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 morning time can be family time. If
Speaker 1: weekday evenings feel shorter than you would like, or even
Speaker 1: if they don't, morning hours can offer a great opportunity
Speaker 1: to connect if you are intentional about this space. Today's tip,
Speaker 1: like some others this week, comes from my book I
Speaker 1: Know How She Does It, which came out ten years
Speaker 1: ago this month. For the book, I collected time diary
Speaker 1: data from one thousand and one days in the lives
Speaker 1: of women with big jobs and families. I found that
Speaker 1: in the one hundred and sixty eight hours that make
Speaker 1: up a week, it is possible to work, spend time
Speaker 1: with family, sleep, exercise, read, or do anything you truly
Speaker 1: care about. Lots of people are successfully having it all.
Speaker 1: Even people with intense jobs often do wind up spending
Speaker 1: a reasonable amount of time with their children. But one
Speaker 1: reason it doesn't always feel like it is that we
Speaker 1: often only count the time in the evening. So if
Speaker 1: you get home from work at six and you've got
Speaker 1: young kids who go to bed at seven thirty, then
Speaker 1: it feels like you've only got ninety minutes a day
Speaker 1: with them. But this ignores the mornings which exist, and
Speaker 1: if you've got kids who go to bed at seven
Speaker 1: thirty PM, my sense is that those morning hours can
Speaker 1: be quite long. I was talking with a lawyer once
Speaker 1: who told me that she never saw her son due
Speaker 1: to her intense billable schedule, and her son was about
Speaker 1: the same age as my toddler at the time. Then
Speaker 1: we moved on to different topics and she started chatting
Speaker 1: about toddler wake up times. I was whining about my
Speaker 1: kid being up at the crack of dawn, and she
Speaker 1: said me two. Well, turns out her kid was often
Speaker 1: waking up at about five thirty AM, and she left
Speaker 1: for work at eight. This was literally two and a
Speaker 1: half hours that she was not seeing at all. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously people do need to get ready in the morning,
Speaker 1: but my guess is that this is not a two
Speaker 1: hour process, Especially if you do have kids who are
Speaker 1: up early. You can easily turn morning time into family
Speaker 1: time if you think about using this window. So what
Speaker 1: would you like to do with it? You and your
Speaker 1: kids could have a real breakfast together if you wanted.
Speaker 1: If it's summer, you could go outside and play go
Speaker 1: for a stroller walk. What a great way to get
Speaker 1: some exercise. If you have a play area, you could
Speaker 1: get your coffee and go sit there and set an
Speaker 1: alarm and then just relax until it goes off. Even
Speaker 1: if you don't have young kids. If you feel like
Speaker 1: you and your partner are often just ships passing in
Speaker 1: the night, perhaps you could use the morning hours for connecting.
Speaker 1: Eat breakfast together a few days a week. Decide to
Speaker 1: get up on time so you have twenty minutes to
Speaker 1: sit together and chat. You can set an alarm so
Speaker 1: no one needs to be watching the clock. You could
Speaker 1: go exercise together, or whatever you like. I know many
Speaker 1: people who listen to a show called Before Breakfast have
Speaker 1: elaborate morning routines, and that is wonderful. But we often
Speaker 1: think of morning routines as being solar things, and they
Speaker 1: can be, but they don't need to be. Build family
Speaker 1: time into your mornings and it will happen and you
Speaker 1: can start your day knowing you did something good in
Speaker 1: the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
Speaker 1: to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback.
Speaker 1: You can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.