Even a busy day has downtime

Learn to use bits of time, even if the situation isn't perfect

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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 that even a full day can have downtime.
Even if some of this downtime is contaminated as the

(00:24):
phrase goes or is chopped up, it's often still there
to some degree. By learning to see this time and
use it intentionally, it is possible to enjoy life a
lot more. Because I have tracked my time for eleven
years now, I have become quite aware of the give

(00:47):
and take aspects of time. Some days feel very full,
with lots of work or activities stretching into the evening.
Others feel more open. But I can see that almost universally,
even the busy days have some amount of time that
is not claimed by things I need to do. Maybe

(01:09):
it's that I'm in my bed at ten twenty but
don't turn off the light until ten forty five, That
is twenty five minutes. Or maybe it's a different sort
of stretch, like I'm waiting at a kid's concert for
twenty five minutes because I had to drop the kid
off early and the actual performance hasn't started yet. Sometimes
the chunks are small. I need to have my little

(01:31):
guy get his shoes on at eight forty five am
if I'm driving him to school and it's eight thirty five,
so I don't really have time to start focused work,
And so I don't, but that time will be spent
on something. Any given day might feature all three of
these sorts of available space. They don't look like a

(01:52):
day at the spa for sure. So if my idea
of leisure time is a day at the spa, I
might be tempted to say I have no free time,
but that's not true. These chunks do add up to
an hour. So what do I want to do at
that time? I'll admit that I generally do what most

(02:13):
of us do, which is read headlines, check texts and emails,
watch short videos, and generally putter around on my phone.
But if you told me, hey, Laura, you'll get an
hour for some sort of hobby today, even on this
busy day, what would you like to do with it?
I am not sure that reading comments on an article

(02:33):
online and deleting emails would be my first choice. I
don't think it would be my second or third choice either.
So the key breakthrough is to stop writing off these
smaller contaminated bits of time as unusable. They are not
completely discretionary. Of course, I'm not going to play the

(02:54):
piano right before bed if kids are sleeping, nor will
I sing if I am waiting for someone Elsa's concert
to start. Ten minutes is not enough time to get
changed for a full workout and do that. But there
is a big difference between something and nothing. That hour
of downtime, chopped up as it might be, will be

(03:17):
used for something. The question is what longtime listeners know that.
One of my favorite suggestions is to put ebooks on
your phone. I love reading things in print, It's really
my first choice, but the convenience of ebooks is hard
to beat. You can get them instantly if you have
internet access and you have your phone with you all

(03:40):
the time. It is as easy to open an ebook
as to open Instagram or email. So if you can
train yourself to do that, you could easily get an
extra hour of reading time each day. That would be
enough to read an extra one to two books per week.
One of my big breakthrough the last few years has

(04:01):
been to listen to things during this downtime with some intention.
Listening to an hour of music. A day is enough
time to get through all the works of Mozart in
a year if I know that's what I want to
do and put in the right cave number. When some
downtime shows up, you could do something creative. Of course,

(04:23):
write a line or two an a journal if you've
got your phone, take some interesting photos. Sometimes needlework is
easy to pick up in small bits of time, as
is coloring. But the first step in all of this
is noticing when this time is happening. So, even if
today is busy, do try to notice every thirty minutes

(04:46):
or so look at what you are doing. Is it
something required like work, housework, childcare, personal care, or travel
time related to those things, or is it something more morphous?
If so, could this time be repurposed for intentional leisure.

(05:08):
If that doesn't do it for you, here's another trick.
Start reading a real page turner of a book. You
will magically start turning your downtime into reading time because
you want to find out what happens. Take note of
when these potential reading moments happen. They might be usable
other days for other sorts of leisure too. Yes, life

(05:32):
is busy. We have a lot of responsibilities, but even
a full day generally has some downtime, if not much.
By seizing these bits of time, or time that isn't perfect,
we can make space for a lot more fun in life,
and that is worth celebrating in the meantime. This is Laura.

(06:00):
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 vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a

(06:27):
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.