Celebrating 7 years of Before Breakfast

Laura shares her favorite advice from the first year of Before Breakfast

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
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 slightly longer one, but
instead of interviewing someone fascinating about how they take their

(00:24):
days from great to awesome, I am going to be
talking about some of the best tips I have heard
over the years and that have been shared on Before
Breakfast so all of us can make our days a
little better. Before Breakfast launched in March of twenty nineteen,

(00:44):
so this episode is celebrating seven years of the show.
This is a daily podcast, and yes, there's been a
new episode every weekday morning for the past seven years.
That is a lot of episodes, and it is a
lot of morning It's a lot of ideas on how
to do life better. For the first five or so years,

(01:07):
the show was only short episodes, approximately four to six
minutes each. Then in late twenty twenty four, I began
adding one interview episode a week so we could hear
from other people about their expertise and their strategies. It's
been fun for me to talk with all kinds of
amazing people and to share these conversations with you. Anyway,

(01:33):
today I'm going to be talking through some of my
favorite ideas from the first year of the show. If
you just joined us in the past year or so,
I encourage you to go back through the archives see
what you missed. But here is some very practical advice
from twenty nineteen that I think still holds up now.

(01:56):
For instance, on March twenty ninth, twenty nineteen, I suggested
listeners plan something fun for Sunday nights. Even people who
like their jobs can often feel a sense of trepidation
those Sunday scaries by Sunday afternoon. One way to avoid

(02:18):
those scaries is to plan in something you can anticipate
for later in the weekend. After all, if you are
meeting friends for dinner on Sunday night, you will be
thinking about your dinner rather than Monday morning for much
of Sunday afternoon, and that is a lot more fun. Yes,

(02:41):
Sunday night is a school night, so you might want
to do something simple and not plan on being out
too late. But there is no reason to lose Sunday
mentally to Monday. Enjoy every second of Sunday that you can.
Here's another twenty nineteen idea that is related to weekends.

(03:05):
On May third, twenty nineteen, I did an episode saying
don't grocery shop on weekends. Now, I know, I know
that really feels like the time it fits for a
lot of people with full time jobs. But grocery stores
are often very busy on weekends since everybody shops in,

(03:27):
so it will take a lot of time to get
in and get out and battle the crowds. Grocery shopping
on weekends also reinforces the idea that weekends are for
chores and errands. But are they? I think it might
be wise to keep the focus on family time and
rejuvenating leisure. Maybe chores and errands can be done during

(03:51):
the week when you are already in work mode. A
lot of grocery stores are open late. If you've got
a fly, maybe one parent does bedtime and the other
goes out grocery shopping. Or if you work from home
on occasion, maybe you could use what would have been

(04:11):
the commute time someday to shop. The shopping will take
less time during the week than during the madness of
a Saturday afternoon, and you will be able to use
the weekends for other things. On June sixth, twenty nineteen,
the before Breakfast tip was to schedule a mental health morning. Now.

(04:36):
This was a listener's suggestion. Someone noted that it was
often hard to take a full day of PTO if
you had various responsibilities, and when people do take PTO,
they often want to use it for longer vacations. But
it might be possible to take half a day off
and use that time for something restorative. For instance, if

(04:57):
you had a dentist appointment at eleven am, you might
purposefully take the morning off until then and do something
that would soothe your soul, reading hobbies, maybe seeing a
friend with some flexibility in their schedule. Even a little
break can go a long way toward making life feel
more sustainable. If you schedule your mental health morning and

(05:22):
for a week or two ahead of time, then you
can look forward to it, and I believe that anticipation
is one of the best forms of self care out there.
In that same vein of taking small breaks, on June twelfth,
twenty nineteen, we talked about how Wednesday is the best

(05:43):
day to work from home now. This episode aired long
before COVID, when working from home became a lot more common.
Yes before Breakfast was around before the pandemic. Back in
twenty nineteen, people were writing whole think pieces on the
angst of negotiation to work from home just one day
a week. Then, as now, the most common day people

(06:06):
would ask for was Friday, And on some level it
makes sense, as Fridays tend to be slower, people thought
their managers would be most likely to approve Fridays as well,
people often work less on Fridays, or maybe leave a
little bit earlier, and so the perceived opportunity cost is lower.

(06:27):
But the problem is that buys into the idea that
people who are working from home aren't really working. Choosing
Friday just limits the damage. Now you and I both
know this isn't true. Many of us work quite hard
from home. So I suggested that people consider negotiating to
work from home on Wednesdays. That way, if you have

(06:52):
a long commute, you will only have to do it
twice in a row. Wednesday provides a nice mid way
week break from the usual routines. You could use Wednesday
to hunker down and work on all the deliverables coming
out of the meetings on the other days. I'm not
sure how many people took me up on this idea

(07:13):
to negotiate to work from home on Wednesday, but I
still think it's a good one. So We're going to
take a quick ad break and then I will be
back with some more historic Before Breakfast ideas from the
first year. Well we are back. I am sharing some

(07:38):
of my favorite tips from the first year of Before
Breakfast as we celebrate the show's seventh anniversary. So, speaking
of dealing with long commutes, as we were talking about
before the break on July tenth of twenty nineteen, I
suggested people try to commute with a friend. Not every day,

(08:00):
of course, but given how much people hate their commutes
and how many people say they wish they could see
their friends more, I am surprised at how little this
actually happens. For a lot of people. Commuting time is
almost entirely wasted. Turning it into relationship building time would

(08:23):
massively upgrade the experience. Now, I know that carpooling involves
a fair amount of planning and coordination, not everyone lives
near each other or works in similar places. Even for
people who do live near each other or even live
with each other and who work near each other, it

(08:44):
might be a little inconvenient. It might add a few
minutes onto the trip. You might lose a sense of
absolute flexibility on when you can leave. But what an upside.
If a friend, their family member, or partner works anywhere
near you, it would be worth trying even just one

(09:06):
day a week or one day every two weeks as
a way to reclaim a few minutes and make something
that is not fun feel a lot more fun. On
July twenty fifth of twenty nineteen, our Before Breakfast episodes
suggested that people read at lunch. When people take a

(09:27):
lunch break, the temptation is often to read headlines or
scroll around on social media if they're not with somebody else,
and it feels kind of relaxing. But reading a real
book would feel even more indulgent. And this reading time
does add up. If you read for fifteen minutes at

(09:50):
lunch five times a week, that's another one point two
five hours of reading per week. A lot of books
take about three to four to read, so if you
do the math, that's like adding another book every three
to four weeks right there. That gives you an extra
fourteen to seventeen extra books per year without really giving

(10:13):
anything up. That certainly sounds like a win to me.
Instead of losing time in general to small things, collecting
these bits of time ephemera and focusing them on one
thing can make life feel a lot more fulfilling. On
August twelfth of twenty nineteen, a listener suggested a hack

(10:37):
which became an episode called Create a Better to Do List.
The idea was to give all tasks on your to
do list an actual time. The basic idea here is
that tasks take time, so if there is not a
designated time to do the tasks, they are probably not

(10:58):
going to happen. This is a very simple idea, but
it is so true, and so many people try to
ignore it. They put things on the to do list
with no available time to do them, and then get
frustrated when they don't make it through their to do list. Now,
some of us have reasonably flexible jobs and so we

(11:21):
don't have to be quite as rigid about exact times
for everything on our to do lists. But if you
do happen to have a job or a situation where
time is tight, as you are making your to do
list for the next day, figure out when you will
do each task, where on your calendar will it go.

(11:43):
Maybe you will need to move things around, or maybe
you will need to limit your to do list. You
might have to make some hard choices, but you know
that is not a bad thing. Choices lead to a
to do list that is actually doable. On September twenty three,

(12:03):
twenty nineteen, I suggested something that could make email more fun.
Reach out to someone you admire. If someone has done
something cool in the world, send them an email and
let them know that you thought it was cool or
if it had an impact on you. Now, if the

(12:24):
particular person is really well known or famous, they might
not respond, but a lot of these emails do in
fact get read. You will feel good sending it, and
most likely the person will feel good reading it, or
at least someone on the person's team will feel good
knowing that they are doing good in the world. There's

(12:47):
really no downside. This is true for sending positive emails
in general. Let an old friend or colleague know your
thinking about them. I'm guessing that you couldn't mind getting
a similar email from someone else, so that can be
your guiding principle for whether to send these things. On

(13:09):
September twenty sixth, twenty nineteen, I shared one of my
favorite suggestions for how people with young kids can have
more real leisure time. Give each parent one night off.
The idea is that if you are in a two
parent family, or at least your co parenting with someone,

(13:30):
each of you gets one night off from caregiving duties
to go do something that is not work and is
not taking care of family members, but is fun for you.
For instance, maybe one of you sings an a choir
on Tuesdays and the other person plays in a pickleball
league on Thursdays. The kids are still with a parent

(13:51):
on each of these nights, but each parent gets to
feel like a full person, maybe even keeping up with
interests they have from before kids. A lot of parents
feel like they have no time for fun, but I
find that many times people aren't using all the resources

(14:11):
that are available to them. Your co parent is a resource,
and you have a joint pool of hours. Each of
you can take some time for you, as long as
you trade off and keep it fair. Now, I know
all families don't look like this, but maybe you could

(14:33):
swap nights with someone else in your life to take
a night for you. A friend, a neighbor, an extended
family member. I'm betting that it can still work. We're
going to take one more quick ad break and then
I will be back with some more historic Before Breakfast advice. Well,

(15:00):
I am back talking ideas from the first year of
Before Breakfast as we celebrate this show's seventh anniversary on
October eighth, twenty nineteen. I suggested that listeners become a
regular somewhere. A lot of people feel disconnected these days,

(15:22):
maybe even a little bit lonely. It's good to go
somewhere where everybody knows your name, as they sang in
the theme song for Cheers. If you and your family
like to go out to eat twice a month, maybe
you make a point of going to the same restaurant
for one of those times, so you eat at the
same place twelve times a year and you get to

(15:44):
know the establishment. Or maybe you always go to the
same bar with your pickleball league after your games. Maybe
you and your running buddy stop at the same coffee
shop for coffee after your run every Saturday morning, and
so you get to know the people who work there
at that time and the regulars who are also getting

(16:05):
their coffee. You can learn people's names. You could say hello,
and even though you don't have a close relationship with
these people, you'll feel like someone in the universe knows
about you and knows you exist. Plus, you develop favorites
that you could start to tell others about and have

(16:26):
some knowledge here everyone likes the guacamole at that particular
Mexican place. You know, that sort of thing. On December sixth,
twenty nineteen, we talked about the wisdom of trying forty
minute meetings. There is no real reason that meetings have
to default to thirty or sixty minutes. If you might

(16:49):
be tempted to schedule something for an hour, see if
you can construct the agenda to be done in forty
minutes instead. This leaves time for making sure everyone is
clear on all the next steps, and maybe even doing
some of those next steps. You can send those emails
right then. This also lets people go to the bathroom

(17:10):
or get a cup of coffee and get to their
next meeting on time. One of the reasons people often
feel frantic or so behind during the workday is that
we often don't build in time for transitions. But even
if you are meeting virtually and not in person, transitions

(17:32):
don't take zero time. They do take sometime build them
in and everyone will be a lot more calm and
a lot happier. Finally, on December sixteenth, I suggested that
busy people make mornings into family time. Sometimes the time

(17:55):
after work can be hard to use well. People are tired.
Young kids might need to go to bed on the
early side, which limits how much you can see them then.
But from my experience, many young kids also wake up
at the crack of dawn. If your kid is up
at let's say five thirty am, and you don't need

(18:16):
to leave for work until eight thirty am, this is
three hours you could potentially be spending together, and my
guess is you don't need all of it for getting ready.
With a few exceptions, whatever playing you would have done
in the evening can be done in the morning. Yep,
you can go to a playground at seven thirty in

(18:38):
the morning if you like, even if you don't have
little kids. Trying a family breakfast or building in enough
time into a morning to talk with your partner or
talk with your teenage children can make mornings feel a
lot more satisfying. They don't just need to be about
racing out the door. We can take our days from

(18:59):
g to awesome by being more mindful of the time
that already exists and moving our mindset from surviving to thriving. Anyway,
those are some of my favorite tips from the first
year of the show. Thank you so much for listening
to Before Breakfast. It has been a great seven years

(19:22):
since March of twenty nineteen, and I hope you will
continue to tune in every morning for more tips on
taking days from great to awesome. What have been your
favorite episodes of Before Breakfast? You can let me know
or let me know any feedback and what you'd like
to see more of at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.

(19:47):
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,

(20:09):
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
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