Don't play jump or dive

Plan ahead to avoid last minute stress

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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 don't play jump or Dive with your schedule.
Make plans with adequate lead time so you don't have

(00:25):
to do too much on the fly. If you grew
up with access to a backyard pool, you may have
played the pool game jump or Dive. One person stands
on a diving board, and after that person launches himself
into the air, his friends shout either jump or dive.

(00:45):
Then the person, who is by now mid air maneuvers
to either jump or dive in accordance with his friend's directions.
You can probably guess that this usually results in a
belly flop, which is kind of a cross between a
jump and a dive. Now, this doesn't sound like my
idea of fun, and I think most adults would agree

(01:06):
with me, but a lot of kids find it hysterical.
That said, I have noticed that plenty of adults played
jump or Dive with their schedules. When you leave things
undecided until the last minute, you are often setting yourself
up for stress or wasted time, or an otherwise suboptimal situation.

(01:26):
But you usually don't have to do that. Suppose you
are planning to run with a friend tomorrow morning at
six am, but there is a seventy percent chance of rain.
You could wake up at five point forty and then
decide whether or not to run. But wouldn't you be
happier if you decided the night before that you will
cancel so you can sleep in. Or you could agree

(01:48):
that you will run together if it's not raining, but
get together at Starbucks to hang out if it is.
Either way you avoid the early wake up at half
asleep text exchange and deciding whether or not to run.
If you're planning to go out with a colleague for
a drink after work but realize you will almost certainly
have to work late because a big project just landed

(02:10):
on your desk, you could make a call at five
point fifteen about whether or not you can pause your
work for drinks, but it might be more considerate to
reach out in advance to see if you can shift
drinks to another day, or maybe go a little later
that day. You can skip this avoidable pivot. I know

(02:31):
plenty of people who make plans that are vague, which
is a variation on jumper dive. They'll plan to meet
up with a friend for brunch on Saturday, but what
does that even mean? Ten o'clock one o'clock and where
the specific location might add thirty minutes of time for
travel and parking. Depending on the options in your town,

(02:51):
your attire might need to be different. Will you be
eating indoors or outdoors? Instead of planning on brunch on Saturday?
Make specific plans with the time and place so you
are not holding each other's Saturday's hostage and figuring out
whether to jump or dive on the fly. Now to

(03:11):
be sure, there are some occasions when leaving things vague
on timing for at least a little while might be
the way to go. Lots of you let me know
that you enjoyed my interview with Kristen the Frugal Girl
on this podcast a few weeks ago. Both of us
generally like to make our plans ahead of time, but
the week I was looking to interview her, she had
jury duty, so we agreed that she would text me

(03:34):
in the evening if she found out that she didn't
have to go in for her duty on the next day,
since her day would suddenly be completely free. In this case,
we could choose a half hour block that happened to
be free for me. I almost always have one of
those somewhere. Being flexible on timing worked out for us there.

(03:55):
But even in that case, we weren't truly playing jump
or dive. That would be like trying to figure out
where six people can go eat dinner when you are
all hungry and a lot of the restaurants are full.
In most cases, you know that people get hungry at
regular intervals, So if you have got a group, best
to plan for that, and in general, if you need

(04:17):
to adjust plans, doing it as soon as you know
means that no one is left lurching as they jump
off the diving board. Best not to schedule a meeting
right after another meeting that always runs over, and just
hope that everyone can move the second meeting forward when
that's needed. You want to know if you are jumping
or diving before you get to the edge of the

(04:40):
diving board. 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,

(05:01):
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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