Second Cup: Plan in a different place

Shift your location to shift your mindset

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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 plan in a different place. By moving

(00:24):
yourself physically to a different location, you can create a
little psychological space for thinking about how you'd like to
spend your time in the future. Longtime listeners know that
I recommend having a designated weekly planning time when you
think about your professional and personal priorities for the upcoming week.

(00:48):
Longtime listeners also know that I recommend doing this on
Fridays if that happens to be a low key day
for you, or maybe even Thursday if that works better
for your schedule. Lately, I have been doing this planning
on Thursdays to get a little ahead of things and
so I can come back to the planning on Friday

(01:10):
if I have forgotten something. Anyway, every other Thursday morning,
our cleaning service tackles the first floor of our house,
which is where my home office is located, so I
need to leave my office and go elsewhere for an
hour or so. Sometimes I just go upstairs or outside.

(01:33):
Other times I go to the library or a coffee shop.
I started moving out of necessity, so I'm not a
nuisance when people are trying to vacuum. But I have
found that I really enjoy doing my weekly planning during
this little field trip, even if I am only in
a different part of my house. I am not at

(01:56):
my desk, so I find myself able to think a
little more creatively about what I should do over the
next week, or how I should structure my schedule. I
come up with ideas for my podcasts and newsletters. I
think about potential long term plans and what I might

(02:16):
want to tackle in the near term. I am guessing
that you might find the same thing. The first and
most important step is to do some sort of weekly planning.
It absolutely doesn't matter if you have a fancy planner
or pen, or where or when you do your planning,

(02:36):
as long as you do it. So commit to that first.
But once you have made that commitment, you might want
to experiment with getting slightly outside of your usual execution zone.
If you do most of your work at your desk
and you have space in your office for a chair,

(02:57):
you might just go sit in that chair, are go
set in a conference room or at the kitchen table.
If you're normally at a desk in a home office elsewhere,
if the weather is nice, you could go sit at
a table outside, or take a quick field trip to
a nearby sandwich place where you buy yourself lunch and
write down your intentions for the next week. I think

(03:21):
this relocation works, at least in part because you're less
likely to be distracted. I mean, sure, you can see
emails coming in on your phone just the same as
you can at your desk, but somehow it can feel
less like this is what you are supposed to be
doing with your time. If people tend to come talk
to you at your desk, they might be less likely

(03:44):
to do that if you are elsewhere. Even just seeing
different scenery can put you in a different frame of mind.
Planning and execution are different things. They are both important,
but it makes sense that we draw on slightly different
skills and parts of our brain to do them. By

(04:07):
separating these out a bit physically, we can be a
bit more intentional about both. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our times. Thanks for listening to before breakfast. If you've

(04:34):
got questions, ideas, 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

(04:56):
your favorite shows. M