Use bits of time for bits of joy

Got five minutes? Here’s what you can do instead of checking email (again).

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
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 to use bits of time for bits
of joy. So here's something I believe. Using time well
means getting the big pieces right. If your work feels

(00:26):
meaningful and enjoyable, and you're spending your work hours doing
challenging and interesting things, life is good. If you're spending
your personal hours nurturing your relationships with family and friends,
and you're making time for your health and hobbies, this
is wonderful. It really doesn't matter what else you do
with your time. However, I've noticed over the years that

(00:46):
even people doing these expert time management things often ponder
what to do about the little pieces of time in
their lives. You know what these are. Five minutes while
you're waiting for a phone call to start, five minutes
while you're waiting for the bus or for the car
pol to bring your kids home. I know what most
of us do with these little bits of time. We
pick up our phones and start deleting email. It feels

(01:08):
so productive to delete those emails right or else, we
take a quick look through social media sites to see
if anyone's liked our posts. These things are very easy
to do, and they fit well in bits of time,
but they can feel somewhat unsatisfying to do over and
over again. People who use their time well often want
to use all their time well, and so they wonder

(01:28):
what else they can do in bits of time to
bring bits of joy into their lives. I think it's
a great question. One of the reasons I started this
podcast was to give people something they could do in
little bits of time. You aim to get to your
train station five minutes before departure, and you listen to
Before Breakfast in that little chunk of time. Hopefully you
heard something in an episode that will take your date

(01:50):
from great to awesome. But if you pay attention to
your time, you'll notice that there are a lot of
these chunks through the day. If you're caught up on
episodes well before, Fist can only fill one of them,
So what do you do with the rest. Over the
past few months, Before Breakfast listeners have written to me
with all kinds of ways that they use little bits
of time for bits of joy. One listener, who works

(02:13):
in a hotel and a cold climate, wrote that she
and her colleagues will go up and down the stairs
together during five to ten minute breaks. They get exercise
and social time and return to their work with a
lot more energy. Another listener wrote in that she uses
time on the bus to work on a language app.
It's hard to do focused work with stops and starts,
and no one's guaranteed to get a seed, which makes

(02:34):
other activities difficult, but she can use these short chunks
of time to add to her skills. I have the
Kindle app on my phone so I can read in
little bits of time. These bits of time can really
add up. It's not unusual for me to score an
extra twenty to twenty five minutes of reading time per
day when I'm looking at my phone while waiting in
a checkoutline, or when the gate agent says they're about

(02:57):
to board the plane, but then we don't board just yet. Sure,
those emails do need to be deleted at some point,
but you can delete email constantly and there will still
be more emails to delete. It's more effective to do
that in big batches and leave those bits of time
for something else. So at some point today, make a

(03:17):
list of things you can do with little bits of time.
Other than delete email or check social media. Call this
your bits of joy list? What can you do in
less than ten minutes to add joy and meaning to
your life. Maybe it's texting a friend or family member
to connect. Maybe it's brainstorming fun things to do on
the weekend. It could be reading a poem, doing a

(03:38):
quick meditation, coloring in one of those grown up coloring books,
doing a few entries and a crossword puzzle, looking at
a great work of art at a museum's website, or
reading a random Wikipedia entry. See if you can list
ten or more ideas, then choose a few favorites to
do as your defaults. Make sure you have the materials handy.

(03:59):
That way, when you find yourself on hold or waiting
for someone to call you, you can pull out those
colored pencils and start working on that coloring book. Life
will feel so much better then if you spend those
few minutes de leting emails that seem to regenerate themselves
before you even close your inbox. So what's on your
bits of joy list? Please email me and let me know.

(04:20):
You can write to me at Before Breakfast podcast at
I heart media dot com. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening and here's to making the most of
our time. Hey everybody, I'd love to hear from you.

(04:41):
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 iHeartMedia dot com that

(05:01):
Before Breakfast is spelled 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 I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.