You drive a car, not a time machine

There's no point wishing things took less time than they do

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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 you drive a car, not a time machine,
so best to plan accordingly. Today's tip comes from a

(00:23):
participant in one of my time tracking challenges. She told
me that she had a tendency to underestimate how long
various things would take, so her husband would remind her
tongue in cheek, that she drives a car, not a
time machine. If something is thirty minutes away, you will
not magically get there in fifteen, and if you leave

(00:45):
ten minutes late, the distance is not going too magically
become shorter. She's not the only one who sometimes forgets
that we live in the real, non magical world, where
the laws of physics are strictly enforced. Wanting something to
take less time will not make it take less time.
In general, it is better to face this reality. Since

(01:09):
I study time and look at a lot of people's
time logs, I've come to see that time estimation is
challenging for many people. This stems from a few things.
Sometimes bad estimates come from looking at insufficient evidence. Maybe
you once drove to your kid's daycare and onto the
office in twenty minutes, so you budget twenty minutes routinely. Once,

(01:32):
you wrote a five hundred word newsletter article in half
an hour, so you assume you can write a similar
article during a thirty minute break between meetings today. But
maybe there were extenuating circumstances for those situations, like there
was literally no one else on the road because it
was a major holiday that your family just didn't happen
to have off, or maybe that newsletter was mostly a

(01:55):
reprinted memo from a colleague. The best case scenario tends
not to be the normal scenario, so it may not
be realistic to expect to write a newsletter when you've
got thirty minutes between meetings, as you probably won't even
get the full thirty minutes if the meeting run's late,
or you need to go to the bathroom, or you
find yourself answering a hot email. You can start, but

(02:17):
your work isn't getting done by a time machine. We
also underestimate with time because we forget about some of
the steps. Unlike time machines, cars need to be parked,
Maybe the time between the actual key and the ignition
moment in your driveway to the entrance to your office
complex is twenty minutes, but you have to put on

(02:38):
your shoes, walk to your car, get in, put on
your seat belt, and start up a podcast. Of course,
on the other end, you need to find a spot,
grab your things, tap your badget security, and walk to
your desk. If you put your shoes on twenty minutes
before your first meeting, you will in fact be late.

(03:02):
But honestly, I think the biggest thing going on is
some fantasizing. The truth is we don't want it to
take forty minutes to get to work, or for that
full on grocery store trip to take ninety minutes, so
we don't budget the proper amount of time and just
hope it will work out. Alas we drive cars, not

(03:23):
time machines. Wanting something to be different doesn't make it change. Instead,
it's better to face reality and see what can be
done to actually change what's going on while observing the
laws of physics. Maybe you can split daycare drop off duties,
maybe you can work from home twice a week, maybe

(03:44):
you can order groceries online. But there is nothing gained
by routinely underestimating how much time things will take other
than a lot of frustration and frenzy. Better to be
more accurate and get done what we intend to do.
In the meantime, This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and

(04:08):
here's to making the most of 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.

(04:32):
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