too many
Speaker 1: mornings in a row, I could start going to bed
Speaker 1: at ten thirty or ten. But the upside of creating
Speaker 1: a realistic ideal week is that it reminds you of
Speaker 1: the good things you'd like to have in your life
Speaker 1: that are relatively accessible. All that stands between me and
Speaker 1: my husband going out to dinner every other Friday night
Speaker 1: or so is looking at our calendars and arranging to
Speaker 1: have it happen. Since I work from home, going out
Speaker 1: to lunch feels like a treat to me, and I
Speaker 1: should take the initiative to invite people I find interesting
Speaker 1: or just go myself. If I know I like evening
Speaker 1: walks with kids one on one, I should do that
Speaker 1: when I find myself in this situation where another adult
Speaker 1: is in the house to watch the other kids, but
Speaker 1: there's some downtime. I think it can also be useful
Speaker 1: to create a template of a realistic ideal week and
Speaker 1: then track an actual week. Time tracking has helped in general,
Speaker 1: but it can be enlightening to compare a week that
Speaker 1: actually happened with this realistic ideal Where do things match?
Speaker 1: Hopefully they do, somewhere where do they diverge? No doubt
Speaker 1: this happens too, but when you see it, you can
Speaker 1: ask why and figure out if there's anything to be
Speaker 1: done about that. Maybe nothing can be done, but maybe
Speaker 1: something can, and that's good to figure out. So take
Speaker 1: some time today to think about what your realistic ideal
Speaker 1: week would look like. How would you spend your hundred
Speaker 1: sixty eight hours? How are you spending them now? I
Speaker 1: hope over time we can bring these two schedules very
Speaker 1: close together. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and here's to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from you. You can send me
Speaker 1: your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with
Speaker 1: me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod
Speaker 1: that's B the number four, then Breakfast p o D.
Speaker 1: You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: podcast at i heeart media dot com that Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: is spelled out with all the letters. Thanks so much,
Speaker 1: I look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is
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