Consider the arc of a month

Look forward a month to manage your calendar well

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to think about the arc of a month.
Taking a few moments at the beginning of the month

(00:23):
to think about what you need to do and what
you are looking forward to can make any stretch of
time feel more doable and interesting. Longtime listeners know that
I believe most people live their lives in weeks. A
week is the unit of repeat in the pattern of
our lives, and by looking at one hundred and sixty

(00:45):
eight hours, you will have a pretty good sense of
what someone's life truly looks like. I generally plan my
life in weeks, but lately I've been thinking a little
bit more about months. By taking a few minutes at
the beginning of a month to think about what's going on,
what I need to do, and what I'm looking forward to,

(01:06):
I can plan time more holistically. Maybe I can move
something to a lower key week, or maybe I need
to add something to a time that's looking kind of dreary.
A key thing this practice does is remind you what
the weekends are for any given month. The last weekend
of the month can seem a ways away from the

(01:26):
vantage point of the first, but if there is something
more elaborate you would like to do, getting a rough
idea far ahead of time makes it more likely to happen.
You also keep yourself from getting blindsided by big stuff.
Maybe you know on some level that you have a
big deadline on the twenty seventh of a given month

(01:48):
that seems far away, but you are not actively thinking
about the fact that you're going to that conference from
the nineteenth to the twenty third, and you've got family
visiting the week before that. Knowing you to have all
that on your plate can remind you to work ahead
earlier in the month, so you're not quite so crunched
at the end. Alternately, you might see that you're going

(02:12):
to get slammed in the first week or two, but
the last two weeks of the month are pretty open now.
You know to try to keep them that way so
you can recover after going through the ringer, rather than
simply putting things there without thinking about it. There might
also be days that it's just wise to know about.

(02:33):
I know I sometimes forget about the random half days
at my kids' schools. Looking ahead a month reminds me
to get those on the calendar, and if things are
looking kind of grim, well, it's always good to put
something fun into the near future. I know the early
days of January felt much better for me when I

(02:54):
decided to put two fun Friday night activities on different
weekends through the month. It was not just a cold
and dreary month. January was a month where I went
to see a Sixers game and I went to Boston
with a friend. You don't need to spend much time
on this. I don't, and if I forget to do it.

(03:15):
Planning life just in terms of weeks and then seasons
is fine. But I know a lot of people do
get some sort of fresh month energy as they at
least metaphorically flip their calendar pages. If that is true
for you, then there's no harm in treating a month
as a unit and looking at all of it. You

(03:35):
just might wind up with more fun on the calendar
or more space if that's what you want by looking ahead.
In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for

(04:01):
listening to before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback.
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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(04:24):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.