September 18, 2024 • 25 mins
Before Breakfast kicks off a new interview series with physician, course creator, and marathon runner Sarah Hart-Unger
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. You
may notice that something is a little bit different about
today's episode. For starters, it's going to be longer, and second,
(00:23):
it won't just be me talking. I have decided to
switch things up a little and about once a week,
I will be doing a longer episode of Before Breakfast,
often featuring a guest. We'll talk about how lots of
different people make the most of their time, sharing tips
that can hopefully help all of us take our days
from great to awesome. So today I am delighted to
(00:47):
welcome a very special first guest, Sarah hart Unger. Lots
of you may know her as the co host of
my other podcast, Best of Both Worlds, where we've been
talking to each other every week for seven years now.
So I figured she might go easy on me with
my first foray into hosting guest episodes with Before Breakfast,
(01:09):
and I wanted to launch this new series getting some
tips from her, because, as you are going to hear,
she has a lot going on and handles her schedule
very well. So we're going to talk planning and mornings
and more so Sarah, Welcome to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Thank you so much for having me. I did not
realize that I was the first guest of this series.
I'm super honored. And for those of you who also
listen to Best of Both Worlds, don't worry, you're not
like on the wrong podcast, but super excited to be here.
For those who don't know me, I am a physician.
I'm a pediatric endocrinologist. I work part time seeing patients
(01:47):
three times a week, and on my off days, I
am a podcaster and writer. I've been blogging at the
same kind of two thousand and five era website for
twenty years now, and I also host Best of Both
Worlds with Laura and have my own podcast project called
Best Laid Plans, which started in twenty twenty, all about
things related to planning. And I have a lot of
(02:09):
fun there, and yeah, lots of stuff going on. I
also have three kids, ages six, ten, and twelve. I
am married to another physician, a vascular surgeon named Josh,
and we live in South Florida.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
That's good. Yeah, a lot of stuff going on, and
you know, she has systems for managing all of it,
which we're going to hear a little bit about. But
since this is called before Breakfast, I wanted you to
start with your morning routine because Sarah is kind of
the queen of morning routines. She has a morning routine
that starts early and features a lot of great stuff.
(02:43):
So Sarah, can you tell us about what tends to
happen on weekday mornings. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Well, first of all, I'll just note that my morning
routine has shifted a lot in different phases of my life,
and I think this is a common theme about how
I like to live and do my planning, which is
that are going to be iterative and not necessarily kind
of set it and forget it.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
So right now, my kids are.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
A little bit older, which opens up some time given
that I'm certainly not up overnight, and I am training
for a marathon, which will be my six marathon this December,
so I do get up pretty early.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
So most of my clinical days, I get up.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Somewhere in the fours usually around four fifteen or four thirty.
I tend to do some reading during that time, briefly,
maybe ten pages of a nonfiction book that I'm working on.
I will do my planning for the day. So this
is when I look at my planner, see what I
have going on in terms of what is scheduled, and
I identify what I want to get accomplished in terms
(03:43):
of my to do list, and then I usually try
to squeeze in a ten minute headspace meditation before I
head out running. I run either by myself or with
a group. I often meet friends a couple days a week,
so that kind of adds a little bit of fun
to that extremely early hour of running. It makes me
feel a little bit less crazy because I'm missing. If
I'm meeting other people, then I mean I'm not the
(04:03):
only one out there. And then I run from around
let's say five p thirty ish to six forty five
get home. My husband usually at that point is starting
to get the kids up, and I will do a
little bit of contribution to that, but he's taken over
a lot of that piece because at around seven twenty
five I leave to drive my kids to school. We
(04:25):
have different plans for different days, so sometimes I drive
all of my kids, sometimes I drive just one, and
sometimes my husband drives. And all of that is set
before the week begins, so we kind of know what
we are up to and what we have on our
plates for the morning. So, yeah, it is a lot.
It's pretty quick. I don't really linger in anyone task.
I have a very brief getting ready routine. On my
(04:48):
clinical days. I almost always wear scrubs because I find
it looks reasonably professional and I absolutely don't have to
think about my outfit at all. And I even would
go so far as to say, like my hair, it
is very intentional to support my quick routines in that
I get it straightened permanently so that I basically don't
have to do any hair readiness in the morning as well.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, so on your clinical days, when are you at
your office and then seeing your first patients?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yes, so the drive takes me from around seven thirty
ish until eight thirty, and then my first patient is
usually in the room when I arrive at the office
somewhere between eight thirty and eight forty. So I'm just
like off to the races.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Well, that is quite a long morning routine. Why are
you choosing to do this?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Well?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
I love running, and that is kind of like the
cornerstone of what has to everything else kind of like
revolves around that because that's one thing I'm passionate about
and I'm just not really willing to give it up
despite having a lot of busyness in the rest of
my life. And I have found over the years that
if I do not run and put myself first in
the morning in that way, it is not going to happen.
(05:56):
No one's gonna magically carve out an hour in the
evening and say, hey, Sarah, we don't need you for
anything at all, why don't you just go for a run.
And yet I know that if I'm doing that at
five thirty, everyone's asleep, so I'm not really bothering anyone.
Although new development, my husband is starting to pivot towards morning.
So that's pretty awesome in that our kids are bigger
(06:16):
now and we can both do a little neighborhood run
at the same time sometimes, So he's kind of figured
out my secret that this is by far and away
the most reliable time slot of the day.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, there are a lot few fewer emergencies either professionally
or personally at five thirty AM versus say, five thirty PM.
You can definitely have a lot of things go wrong
that can derail or workout later in the day. Do
the same routine on weekends or is it a little
bit different in the morning.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
No, not at all.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
So I have different routines for different days, which is
necessary because it's so early and I know I will
exhaust myself if I do exactly that every day, so
I've built in like a later start on one of
my non clinical days on Thursdays Saturday, I do tend
to start pretty early, not quite as early. I usually
get up at five to do my long run at six.
Remember that I do live in South Florida, so running
(07:04):
outside you really cannot wait and just do that midday
or you would be cooked by the sun. So I
get that done early. But then on Sunday, I don't
have any running and I tend to just wake up
when the kids wake up. Need one day to just
relax and sleep.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
In a bit.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Excellent. Well, We're going to take a quick ad break
and I will be back with more with Sarah hart Hunger.
Well we are back. This is before Breakfast, and I
am interviewing Sarah hart Unger, who is a physician, a
mom of three, a marathon runner, and my co host
(07:42):
on the podcast Best of Both Worlds. If you are
just joining this podcast wondering what is going on before
Breakfast is adding one longer episode each week where we
interview someone awesome about how they take their days from
great to awesome. So Sarah has shared a lot about
her morning routine and how she makes space for marathon
training in the middle of her very, very busy life. So, Sarah,
(08:05):
what would you say your biggest time management challenge is
right now?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah, that's easy.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
My kids are older now and because of that, they
have started to get into some passions of their own
that have hours that are more involved than what I
was used to when they were smaller. We have soccer
and gymnastics that often end at like eight forty five
at night, and you heard what time I get up.
So I was very much stressed about how we would
make that work this year but also allow for enough
(08:31):
sleep because I need at least seven hours. I know
this number can vary from person to person, and I'm
you know, some people need more than that, but I
tend to feel okay with seven, but I do not
do well with significantly less than seven on any kind
of a regular basis. And I was having trouble kind
of figuring out how the pieces were going to fit.
And we'll talk about kind of some of the things
(08:52):
I did, But one of the saving things has been
discovering carpools and figuring out how we can make some
of these evenings not quite so late, even if a
kid is arriving on the later side. That takes the
heat off of me, and I can be putting my
younger kid to bed, who also can't really be staying
up that late every single night, and make sure that
some nights include an earlier bedtime even if my kids
(09:15):
are out doing things close to nine o'clock.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, well, getting enough sleep is a challenge for many people,
and I remember that one of the ways you sort
of organized your schedule to make this happen. You recently
created a realistic ideal week template where Sarah printed up
a sheet of paper that had all one hundred and
sixty eight hours of the week on it. I believe
in thirty minute cells. Was it thirty minute cells or
(09:39):
was it fifteen hours thirty minutes?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
The template is based on planners that I know and love.
I can talk about planners all day, and I won't,
but I have certain weekly layouts that seem to serve
me really, really well, and the concept of putting all
the one hundred and sixty eight hours on the week.
I feel it comes from both your work and then
also some from Michael Hyatt, who has this embedded in
his own line of planners, the Full Focused Planner. I
(10:04):
don't like his layout as much as mine, so I
actually worked with a designer to create my own ideal
week based on the planners that I love.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
And it's a vertical.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Weekly, so you can basically see all the hours laid out,
kind of like electronic calendars are at well as well,
from when I wake up to when I go to sleep.
And I absolutely needed to do that for this season.
I actually tell people to do that every single season.
I think it's very helpful. But this was, like, I mean,
I felt a dire need to put things on paper
(10:32):
because my brain was just sort of circling and trying
to figure out how to fit things and it just
didn't seem to want to add up. And it was
not until I actually started writing things down and actually
had my husband do the same exercise so we could
kind of talk about how we could work together and
share different responsibilities so that both of us could fit
in the things that mattered. I think doing it in
this dual way this time around was even more helpful.
(10:56):
But yeah, I absolutely needed to do that. Then I
it to Laura because I am lucky enough to have
her as my friend, and she is very used to
looking at people's one hundred and sixty eight hours, and
she had a couple of tweaks, such as maybe a
more flexible working night on Thursday, and just making sure
that the carpool loads were shared in a way that
(11:18):
made sense for everyone.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And you actually put in the times that you plan
to sleep on this template right so that you could
make sure every single night was seven hours in your bed.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yes, I think there's one night that might be slightly
less than that, but I wanted the average to be
well over seven and I can't imagine not including sleep.
I mean to be honest, that was what I was
most anxious about, because I know that I am not
going to function well if I'm chronically steep deprived, making
everything else unpleasant and harder. So it's like kind of
one of those anchored things that you have to get
right before you even move on to any of the details.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
And so just to do the math for people, if
you are waking up some morning at four fifteen, you
probably need to be in bed by about nine fifteen
the night before. That's counting seven hours back from that.
So again, if we have a kid's practice going till
eight forty five, maybe that's a night that your husband
or somebody else is bringing the kids home. You put
your little one to bed, and then you can be
(12:13):
drifting into bed at nine o'clock or so, and making
sure that that's not in your purview for that particular evening.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Correct, And also working with the kids to kind of
get that turnaround pretty quick from arriving home to getting
ready for bed so that it doesn't need a lot
of poking and prodding, because honestly they need the sleep
as well. So yeah, combination of both of those things,
but making sure that I am not involved in that
late piece every single night, and same with my husband,
Like if we each take some and then I have
some later mornings, then we can kind of make the
(12:41):
puzzle pieces fit together without anyone getting too too tired.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Because if you could drive a kid a little later,
if you weren't doing both drop offs on one morning,
you could start the whole routine a little bit later
as well.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Correct correct, And then I have a day I'm not
driving at all, for example, that takes the heat off,
and that happens to be a day that I've decided
to run a little bit later, but then also work
a little bit later in the night to make up
for those hours lost. So yeah, it's it's like a
balancing act. And I don't think I would have seen
the pictures so clearly without actually putting it onto paper.
(13:15):
Electronically would have worked as well, by the way, and
I will say the one advantage to an electronic calendar
like this is that I could have then made an
edit without having to draw it all over again. So
that is another option that works really really well.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
And just one more thing about this ideal week. You
said you were going to take one night to do
something a little bit more, either work or something else
you wanted to do. Can you talk a little bit
about how you arrange for that.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, I noticed that there was a night when there
was a later pickup that we would probably be doing
and also a drop off. But that's a long, long practice,
like more than three hours, and it's a day that
often I wanted to have a later start, and I
just feel like often gets kind of derailed by kid
related things in the late afternoon, like if there was
an appointment for a kid, it needs to go there,
(13:58):
and I need time to work. I'm working on multiple podcasts,
various projects, et cetera. And so I realized that I
could take that slot and I could be useful. I
could do that late night pickup, but in doing that,
I could also get time to myself from around five
o'clock until eight forty five, whether I wanted to attend
a workout class, do some extra work. I mean, in
(14:18):
more than three hours, there's actually room for kind of
a lot of stuff. So I'm excited to see how
those possibilities open up. We do have a childcare provider,
so you know, I don't even necessarily know that my
husband can always kind of fill in the gaps through
that whole period every Thursday. So if he can't, she
is like well aware that she's okay with staying late
(14:39):
some of those days. And we've opened those possibilities up
because she doesn't come in early in the morning because
we do the driving. So see, it's all like the
puzzle pieces have to fit.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
The puzzle pieces have to fit the entire mosaic of
the one hundred and sixty eight hours in Sarah hart
Unger's life, So on your Planning friend and So Sarah
is an expert in planning. She has another podcast called
Best Laid Plans, which you should totally go check out.
She teaches courses also called Best Laid Plans and various
iterations of that, that help people learn to plan their lives.
You mentioned that you do your daily planning in the morning, right,
(15:10):
and that's sort of four fifteen or four thirty to
five window before you leave to go for your run.
What does that tend to look like? What are you
actually doing for the day in that moment?
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yeah, I wish I had my planner next to me.
I would show it to you, although I guess.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
That's is only audio, so we're gonna have to describe
it for our listeners.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Sure, So I take my actual calendar. I look to
see what I have scheduled, and I also look at
the list of tasks that I have for my week
that we can talk about it. But I put together
a plan for my week in terms of my priorities
and what I want to get done for that week,
and integrating those two things together along with kind of
how i'm feeling that day, I will make a choice
(15:49):
as to what I decide to put on my to
do list. Sometimes I will also kind of assign some
of those jobs a specific time. Other times I will
just kind of assign them for the day and then
let things carry me how they will. I often have
enough things scheduled that it's pretty clear what I need
to get done within the cracks, But I don't feel
rested and like peaceful and even ready to run until
(16:10):
I've kind of done that and I put it in
writing on a physical piece of paper so that I
can see it, just so I kind of know what
my plans are for the day. I do want to
mention that I do not always check off every item
on my list.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Things are going to come up.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
As much as I want to fight against living a
reactive life, sometimes there are things that just require me
to change my plans. That said, I still think that
making them is incredibly valuable. I've said that, like, even
if you get done fifty percent or sixty percent of
the things on your list every single day, that is
a lot of forward motion if you've selected those things
you wanted to do well. And so I'm not aiming
(16:45):
for perfection in my execution, but I still think the
process is incredibly valuable.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Absolutely. Well, we're going to take one more quick ad
break and we'll be back to here with more of
what Sarah Hartunger has to say about mornings, planning and more. Well,
we are back. This is Before Breakfast doing an interview
with Sarah Hart Hunger. People just joining us. We are
(17:11):
doing one longer before Breakfast every week starting this as
a new series. We're I'll be talking with people about
how they take their days from great to awesome and
how they make the most of their time. So Sarah
has been sharing her various habits and routines with us.
So Sarah, maybe you can tell our listeners one thing
that you did this week that helped take one of
your days from great to awesome. A little treat in
(17:34):
the life of Sarah Hart Hunger.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yeah, well, this is going to be really highbrow, but
I think sometimes that we don't give ourselves enough credit
for really appreciating some of these little things in life.
And I have to say, when our family sat down
all together to watch the finale of the reboot of
Dance Moms on Sunday night, it absolutely was an awesome,
awesome end to the weekend, and it actually ended up
(17:57):
being one of our more seamless kind of Sunday nights
we've had in a while, because because we're all excited
to watch it, and we had set the expectation really
significantly that right afterwards was going to be bedtime, and
it was just such a bright spot of fun. So,
I don't know, just kind of like savoring and intentionally
choosing our leisure activities is really really big for me,
even though you know, just watching a TV show, you
(18:21):
could certainly just zone out and like scroll your phone
and watch what has served to you. But if you're
instead saying, oh, I have an hour, like how can
we make this into something that I will remember and
get to think about and truly enjoy, then that that
can be enough.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
You turned screen time into a party. That sounds like
a great way to end the weekend. Well, I wonder
if you have any kind of life hacks you can
share with us. I asked Sarah beforehand to think of
a couple of little tips like this and strategies that
she swears by, so maybe you can share a few
with us.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Yeah, I'm gonna give you two.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
I'm gonna give you one that's like really specific and
one that is more of a mindset.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
So my specific one has to do with tracking your
media consumption.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
This is something I started to do at the beginning
of this year, and I feel like we just spent
a lot of times with content being served at us,
and it can consume a great deal of our attention
and our hours, and yet there's sometimes just not a
lot of thought into what we choose to do, whether
we're even paying attention to the things we're looking at,
et cetera. So I have just started to jot down
(19:23):
like the podcast that I listen to, a TV show
that I watch, anything that I intense, and pages that
I read, like anything that I intentionally sit down to consume.
And I have found it to be really really eye
opening and tends me tends to make me more aware
of that time I'm spending as well, so it doesn't
just seem like extra time. It's like actual time that
(19:43):
I'm involved in, like enjoying something.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
So try it. You might not love it, but you might.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Even think of it as a valuable exercise to do
for a few days because it may be eye opening.
So that's my more specific tip my more like I
don't know, abstract tip is to the idea of a
spirit of iteration. I think we're always looking for like
the one perfect way and I'm going to have my
routine down and my planning system set up and my
(20:08):
career in this way or that, and it's just going
to be perfect. But the one thing that I have
I guess I've learned in my forty some years now
is that things are going to always change, and it's
better to have a spirit of exploration and like what
works for this season and what works for this season,
And even if we want to celebrate that some routine
was awesome, that doesn't mean that we don't want to
revisit it later on to see if it.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Still makes sense to continue.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
So just generally treating your life with a spirit of
iteration and exploration rather than thinking you're gonna just end
upsetting your ways and continue it until the end of time.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
That is so true. And you know, I've written a
lot about morning routines over the years, and people share
their morning routines with me, and I used to say,
this is a snapshot in time because something is going
to change. I mean, the person is going to change jobs,
or you know, move, or their kids will get older
and start a school at a different time, or they
(21:01):
don't have children and they're going to have children and
then their entire morning routine is going to change as
a result of that. Or even they're going to adopt
a puppy and like, the puppy is going to need
to be walked in the morning, and it's gonna change
everything about it. And sometimes people even find this frustrating, like, well,
I had this great routine and now my great routine
doesn't work anymore. Like they get upset that life has
dished this up to them. It's like, what, No, it's
(21:22):
the nature of life to change, And it's totally fine
to embrace temporary habits and something can work for you
for a while and then it doesn't work or it's
not working as well as it did before for whatever reason,
which could be totally legitimate, and then you change and
you do something else. So I love that spirit of
iterative processes. Wonderful. So, Sarah, what are you looking forward
(21:47):
to right now in your life?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, I'll give you a short term and a long term.
My short term is that I'm excited to see what
I do with this Thursday night, and my kind of
little bit of freedom and longer amount of time to
work is usually I have an appointment to deal with
in the afternoon with a kid, but I'm super excited
to have some uninterrupted hours in the evening time to
do with what feels right. So I'll report back on
that and I'm excited about it. Emily long term excitement
(22:11):
is that I am seeing my college friends in the
middle of September. It's going to be awesome, And just
really looking forward to that time spent with people. I
always feel like that is one of the best things
we can do.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah, people are a good use of time, I always say.
And your idea of taking one night off, I mean
this is another tip in general we can share with
people like people who are busy like Sarah, who have jobs,
who have families. You can wind up spending a lot
of your time dealing with the job stuff and dealing
with family care and household responsibilities. But even just taking
(22:45):
one night a week where you get to determine what
you do and you go to something like a strength
class or I sing with a choir, these are things
that make you feel more like well, there's more to
life than just work and family. Awesome as those things
may be, there's something for me too. So you think
you're going to go to strength class, Sarah, is that
what it's going to be?
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I think I'm going to be doing a lot of
work for myself on that day, but I am still
looking forward to it because you know, I enjoy my
various projects.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Yeah, and it's a different kind of work, like you
can have that creative work, that sense of space in
the evening where you're not locked in by certain hours.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Right exactly, I'll be able to come up with some
really deep and cool thoughts to put in my next newsletter.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Awesome, deep and cool thoughts. We're all about that. So, Sarah,
maybe you can just tell our listeners where they can
find you.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
So I have that twenty year old blog which is
at the shoebox dot com, which is my initials s
h U t h E s h U box dot com.
That's where you can find links to all my podcast
episodes and pretty much everything I do, as well as
blog posts going back many many years. And then of
course you can find both podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts.
It's best of both Worlds with Laura vandercam and then
(23:54):
best Lead Plans Awesome.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Well, Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today
for this first interview of my series of interviews with
people about how they spend their time, how they make
the most of their time, how they take their days
from great to awesome. And for the Before Breakfast listeners
who are joining us for this first one, thank you
so much for sticking with me in this new format.
You can let me know what you think. As always,
(24:17):
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot
com and 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,
(24:39):
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. You
may notice that something is a little bit different about
today's episode. For starters, it's going to be longer, and second,
(00:23):
it won't just be me talking. I have decided to
switch things up a little and about once a week,
I will be doing a longer episode of Before Breakfast,
often featuring a guest. We'll talk about how lots of
different people make the most of their time, sharing tips
that can hopefully help all of us take our days
from great to awesome. So today I am delighted to
(00:47):
welcome a very special first guest, Sarah hart Unger. Lots
of you may know her as the co host of
my other podcast, Best of Both Worlds, where we've been
talking to each other every week for seven years now.
So I figured she might go easy on me with
my first foray into hosting guest episodes with Before Breakfast,
(01:09):
and I wanted to launch this new series getting some
tips from her, because, as you are going to hear,
she has a lot going on and handles her schedule
very well. So we're going to talk planning and mornings
and more so Sarah, Welcome to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Thank you so much for having me. I did not
realize that I was the first guest of this series.
I'm super honored. And for those of you who also
listen to Best of Both Worlds, don't worry, you're not
like on the wrong podcast, but super excited to be here.
For those who don't know me, I am a physician.
I'm a pediatric endocrinologist. I work part time seeing patients
(01:47):
three times a week, and on my off days, I
am a podcaster and writer. I've been blogging at the
same kind of two thousand and five era website for
twenty years now, and I also host Best of Both
Worlds with Laura and have my own podcast project called
Best Laid Plans, which started in twenty twenty, all about
things related to planning. And I have a lot of
(02:09):
fun there, and yeah, lots of stuff going on. I
also have three kids, ages six, ten, and twelve. I
am married to another physician, a vascular surgeon named Josh,
and we live in South Florida.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
That's good. Yeah, a lot of stuff going on, and
you know, she has systems for managing all of it,
which we're going to hear a little bit about. But
since this is called before Breakfast, I wanted you to
start with your morning routine because Sarah is kind of
the queen of morning routines. She has a morning routine
that starts early and features a lot of great stuff.
(02:43):
So Sarah, can you tell us about what tends to
happen on weekday mornings. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Well, first of all, I'll just note that my morning
routine has shifted a lot in different phases of my life,
and I think this is a common theme about how
I like to live and do my planning, which is
that are going to be iterative and not necessarily kind
of set it and forget it.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
So right now, my kids are.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
A little bit older, which opens up some time given
that I'm certainly not up overnight, and I am training
for a marathon, which will be my six marathon this December,
so I do get up pretty early.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
So most of my clinical days, I get up.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Somewhere in the fours usually around four fifteen or four thirty.
I tend to do some reading during that time, briefly,
maybe ten pages of a nonfiction book that I'm working on.
I will do my planning for the day. So this
is when I look at my planner, see what I
have going on in terms of what is scheduled, and
I identify what I want to get accomplished in terms
(03:43):
of my to do list, and then I usually try
to squeeze in a ten minute headspace meditation before I
head out running. I run either by myself or with
a group. I often meet friends a couple days a week,
so that kind of adds a little bit of fun
to that extremely early hour of running. It makes me
feel a little bit less crazy because I'm missing. If
I'm meeting other people, then I mean I'm not the
(04:03):
only one out there. And then I run from around
let's say five p thirty ish to six forty five
get home. My husband usually at that point is starting
to get the kids up, and I will do a
little bit of contribution to that, but he's taken over
a lot of that piece because at around seven twenty
five I leave to drive my kids to school. We
(04:25):
have different plans for different days, so sometimes I drive
all of my kids, sometimes I drive just one, and
sometimes my husband drives. And all of that is set
before the week begins, so we kind of know what
we are up to and what we have on our
plates for the morning. So, yeah, it is a lot.
It's pretty quick. I don't really linger in anyone task.
I have a very brief getting ready routine. On my
(04:48):
clinical days. I almost always wear scrubs because I find
it looks reasonably professional and I absolutely don't have to
think about my outfit at all. And I even would
go so far as to say, like my hair, it
is very intentional to support my quick routines in that
I get it straightened permanently so that I basically don't
have to do any hair readiness in the morning as well.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, so on your clinical days, when are you at
your office and then seeing your first patients?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yes, so the drive takes me from around seven thirty
ish until eight thirty, and then my first patient is
usually in the room when I arrive at the office
somewhere between eight thirty and eight forty. So I'm just
like off to the races.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Well, that is quite a long morning routine. Why are
you choosing to do this?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Well?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
I love running, and that is kind of like the
cornerstone of what has to everything else kind of like
revolves around that because that's one thing I'm passionate about
and I'm just not really willing to give it up
despite having a lot of busyness in the rest of
my life. And I have found over the years that
if I do not run and put myself first in
the morning in that way, it is not going to happen.
(05:56):
No one's gonna magically carve out an hour in the
evening and say, hey, Sarah, we don't need you for
anything at all, why don't you just go for a run.
And yet I know that if I'm doing that at
five thirty, everyone's asleep, so I'm not really bothering anyone.
Although new development, my husband is starting to pivot towards morning.
So that's pretty awesome in that our kids are bigger
(06:16):
now and we can both do a little neighborhood run
at the same time sometimes, So he's kind of figured
out my secret that this is by far and away
the most reliable time slot of the day.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, there are a lot few fewer emergencies either professionally
or personally at five thirty AM versus say, five thirty PM.
You can definitely have a lot of things go wrong
that can derail or workout later in the day. Do
the same routine on weekends or is it a little
bit different in the morning.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
No, not at all.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
So I have different routines for different days, which is
necessary because it's so early and I know I will
exhaust myself if I do exactly that every day, so
I've built in like a later start on one of
my non clinical days on Thursdays Saturday, I do tend
to start pretty early, not quite as early. I usually
get up at five to do my long run at six.
Remember that I do live in South Florida, so running
(07:04):
outside you really cannot wait and just do that midday
or you would be cooked by the sun. So I
get that done early. But then on Sunday, I don't
have any running and I tend to just wake up
when the kids wake up. Need one day to just
relax and sleep.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
In a bit.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Excellent. Well, We're going to take a quick ad break
and I will be back with more with Sarah hart Hunger.
Well we are back. This is before Breakfast, and I
am interviewing Sarah hart Unger, who is a physician, a
mom of three, a marathon runner, and my co host
(07:42):
on the podcast Best of Both Worlds. If you are
just joining this podcast wondering what is going on before
Breakfast is adding one longer episode each week where we
interview someone awesome about how they take their days from
great to awesome. So Sarah has shared a lot about
her morning routine and how she makes space for marathon
training in the middle of her very, very busy life. So, Sarah,
(08:05):
what would you say your biggest time management challenge is
right now?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah, that's easy.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
My kids are older now and because of that, they
have started to get into some passions of their own
that have hours that are more involved than what I
was used to when they were smaller. We have soccer
and gymnastics that often end at like eight forty five
at night, and you heard what time I get up.
So I was very much stressed about how we would
make that work this year but also allow for enough
(08:31):
sleep because I need at least seven hours. I know
this number can vary from person to person, and I'm
you know, some people need more than that, but I
tend to feel okay with seven, but I do not
do well with significantly less than seven on any kind
of a regular basis. And I was having trouble kind
of figuring out how the pieces were going to fit.
And we'll talk about kind of some of the things
(08:52):
I did, But one of the saving things has been
discovering carpools and figuring out how we can make some
of these evenings not quite so late, even if a
kid is arriving on the later side. That takes the
heat off of me, and I can be putting my
younger kid to bed, who also can't really be staying
up that late every single night, and make sure that
some nights include an earlier bedtime even if my kids
(09:15):
are out doing things close to nine o'clock.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, well, getting enough sleep is a challenge for many people,
and I remember that one of the ways you sort
of organized your schedule to make this happen. You recently
created a realistic ideal week template where Sarah printed up
a sheet of paper that had all one hundred and
sixty eight hours of the week on it. I believe
in thirty minute cells. Was it thirty minute cells or
(09:39):
was it fifteen hours thirty minutes?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
The template is based on planners that I know and love.
I can talk about planners all day, and I won't,
but I have certain weekly layouts that seem to serve
me really, really well, and the concept of putting all
the one hundred and sixty eight hours on the week.
I feel it comes from both your work and then
also some from Michael Hyatt, who has this embedded in
his own line of planners, the Full Focused Planner. I
(10:04):
don't like his layout as much as mine, so I
actually worked with a designer to create my own ideal
week based on the planners that I love.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
And it's a vertical.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Weekly, so you can basically see all the hours laid out,
kind of like electronic calendars are at well as well,
from when I wake up to when I go to sleep.
And I absolutely needed to do that for this season.
I actually tell people to do that every single season.
I think it's very helpful. But this was, like, I mean,
I felt a dire need to put things on paper
(10:32):
because my brain was just sort of circling and trying
to figure out how to fit things and it just
didn't seem to want to add up. And it was
not until I actually started writing things down and actually
had my husband do the same exercise so we could
kind of talk about how we could work together and
share different responsibilities so that both of us could fit
in the things that mattered. I think doing it in
this dual way this time around was even more helpful.
(10:56):
But yeah, I absolutely needed to do that. Then I
it to Laura because I am lucky enough to have
her as my friend, and she is very used to
looking at people's one hundred and sixty eight hours, and
she had a couple of tweaks, such as maybe a
more flexible working night on Thursday, and just making sure
that the carpool loads were shared in a way that
(11:18):
made sense for everyone.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And you actually put in the times that you plan
to sleep on this template right so that you could
make sure every single night was seven hours in your bed.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yes, I think there's one night that might be slightly
less than that, but I wanted the average to be
well over seven and I can't imagine not including sleep.
I mean to be honest, that was what I was
most anxious about, because I know that I am not
going to function well if I'm chronically steep deprived, making
everything else unpleasant and harder. So it's like kind of
one of those anchored things that you have to get
right before you even move on to any of the details.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
And so just to do the math for people, if
you are waking up some morning at four fifteen, you
probably need to be in bed by about nine fifteen
the night before. That's counting seven hours back from that.
So again, if we have a kid's practice going till
eight forty five, maybe that's a night that your husband
or somebody else is bringing the kids home. You put
your little one to bed, and then you can be
(12:13):
drifting into bed at nine o'clock or so, and making
sure that that's not in your purview for that particular evening.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Correct, And also working with the kids to kind of
get that turnaround pretty quick from arriving home to getting
ready for bed so that it doesn't need a lot
of poking and prodding, because honestly they need the sleep
as well. So yeah, combination of both of those things,
but making sure that I am not involved in that
late piece every single night, and same with my husband,
Like if we each take some and then I have
some later mornings, then we can kind of make the
(12:41):
puzzle pieces fit together without anyone getting too too tired.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Because if you could drive a kid a little later,
if you weren't doing both drop offs on one morning,
you could start the whole routine a little bit later
as well.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Correct correct, And then I have a day I'm not
driving at all, for example, that takes the heat off,
and that happens to be a day that I've decided
to run a little bit later, but then also work
a little bit later in the night to make up
for those hours lost. So yeah, it's it's like a
balancing act. And I don't think I would have seen
the pictures so clearly without actually putting it onto paper.
(13:15):
Electronically would have worked as well, by the way, and
I will say the one advantage to an electronic calendar
like this is that I could have then made an
edit without having to draw it all over again. So
that is another option that works really really well.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
And just one more thing about this ideal week. You
said you were going to take one night to do
something a little bit more, either work or something else
you wanted to do. Can you talk a little bit
about how you arrange for that.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, I noticed that there was a night when there
was a later pickup that we would probably be doing
and also a drop off. But that's a long, long practice,
like more than three hours, and it's a day that
often I wanted to have a later start, and I
just feel like often gets kind of derailed by kid
related things in the late afternoon, like if there was
an appointment for a kid, it needs to go there,
(13:58):
and I need time to work. I'm working on multiple podcasts,
various projects, et cetera. And so I realized that I
could take that slot and I could be useful. I
could do that late night pickup, but in doing that,
I could also get time to myself from around five
o'clock until eight forty five, whether I wanted to attend
a workout class, do some extra work. I mean, in
(14:18):
more than three hours, there's actually room for kind of
a lot of stuff. So I'm excited to see how
those possibilities open up. We do have a childcare provider,
so you know, I don't even necessarily know that my
husband can always kind of fill in the gaps through
that whole period every Thursday. So if he can't, she
is like well aware that she's okay with staying late
(14:39):
some of those days. And we've opened those possibilities up
because she doesn't come in early in the morning because
we do the driving. So see, it's all like the
puzzle pieces have to fit.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
The puzzle pieces have to fit the entire mosaic of
the one hundred and sixty eight hours in Sarah hart
Unger's life, So on your Planning friend and So Sarah
is an expert in planning. She has another podcast called
Best Laid Plans, which you should totally go check out.
She teaches courses also called Best Laid Plans and various
iterations of that, that help people learn to plan their lives.
You mentioned that you do your daily planning in the morning, right,
(15:10):
and that's sort of four fifteen or four thirty to
five window before you leave to go for your run.
What does that tend to look like? What are you
actually doing for the day in that moment?
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yeah, I wish I had my planner next to me.
I would show it to you, although I guess.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
That's is only audio, so we're gonna have to describe
it for our listeners.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Sure, So I take my actual calendar. I look to
see what I have scheduled, and I also look at
the list of tasks that I have for my week
that we can talk about it. But I put together
a plan for my week in terms of my priorities
and what I want to get done for that week,
and integrating those two things together along with kind of
how i'm feeling that day, I will make a choice
(15:49):
as to what I decide to put on my to
do list. Sometimes I will also kind of assign some
of those jobs a specific time. Other times I will
just kind of assign them for the day and then
let things carry me how they will. I often have
enough things scheduled that it's pretty clear what I need
to get done within the cracks, But I don't feel
rested and like peaceful and even ready to run until
(16:10):
I've kind of done that and I put it in
writing on a physical piece of paper so that I
can see it, just so I kind of know what
my plans are for the day. I do want to
mention that I do not always check off every item
on my list.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Things are going to come up.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
As much as I want to fight against living a
reactive life, sometimes there are things that just require me
to change my plans. That said, I still think that
making them is incredibly valuable. I've said that, like, even
if you get done fifty percent or sixty percent of
the things on your list every single day, that is
a lot of forward motion if you've selected those things
you wanted to do well. And so I'm not aiming
(16:45):
for perfection in my execution, but I still think the
process is incredibly valuable.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Absolutely. Well, we're going to take one more quick ad
break and we'll be back to here with more of
what Sarah Hartunger has to say about mornings, planning and more. Well,
we are back. This is Before Breakfast doing an interview
with Sarah Hart Hunger. People just joining us. We are
(17:11):
doing one longer before Breakfast every week starting this as
a new series. We're I'll be talking with people about
how they take their days from great to awesome and
how they make the most of their time. So Sarah
has been sharing her various habits and routines with us.
So Sarah, maybe you can tell our listeners one thing
that you did this week that helped take one of
your days from great to awesome. A little treat in
(17:34):
the life of Sarah Hart Hunger.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yeah, well, this is going to be really highbrow, but
I think sometimes that we don't give ourselves enough credit
for really appreciating some of these little things in life.
And I have to say, when our family sat down
all together to watch the finale of the reboot of
Dance Moms on Sunday night, it absolutely was an awesome,
awesome end to the weekend, and it actually ended up
(17:57):
being one of our more seamless kind of Sunday nights
we've had in a while, because because we're all excited
to watch it, and we had set the expectation really
significantly that right afterwards was going to be bedtime, and
it was just such a bright spot of fun. So,
I don't know, just kind of like savoring and intentionally
choosing our leisure activities is really really big for me,
even though you know, just watching a TV show, you
(18:21):
could certainly just zone out and like scroll your phone
and watch what has served to you. But if you're
instead saying, oh, I have an hour, like how can
we make this into something that I will remember and
get to think about and truly enjoy, then that that
can be enough.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
You turned screen time into a party. That sounds like
a great way to end the weekend. Well, I wonder
if you have any kind of life hacks you can
share with us. I asked Sarah beforehand to think of
a couple of little tips like this and strategies that
she swears by, so maybe you can share a few
with us.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Yeah, I'm gonna give you two.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
I'm gonna give you one that's like really specific and
one that is more of a mindset.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
So my specific one has to do with tracking your
media consumption.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
This is something I started to do at the beginning
of this year, and I feel like we just spent
a lot of times with content being served at us,
and it can consume a great deal of our attention
and our hours, and yet there's sometimes just not a
lot of thought into what we choose to do, whether
we're even paying attention to the things we're looking at,
et cetera. So I have just started to jot down
(19:23):
like the podcast that I listen to, a TV show
that I watch, anything that I intense, and pages that
I read, like anything that I intentionally sit down to consume.
And I have found it to be really really eye
opening and tends me tends to make me more aware
of that time I'm spending as well, so it doesn't
just seem like extra time. It's like actual time that
(19:43):
I'm involved in, like enjoying something.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
So try it. You might not love it, but you might.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Even think of it as a valuable exercise to do
for a few days because it may be eye opening.
So that's my more specific tip my more like I
don't know, abstract tip is to the idea of a
spirit of iteration. I think we're always looking for like
the one perfect way and I'm going to have my
routine down and my planning system set up and my
(20:08):
career in this way or that, and it's just going
to be perfect. But the one thing that I have
I guess I've learned in my forty some years now
is that things are going to always change, and it's
better to have a spirit of exploration and like what
works for this season and what works for this season,
And even if we want to celebrate that some routine
was awesome, that doesn't mean that we don't want to
revisit it later on to see if it.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Still makes sense to continue.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
So just generally treating your life with a spirit of
iteration and exploration rather than thinking you're gonna just end
upsetting your ways and continue it until the end of time.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
That is so true. And you know, I've written a
lot about morning routines over the years, and people share
their morning routines with me, and I used to say,
this is a snapshot in time because something is going
to change. I mean, the person is going to change jobs,
or you know, move, or their kids will get older
and start a school at a different time, or they
(21:01):
don't have children and they're going to have children and
then their entire morning routine is going to change as
a result of that. Or even they're going to adopt
a puppy and like, the puppy is going to need
to be walked in the morning, and it's gonna change
everything about it. And sometimes people even find this frustrating, like, well,
I had this great routine and now my great routine
doesn't work anymore. Like they get upset that life has
dished this up to them. It's like, what, No, it's
(21:22):
the nature of life to change, And it's totally fine
to embrace temporary habits and something can work for you
for a while and then it doesn't work or it's
not working as well as it did before for whatever reason,
which could be totally legitimate, and then you change and
you do something else. So I love that spirit of
iterative processes. Wonderful. So, Sarah, what are you looking forward
(21:47):
to right now in your life?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, I'll give you a short term and a long term.
My short term is that I'm excited to see what
I do with this Thursday night, and my kind of
little bit of freedom and longer amount of time to
work is usually I have an appointment to deal with
in the afternoon with a kid, but I'm super excited
to have some uninterrupted hours in the evening time to
do with what feels right. So I'll report back on
that and I'm excited about it. Emily long term excitement
(22:11):
is that I am seeing my college friends in the
middle of September. It's going to be awesome, And just
really looking forward to that time spent with people. I
always feel like that is one of the best things
we can do.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah, people are a good use of time, I always say.
And your idea of taking one night off, I mean
this is another tip in general we can share with
people like people who are busy like Sarah, who have jobs,
who have families. You can wind up spending a lot
of your time dealing with the job stuff and dealing
with family care and household responsibilities. But even just taking
(22:45):
one night a week where you get to determine what
you do and you go to something like a strength
class or I sing with a choir, these are things
that make you feel more like well, there's more to
life than just work and family. Awesome as those things
may be, there's something for me too. So you think
you're going to go to strength class, Sarah, is that
what it's going to be?
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I think I'm going to be doing a lot of
work for myself on that day, but I am still
looking forward to it because you know, I enjoy my
various projects.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Yeah, and it's a different kind of work, like you
can have that creative work, that sense of space in
the evening where you're not locked in by certain hours.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Right exactly, I'll be able to come up with some
really deep and cool thoughts to put in my next newsletter.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Awesome, deep and cool thoughts. We're all about that. So, Sarah,
maybe you can just tell our listeners where they can
find you.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
So I have that twenty year old blog which is
at the shoebox dot com, which is my initials s
h U t h E s h U box dot com.
That's where you can find links to all my podcast
episodes and pretty much everything I do, as well as
blog posts going back many many years. And then of
course you can find both podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts.
It's best of both Worlds with Laura vandercam and then
(23:54):
best Lead Plans Awesome.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Well, Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today
for this first interview of my series of interviews with
people about how they spend their time, how they make
the most of their time, how they take their days
from great to awesome. And for the Before Breakfast listeners
who are joining us for this first one, thank you
so much for sticking with me in this new format.
You can let me know what you think. As always,
(24:17):
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot
com and 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,
(24:39):
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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