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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeart Radio.
Good morning.
This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is that it might be possible to make a little bit more of your time feel usable.
Being able to use 10% more of your time can, over the long haul, mean you can get a lot more done.
So it is easy to fantasize about long stretches of perfectly productive, uninterrupted time.
No meetings.
No Slack messages.
No quick questions from someone popping their head into the office.
No plumbers, electricians to be let into the house.
No children wanting a snack.
Just focus time for our most important work.
I don't know about you, but I am guessing that fantasy bears little resemblance to a lot of my listeners' lives.
I work for myself and yet I know I have limited stretches for focus time.
A lot of people have much less say over their schedules than I do.
But if you have been listening to Before Breakfast for a while, you know that we all have 168 hours in the week.
Those hours may have a lot of constraints and interruptions, but they are ours nonetheless.
So rather than wait for a perfect time, we are wise to make the most of them.
I am sure you can think of plenty of situations where big progress might not be possible, but maybe small progress might be.
Maybe you are working in suboptimal conditions, like on an airplane or while home taking care of a sick child.
When you are tired, when you're waiting for someone else to provide an important piece of content you need for a project, or when you just have a short amount of time.
Maybe you can't do a lot, but even in suboptimal conditions, you can often do something.
Sometimes this may be as small as setting up the presentation and putting titles on each slide.
Identifying the documents you'll need for a project or updating your calendar with meetings and deadlines related to the project.
Sometimes you write two sentences and something larger.
Maybe you get through three of 20 emails you need to send.
Perhaps it isn't much, but there are a few benefits to taking these small steps.
You are a little bit closer to your goal.
Anything you do now, you don't have to do later.
So you've made life a little easier for future you.
In addition, and I think this is most important, you get in the habit of using more of your time.
I think many of us could use about 10% more of our time if we tried and looked hard for it.
Rather than not starting something new at 445pm because the day is over, you might be able to do a few small things, which will make tomorrow feel more focused.
Rather than doing nothing...
While sitting in the waiting room at a parkour class which is where I was when I wrote the script for this right next to a seven-year-old's birthday party that was running simultaneously with my kids' class, you could write podcast scripts.
We don't have to pack things in just to pack things in.
But when you get in the habit of using a bit more of your time, eventually you don't assume an awkward 15-minute stretch of time is unusable.
You know what kind of work fits well into 15-minute stretches, or what you can do on the sidelines of your kid's soccer practice, or what you can do on plane rides.
When moments like these arise, you do something meaningful with them.
You don't just scroll on your phone.
The work you do in bits of suboptimal time also gives you momentum.
Having momentum and not starting from nothing means that when you do have optimal time, you can hit the ground running.
So the next time you find yourself with a not ideal bit of time, try to use it anyway.
Take the steps you can on the projects you are working on.
Using 10 more of our time is like getting more than an extra hour in the day, which doesn't feel like a bad thing.
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 Laura Vanderkam dot 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.
Hey guys, it's us, the Jonas Brothers.
I'm Joe.
I'm Kevin.
And I'm Nick.
And guess what?
We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas.
We invented a podcast?
Well, we didn't invent it.
We just contributed to it.
We're the first people to do podcasts.
We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions.
Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but you know.
Tired and sick.
Tired and sick.
Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Just listen.
We don't care where you hear it.
On Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends, we help make you funnier.
On this episode.
My guests Bob Odenkirk and Kids in the Hall's, Bruce McCullough, try and help the Kazoo Kid and Tazon Day be famous again.
What if there's an alternate universe show where you guys are incredibly popular?
Well, and they could travel the land doing meet and greets.
They're constantly needed at malls.
Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is an iHeart Podcast.
Guaranteed human.
