Know when you won't get much done

Acknowledge unproductive stretches, so expectations match reality.

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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 know and acknowledge stretches of time when
you will not be getting much done. You can plan

(00:25):
your life more rationally when your expectations match reality. Today's
tip comes from the podcast Best Laid Plans, which is
hosted by Sarah hart unger my co host on my
other podcast, Best of Both Worlds. On a recent episode,
Sarah read a note from a listener that described how

(00:48):
she divided the year. She thought of the year and
five quintiles, and one of those quinn tiles went from
Thanksgiving to the end of her children's holiday break. Now,
if you do the math, that is not going to
be a very long quintile. There is maybe a week
in November, and then they had a longish like three

(01:10):
week holiday break from late December to early January. So
we are talking a stretch of time that is maybe
seven to eight weeks in total. This is not mathematically
a fifth of the year. But the reason this person
divided her year up this way is that she realized

(01:31):
she basically never got much done during this stretch of
time Because her kids were out of school so much,
they tended to take their vacations then or go visit family.
The three to four weeks or so that her kids
were in school between Thanksgiving and Christmas break were often
stuffed with other activities. The space available to work was limited.

(01:58):
She could try to play through, or she could acknowledge
that this was just not going to be a very
productive time, and she could think of the season accordingly.
She could have limited expectations for her business and probably
feel happier when she met these low expectations versus setting

(02:21):
high expectations that would crash into reality. I think this
is a smart idea. Many of us have stretches of
time that are simply not going to be productive. Maybe
you cover for a colleague who tends to take a
vacation in late June, and then the fourth of July

(02:42):
causes a series of interruptions to the usual schedule, and
then you tend to take your vacation in mid July.
Probably this is just not going to be the stretch
of time when you can launch some big new speculative project.
If you have got young kids who to get sick
like clockwork in February, in March. Then maybe you need

(03:04):
to take this into account when you plan out your year.
It's not that you won't get anything done, but the
odds that you get through all eight to nine weeks
of February in March without getting sick yourself are low. Now,
obviously you can't trot out excuses all fifty two weeks

(03:24):
of the year, though perhaps they would be reasonable for
much of the time. The woman who didn't get much
done between Thanksgiving and New Years worked in a tax
education field. This meant she poured it on from January
to April and would often make a lot of her
revenue during this time. If you are going to have
a slow season, you probably need a fast season at

(03:48):
some other point. It might even help to note your
busy seasons for work and set your expectations for your
personal life accordingly. And we don't acknowledge these stretches that
lean one way or another, we start to feel perpetually
behind whatever sphere of life that happens to be in.

(04:11):
When you acknowledge that you won't be productive for a
particular chunk of time. On the other hand, you can
enjoy that time a lot more. You are still getting
the same amount done, but at least now you don't
feel bad as well. In the meantime, this is Laura.

(04:33):
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

(05:00):
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