Ten percent more

Making a little more time feel usable can help you get more done

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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 it might be possible to make a
little bit more of your time feel usable. Being able

(00:25):
to use ten percent more of your time can over
the long haul, mean you can get a lot more done.
So it is easy to fantasize about long stretches of
perfectly productive, uninterrupted time. No meetings, no slack messages, no

(00:45):
quick questions from someone popping their head into the office,
no plumbers electricians to be let into the house, no
children wanting a snack, just focus time for our most
important work. I don't know about you, but I am
guessing that fantasy bears little resemblance to a lot of

(01:07):
my listener's lives. I work for myself, and yet I
know I have limited stretches for focused time. A lot
of people have much less say over their schedules than
I do. But if you have been listening to Before
Breakfast for a while, you know that we all have

(01:29):
one hundred and sixty eight hours in the week. Those
hours may have a lot of constraints and interruptions, but
they are ours, nonetheless, so rather than wait for a
perfect time, we are wise to make the most of them.
I am sure you can think of plenty of situations

(01:50):
where big progress might not be possible, but maybe small
parkas might be. Maybe you are working in suboptimal conditions,
like on an air plane or while home taking care
of a sick child, when you are tired, when you
are waiting for someone else to provide an important piece
of content you need for a project, or when you
just have a short amount of time. Maybe you can't

(02:14):
do a lot, but even in suboptimal conditions, you can
often do something. Sometimes this may be as small as
setting up the presentation and putting titles on each slide,
identifying the documents you'll need for a project, or updating
your calendar with meetings and deadlines related to the project.

(02:36):
Sometimes you write two sentences and something larger. Maybe you
get through three of twenty emails you need to send.
Perhaps it isn't much, but there are a few benefits
to taking these small steps. You are a little bit
closer to your goal. Anything you do now you don't

(02:57):
have to do later. See you've made life life a
little easier for future you. In addition, I think this
is most important you get in the habit of using
more of your time. I think many of us could
use about ten percent more of our time if we
tried and looked hard for it. Rather than not starting

(03:21):
something new at four forty five pm because the day
is over, you might be able to do a few
small things which will make tomorrow feel more focused, Rather
than doing nothing while sitting in the waiting room at
a parkour class, which is where I was when I
wrote the script for this, right next to a seven

(03:41):
year old's birthday party that was running simultaneously with my
kid's class. You could write podcast scripts. We don't have
to pack things in just to pack things in. But
when you get in the habit of using a bit
more of your time, eventually you don't assume an awkward
word fifteen minute stretch of time is unusable. You know

(04:05):
what kind of work fits well into fifteen minute stretches,
or what you can do on the sidelines of your
kid's soccer practice, or what you can do on plane rides.
When moments like these arise, you do something meaningful with them.
You don't just scroll on your phone. The work you

(04:26):
do in bits of suboptimal time also gives you momentum.
Having momentum and not starting from nothing means that when
you do have optimal time, you can hit the ground running.
So the next time you find yourself with a not
ideal bit of time, try to use it anyway. Take

(04:49):
the steps you can on the projects you are working on.
Using ten percent more of our time is like getting
more than an extra hour in the day, which doesn't
feel like a bad thing in the meantime. This is Laura,
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of

(05:13):
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

(05:36):
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.