Hey everybody, the time has finally come.
This week, starting October 7th through October 11th, that's Monday through Friday everybody, we are revealing the Iconic 400.
Yes, Bo and Yang and I famously missed our 400th episode here on Las Culturistas, but we are ready to reveal the Iconic 400.
Who is on the list?
Does it matter? No.
Will it be fun? Yeah.
There might even be a surprise or two in there, so listen carefully.
Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey friends, I'm Jessica Capshaw.
And this is Camilla Luddington.
And we have a new podcast, Call It What It Is.
You may know us from Graceland Memorial, but did you know that we are actually besties in real life?
And as all besties do, we navigate the highs and lows of life together.
Big or small, we are there.
And now here we are opening up the friendship circle.
To you, listen to Call It What It Is on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Good morning. This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's episode is going to be a longer one.
It's part of my series of interviews with people talking about how they take their days from great to awesome.
I am so excited to introduce you today to Kathleen Paley, who is a lawyer, a dedicated volunteer, a mother, and a podcaster, among other things.
And what I love about talking with Kathleen is that she is always looking for ways to make the world around her better, as she is also looking for ways to make her own life run well.
So Kathleen, welcome to the show.
Good morning. Thank you for having me.
I'm just honored to be here.
Awesome. Well, please tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Well, I'll try not to repeat what you just shared, but you're right.
I'm a lawyer and a mom.
I have two teen, preteen kiddos, and I'm a litigator at a big law firm in DC.
And you put those together.
That's a lot to handle, but I don't want that to be all of life.
So I have a few volunteer gigs and have so many kind of thoughts about using our time and our resources in effective, efficient ways that I was like, you know what?
I got a startup podcast, too, to talk about all this.
So there are a lot of balls in the air, and that makes for a very busy, but also very fun life.
Awesome. Well, I wonder if you could talk through a little bit about your morning routine.
And from what I understand, you have more of a hybrid schedule where some days you are working from home and some days you are in your office and obviously some days you're on the road as well.
But maybe you could talk through what your morning routine looks like on those different days and how you figured out what works for you.
All right. Yes, you're very correct.
I will say the days they're on the road, I have no morning routine except get up and just like start grinding for work.
But when home, there are two kind of templates.
Mondays and Fridays, I work from home.
And that gives a lot of flexibility in terms of how the morning goes.
Now, one of the things I think is incredibly valuable to my own values in the life I want to live is I want to take my kids to the bus stop.
And so even though I have a teen who is over six feet tall and does not want to be taken to the bus stop, we still walk together in the morning.
And it's a nice few minutes to just chat and very relaxed.
So on work from home mornings, I get up at 6 .15 and we are out the door by 6 .30 going to the bus stop.
But that gives a lot of flexibility between about 6 .30 and 9 o 'clock.
Now, I used to feel like as soon as I was done with official parental duties, I should start working.
So by 6 .45 or 7 a .m., I should be doing billable, lawyery work.
And with time, I realized that that does not build the kind of life I want.
I'm going to do all the work that needs to be done, but it doesn't need to be done at that time.
So now on those mornings when I'm working from home, between about 6 .45 and 9 o 'clock, I use that time for things that I find valuable.
That includes things like, at this point, drafting podcast scripts and reading and spending time with my other kid or going sometimes to just go for a walk.
And it's just lovely, especially now that the fall weather is starting to arrive, to just go for a walk, stretch your legs, clear your thoughts, get sort of energized for the day.
And so that means two mornings a week, Mondays and Fridays.
I have about two and a half hours of flexible time to do stuff that I find life -affirming.
I also throw in a load of laundry, unload the dishwasher, do those sorts of things to keep the daily rhythms of family life going.
But those don't actually take all that much time.
They take kind of a mental load, but they don't take a lot of time.
So this morning, we're filming on a Friday, and I took the kid to the bus stop.
And then I wrote out some interview questions for my own podcast.
I read for a while, I journaled for a while, and I went for a walk.
And so you do that twice a week.
That's five hours a week, a really good kind of...
You could almost call it...
I kind of hate the term self -care, but in a way, it's like self -care time.
Now, three days a week, I go into the office.
That starts with, take the kid to the bus stop and then go straight to the office.
But that means I'm getting there really early, like in the seven o 'clock hour.
Which gives a great jumpstart to the day to get through the backlog of things that need to be done and before the office fills up.
And so I like that sort of quiet, slightly contemplative time at the office three mornings a week when it's just me and my caffeine source and my inbox.
And I try to very much match the work to the energy levels and the rhythms that are going on.
So I can blast through a whole ton of stuff before people arrive.
Awesome. Yeah, mornings really are a great time to get things done.
And I love that since Monday and Friday or work from home days, you even start the week with a big dose of this morning self -care, right?
It feels a little bit different than just diving straight into the office.
It's probably a very different sort of thing.
I mean, that really dramatically reduces those Sunday scaries when you know, oh, tomorrow morning, I've got a little bit of flexibility.
There's a little bit of a mental bridge to get into the week full speed.
Absolutely. So your podcast is called Minimalish.
So like minimalism, but ends with minimalish.
So what do you mean by minimalish?
And what is appealing to you about sort of a lighter version of minimalism?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I think the driving force for me is that I want to remove distractions so that I can focus on the very many, many cool things that life presents, all of these opportunities.
The issue is I think sometimes the term minimalism is it's hijacked a little bit into people who talk about like, I want to do nothing.
I want total emptiness of the schedule.
And it's its own little cult in a way that does not appeal to me.
I do not want emptiness.
I do not want nothing.
That is totally an appealing.
And so that sort of brand of minimalism you see online, I think that's boring and it can come off as sort of preachy or self -righteous.
And what I'm looking for is figuring out how to focus on what I figure in my own life to be the right stuff.
But when there's so much going on that does mean needing to kind of cut out the clutter.
And so there are four kinds of clutter you could say that I've tried to cut out in life.
One is visual clutter, stuff management.
Just, you know, when you've got kids and you've got a lot of balls in the air, I think we both have dogs.
There's a lot to keep going and having just less stuff around, particularly for those of us who are sort of distracted by visual clutter is helpful.
Just having fewer things to manage.
I also try to cut out schedule clutter and keep the commitment levels to the right level.
And one example is my kids are both pretty competitive athletes and we want them to be able to play at a competitive level, but we don't want entire weekends every weekend to be taken up with tournaments where you're driving six hours away, you're spending all day.
You're staying the night.
You're doing a tournament the next day, too.
That's not the right level of commitment for us.
So schedule clutter, we let them play in a travel league that has two games a week.
Not like an AAP basketball league where you're doing the tournament every weekend.
We don't want to be essentially taxi drivers for our entire lives.
So schedule clutter, we try to keep things at a level that lets them compete, but doesn't ruin the family dynamic.
I also try to cut out financial clutter.
That includes being very reflective on what spending actually gives value to our lives and what doesn't and really questioning assumptions, questioning the defaults that we tend to fall into, particularly when life is busy and you start throwing money at everything.
I want to figure out where I really get value from throwing money at a problem.
And right now, I have some cleaning folks in my home because I get value from having someone help with that.
But there are other things that we don't throw money at.
That removing financial clutter also involves eliminating debt.
We just paid off everything as quickly as possible.
And that is such a reduced mental load of just worry.
It reduces your worry when you don't have debt.
And then finally, I know I've gone on a long time here.
I try to remove mental clutter.
And the way I put it is, maybe this is just part of being in your 40s, but I've really stopped caring about the judgments of others and what they're going to say about my choices.
I'm willing to be a little bit unconventional.
I'm willing to be a little bit weird.
And if someone thinks that it's strange, I really don't care.
We're going to live lives on our own terms.
So that's my take on minimalish, cutting out various forms of clutter so that we can live the lives that make us sort of very individually, particularly most satisfied.
Sounds good. Well, we're going to take a quick ad break, and then we're going to come back and learn about a very cool project that Kathleen did before turning 40.
We will never really know why we have worked tirelessly on this list.
I'm Michael Baubaro.
That's really good.
Once you hear I'm Michael Baubaro, you know exactly who was talking.
And we really think it's going to resonate.
Happily flying a pride flag.
Also there might be a little bit of a surprise or two in there.
So listen carefully, hint, hint, Friday.
Listen to Lost Culture East us on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey friends. I'm Jessica Capshaw.
And this is Camilla Luddington.
And we have a new podcast, Call It What It Is.
You may know us from Graceland Memorial, but did you know that we are actually besties in real life?
And as all besties do, we navigate the highs and lows of life together.
And what does that look like?
A thousand pep talks.
A million I've got used.
Some very urgent I'm coming offers.
Because, I don't know, let's face it, life can get even crazier than a season finale of Grey's Anatomy.
And now here we are opening up the friendship circle to you.
Someone's cheating?
We've got you on that.
In -laws or in -lying?
Let's get into it. Toxic friendship?
Air it out. We're on your side to help you with your concerns.
Talk about ours. And every once in a while, bring on an awesome guest to get their take on the things that you bring us.
While we may be a license to advise, we're going to do it anyway.
Listen to Call It What It Is on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
Well, we are back for those just joining us.
This is the longer version of Before Breakfast.
Once a week or so, I am doing an interview with someone who is doing cool things in their lives, taking their days from great to awesome.
We are talking with Kathleen Paley, who is a lawyer, a mother, a volunteer, and the host of the Minimalish Podcast.
So, Kathleen, you did a really cool project of 40 acts of kindness before turning 40, I believe.
I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that project and maybe just highlight one or two of the things you did as part of it.
Yeah, I wanted to memorialize turning 40 in some kind of way.
But I was not seeking a big birthday party or anything.
That actually turns out to be a good thing because I turned 40 in the summer of 2020.
So, if there had been a desire for a big birthday party, that was not going to happen with the pandemic going on.
But it's late 2019 and I just wanted to memorialize this time and do something special.
And I thought, well, there are bucket lists of 40 before 40, things to do, adventures to have, and that all sounded fun.
But I thought, what about 40 small acts of kindness?
Things that we can do within our community, within our families, that would just help brighten someone's day?
And so, I put together a list.
Took a few months iterating on it and put together a list with a few categories of acts of kindness to do.
And over the course of the next six months or so, I knocked out almost all the list.
And it was a lot of fun.
The categories included things like goods and money, giving goods and money, respect and encouragement, time and talent, earth and environment, and then within the family, intra -family acts of kindness.
So, a few of my favorite ones.
I was shocked to learn that in the community that we live in, in Northern Virginia, which seems quite economically comfortable, there is still a remarkably high percentage of kids in schools who face food insecurity.
They may get free lunch at school, but when they go home, those cabinets are empty.
And it turns out that within our community, there is a program where you can drop off shelf -stable foods at elementary schools, and they will very sort of covertly, quietly, so as not to embarrass the kids, put food into kids' backpacks that they can take home so that there is an actual dinner on the table.
And so, one of the 40 acts of kindness was, I went and bought several hundred pounds of rice and several hundred pounds of dried beans and weighed down the car.
It was kind of sagging in the back, but took them to one of the local elementary schools and dropped them off so that they would have their pantry full so that all of these kids could go home and have meals, particularly over the weekends.
That was so much fun, and I think that there's some value in really doing physical acts yourself.
I think you feel more involved in the process of helping.
I also like to cut checks for things as well, but there was something about the very physical nature of that that I found inspiring.
And then maybe you can talk about one that's a bit more person -to -person that you did, something encouraging somebody.
Yes. I actually, I've received some books over the years from folks where they said, I loved this and you may really value it.
I thought, I want to do that for someone, too.
So I decided to choose five books that I have found to be life -changing or transformative and to give them to friends with a little note saying why I thought that they may find it valuable.
In fact, one of those books was 168 Hours That You Have More Time Than You Think by a certain Laura Vanderkamp.
I have found it really inspirational back in my earlier parenting -lawyering journey when I was just starting off with thinking about how to make this better, richer life.
And I actually gave it to, I think, two or three friends.
Awesome. Well, I'm glad to hear that.
I did not ask Kathleen to say that, but I'm very excited to hear.
She absolutely denied it.
Oh, that's wonderful.
So if somebody else was going to undertake a project like this, doing a large number of random acts of kindness, I wonder if there was something you learned along the way or some advice you'd give to them to make it a more effective project.
I think setting out in advance the sort of general categories that you want these acts to be in or general groups that you want to help can help structure the thinking and can help sort of spur on creativity.
And then also just ask thoughtful people in your life, you know, hey, how do you think I could help with local animals or whatever it is your priority is.
And sometimes you can actually get pretty insightful, thoughtful ideas from others, but you need to give them a prompt, not just what can I do that's nice to say I want to help the local poor.
How can I do that? What do you think?
So, yeah, structure a little bit and then just seek inspiration from others who you respect.
Awesome. We're going to take one more quick ad break and then we'll be back to learn about Kathleen's current time management challenges.
Hey, everybody, the time has finally come this week starting Monday, October 7th going daily through Friday, October 11th.
Bo and Yang and I, Matt Rogers are unveiling the iconic 400.
Yes, these are the top 400 people in all of culture and we're unveiling all of them.
Number 372, Nancy Kerrigan.
We will never really know why we have worked tirelessly on this list.
I'm Michael Babarro.
Once you hear I'm Michael Babarro, you know exactly who was talking and we really think it's going to resonate.
Christian. She is not a Christian happily flying a pride flag.
Also, there might be a little bit of a surprise or two in there.
So listen carefully.
Hint, hint Friday. Listen to Lost Culture East us on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
How do you feel about Biscuits?
Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the Biscuits.
I was a lady rebel.
Like, what does that even mean?
The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image.
It's right here in black and white and prints.
A lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch.
He's a leader. He chooses hills that he want to die on.
Why would we want to be the losing team?
I just take all the others to about it.
Segregation academies.
When civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools, these charter schools were exempt from this.
Bigger than a flag or mascot.
You have to be ready for serious backlash.
Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
While we are back, this is one of the longer before breakfast episodes.
I am interviewing Kathleen Paley, who is a lawyer, mother, volunteer podcaster, many different hats.
She talked about a project she did of doing 40 acts of kindness before turning 40.
Kathleen, I wonder if you could talk about your biggest time management challenge right now.
My biggest time management challenge is that I am a sucker for adding projects to my life.
I did recently start doing a podcast.
It's how to work in more while not feeling harried.
One of the ways I've been able to do this is to just look for what are the low -value pockets of time that I'm not wasting but maybe not using optimally.
We started this episode talking about Mondays and Fridays from home where there's a big chunk of time, several hours in the morning.
I've started to leverage that time to do more work.
It's not necessarily the podcast work, but shift more things into those time frames that I might otherwise do at another point.
I'm using the tiles or the pieces of time, moving them around the way you've talked about so much in your work.
By adding more, I've made myself be creative about looking at where the low -value time is being spent and seeing where I can eliminate that waste.
I'm using my Mondays and Fridays better and using little pockets of time on the weekends when I might have otherwise been kind of scrolling or just puttering around the house, carving out a half an hour here and an hour there to move the tiles around and be able to do the volunteer work and the podcast
stuff and the mom stuff and all those billable hours.
What's one of your volunteer gigs right now that is a project you've taken on but is adding meaning to your life?
For the last, I think we're on year five now.
I've been a commissioner on our city's economic development authority.
I did a two -year stint as the chair and then timed out under our bylaws, so I'm back to not chairing meetings anymore, but we work on helping small businesses, both retail and sort of more traditional accounting firms and such, but helping small businesses in the city thrive through a variety of programs
and support systems.
Doing that work is really exciting because over time, you do start to see a change in your community.
The five -year mark, I'm now seeing projects that we started years ago really bear fruit, and it's incredibly exciting when you walk around your community and you say, we had a role in that.
We helped with that.
This place is better because of something that we did.
It's all, you know, we have staff, we have a bunch of volunteers, and they work together beautifully to make the place that we live more vibrant.
Awesome. Kathleen, what is something you have done this week to take a day from great to awesome?
Yes. I have recently, so it's this week -ish, I have rediscovered my love of the library.
I had thought, oh, I like audio books, but somehow that childhood or young adulthood love of reading the written word on a page had somehow faded, and I realized it wasn't that it faded.
I just didn't have anything I wanted to read.
And so recently, I've been going to the library.
So rediscovering the library, but then taking it up a notch in the last couple of weeks by using my Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday commute time on the Metro to read a paper book.
So now I'm getting an hour each day, three days a week, reading a book in peace.
You know, there's jump clutter going on around you.
There's movement going on around you.
But by just shifting that Metro time and not doing like an audio book, but actually reading on paper, I'm getting that great satisfaction of reading something on paper and the turn of the page.
Again, that physical act, the holding the book, there's something special about it.
And so the great to awesome is getting back into reading and finding time to do it that isn't taking away from anything else.
Yeah. And since you're leaving early enough on those days, you're probably getting a seat.
I would imagine it's slightly harder to read if you're holding onto a poll, like flipping back and forth between the pages.
Correct? Yes. Yes. In the afternoon, it is pretty crowded.
And I'm flipping the pages while like wrapping an arm around the pole.
But in the morning, it's a seat.
It's beautiful. It's a seat.
It's beautiful. That's so funny.
I have memories of many, many years ago, I had a year long internship that I lived in the greater Washington DC area.
And I had a fairly long commute.
And I wound up reading, I'm gonna say it wrong, but Anna Karenina Tolstoy's novel on the Metro.
20 minutes a day, you know, you get through it over the course of a month or two.
It was a it was a good read.
You know, past the time.
I hope you're enjoying your reading in the morning as well.
Do you have a particular life hack or strategy you want to share with our listeners?
I always love to ask people if there's something really cool that you've been trying that's made life more efficient that you could share with us.
Well, one thing we've been doing recently is whenever there's a situation where someone's going to give us a gift, like holidays, you know, those are coming up, you know, anniversary, things like that.
We've been saying, can you just give us a gift card to a restaurant?
It's because one, I'm trying to just spend less money eating out and being more efficient in that way.
And two, we want to do that.
But we're also big foodies.
So I don't want clutter at home.
I don't want physical stuff, more physical stuff at home.
But I do want to go explore new restaurants and try new foods.
So just letting the folks in your life know, like restaurant gift cards, please, that is that is a very welcome gift has been super in terms of now we get more experiences that we like and we don't have another vase sitting around that's just going to gather dust.
Exactly. With a little extra tip for our listeners that you need to make sure you use the gift cards then.
So when it comes in, make sure you've got a reservation and a date on the calendar because otherwise those become clutter in a different way.
They do. Yeah, Laura, actually we, my kids have accumulated gift cards from birthday gifts over time.
Although I do swear that 13 year old boys just circulate the same Amazon gift card back and forth.
But they've accumulated a bunch of gift cards.
And I took a page from your playbook and told my youngest, we're having a gift card day.
We're going to use up all of your gift cards.
So we went to Dick's Sporting Goods.
We went to a local bookstore.
We did an Amazon order.
And he was like, Oh, that was actually a lot of fun.
Like yes, buddy. And now you have stuff you want.
And I don't have a drawer full of your gift cards.
Exactly. Exactly. Awesome.
Well, Kathleen, this has been great.
Can you tell our listeners where they can find you?
Yes. I mentioned a couple of times.
I now have a podcast.
It's the Minimalish Mom podcast.
If you have any interest in listening, it's on Apple podcast and Spotify.
You can also reach out on Instagram.
It's Minimalish Mom.
The podcast name came from the fact I've had that handle since like 2015 or something.
So it was just the easiest way to name things.
But I would love to connect to folks who share an interest in using our time and resources better.
I think it's a lot of fun.
So please reach out.
Well, we have a lot of people listening to this podcast who want to use their time and resources better.
So Kathleen, thank you so much for joining us.
And thanks to everyone who has been listening.
I would love your feedback about this interview series, particularly if you decide to adopt Kathleen's project of doing random acts of kindness.
I would love to hear about that.
You can reach me at laura .lauravandercam .com.
And 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 .lauravandercam .com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, the time has finally come.
This week, starting October 7th through October 11th, that's Monday through Friday, everybody, we are revealing the iconic 400.
Yes, Bo and Yang and I famously missed our 400th episode here on Las Culturistas, but we are ready to reveal the iconic 400.
Who is on the list?
Does it matter? No.
Will it be fun? Yeah, there might even be a surprise or two in there.
So listen carefully.
Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, friends, I'm Jessica Capshaw.
And this is Camilla Luddington.
And we have a new podcast, Call It What It Is.
You may know us from Graceland Memorial, but did you know that we are actually besties in real life?
And as all besties do, we navigate the highs and lows of life together, big or small, we're there.
And now here we are opening up the friendship circle to you.
Listen to Call It What It Is on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
