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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Good morning.
This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is to unplug to get things done.
Consciously putting yourself somewhere without digital distractions might help you power through something you have been procrastinating on.
So a few weeks ago, the Wi-Fi went out at my house.
It's kind of a long story about how this all happened, and it wound up being out for about a week.
In the first day, before we figured out some workarounds, we truly had very little digital access.
I couldn't load webpages or email on my phone when I was inside the house, and my laptop couldn't access the internet either.
This was all frustrating.
But there was this silver lining.
I had been putting off working on a draft of an article.
On Friday, after my internet went out, I couldn't do a lot of other things.
And I couldn't pretend to be productive by checking my email a lot.
So I wrote a draft.
It only took me a few hours when I wasn't giving myself the option of doing a million other things at the same time.
Perhaps you've experienced something similar on a plane.
Now, I know you can get Wi-Fi on a lot of planes these days, but sometimes you can't if you are over water and sometimes the system is a little buggy or expensive.
If it is a short flight, I tend not to make an attempt.
I have often assigned myself a writing project on the plane and found I have been able to crank something sizable out by the time we land.
We often rely on connectivity to take a break from work.
Now, we don't necessarily think of it that way.
We can convince ourselves that the emails need to get sent and such, and maybe they do, but maybe not immediately.
Depriving ourselves of easy breaks sometimes means we soldier through.
If you find that to be the case for you, then maybe you can consciously unplug for a bit.
Now, I would not recommend asking your yard crew to accidentally cut the cable, which is what turned out to happen for us, but you could create the equivalent.
Put your phone in airplane mode or put it somewhere else.
Go somewhere with no Wi-Fi.
Assign yourself something that is going to take some serious concentration to do.
Now, you will probably want to check things at some point, and that is fine.
It is actually really hard to concentrate on anything for more than 90 minutes or so.
So you might take a 10-minute break to make sure nothing disastrous has happened in your world.
My guess is that it hasn't.
And hopefully that truth will empower you to try disconnecting more often.
In any case, we eventually got the Wi-Fi working again, so I haven't had to go work in Starbucks or the library.
I can check email constantly if I wish to.
But remembering all I got done on that Friday, I am trying not to.
It is best to keep these things in check.
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening.
And here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas or feedback, you can reach me at laura at lauravandercam.com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeart Media.
For more podcasts from iHeart Media, please visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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