All the time in the world

Viewing time as abundant can help us spend time better

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is to try telling yourself that you have
all the time in the world. It might not be
literally true, but believing it can help us savor good

(00:27):
moments and be more patient with things that move at
a leisurely pace. When the pandemic began, many families lives
went from hyper scheduled to nothing basically overnight. Suddenly there
were no other options, and so people began to do
all sorts of time filling things like complicated lego projects,

(00:52):
thousand piece puzzles, baking extravaganzas, or reading long chapter books
with their kids. Now to me, the interesting thing about
all this is that these activities were probably possible before
the pandemic too. Even the most complicated lego projects max
out at twenty hours or so, same with puzzles. Reading

(01:15):
twenty minutes a night of short books versus thirty minutes
of parts of longer ones really isn't that big a difference.
But because people had more options, they felt like they
were too busy to do these things. And when we
feel like we are too busy, we don't think about
what we'd like to do with our time, so we
choose the things that are most effortless, like scrolling through

(01:40):
social media. So rather than devote twenty hours to a
lego project, we devote twenty hours to social media. Over
the course of two weeks. The time is the same,
but the feeling of scarcity changes choices. Things are definitely

(02:00):
starting back up now, Thank goodness. I don't have any
illusion that people will learn big lessons from lockdowns in life.
People often claim that everything has changed, but generally everything
doesn't change. But if people would like to make better
choices with leisure time in general, it helps to ask

(02:20):
this question, what would I do if I had all
the time in the world. When we feel busy, we
limit our choices. When we view time as abundant, we
stop setting those arbitrary limits. It might take forty hours
to read War and Peace, but we will spend forty

(02:43):
hours on something one way or another. It takes a
while to read through the Chronicles of Narnia, but that
time will pass anyway. It will be spent on something.
The question is just what. So you might try looking

(03:04):
at your time through this lens. If I didn't feel
like I had a million other things to do. What
would I do? And when you think about this, maybe
you'll see that you can make time even for things
that don't seem like they would fit any busy person's life.

(03:28):
In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
here's to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody,
I'd love to hear from you. You can send me
your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with

(03:49):
me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod
that's b E the number four, then Breakfast p o D.
You can also to shoot me an email at Before
Breakfast podcast at i heeart media dot com that Before
Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters. Thanks so much,
I look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is

(04:16):
a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.