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 to adopt the mindset that after five pm
Speaker 1: it's Friday. You just might find yourself feeling more relaxed
Speaker 1: and enjoying your time after work. More so, over the
Speaker 1: past year or so, I've become more and more interested
Speaker 1: in how people spend their evening hours. In another year
Speaker 1: or two, I'll publish a book called The Golden Hours.
Speaker 1: I'm making the most of your weekday evenings. This time
Speaker 1: is so hard to use well. People are tired, and
Speaker 1: in many cases we have family or household responsibilities. But
Speaker 1: it's also a lot of time to simply write off.
Speaker 1: I collected time logs from a ton of people to
Speaker 1: analyze their evenings, and I can report that on average,
Speaker 1: people had about five hours after they finished work and
Speaker 1: before they went to bed on weekdays. Multiply that by
Speaker 1: four nights from Monday to Thursday, and we are talking
Speaker 1: twenty hours a week of potential family and leisure time.
Speaker 1: Of course, one of the reasons it's hard to really
Speaker 1: relax and enjoy this time is that we know we
Speaker 1: are going to work the next day, there will need
Speaker 1: to be preparations for getting up early in school schedules
Speaker 1: and activities and so forth. But honestly, if you have
Speaker 1: young kids, you may be up early on weekends anyway.
Speaker 1: You have the activities then as well. And yet in
Speaker 1: general people still feel more relaxed on weekends. So here's
Speaker 1: an idea to contemplate. Not too long ago, Professor Cassei
Speaker 1: Holmes was a guest on this show. She talked about
Speaker 1: one of her studies or she found that when people
Speaker 1: were told to treat their upcoming weekends like a vacation,
Speaker 1: they generally enjoyed themselves more. So, if thinking of the
Speaker 1: weekend as a vacation can make it more enjoyable, then
Speaker 1: I think thinking of a weeknight as a weekend might
Speaker 1: do the same thing. So repeat this phrase to yourself
Speaker 1: after five pm it's Friday, even if it is five
Speaker 1: pm on a Tuesday, there is no reason not to
Speaker 1: feel like you are off and relaxed and enjoying some
Speaker 1: restorative time. You can linger over your dinner even if
Speaker 1: it's Tuesday, and you can enjoy your downtime at night,
Speaker 1: after your chores or after your kids go to bed,
Speaker 1: even if it is a weekday. My guest is you
Speaker 1: don't stay up all that late on Friday night if
Speaker 1: you've been working all week. So we're not even talking
Speaker 1: about not upsetting any sleep schedules. We're just not approaching
Speaker 1: the next day as some battle to be prepared for
Speaker 1: tomorrow is going to happen one way or the other.
Speaker 1: So after five pm, it's Friday. I really like this phrase,
Speaker 1: and I have been experimenting with saying it to myself. Now.
Speaker 1: Obviously a pithy phrase can't actually make a Tuesday into
Speaker 1: a Friday. You should probably still go to work on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: but it does make the time feel a little different,
Speaker 1: at least for me. Perhaps you will find this phrase
Speaker 1: helpful as well. In the meantime, This is Laura. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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