Manage time like Teddy Roosevelt

Intense work plus smart breaks add up to big accomplishments.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Good Morning. This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is about borrowing a time management strategy from
President Theodore Roosevelt. Block out your schedule for the day
and alternate periods of focused work with completely different sorts

(00:27):
of activities that advance you towards your personal goals. If
you do this, you might wind up as the kind
of person who can run a country while writing a
book on naval warfare in your spare time, which yes,
Roosevelt did. I'm grateful to host Aaron McCarthy of the
History Versus podcast for sending an examples of Roosevelt's schedule.

(00:50):
Rather than work from a to do list, Roosevelt would
map out his days. This was a habit he developed young.
For instance, as a student at Harvard, he would have
breakfast at eight, study till ten, eleven to twelve, do
Latin recitation, then boxing at the gym, lunch, studying and

(01:10):
recitation until four, watching a ballgame, dinner, studying for an hour,
and then at half past ten reading by the fire.
One day on the campaign trail, he followed the following schedule.
Seven am breakfast, seven thirty am a speech, eight am
reading a historical work, nine am a speech, ten am

(01:35):
dictating letters, eleven am discussing Montana minds, am a speech,
twelve pm reading an ornithological work, PM a speech, one PM, lunch,
PM another speech, to thirty pm reading Scottish novelist Sir
Walter Scott, and so on. Now, with so much to do,

(01:59):
I mean, he gave eight speeches that day, it might
feel strange to stop in the middle to read a
Walter Scott novel. But by focusing intently on whatever he
was doing in the moment, and consciously building and breaks
focused on his passions, Roosevelt was able to read, take courses,
and exercise something less busy people often claimed to have

(02:21):
no time to do. Now, to be sure, a rigid
schedule can be tough when stuff goes wrong. If Roosevelt
was zooming from place to place but his train got delayed,
this could throw off the whole day. This is something
that another great figure in American history, Benjamin Franklin, discovered.
Anyone who's read his autobiography will recall the disciplined schedule

(02:43):
Franklin developed to help him as he ran his business.
And embarked on his ambitious project of achieving moral perfection
alas he soon realized that the schedule didn't always work.
People would come see him about doing business together, and
as a businessman, he wanted to have those meetings. But
oddly enough, these people did not always show up at

(03:03):
the exact moment when this was most convenient. So it
goes I'd probably leave more space than Roosevelt did to
deal with the unexpected, but it's hard to argue with success.
For those of us with more normal lives, we might
intentionally schedule in reading breaks during work, making it through
ten pages and fifteen minutes or so, rather than losing

(03:26):
this time to unfocused email checks. We might build in
space to go for a walk with a colleague, and
then maybe twenty minutes later in the day to practice
a foreign language. It's not that twenty minutes is so much,
but by consistently building in these bits of time for
other passions, we make them part of our lives, even

(03:46):
as we get a lot done in our main jobs too.
So how will you block out your daily schedule and
be sure to check out the History Versus podcast in
the meantime? This is Laura. Thanks for listening and here
to making the most of our time. Hey everybody, I'd

(04:09):
love to hear from you. You can send me your tips,
your questions, or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter,
Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod. That's b E
the number four, then Breakfast p o D. You can
also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast podcast at
i heeart media dot com that Before Breakfast is spelled

(04:32):
out with all the letters. Thanks so much, I look
forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Two