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: episode is going to be a slightly longer one, but
Speaker 1: instead of interviewing a fascinating guest about how they take
Speaker 1: their days from great to awesome, I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: about some ways that I try to take my days
Speaker 1: from great to awesome and that I hope will be
Speaker 1: helpful for you as well. Longtime listeners know that I've
Speaker 1: spent the past three years working on a book called
Speaker 1: Big Time, A Simple Path to Time Abundance. That book
Speaker 1: is on sale this week. If you enjoy the tips
Speaker 1: on this show, I hope you will consider picking up
Speaker 1: a copy, and to pique your interest, I thought i'd
Speaker 1: share what I have learned about time while writing the
Speaker 1: book and some of the practices from the book that
Speaker 1: I've adopted that I think helped make my life better. First,
Speaker 1: just so people know where I'm coming from, my life
Speaker 1: sometimes bears a bit of a resemblance to a circus,
Speaker 1: though I have learned to embrace that for reasons we'll
Speaker 1: talk about soon. I have five kids, ranging from ages
Speaker 1: six to eighteen, and four of whom are still living
Speaker 1: at home. My husband and I both work and both
Speaker 1: travel for work. We have all the usual complement of activities,
Speaker 1: play dates, community events during the week. I'm recording this episode.
Speaker 1: For instance, my Tuesday afternoon resembled one of those multi
Speaker 1: person acrobatic tricks you might see in a circus. For
Speaker 1: various reasons, we've needed to move the six year old
Speaker 1: from taking the bus home from school to getting picked
Speaker 1: up at school. We have a nanny who helps us
Speaker 1: after school, so that is fine. She can usually pick
Speaker 1: him up, but then this means she can't drive the
Speaker 1: other kids places from about three point thirty to four
Speaker 1: pm on weekdays. So on Tuesdays, my eleven year old
Speaker 1: son has a pottery class at three forty five that
Speaker 1: he absolutely loves. This past Tuesday, I was going back
Speaker 1: and forth with another podcast that wanted to interview me
Speaker 1: about the schedule and what would work. They offered me
Speaker 1: three pm or six pm. Now, normally I would have
Speaker 1: just grabbed three pm, after all, it's during the workday,
Speaker 1: but then I remembered I would need to drive the
Speaker 1: eleven year old, so I took the six pm. But
Speaker 1: of course then I realized that we had an alto
Speaker 1: sax lesson that would usually be running from five forty
Speaker 1: five to six thirty on Tuesdays, and a trombone lesson
Speaker 1: running from six thirty to seven. The house was not
Speaker 1: going to be quiet during this window. The good news
Speaker 1: our garage is detached from the house. That's an upside
Speaker 1: of an older home, it turns out. So I made
Speaker 1: a mini recording studio out there and it all worked.
Speaker 1: But you know, the layers of different contingencies are just
Speaker 1: sometimes a bit intense. So I will not claim that
Speaker 1: my life is some sort of minimalist simple thing. It
Speaker 1: simply can't be. But that is okay. A complex life
Speaker 1: isn't inevitably chaotic. Turns out that chaos and complexity are
Speaker 1: not the same thing at all. Time is big enough
Speaker 1: for whatever matters to us, and even amid the complexity,
Speaker 1: there are all kinds of strategies we can use that
Speaker 1: can make life feel calm and time feel more spacious.
Speaker 1: So in today's episode, I'm going to talk about a
Speaker 1: few of my favorite strategies that I learned while writing
Speaker 1: Big Time. The first is that to run a good circus,
Speaker 1: you really need to know where the time is going. Now,
Speaker 1: I have tracked my time for eleven straight years. Yes,
Speaker 1: I know how I have spent every half hour for
Speaker 1: the last eleven years of my life. I promise you
Speaker 1: no one else needs to do that. But I do
Speaker 1: think it's a good idea to track your time for
Speaker 1: a week. A week will give you a fairly good
Speaker 1: sense of where your time truly goes. I find that
Speaker 1: time tracking keeps me accountable and helps to cement memories.
Speaker 1: The memory part is especially fun. I can look back
Speaker 1: on say a Monday evening from six years ago, and
Speaker 1: see what I was up to, like playing out in
Speaker 1: the yard with kids who were a lot younger than I.
Speaker 1: Feel like I have more time because I can see
Speaker 1: my time quite clearly. I see how much time is
Speaker 1: required for the things I have to do, and how
Speaker 1: much time is available for the things I want to do.
Speaker 1: But this was just my general belief before writing Big Time,
Speaker 1: and my impression from what other people had told me
Speaker 1: about tracking their time. Of course, anecdotes mean nothing on
Speaker 1: their own, so for Big Time, I decided to look
Speaker 1: more systematically at time tracking. I had two hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy nine people track their time for a week. I
Speaker 1: asked them various questions designed to measure time satisfaction before
Speaker 1: and after the week they tracked. What I found is
Speaker 1: that people's time satisfaction levels rose significantly after they tracked
Speaker 1: time for one hundred and sixty eight hours. Indeed, agreement
Speaker 1: with the statement generally I have enough time for the
Speaker 1: things I want to do rose twenty five percent in
Speaker 1: just one week. Now. I think there are a few
Speaker 1: reasons for this. An obvious one is that time tracking
Speaker 1: inspired better time choices. People didn't want to document a
Speaker 1: three hour YouTube bin on their time logs, so they
Speaker 1: chose more fulfilling leisure time activities and thus felt better
Speaker 1: about their time. But I don't think it's just that.
Speaker 1: I think the deeper reason is that seeing where the
Speaker 1: time goes helps us rewrite our stories. Many of us
Speaker 1: are telling ourselves quite negative stories about our time, like
Speaker 1: I'm working around the clock, I never sleep, I never
Speaker 1: see my family, I have no free time whatsoever. But
Speaker 1: even if you work long hours, you probably don't work
Speaker 1: around the clock. If you have a bad night, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean all seven nights of the week or just
Speaker 1: as terrible. You probably do see your family. Indeed, even
Speaker 1: people who work long hours are pleasantly surprised at how
Speaker 1: much family time makes it onto the time logs. I'm
Speaker 1: willing to bet that you also have some free time.
Speaker 1: It might not be as much as you want, but
Speaker 1: it isn't zero either. Whether it is spent well or
Speaker 1: not is up to you. That is the nature of
Speaker 1: discretionary time. But for just about everyone there is at
Speaker 1: least some time. It is there. When you see all this,
Speaker 1: you start to see that life is pretty reasonable. Maybe
Speaker 1: you want to change some things. I mean, many of
Speaker 1: us look at our time logs and want to change
Speaker 1: a few things, but we are generally talking tweaks, not
Speaker 1: a total lifestyle overhaul. Seeing where the time goes makes
Speaker 1: us happier with our time. If you track your time,
Speaker 1: I think you will find the same thing. So another
Speaker 1: idea from Big Time that I am embracing is that
Speaker 1: I am the master of a three ring circus. When
Speaker 1: people say my life is a circus, they tend to
Speaker 1: mean it is chaotic. But I think this is a
Speaker 1: slander against circuses. A circus is incredibly well organized. All
Speaker 1: the acts happen when they are supposed to happen. Tricks
Speaker 1: are executed with split second precision. We should aspire for
Speaker 1: life to be like a circus. As I think of
Speaker 1: myself as the ring master, I also like to picture
Speaker 1: that the circus of my life has three rings, career, relationships, self.
Speaker 1: A good ring master knows what is going on in
Speaker 1: all three rings at all times. Perhaps a bigger act
Speaker 1: is currently going on in one than the others, but
Speaker 1: there are highlights in all three, and a good ring
Speaker 1: master keeps her eye on all of them. Now, the
Speaker 1: best way to keep on top of all of this
Speaker 1: is to have a designated weekly planning time, when you
Speaker 1: look at what is most important in all three rings
Speaker 1: of the circus and make sure that you have worked
Speaker 1: out the logistics. I have always liked my weekly planning ritual,
Speaker 1: but as my life has grown more complex, I have
Speaker 1: found that I almost come to crave it. I look
Speaker 1: forward to Thursday mornings, which is when I now sit
Speaker 1: down with my planner and my calendar and think, what
Speaker 1: do I need to do to make progress on my
Speaker 1: professional goals next week? What do I need to do
Speaker 1: to make progress on the goals I have for relationships
Speaker 1: with friends and family? What is most important for my
Speaker 1: own physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional health. I also look
Speaker 1: at the things that are already on my calendar for
Speaker 1: the upcoming week. Even if that I don't rise to
Speaker 1: the level of being a top priority, do I have
Speaker 1: a plan for dealing with all these things. This is
Speaker 1: when I sort out the logistics for something like the
Speaker 1: Tuesday afternoon with the driving and the podcast recording and
Speaker 1: the music lesson that way, I am not blindsided by
Speaker 1: any of it. I am not suddenly remembering on Tuesday
Speaker 1: that the house will be loud. I am not racing
Speaker 1: over to the garage trying to find a good spot,
Speaker 1: because I had looked at my week ahead of time
Speaker 1: and thought about it, and so I had already built
Speaker 1: in time earlier on Tuesday to scope out the garage
Speaker 1: and make sure there was something that would work acoustically. Now,
Speaker 1: there is another part to this circus metaphor that we
Speaker 1: have talked about here on before Breakfast before, which is
Speaker 1: the importance of a net. I used to think that
Speaker 1: a net is a net, but as I have interviewed
Speaker 1: circus performers, I have come to learn that a net
Speaker 1: has to be exactly where the performers think it should be.
Speaker 1: They train themselves to land properly in the net. They
Speaker 1: certainly don't plan to land there during a performance, but
Speaker 1: the net can't be an afterthought. And so as I
Speaker 1: am trying to make my life feel more calm and
Speaker 1: time feel more spacious, I spend some time thinking about
Speaker 1: what I will do if things go wrong. I build
Speaker 1: an extra time I work ahead. That way, if something
Speaker 1: big comes up on a Tuesday and displaces what I
Speaker 1: plan to do on that Tuesday, there is somewhere to
Speaker 1: put the spill over. Everything stays on track, and the
Speaker 1: circus keeps humming along. There is no need to feel
Speaker 1: rushed and frantic. And when you don't feel rushed and frantic,
Speaker 1: time can feel a lot more abundant. We're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick ad break and then I'll be back
Speaker 1: with more tips from Big Time. Well, I am back
Speaker 1: talking a few tips from my new book, Big Time,
Speaker 1: A Simple Path to Time Abundance. So a third strategy
Speaker 1: for making time feel bigger and making time feel more
Speaker 1: spacious is to actually try to do big things in
Speaker 1: your time. Big things are quite doable in small enough steps,
Speaker 1: but when you do big things, you feel like the
Speaker 1: kind of person who has the time to do big things.
Speaker 1: And that's a good story to go through life with
Speaker 1: For instance, this year, I am listening to all the
Speaker 1: works of Mozart. Mozart wrote a lot of music, but
Speaker 1: he also died fairly young at age thirty five, so
Speaker 1: it is a finite amount of music. I have been
Speaker 1: listening to about thirty to sixty minutes of his music
Speaker 1: each day, going through his work chronologically based on the
Speaker 1: list in Wikipedia. I just have it going on in
Speaker 1: the background or while I'm driving around in the car.
Speaker 1: It's not too much each day, I can tell you
Speaker 1: from my time logs. I am definitely in the car
Speaker 1: for more than thirty minutes a day, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be too much each day because daves keep passing,
Speaker 1: and there are three hundred and sixty five days in
Speaker 1: a year, and so I know that if I continue
Speaker 1: at this pace, I will make it through the entirety
Speaker 1: of Mozart's catalog by the end of December. So it
Speaker 1: goes for many things in life. While writing Big Time,
Speaker 1: I interviewed people doing all sorts of projects, like seeing
Speaker 1: all of America's national parks, walking a pilgrimage route, listening
Speaker 1: to the entire Bible as an audiobook, learning Latin, and
Speaker 1: so forth. These are all very big undertakings. But if
Speaker 1: you break any big thing down into small enough steps,
Speaker 1: then each day it feels about as simple as brushing
Speaker 1: your teeth. Most of us don't feel much resistance to that.
Speaker 1: Brushing teeth is easy and just takes a tiny bit
Speaker 1: of time. So if you want to build anything big
Speaker 1: into your life, break it down into small enough bits
Speaker 1: that it feels easy, like it's just a bit of time.
Speaker 1: That's how I read War and Peace a few years ago.
Speaker 1: This fourteen hundred plus page epic is big, there's no
Speaker 1: other way to describe it. But it also contains three
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty one extremely short chapters. I read one
Speaker 1: chapter a day, which usually took me five to ten minutes.
Speaker 1: Hardly worth commenting on, but the difference between nothing and
Speaker 1: just a little more than nothing is cumulatively great. I
Speaker 1: finished War and Peace on December twenty seventh, just as
Speaker 1: the calendar said I would. When you do something big,
Speaker 1: it changes the story you tell yourself about your time.
Speaker 1: If you have time to read War and Peace, then
Speaker 1: you can't be starved for time. You have tons of time,
Speaker 1: as evidence by the fact that you read War and Peace.
Speaker 1: Of course, it only took a few minutes a day
Speaker 1: to read, But we don't need to dwell on that. Instead,
Speaker 1: we can just enjoy the feeling of big time and
Speaker 1: what big Time makes possible. So another strategy I am
Speaker 1: adopting for making time feel more abundant is to embrace
Speaker 1: the golden hours. This is truly one of my favorite
Speaker 1: strategies from Big Time. People often talk about the golden years,
Speaker 1: that is the time after working when retirees can enjoy
Speaker 1: family in leisure. We get a miniature version of this
Speaker 1: every weekday evening during what I call our golden hours,
Speaker 1: the time after work and before bed. This is often
Speaker 1: the bulk of the leisure time people have during the week,
Speaker 1: but these hours are incredibly hard to use well. People
Speaker 1: are tired, we are out of energy and out of sorts. Still,
Speaker 1: I think it is possible to make choices that allow
Speaker 1: us to feel like these hours actually happened. And when
Speaker 1: we feel like these hours actually happened, we feel like
Speaker 1: we have a lot more time in our lives. The
Speaker 1: key is to set one small intention each day for
Speaker 1: something you want to do during your golden hours. We
Speaker 1: are talking about thirty minutes here. Your intention should be
Speaker 1: something that is not work, and is not housework or
Speaker 1: the physical care of family members, and is something you
Speaker 1: would genuinely look forward to doing. Now that I am
Speaker 1: thinking about this, I try to put something on my
Speaker 1: to do list each day for my golden hours. What
Speaker 1: fun thing would I like to do tonight? It can
Speaker 1: truly be just thirty minutes. Often it's that I like
Speaker 1: to spend thirty minutes doing a puzzle or reading a book.
Speaker 1: Some people like to sit outside or go for a walk,
Speaker 1: make a special treat for dessert, call a friend, do
Speaker 1: a hobby. Maybe in fall, it's sitting by a fire pit.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's looking up at the stars or watching the sunset.
Speaker 1: We do what we call toade time in my family,
Speaker 1: which stands for time outside after dinner. Everyone is happier outside.
Speaker 1: It really doesn't have to be much. But when I
Speaker 1: had people try this out for a week as part
Speaker 1: of writing Big Time, a sense of time satisfaction rose significantly.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, when people started setting golden hour intentions, they
Speaker 1: also started getting better sleep. It turns out that a
Speaker 1: lot of people stay up late in order to get
Speaker 1: some me time in their schedules. But if you build
Speaker 1: in thirty minutes of me time somewhere else during the evening.
Speaker 1: You won't need to stay up so late to get it.
Speaker 1: And this can make all of time feel better. I
Speaker 1: know I have been finding this to be true in
Speaker 1: my life. When I sit down and do a puzzle
Speaker 1: instead of scrolling, I feel like my evening actually happened.
Speaker 1: There is something memorable in there, or at least more
Speaker 1: memorable than our electronic hobbies. And I can go to
Speaker 1: bed when I need to go to bed, No need
Speaker 1: to borrow time from the next day. We're going to
Speaker 1: take one more quick ad break and then I will
Speaker 1: be back with more tips from Big Time. Well, I
Speaker 1: am back talking tips from my new book, Big Time,
Speaker 1: a Simple Path to Time Abundance. The last strategy I
Speaker 1: want to talk about today that helps make me feel
Speaker 1: like time is more spacious is to say some judicious yesses.
Speaker 1: These yeses can help us be open to serendipity. So
Speaker 1: if you read a lot of productivity literature and trust me,
Speaker 1: I do you know that a key tenant is that
Speaker 1: we should all say no more often. And I understand
Speaker 1: expectations are infinite. Time is finite. We are always choosing
Speaker 1: choose well. Bonus points if you know which of my
Speaker 1: books that statement is from. Many people feel over skied
Speaker 1: in their lives, and I don't want anyone spending time
Speaker 1: on things that aren't meaningful or enjoyable for ourselves or
Speaker 1: the people we care about. But if you think about it,
Speaker 1: you soon see that almost all new opportunities, adventures, and
Speaker 1: relationships come out of saying yes. After all, if you
Speaker 1: knew about something great, you'd already be doing it. New
Speaker 1: things come from talking to someone new, following up, putting
Speaker 1: some effort in, and seeing where things go. That is
Speaker 1: really the whole reason this show exists. I got an
Speaker 1: email in the fall of twenty eighteen from a publicist
Speaker 1: at my publisher asking if I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: elevating and monetizing my Best of Both Worlds podcasts that's
Speaker 1: the other one I have. She said it might be
Speaker 1: a refresher of stuff I already knew, but I agreed
Speaker 1: to a conversation, and then it became came clear that
Speaker 1: this was not actually about Best of Both Worlds, but
Speaker 1: that my publisher had an agreement with a podcast network
Speaker 1: about trying to launch some new shows. More conversations revealed
Speaker 1: that the network wanted to launch a show of short
Speaker 1: episodes about productivity tips. After many iterations, iHeartMedia launched this
Speaker 1: show as Before Breakfast in early twenty nineteen. We've been
Speaker 1: around for seven years now. We get millions of downloads
Speaker 1: a year. Absolutely none of that was obvious from the
Speaker 1: first email, which I might not have answered if I'd
Speaker 1: been swamped or trying to say no to more things.
Speaker 1: In general, I think saying yes makes life more interesting,
Speaker 1: and I try to do this in my personal life too.
Speaker 1: So last spring is part of writing Big Time. I
Speaker 1: decided to go on a three week yes quest where
Speaker 1: I would say yes to things that sound did interesting.
Speaker 1: In this part of that, I wound up swimming with
Speaker 1: sharks in Hawaii. My oldest son really wanted to do
Speaker 1: this as part of our families already planned vacation to Oahu.
Speaker 1: He asked me to go with him and wisely timed
Speaker 1: this request to my yes quest. Now. I will tell
Speaker 1: you I don't particularly like going out in small boats
Speaker 1: on big waves. It makes me seasick. I also don't
Speaker 1: like sitting in cold water for long periods of time.
Speaker 1: I get cold very easily. And sharks I was going
Speaker 1: to be swimming with sharks. That's a little bit anxiety producing.
Speaker 1: But the truth is I had no real reason to
Speaker 1: say no, and since I was trying to say yes
Speaker 1: to things, we did it. And yes, it was a
Speaker 1: little nerve wracking, but it was also such a memorable experience.
Speaker 1: Sharks are magic. So is a day when a teenager
Speaker 1: wants to spend time with you. On the way back
Speaker 1: from swimming with those sharks, our boat past some whales
Speaker 1: surfacing in Hawaii's waters. Talk about a bonus seeing those
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember that for sure, and that definitely
Speaker 1: wouldn't have happened for me if I hadn't said yes
Speaker 1: to something outside my comfort zone. Now, I know we
Speaker 1: can't say yes to everything, but one way to think
Speaker 1: about this is that, in general, we want to spend
Speaker 1: less time doing things that we need to talk ourselves into.
Speaker 1: You are not initially excited, but you start going, well,
Speaker 1: you know it won't be too hard, it might look
Speaker 1: good on my resume. This is how we fill our
Speaker 1: lives with things that are a five or a six
Speaker 1: on a ten point scale of excitement. This is how
Speaker 1: we start to feel overscheduled with things we don't really
Speaker 1: want to do, and we feel like we can't take
Speaker 1: on anything else. Where you want to sit up and
Speaker 1: pay attention is when you start talking yourself out of something.
Speaker 1: You are initially excited, but then you start telling yourself
Speaker 1: that the logistics are going to be complicated. Maybe it
Speaker 1: is outside your comfort zone, you'll have to call in
Speaker 1: a favor from a friend, your partner, or a colleague.
Speaker 1: But that initial excitement is telling you can probably figure
Speaker 1: everything else out. So I try to say yes to
Speaker 1: interesting things because I know that it is doing interesting
Speaker 1: things that makes time feel big and abundant, not cutting
Speaker 1: things out adding them in. Yes, it might be counterintuitive,
Speaker 1: but I promise you it's true. There are a great
Speaker 1: many more practical strategies in Big Time for falling in
Speaker 1: love with your schedule and feeling like time is bigger
Speaker 1: enough for all the wonderful things you want to do.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this show, I hope you will pick
Speaker 1: up a copy and check it out. If you do,
Speaker 1: please let me know what you think. You can always
Speaker 1: reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. 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
Speaker 1: from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.