April 17, 2019 • 32 mins
We’re ready to spend more time on what matters. Laura Vanderkam, Host of the new Before Breakfast Podcast, tells us how as we chat about her new book, Juliet’s School of Possibilities.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Anytime you're telling a story that starts with well, everybody
knows that. You know, you can't just go to bed
with dirty counters. Yes you can. It turns out you
can go to bed with dirty counters, and people do
it all the time. I mean, nobody wants to eat
off truly filthy counters. But but I'm guessing those counters
will get dirty again the next Perhaps that's where we
draw where maybe where we draw the line, but to
(00:22):
the counters will in fact it dirty again the next day,
whereas you won't get that time back. Hey there, Welcome
to you. Turns the podcast where we talk about changing direction,
turning around, being different. I am Lisa Us and I'm
(00:46):
Chill Herzig, And as we talked about transformation, I feel
like the topic comes up often, how do we manage
our time? How do we manage our time when we're
trying to navigate some sort of complicated, weird snaggle in
our lives. So I'm kind of a time manager. I
you are a massive time manager. I feel like this
(01:08):
podcast you can just take off your earphones and leave
the room because you are so not with time. I'm not,
and I'm worse. There was a time when I worked
a big job and I had an assistant, And you know,
I say that she moved me around on the game
board of my life. That is what I would always feel.
I had a series of fantastic assistance for whom I
(01:30):
will be eternally grateful without them. Though I'm my own assistant,
I yell at my inner assistant all the time because
she messes up all the time. And no, I don't
I feel like my time management is is not my
my great strength. Well you you fake it really well
because from the outside looks like you're doing perfectly with
(01:51):
time management. On the other hand, really need to talk
to our guest today because she is time Maven. She
is the host of two podcasts. She's really we can
barely stand out with this one before Breakfast and Best
of Both Worlds um And she's also an author. She's
got a bunch of books. Her most recent is Juliet's
(02:13):
School of Possibilities. We are joined today by the beautiful
Laura vander Camp. Thank you so much for being with us,
Thank you for having me and I need your help
so badly because I am a master procrastinator. Um And
this podcast is about change and transformation. But I think
so many of us, myself included, I feel like we
(02:36):
just can't fit it into what we're doing. We're so
our lives are crammed with stupid busy stuff that we
can never actually do anything different. Can you fix us? Well?
I thank you. Both seemed very functional. We're all here,
so we solve that problem at least. Um No, I mean,
the difficulty with time is that it keeps passing, whether
(02:57):
you think about how you're spending it or not. And
so it's very z to spend time mindlessly and consciously
sort of taking ourselves out of this flowing river to ask, well,
where is my time going? Is it going to the
right places? Am I happy about this? Am I not
happy about this? It takes a lot of effort, and
of course when you're so busy, it's hard to put
effort into things. And also when you're going through change,
(03:21):
your focus is not at its best anyway, you know.
So I think there there is and sort of a
time management blow up that happens when you're going through
any kind of life transition. Um. Except, as Lisa says,
that's a moment when it's really critical to be able
to take stock so so what's give us a method? Um,
(03:43):
what's the starting place for for managing our time better? Well?
I think for anyone and certainly for people in transition,
it really helps to figure out where the time is
actually going, because, especially when there is a lot of change,
we have a tendency to tell ourselves all sorts of
stories about where the time might be going. And maybe
they're true, but maybe they're not. So we want to
make sure because if you're trying to make changes, you
(04:06):
need to know where you are now. How otherwise, how
do you know if you're changing the right thing. Maybe
something that you thought was a problem really isn't. Maybe
something you've never even considered taking far more time than
you might have imagined. So I always recommend as the
first step try tracking your time. Ideally for a week.
A couple of days is okay. Um, a week is
best because that's the actual cycle of life as we
(04:28):
live in, and it doesn't have to be to get
I'm saying get up. You know, every time you get
up to get a glass of water, you have to
write that down that that would be impossible to stick with.
I checked my time in these half hour blocks, um,
and I find that a half hour is enough to
give me a good picture of where the time is going,
but isn't so detailed that I get overwhelmed. And I'm
(04:49):
not writing down every half hour in the sense of
checking in every half hour. I probably check in about
three times a day and write what I did since
the last time. And I know this doesn't sound like
a tremendous amount of fun um. You know, writing where
the time goes is about as much fun as as
tracking your spending or tracking your eating or the other
things that that people suggest. But it is so useful
(05:11):
and and one of the key reasons to do it
is we often see that things are going better then
we think they are. You know, we have a tendency
to invent all sorts of catastrophes about how behind we are,
how we're dropping balls left and right, and that may
not be the case. It may be that you are
spending quite a bit of time with the people who
(05:32):
are important to you. It may be that you are,
you know, not sleeping well every night, but some nights
are doing better than others. It may be that you
do have some pockets of high quality leisure time, maybe
not as much as you want, but it might be
some and and so when we see that, it often
gives us permission to relax a little bit. And when
you're in that more relaxed sense of abundance, then you
(05:54):
can start making the changes that you do need to.
So let's pretend that I've kept this journal. Let's pretend
and maybe I'm not as productive as I would like
to be. And I see like, oh, you spent half
an hour making toast and drinking tea. Um, you have
seven secrets to time management that will help us. I
(06:17):
know you don't. I'm sure I do. I'm trying to
think which seven? All right, I will come up. Okay,
the secrets that I learned from you which I have
not yet applied. But um, the first one was tend
your garden. Then you had to make life memorable. These
(06:38):
these are chapter titles from a book came out about
a year ago. Yes, now, now you've helped me. Remember,
do you want to share those? Sure? Well? I mean
the tending your garden metaphor is is what we were
just talking about about, figuring out where the time goes
and then asking yourself the questions of what you like
and what you don't like. Similarly, if you were, you know,
tending a garden. You're weeding, your pruning, You're saying, do
(06:59):
I like at there? Do I want something else there?
And you know, over time you can build quite a
beautiful thing as long as you recognize that there is
work involved in it. A garden is not a set
it and forget it sort of thing, and the same
thing with a schedule. But if you put yourself in
a position of being that master gardener, you can make
all sorts of wonderful things happen with your life. And
I think that that sense of autonomy and control is
(07:23):
is the most important thing to come out of tracking
your time, because you start to see that I do
have some power to make decisions. Maybe there are things
that feel like they are not so much choices. These
are obligations I have or things that I have to
deal with in my life. But there's probably some space
within the garden of a schedule that we can exercise
some autonomy over and as we figure out how we
(07:46):
can make the best choices with that, over time, we
can start to expand that sphere of influence. Okay, so
another one that you talk about is don't fill time.
What is I mean? I feel like any time I
see a little chunk open, I think, how how should
I best fill this? Yeah, we all have a tendency
to do that, and I think it's many of us
(08:07):
have this unquestioned story in our heads that the busier
you are, the more important you are. And on some
level it makes sense, right, because when somebody is important,
there's a lot of demand for their time, right, that
that's why they're important. You know, there are lots of
people want to see them and so forth. But it
(08:28):
doesn't actually logically follow that these people pack every minute
of their schedule. Um, many of the most successful people
have ever studied have used the power they do have
over their time to leave open blocks of space. And
there's a couple of reasons for this. I mean, one is,
everything takes longer than you think it will. I mean,
there's traffic on the way into work. Imagine that it
(08:49):
takes longer to get somewhere in the rain. Who would
have thought our meeting ran over? Oh my goodness, never
happened before. All these things, right, are entirely anticipatable, and
so because of that it helps to leave open open space.
But it's it's not just about those practicalities. It's about
recognizing that open space invites opportunity into our lives. If
(09:11):
you're having a really good conversation with someone and it's
leading to all sorts of interesting revelations and things you
might want to try in the future and ideas, it
is so awesome to be able to stick with that conversation,
not be like, yeah, I got another meeting, you know,
to thirty next, and then three o'clock next and so
forth like that. So the only way you can do
that is to not full time. Yeah, bok, book enough
(09:34):
of it, leave bumpers on the sides of meetings. I've
noticed that our new scheduling software at at my at
my other job, I got a lot of hustles here, um,
you know, has an option to when you book an hour,
it actually only books fifty minutes for the meeting. Nice,
And I feel like, actually, what's happening is these these
(09:56):
developers are realizing that people are going a little nuts,
and that the tools that they've created so that we
can very easily pack our schedules and you know, shove
much more into every every day, that actually that's not
doing anybody any favors. So there, do you consult with
any of these. Well, when I find hilarious about the
(10:16):
electronic calendars, I mean, you can like triple book yourself
for a time slot, which is really funny. If you
stop you, it doesn't stop you at all. It doesn't
remind you. By the way, these two things are are
thirty minutes apart from each other, and yet you have
scheduled yourself back to back into them, curious that you
know they need a little um, I don't say with
those little paper clips like come up and tell you
this is a bad idea, but you know, yeah, no,
(10:39):
I mean we all need to be more judicious with
what we agree to take on. And and one of
one of the things I often suggest to people is,
whenever you're asked to do something in the future, ask
yourself if you do it tomorrow, because it's really hard
to have that same sense of opportunity cost and how
much energy you'll have and what you'll want to take
on and how busy you'll be for a time in
(11:00):
the future. I mean, if somebody asked me to do
something in October, well I look at my October calendar
and it looks pretty open, So yeah, I'm free. Sure,
I've got nothing going on in October, happy to take
that on. That is not how it's gonna totally not
how it's going to be in October. You know, I'm
gonna be just as busy as I am now, only
I'll have this other thing that I really didn't want
to do that's also gonna be on my calendar. Now
I'll be even busier. So better to ask if you
(11:21):
do it tomorrow. Well, when we come back, we're going
to talk more about how to make our calendar and
the productive. We are chatting with Laura ander Kimp and
we're trying to figure out time management here. And you've
(11:44):
got two podcasts. One of them is um called best
of both worlds, which is because you're a mom too,
you're not just the time guru a mom of many
board children. Yes, uh so we're all juggling women here.
Uh how do you figure out because being a mom
can be a full time job, and jobs certainly can
(12:05):
suck up all your time, is it possible to have
it all? I mean, do you schedule every minute? Is
that the only way you could have it all? Or
is that a myth? Then we should all just give
it up right now? I do think that people can
have it all if you define having it all as
having you know, a career you really enjoy, a family
you also really enjoy, and and time for your personal
(12:27):
pursuits too. Um. And I don't think doing all those
things requires scheduling every minute of your life. I do
think it requires being careful with your time and mindful
and intentional about how you spend your time. But I
certainly don't think those are in opposition and in best
of both worlds, which I I co horst host with
my friends Sarah Hart Hunger, who is a practicing physician
(12:49):
and mom of three small children, so a lot on
her plate as well. We we talk about it from
this angle of people who are loving careers, loving families,
wanting to do their own things as well. Um, because
we felt there was really a gap in the market because,
as you said, a lot of the content aimed at
moms is pretty negative and saying you won't be able
to do these things. You know that you're going to
have to make all these harsh trade offs. And my
(13:11):
point is always there there are a hundred sixty eight
hours in a week, which is quite a bit of time. Um,
if you are working forty hours a week, so that's
a full time job and sleeping eight hours a night,
which a lot of people claim not to do. But
let's say you're doing that, that's fifty six hours per week.
That leaves seventy two hours to do other things. So
I suspect it's quite possible to spend a lot of
(13:32):
quality time with your family, um, spend some time with friends,
spend some time exercising, spend some time reading if you're
careful about how you allocate them, and you spend some
time just doing boring, stupid stuff if you if you
want to like watching like binge watching Netflix, is that okay?
You certainly can if it brings you joy, If it
brings you joy into your schedule, by all means, watch
(13:55):
whatever show you want to watch on guilt Free. I
think the problem arises when people don't recognize that leisure
time is occurring, and so spend it in sort of
mindless ways, like we just pick up our phones and
sort of start scrolling through stuff, you know, looking at
photos of on Facebook of people from high school you
weren't that fond of in the first place, and then
(14:17):
you know, a whole hours can disappear into this and
especially when you are so busy, it can be very
frustrating if you spend leisure time mindlessly like that, So
and tell people like, think about it, what would bring
you joy? And if it's choosing to watch an hour
of a favorite television show, do that right and know
you are doing it, and choose to do that and
enjoy it and savor it while you no guilt, No guilt.
(14:40):
Guilt is pretty useless in any case. Yeah, So, okay,
now switching into work mode, you talk about, um not
about working only to the point of diminishing returns and
that sort of rule of economics as applied to your work.
How does that? How does that apply? Well? With most
things that we allocate resources to, there there comes this
(15:01):
point of diminishing returns. So you know, if you are
eating a brownie, for instance, the first four or five
bites are amazing, maybe the tenth bite is sort of
less exciting, and probably the hundredth bite would be no
fun at all. Um. So it's the same point of
diminishing returns. And there's been some interesting studies looking at this.
And you know the amount of errors people make when
(15:22):
they're hours go north of about fifty a week for instance,
Um that you you just become less efficient as you
become tired, and you can do certain things to renew
your energy, but you need to sort of pay attention
to the hours as a whole. The good news is,
if you are smart about how you spend your work hours,
you can do a lot in forty certainly in fifty
(15:43):
hours a week. Um, But you need to pay attention
to when do I have the most energy? What sort
of work should be done at the time when I
have the most energy, What sort of work is better
suited to time when I don't have as much energy? Um?
How can I make sure that I am making space
not just for the things that are right in front
(16:03):
of me demanding to be done, the urgent stuff, but
also nurturing work relationships, building up yourself as an expert
in a field, for instance, and all that's involved in networking.
But if you are intentional, if you think through your
work week, you can make space for all of that.
There was a sentence that you wrote that actually stuck
with me when when I was reading your material, and
(16:26):
it's choices skillfully made lead to freedom. Can you unpack
that for us? Yeah, this was a great quote. That
I came across from a Buddhist teacher. Um, but it's
just pointing out that, um it was mindful of us.
Ultimately leads to having more time, because when we choose
(16:46):
how to spend our hours, then we start to put
the good stuff in and then see what other time
is also available to relax, to have leisure time. I
know that the days and the weeks when I am
better about thinking through what would I really like to
do this week? Um, what time is available to me?
(17:08):
When can those things go? What doesn't matter as much?
I feel like I have so much more time, And
it's it's been almost amazing, you know when because I
am a mother of four small children, things go wrong
all the time. I mean, this is the nature of
family life. Um. And you know we had we had
some you know, things happened in the fall with like
(17:31):
you know, kids and e R visits, as always happens,
Everyone's all right. But I was so amazed that one
week that that happened, how productive I felt because I
had identified sort of the three things that absolutely had
to happen that week, And even if I had spent
much of Monday in the e R, I still knew
what three things had to get done, And so I
wasn't making myself busy with all the other stuff that
(17:52):
did not absolutely have to get done. But I did
those three things. Probably didn't do anything else, but those
three things got done, and so hey, you know, I'm good. Yeah.
Mindfulness leads to this sense of a great job. Yeah.
So it sounds to me like you must be pretty
good at saying no to things, because part of planning
(18:12):
your time is planning what you're not going to do.
So how do you what's your what's your no style?
My no style? Well, I do try to ask myself
that question. Will I do it? What I do it tomorrow? Um?
Is this something I want to take on compared to
the other things I could be doing with that hour? Um?
You know, and we are somebody just asked to have
(18:35):
a phone call. It seems like, oh, it's just a
phone call, But that's an hour that you could you know,
go walk outside on a beautiful spring day for instance.
Is it is that phone call adding more to your
life than the walk on the beautiful spring day. While
you're on that walk, you may have an awesome idea
related to your business, to your career, to something else
you want to do in life? Is that phone call
(18:57):
worth more than giving yourself the chance to come up
with that amazing idea. I think these are the sorts
of questions we need to ask. But you know, I
don't want to just make it sound like you should
just say no to everything, because I think sometimes people
who have been very, very busy get in their mind like, Okay,
now I need to learn to say no. And that
may be true. But part of learning to say no
is also recognizing when something is a good opportunity and
(19:20):
learning to say yes to the right things, and saying
yes wholeheartedly to things that maybe you know doesn't seem
like the sort of thing someone like us should do
or should have the space for. Um. I see this
especially when I you know, a lot of my literature
has been aimed at parents of small children, for instance.
I think mothers in particular often feel like, oh, well,
(19:42):
I couldn't travel to that conference, I couldn't take on
that promotion because it would involve a lot of demands.
But if it's something that really excites you and would
make you want to come to work, and you think
you could uniquely contribute, maybe you should say yes, right
wouldn't just listen to that story that just because I
(20:02):
have these family responsibilities means I can't do those things. Now,
if you take that on, you may need to say
no to some other things. But I'm guessing there's a
bunch of lower value work tasks and such that you
could say no to. What's your filter for that, though,
because I think a lot of us will take on
anything anyone throws at us, you know, especially at work.
(20:24):
You want to be the helpful person. You want to
be the go to person. Um. And as a mom,
maybe I'm just not a helpful person. I don't know. Yeah,
I see I have some friends who I see that
in that they say yes to everything as soon as
someone asks. Um. I love the rubric that Gretchen Ruben
has of people who are upholders, because people who are
(20:44):
obligers um, and so obligers of course when somebody else
asks them to do something, they will automatically say yes.
And I'm sort of a people pleasing kind of person,
and some of us maybe less oriented that way. So,
you know, but I think the rubric that of going
through would I do this tomorrow? Because if I if
I would cancel things for tomorrow. If I'd move stuff
(21:06):
around to put this in tomorrow, because I'm pretty excited
about it, that's a good sign that I should say
yes to it in the future. I love that when
we come back, we're gonna ship. Here's a little bit
and toxic. We've been chatting with Laura vander Kim about
(21:29):
time management, and what is shocking to me is how
well you've managed your time so that you do not
only host two podcasts, but you have written books on
time management. And your latest book, Juliet's School of Possibilities,
is a story. It's like, it's not even like a
self help book. It's really a story. Um, how did
(21:52):
that happen? Well, there's some history of their being business fables.
Many of the best selling business books of all time
have been things like Five Dysfunctions of a Team or
The One Minute Manager, which are attempting to teach a
lesson but in the form of a story. And I
know that people love stories. I give a lot of
(22:13):
speeches and nobody ever comes up to me afterwards and says, yeah,
that's statistic. I love that statistic. That moved me right.
You know, it's always this the story you told about
this and people can cite these stories back to you
almost perfectly. It's it's amazing how good our memory is
for stories. So um So well, I've been writing a
lot of time management literature. Maybe I should try a
(22:34):
different tactic. And the publisher I'd been working with over
the years is also interested in doing fable, So we
came up with the idea of Juliette's School of Possibilities,
which is a fable about ambitious young woman whose life
is falling apart on various dimensions because she cannot figure
out how to spend her time well. She winds up
(22:54):
at at Juliette School of Possibilities, where her mentor Juliette,
shows her what it truly means to, you know, make
good choices? Are you Juliet? I am not Juliet. I
so wish I were Juliet. But I've interviewed so many
amazing people over the years, and and the lessons I
have learned from them sort of could be put together
to create this this figure of Juliet who is a
(23:18):
successful businesswoman, uh, you know, loving mother and very calm.
I think that's the part that really gets me, um,
because I may sometimes feel like Oh yeah, I'm I'm
doing good on and making the business stuff work, the
family stuff work. But I'm a little bit tense um
and and so her she's different. So what's the the
(23:39):
School of possibilities? What's the most important lesson you could
draw from there? Well, at the School of Possibilities, Riley
has shown different versions of her life, which is based
on different choices she might make about how she spends
her time. Whether she just reacts to whatever is right
in front of her, whatever seems most urgent, whatever is blinking, versus,
(24:01):
you know, if she puts thought into it and make
sure she makes time in her busy schedule for the
things that align with her long term goals. And these
two visions are entirely different. And it's not even that
sort of false choice that a lot of people have. Oh,
I'll either be professionally successful or I'll be personally successful.
These two things are at odds. It's really one vision
she's not professionally or personally successful, and the other she's both.
(24:24):
Because it's the same mindset that I am choosing what
is most important to put my time in and recognizing
that I cannot do everything, so I have to make
choices of which things are are most important and and
so when she learns to do that, she starts rapidly
making changes in her life, um trying to put the
(24:46):
pieces of her life back together. And I guess readers
will have to find out if she succeeds. So the
I loved the story, and it felt a little bit
like Dickens Christmas Carol Um because you have the you know,
the future, the future visions. But what I found sort
of ironic was that this is a woman who has
(25:07):
I think, by the time of the book is over
a thousand emails in her inbox, and the first choice
she makes after her epiphany is is to go for
a bike ride, which was wild because sometimes I think,
I just think that is where we need to go, right,
just the opposite of whatever it is we're doing. Yeah,
(25:27):
because it turns out those thousand emails will still be
there after the bike ride, and they'll be there whether
you go for the bike ride or not. But your
ability to deal with what you need to deal with
coming out of those thousand emails maybe better if if
you go on the bike ride. And also, I mean
getting through those thousand emails wasn't going to help her
save her career. I mean, her career was already falling apart.
She needed something new to to pull herself out of
(25:50):
this whole her company giving her an ultimatum that she
was soon going to be out. So you know, the
same thing you've been doing isn't working. You probably should
try something different. So let me ask you. Sometimes I
think to make changes in the way you use your time,
You're really talking about making a profound change in yourself.
I mean, you know, for example, one of the people
(26:13):
I admire most in this world is a fantastic professional
killing it on so many levels. Her house is a
complete disaster area, and I feel that every time I
go over to her house, I think, no wonder, she
is so incredible. And if I could just let go
of the stupid counter wiping situation that I have in
(26:34):
my head, maybe I too would have you know, would
be on the freeway a little bit more the way
she is. But I'm a counter wiper. My mother made
me into a counter wiper. I do it, especially when
I'm angry. So how do I get I actually serious?
I want to get over this. I don't want to
be a passive, aggressive cleaning person. I want to free
(26:57):
up that time and let things be a little bit
more of a zoo at my house. But this is profound.
How do I how do I dig this out of me? Yeah?
We have all sorts of stories that we tell ourselves
that are often based on the way we grew up.
And anytime you're telling a story that starts with, well,
everybody knows that, you know, you can't just go to
bed with dirty counters. Yes you can. It turns out
you can go to bed with dirty counters, and people
(27:18):
do it all the time. I mean, nobody wants to
eat off truly filthy counters. But but I'm guessing those
counters will get dirty again the next Perhaps that's where
we draw where maybe where we draw the line but
to the counters will in fact get dirty again the
next day, whereas you won't get that time back. You know,
we have the story of always joke about this the
eleven PM home inspection. There's a lot of people who
(27:40):
have somehow absorbed this story that there is an eleven
pm home inspection and if the house is not picked up,
they can't go to bed because there will be an
eleven pm home inspection on before breakfast. Because I love
how short, sweet and to the point before breakfast is
you're very careful with your listeners time, of course, and
that one belongs on there there like there is no
(28:01):
there is no eleven pm home inspection, right yeah, And
I mean, I know it's hard to change these stories.
I mean we can. If the counter wiping is about
working off stress, maybe there's some other thing that would
be more productive to do without stress, like going for
a run or you know, punching a punching bag or
something along those lines, um, writing in a journal. These
(28:23):
all might be things that would help. You have a
giant punching bag installed in my kitchen, I could just
hang it from the ceiling next to the site, or
just stop stressing about having clean counters and enjoy your
clean counters and listen to a podcast while you're wiping.
You're multitasking. Is multitasking good or bad? It depends how
you're multitasking. Um. I think the most common form of
(28:46):
multitasking is the one that really gets us in trouble,
which is you're attempting to do two things at once
that are using related parts of your brain. So you're
on a conference call and you're trying to check email
at the same time. Um, you are probably not really
paying attention to both of them. And I know this.
It's so attempting to do because you know you're on
(29:07):
a call for an hour and possibly you're not needed
for the whole hour, and like, I'll just check my
email see what's coming in. And inevitably when I do that,
people are like, and Laura, what did you think of that? Uh?
It's actually so common now that people don't even really apologize.
They say, oh, I checked out for a second. What
was the question? I mean, I have this, this happened. Okay,
(29:28):
maybe I haven't quite gotten myself to that level. I
haven't been able to say. I've actually been doing a
lot of video chats lately to get around that issue.
It sort of forces everyone to pay more attention, and
I feel bad about it somewhat as a you know,
work from home mom, because I often don't wish to
do my hair and makeup before being on a video call.
But on the other hand, you pay so much more attention,
(29:49):
and it also forces the issue a little bit more,
which is that if you can be checking email during it,
and maybe you don't need to be on the call
or maybe you don't need to be on the call
for the whole time. I mean, you could be on
for ten minutes and then you can be more honest
about honest about to say, you know, I see the
rest of this agenda doesn't have anything to do with me.
I think probably guys could just continue this without me,
(30:10):
or you know, or or release other people if you're
in the position, the sort of managerial position of the
call and say, well, for the first fifteen minutes, we
need everyone, and then after that we only need these
two people. I mean, that's that's entire. If people did that,
it would free up all sorts of space. Are you
a fan of finding like five minutes here and five
minutes there. Do you have to have big chunks of
time to make a difference in your schedule or can
(30:32):
it be like the fifteen minutes you grabbed because the
traffic was moving. Um, I think you can definitely use
small bits of time. I'm a little bit wary of
of these sort of time hacks. I read about online
all the time that that promised to save you little
bits of time here and there, because I mean, if
you take thirty seconds less in the shower, I'm not
really sure what you're going to do with that. It
(30:53):
doesn't seem like this is going to change your life
in any measurable way. Um. But that said, you don't
need huge chunks of time in order to do things.
And and some of the biggest changes I've more practical
changes I've made in my life have come out of
recognizing that you can use small bits of time. UM. So,
for instance, putting the Kindle app on my phone so
(31:17):
I can read e books in short chunks of time
that I might have been tempted just to be deleting
emails or scrolling around online. Now I can actually read books.
And it's somewhat amazing how much literature you can get
through in those small chunks of time. Laura, thank you
so much for being with us today, great advice, Thank
you for having me. If you want to hear more
from Laura, check out her podcast before Breakfast or go
(31:39):
to her website Laura VANDERCOUMP dot com. My thanks as well,
and thanks to Alicia Haywood are fantastic producer, and thanks
to all of you listening. Please will you do us
a favor, rate and review us if you have not
done so already, we'd love to know how you're feeling
about this podcast and connect with us here at You
(31:59):
Turn
Anytime you're telling a story that starts with well, everybody
knows that. You know, you can't just go to bed
with dirty counters. Yes you can. It turns out you
can go to bed with dirty counters, and people do
it all the time. I mean, nobody wants to eat
off truly filthy counters. But but I'm guessing those counters
will get dirty again the next Perhaps that's where we
draw where maybe where we draw the line, but to
(00:22):
the counters will in fact it dirty again the next day,
whereas you won't get that time back. Hey there, Welcome
to you. Turns the podcast where we talk about changing direction,
turning around, being different. I am Lisa Us and I'm
(00:46):
Chill Herzig, And as we talked about transformation, I feel
like the topic comes up often, how do we manage
our time? How do we manage our time when we're
trying to navigate some sort of complicated, weird snaggle in
our lives. So I'm kind of a time manager. I
you are a massive time manager. I feel like this
(01:08):
podcast you can just take off your earphones and leave
the room because you are so not with time. I'm not,
and I'm worse. There was a time when I worked
a big job and I had an assistant, And you know,
I say that she moved me around on the game
board of my life. That is what I would always feel.
I had a series of fantastic assistance for whom I
(01:30):
will be eternally grateful without them. Though I'm my own assistant,
I yell at my inner assistant all the time because
she messes up all the time. And no, I don't
I feel like my time management is is not my
my great strength. Well you you fake it really well
because from the outside looks like you're doing perfectly with
(01:51):
time management. On the other hand, really need to talk
to our guest today because she is time Maven. She
is the host of two podcasts. She's really we can
barely stand out with this one before Breakfast and Best
of Both Worlds um And she's also an author. She's
got a bunch of books. Her most recent is Juliet's
(02:13):
School of Possibilities. We are joined today by the beautiful
Laura vander Camp. Thank you so much for being with us,
Thank you for having me and I need your help
so badly because I am a master procrastinator. Um And
this podcast is about change and transformation. But I think
so many of us, myself included, I feel like we
(02:36):
just can't fit it into what we're doing. We're so
our lives are crammed with stupid busy stuff that we
can never actually do anything different. Can you fix us? Well?
I thank you. Both seemed very functional. We're all here,
so we solve that problem at least. Um No, I mean,
the difficulty with time is that it keeps passing, whether
(02:57):
you think about how you're spending it or not. And
so it's very z to spend time mindlessly and consciously
sort of taking ourselves out of this flowing river to ask, well,
where is my time going? Is it going to the
right places? Am I happy about this? Am I not
happy about this? It takes a lot of effort, and
of course when you're so busy, it's hard to put
effort into things. And also when you're going through change,
(03:21):
your focus is not at its best anyway, you know.
So I think there there is and sort of a
time management blow up that happens when you're going through
any kind of life transition. Um. Except, as Lisa says,
that's a moment when it's really critical to be able
to take stock so so what's give us a method? Um,
(03:43):
what's the starting place for for managing our time better? Well?
I think for anyone and certainly for people in transition,
it really helps to figure out where the time is
actually going, because, especially when there is a lot of change,
we have a tendency to tell ourselves all sorts of
stories about where the time might be going. And maybe
they're true, but maybe they're not. So we want to
make sure because if you're trying to make changes, you
(04:06):
need to know where you are now. How otherwise, how
do you know if you're changing the right thing. Maybe
something that you thought was a problem really isn't. Maybe
something you've never even considered taking far more time than
you might have imagined. So I always recommend as the
first step try tracking your time. Ideally for a week.
A couple of days is okay. Um, a week is
best because that's the actual cycle of life as we
(04:28):
live in, and it doesn't have to be to get
I'm saying get up. You know, every time you get
up to get a glass of water, you have to
write that down that that would be impossible to stick with.
I checked my time in these half hour blocks, um,
and I find that a half hour is enough to
give me a good picture of where the time is going,
but isn't so detailed that I get overwhelmed. And I'm
(04:49):
not writing down every half hour in the sense of
checking in every half hour. I probably check in about
three times a day and write what I did since
the last time. And I know this doesn't sound like
a tremendous amount of fun um. You know, writing where
the time goes is about as much fun as as
tracking your spending or tracking your eating or the other
things that that people suggest. But it is so useful
(05:11):
and and one of the key reasons to do it
is we often see that things are going better then
we think they are. You know, we have a tendency
to invent all sorts of catastrophes about how behind we are,
how we're dropping balls left and right, and that may
not be the case. It may be that you are
spending quite a bit of time with the people who
(05:32):
are important to you. It may be that you are,
you know, not sleeping well every night, but some nights
are doing better than others. It may be that you
do have some pockets of high quality leisure time, maybe
not as much as you want, but it might be
some and and so when we see that, it often
gives us permission to relax a little bit. And when
you're in that more relaxed sense of abundance, then you
(05:54):
can start making the changes that you do need to.
So let's pretend that I've kept this journal. Let's pretend
and maybe I'm not as productive as I would like
to be. And I see like, oh, you spent half
an hour making toast and drinking tea. Um, you have
seven secrets to time management that will help us. I
(06:17):
know you don't. I'm sure I do. I'm trying to
think which seven? All right, I will come up. Okay,
the secrets that I learned from you which I have
not yet applied. But um, the first one was tend
your garden. Then you had to make life memorable. These
(06:38):
these are chapter titles from a book came out about
a year ago. Yes, now, now you've helped me. Remember,
do you want to share those? Sure? Well? I mean
the tending your garden metaphor is is what we were
just talking about about, figuring out where the time goes
and then asking yourself the questions of what you like
and what you don't like. Similarly, if you were, you know,
tending a garden. You're weeding, your pruning, You're saying, do
(06:59):
I like at there? Do I want something else there?
And you know, over time you can build quite a
beautiful thing as long as you recognize that there is
work involved in it. A garden is not a set
it and forget it sort of thing, and the same
thing with a schedule. But if you put yourself in
a position of being that master gardener, you can make
all sorts of wonderful things happen with your life. And
I think that that sense of autonomy and control is
(07:23):
is the most important thing to come out of tracking
your time, because you start to see that I do
have some power to make decisions. Maybe there are things
that feel like they are not so much choices. These
are obligations I have or things that I have to
deal with in my life. But there's probably some space
within the garden of a schedule that we can exercise
some autonomy over and as we figure out how we
(07:46):
can make the best choices with that, over time, we
can start to expand that sphere of influence. Okay, so
another one that you talk about is don't fill time.
What is I mean? I feel like any time I
see a little chunk open, I think, how how should
I best fill this? Yeah, we all have a tendency
to do that, and I think it's many of us
(08:07):
have this unquestioned story in our heads that the busier
you are, the more important you are. And on some
level it makes sense, right, because when somebody is important,
there's a lot of demand for their time, right, that
that's why they're important. You know, there are lots of
people want to see them and so forth. But it
(08:28):
doesn't actually logically follow that these people pack every minute
of their schedule. Um, many of the most successful people
have ever studied have used the power they do have
over their time to leave open blocks of space. And
there's a couple of reasons for this. I mean, one is,
everything takes longer than you think it will. I mean,
there's traffic on the way into work. Imagine that it
(08:49):
takes longer to get somewhere in the rain. Who would
have thought our meeting ran over? Oh my goodness, never
happened before. All these things, right, are entirely anticipatable, and
so because of that it helps to leave open open space.
But it's it's not just about those practicalities. It's about
recognizing that open space invites opportunity into our lives. If
(09:11):
you're having a really good conversation with someone and it's
leading to all sorts of interesting revelations and things you
might want to try in the future and ideas, it
is so awesome to be able to stick with that conversation,
not be like, yeah, I got another meeting, you know,
to thirty next, and then three o'clock next and so
forth like that. So the only way you can do
that is to not full time. Yeah, bok, book enough
(09:34):
of it, leave bumpers on the sides of meetings. I've
noticed that our new scheduling software at at my at
my other job, I got a lot of hustles here, um,
you know, has an option to when you book an hour,
it actually only books fifty minutes for the meeting. Nice,
And I feel like, actually, what's happening is these these
(09:56):
developers are realizing that people are going a little nuts,
and that the tools that they've created so that we
can very easily pack our schedules and you know, shove
much more into every every day, that actually that's not
doing anybody any favors. So there, do you consult with
any of these. Well, when I find hilarious about the
(10:16):
electronic calendars, I mean, you can like triple book yourself
for a time slot, which is really funny. If you
stop you, it doesn't stop you at all. It doesn't
remind you. By the way, these two things are are
thirty minutes apart from each other, and yet you have
scheduled yourself back to back into them, curious that you
know they need a little um, I don't say with
those little paper clips like come up and tell you
this is a bad idea, but you know, yeah, no,
(10:39):
I mean we all need to be more judicious with
what we agree to take on. And and one of
one of the things I often suggest to people is,
whenever you're asked to do something in the future, ask
yourself if you do it tomorrow, because it's really hard
to have that same sense of opportunity cost and how
much energy you'll have and what you'll want to take
on and how busy you'll be for a time in
(11:00):
the future. I mean, if somebody asked me to do
something in October, well I look at my October calendar
and it looks pretty open, So yeah, I'm free. Sure,
I've got nothing going on in October, happy to take
that on. That is not how it's gonna totally not
how it's going to be in October. You know, I'm
gonna be just as busy as I am now, only
I'll have this other thing that I really didn't want
to do that's also gonna be on my calendar. Now
I'll be even busier. So better to ask if you
(11:21):
do it tomorrow. Well, when we come back, we're going
to talk more about how to make our calendar and
the productive. We are chatting with Laura ander Kimp and
we're trying to figure out time management here. And you've
(11:44):
got two podcasts. One of them is um called best
of both worlds, which is because you're a mom too,
you're not just the time guru a mom of many
board children. Yes, uh so we're all juggling women here.
Uh how do you figure out because being a mom
can be a full time job, and jobs certainly can
(12:05):
suck up all your time, is it possible to have
it all? I mean, do you schedule every minute? Is
that the only way you could have it all? Or
is that a myth? Then we should all just give
it up right now? I do think that people can
have it all if you define having it all as
having you know, a career you really enjoy, a family
you also really enjoy, and and time for your personal
(12:27):
pursuits too. Um. And I don't think doing all those
things requires scheduling every minute of your life. I do
think it requires being careful with your time and mindful
and intentional about how you spend your time. But I
certainly don't think those are in opposition and in best
of both worlds, which I I co horst host with
my friends Sarah Hart Hunger, who is a practicing physician
(12:49):
and mom of three small children, so a lot on
her plate as well. We we talk about it from
this angle of people who are loving careers, loving families,
wanting to do their own things as well. Um, because
we felt there was really a gap in the market because,
as you said, a lot of the content aimed at
moms is pretty negative and saying you won't be able
to do these things. You know that you're going to
have to make all these harsh trade offs. And my
(13:11):
point is always there there are a hundred sixty eight
hours in a week, which is quite a bit of time. Um,
if you are working forty hours a week, so that's
a full time job and sleeping eight hours a night,
which a lot of people claim not to do. But
let's say you're doing that, that's fifty six hours per week.
That leaves seventy two hours to do other things. So
I suspect it's quite possible to spend a lot of
(13:32):
quality time with your family, um, spend some time with friends,
spend some time exercising, spend some time reading if you're
careful about how you allocate them, and you spend some
time just doing boring, stupid stuff if you if you
want to like watching like binge watching Netflix, is that okay?
You certainly can if it brings you joy, If it
brings you joy into your schedule, by all means, watch
(13:55):
whatever show you want to watch on guilt Free. I
think the problem arises when people don't recognize that leisure
time is occurring, and so spend it in sort of
mindless ways, like we just pick up our phones and
sort of start scrolling through stuff, you know, looking at
photos of on Facebook of people from high school you
weren't that fond of in the first place, and then
(14:17):
you know, a whole hours can disappear into this and
especially when you are so busy, it can be very
frustrating if you spend leisure time mindlessly like that, So
and tell people like, think about it, what would bring
you joy? And if it's choosing to watch an hour
of a favorite television show, do that right and know
you are doing it, and choose to do that and
enjoy it and savor it while you no guilt, No guilt.
(14:40):
Guilt is pretty useless in any case. Yeah, So, okay,
now switching into work mode, you talk about, um not
about working only to the point of diminishing returns and
that sort of rule of economics as applied to your work.
How does that? How does that apply? Well? With most
things that we allocate resources to, there there comes this
(15:01):
point of diminishing returns. So you know, if you are
eating a brownie, for instance, the first four or five
bites are amazing, maybe the tenth bite is sort of
less exciting, and probably the hundredth bite would be no
fun at all. Um. So it's the same point of
diminishing returns. And there's been some interesting studies looking at this.
And you know the amount of errors people make when
(15:22):
they're hours go north of about fifty a week for instance,
Um that you you just become less efficient as you
become tired, and you can do certain things to renew
your energy, but you need to sort of pay attention
to the hours as a whole. The good news is,
if you are smart about how you spend your work hours,
you can do a lot in forty certainly in fifty
(15:43):
hours a week. Um, But you need to pay attention
to when do I have the most energy? What sort
of work should be done at the time when I
have the most energy, What sort of work is better
suited to time when I don't have as much energy? Um?
How can I make sure that I am making space
not just for the things that are right in front
(16:03):
of me demanding to be done, the urgent stuff, but
also nurturing work relationships, building up yourself as an expert
in a field, for instance, and all that's involved in networking.
But if you are intentional, if you think through your
work week, you can make space for all of that.
There was a sentence that you wrote that actually stuck
with me when when I was reading your material, and
(16:26):
it's choices skillfully made lead to freedom. Can you unpack
that for us? Yeah, this was a great quote. That
I came across from a Buddhist teacher. Um, but it's
just pointing out that, um it was mindful of us.
Ultimately leads to having more time, because when we choose
(16:46):
how to spend our hours, then we start to put
the good stuff in and then see what other time
is also available to relax, to have leisure time. I
know that the days and the weeks when I am
better about thinking through what would I really like to
do this week? Um, what time is available to me?
(17:08):
When can those things go? What doesn't matter as much?
I feel like I have so much more time, And
it's it's been almost amazing, you know when because I
am a mother of four small children, things go wrong
all the time. I mean, this is the nature of
family life. Um. And you know we had we had
some you know, things happened in the fall with like
(17:31):
you know, kids and e R visits, as always happens,
Everyone's all right. But I was so amazed that one
week that that happened, how productive I felt because I
had identified sort of the three things that absolutely had
to happen that week, And even if I had spent
much of Monday in the e R, I still knew
what three things had to get done, And so I
wasn't making myself busy with all the other stuff that
(17:52):
did not absolutely have to get done. But I did
those three things. Probably didn't do anything else, but those
three things got done, and so hey, you know, I'm good. Yeah.
Mindfulness leads to this sense of a great job. Yeah.
So it sounds to me like you must be pretty
good at saying no to things, because part of planning
(18:12):
your time is planning what you're not going to do.
So how do you what's your what's your no style?
My no style? Well, I do try to ask myself
that question. Will I do it? What I do it tomorrow? Um?
Is this something I want to take on compared to
the other things I could be doing with that hour? Um?
You know, and we are somebody just asked to have
(18:35):
a phone call. It seems like, oh, it's just a
phone call, But that's an hour that you could you know,
go walk outside on a beautiful spring day for instance.
Is it is that phone call adding more to your
life than the walk on the beautiful spring day. While
you're on that walk, you may have an awesome idea
related to your business, to your career, to something else
you want to do in life? Is that phone call
(18:57):
worth more than giving yourself the chance to come up
with that amazing idea. I think these are the sorts
of questions we need to ask. But you know, I
don't want to just make it sound like you should
just say no to everything, because I think sometimes people
who have been very, very busy get in their mind like, Okay,
now I need to learn to say no. And that
may be true. But part of learning to say no
is also recognizing when something is a good opportunity and
(19:20):
learning to say yes to the right things, and saying
yes wholeheartedly to things that maybe you know doesn't seem
like the sort of thing someone like us should do
or should have the space for. Um. I see this
especially when I you know, a lot of my literature
has been aimed at parents of small children, for instance.
I think mothers in particular often feel like, oh, well,
(19:42):
I couldn't travel to that conference, I couldn't take on
that promotion because it would involve a lot of demands.
But if it's something that really excites you and would
make you want to come to work, and you think
you could uniquely contribute, maybe you should say yes, right
wouldn't just listen to that story that just because I
(20:02):
have these family responsibilities means I can't do those things. Now,
if you take that on, you may need to say
no to some other things. But I'm guessing there's a
bunch of lower value work tasks and such that you
could say no to. What's your filter for that, though,
because I think a lot of us will take on
anything anyone throws at us, you know, especially at work.
(20:24):
You want to be the helpful person. You want to
be the go to person. Um. And as a mom,
maybe I'm just not a helpful person. I don't know. Yeah,
I see I have some friends who I see that
in that they say yes to everything as soon as
someone asks. Um. I love the rubric that Gretchen Ruben
has of people who are upholders, because people who are
(20:44):
obligers um, and so obligers of course when somebody else
asks them to do something, they will automatically say yes.
And I'm sort of a people pleasing kind of person,
and some of us maybe less oriented that way. So,
you know, but I think the rubric that of going
through would I do this tomorrow? Because if I if
I would cancel things for tomorrow. If I'd move stuff
(21:06):
around to put this in tomorrow, because I'm pretty excited
about it, that's a good sign that I should say
yes to it in the future. I love that when
we come back, we're gonna ship. Here's a little bit
and toxic. We've been chatting with Laura vander Kim about
(21:29):
time management, and what is shocking to me is how
well you've managed your time so that you do not
only host two podcasts, but you have written books on
time management. And your latest book, Juliet's School of Possibilities,
is a story. It's like, it's not even like a
self help book. It's really a story. Um, how did
(21:52):
that happen? Well, there's some history of their being business fables.
Many of the best selling business books of all time
have been things like Five Dysfunctions of a Team or
The One Minute Manager, which are attempting to teach a
lesson but in the form of a story. And I
know that people love stories. I give a lot of
(22:13):
speeches and nobody ever comes up to me afterwards and says, yeah,
that's statistic. I love that statistic. That moved me right.
You know, it's always this the story you told about
this and people can cite these stories back to you
almost perfectly. It's it's amazing how good our memory is
for stories. So um So well, I've been writing a
lot of time management literature. Maybe I should try a
(22:34):
different tactic. And the publisher I'd been working with over
the years is also interested in doing fable, So we
came up with the idea of Juliette's School of Possibilities,
which is a fable about ambitious young woman whose life
is falling apart on various dimensions because she cannot figure
out how to spend her time well. She winds up
(22:54):
at at Juliette School of Possibilities, where her mentor Juliette,
shows her what it truly means to, you know, make
good choices? Are you Juliet? I am not Juliet. I
so wish I were Juliet. But I've interviewed so many
amazing people over the years, and and the lessons I
have learned from them sort of could be put together
to create this this figure of Juliet who is a
(23:18):
successful businesswoman, uh, you know, loving mother and very calm.
I think that's the part that really gets me, um,
because I may sometimes feel like Oh yeah, I'm I'm
doing good on and making the business stuff work, the
family stuff work. But I'm a little bit tense um
and and so her she's different. So what's the the
(23:39):
School of possibilities? What's the most important lesson you could
draw from there? Well, at the School of Possibilities, Riley
has shown different versions of her life, which is based
on different choices she might make about how she spends
her time. Whether she just reacts to whatever is right
in front of her, whatever seems most urgent, whatever is blinking, versus,
(24:01):
you know, if she puts thought into it and make
sure she makes time in her busy schedule for the
things that align with her long term goals. And these
two visions are entirely different. And it's not even that
sort of false choice that a lot of people have. Oh,
I'll either be professionally successful or I'll be personally successful.
These two things are at odds. It's really one vision
she's not professionally or personally successful, and the other she's both.
(24:24):
Because it's the same mindset that I am choosing what
is most important to put my time in and recognizing
that I cannot do everything, so I have to make
choices of which things are are most important and and
so when she learns to do that, she starts rapidly
making changes in her life, um trying to put the
(24:46):
pieces of her life back together. And I guess readers
will have to find out if she succeeds. So the
I loved the story, and it felt a little bit
like Dickens Christmas Carol Um because you have the you know,
the future, the future visions. But what I found sort
of ironic was that this is a woman who has
(25:07):
I think, by the time of the book is over
a thousand emails in her inbox, and the first choice
she makes after her epiphany is is to go for
a bike ride, which was wild because sometimes I think,
I just think that is where we need to go, right,
just the opposite of whatever it is we're doing. Yeah,
(25:27):
because it turns out those thousand emails will still be
there after the bike ride, and they'll be there whether
you go for the bike ride or not. But your
ability to deal with what you need to deal with
coming out of those thousand emails maybe better if if
you go on the bike ride. And also, I mean
getting through those thousand emails wasn't going to help her
save her career. I mean, her career was already falling apart.
She needed something new to to pull herself out of
(25:50):
this whole her company giving her an ultimatum that she
was soon going to be out. So you know, the
same thing you've been doing isn't working. You probably should
try something different. So let me ask you. Sometimes I
think to make changes in the way you use your time,
You're really talking about making a profound change in yourself.
I mean, you know, for example, one of the people
(26:13):
I admire most in this world is a fantastic professional
killing it on so many levels. Her house is a
complete disaster area, and I feel that every time I
go over to her house, I think, no wonder, she
is so incredible. And if I could just let go
of the stupid counter wiping situation that I have in
(26:34):
my head, maybe I too would have you know, would
be on the freeway a little bit more the way
she is. But I'm a counter wiper. My mother made
me into a counter wiper. I do it, especially when
I'm angry. So how do I get I actually serious?
I want to get over this. I don't want to
be a passive, aggressive cleaning person. I want to free
(26:57):
up that time and let things be a little bit
more of a zoo at my house. But this is profound.
How do I how do I dig this out of me? Yeah?
We have all sorts of stories that we tell ourselves
that are often based on the way we grew up.
And anytime you're telling a story that starts with, well,
everybody knows that, you know, you can't just go to
bed with dirty counters. Yes you can. It turns out
you can go to bed with dirty counters, and people
(27:18):
do it all the time. I mean, nobody wants to
eat off truly filthy counters. But but I'm guessing those
counters will get dirty again the next Perhaps that's where
we draw where maybe where we draw the line but
to the counters will in fact get dirty again the
next day, whereas you won't get that time back. You know,
we have the story of always joke about this the
eleven PM home inspection. There's a lot of people who
(27:40):
have somehow absorbed this story that there is an eleven
pm home inspection and if the house is not picked up,
they can't go to bed because there will be an
eleven pm home inspection on before breakfast. Because I love
how short, sweet and to the point before breakfast is
you're very careful with your listeners time, of course, and
that one belongs on there there like there is no
(28:01):
there is no eleven pm home inspection, right yeah, And
I mean, I know it's hard to change these stories.
I mean we can. If the counter wiping is about
working off stress, maybe there's some other thing that would
be more productive to do without stress, like going for
a run or you know, punching a punching bag or
something along those lines, um, writing in a journal. These
(28:23):
all might be things that would help. You have a
giant punching bag installed in my kitchen, I could just
hang it from the ceiling next to the site, or
just stop stressing about having clean counters and enjoy your
clean counters and listen to a podcast while you're wiping.
You're multitasking. Is multitasking good or bad? It depends how
you're multitasking. Um. I think the most common form of
(28:46):
multitasking is the one that really gets us in trouble,
which is you're attempting to do two things at once
that are using related parts of your brain. So you're
on a conference call and you're trying to check email
at the same time. Um, you are probably not really
paying attention to both of them. And I know this.
It's so attempting to do because you know you're on
(29:07):
a call for an hour and possibly you're not needed
for the whole hour, and like, I'll just check my
email see what's coming in. And inevitably when I do that,
people are like, and Laura, what did you think of that? Uh?
It's actually so common now that people don't even really apologize.
They say, oh, I checked out for a second. What
was the question? I mean, I have this, this happened. Okay,
(29:28):
maybe I haven't quite gotten myself to that level. I
haven't been able to say. I've actually been doing a
lot of video chats lately to get around that issue.
It sort of forces everyone to pay more attention, and
I feel bad about it somewhat as a you know,
work from home mom, because I often don't wish to
do my hair and makeup before being on a video call.
But on the other hand, you pay so much more attention,
(29:49):
and it also forces the issue a little bit more,
which is that if you can be checking email during it,
and maybe you don't need to be on the call
or maybe you don't need to be on the call
for the whole time. I mean, you could be on
for ten minutes and then you can be more honest
about honest about to say, you know, I see the
rest of this agenda doesn't have anything to do with me.
I think probably guys could just continue this without me,
(30:10):
or you know, or or release other people if you're
in the position, the sort of managerial position of the
call and say, well, for the first fifteen minutes, we
need everyone, and then after that we only need these
two people. I mean, that's that's entire. If people did that,
it would free up all sorts of space. Are you
a fan of finding like five minutes here and five
minutes there. Do you have to have big chunks of
time to make a difference in your schedule or can
(30:32):
it be like the fifteen minutes you grabbed because the
traffic was moving. Um, I think you can definitely use
small bits of time. I'm a little bit wary of
of these sort of time hacks. I read about online
all the time that that promised to save you little
bits of time here and there, because I mean, if
you take thirty seconds less in the shower, I'm not
really sure what you're going to do with that. It
(30:53):
doesn't seem like this is going to change your life
in any measurable way. Um. But that said, you don't
need huge chunks of time in order to do things.
And and some of the biggest changes I've more practical
changes I've made in my life have come out of
recognizing that you can use small bits of time. UM. So,
for instance, putting the Kindle app on my phone so
(31:17):
I can read e books in short chunks of time
that I might have been tempted just to be deleting
emails or scrolling around online. Now I can actually read books.
And it's somewhat amazing how much literature you can get
through in those small chunks of time. Laura, thank you
so much for being with us today, great advice, Thank
you for having me. If you want to hear more
from Laura, check out her podcast before Breakfast or go
(31:39):
to her website Laura VANDERCOUMP dot com. My thanks as well,
and thanks to Alicia Haywood are fantastic producer, and thanks
to all of you listening. Please will you do us
a favor, rate and review us if you have not
done so already, we'd love to know how you're feeling
about this podcast and connect with us here at You
(31:59):
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Road to Somewhere News
Hosts And Creators
Lisa Oz
Jill Herzig
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