March 18, 2025 • 43 mins
Can you turn yourself into a morning person? With the help of author and podcaster Laura Vanderkam, you sure can! Hosts Lea Palmieri and Matt Stillo speak with the author of “What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast: A Short Guide to Making Over Your Mornings--and Life” and host of the “Before Breakfast” podcast to find out why your morning routine starts long before that dreaded alarm goes off, and the small changes you can make to have a big impact on your day, right when its getting started.
For more information, visit
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Ruby.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Good morning, Matt, and welcome to grown up stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
We a but you know that it's not morning right now.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I know, but I wish that it was because it's
the best time of the day, and also because we
are talking about morning routines today.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Okay, well that is true. We have author, podcast hosts
and time management expert. Oh I wish that could be me, right,
Laura Vanderkamp on the show today, and she's going to
achieve the impossible, making us all mourning people.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Mm hmm. Okay, Matt, let's be real. Tell me about
your typical morning routine.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Here's how it really started to go bad. Is that
in college they give you the option to start your
classes at eleven am. An eighteen year old me was like, yes, please,
all classes start later, and I became this terrible morning person.
Where I was obviously his college is staying out late
and whatever. But I feel like I've been on a
ten year trajectory since graduating from college. I've had to
(00:59):
wheel myself into a morning person, and I feel stuck
kind of. But I'm getting better because my wife is
a morning person, and if I don't get up when
she's up, I'm in trouble. Good, good, good, Right, I
should be up. But our little morning routine is we
make some coffee, We do a fresh press green juice. Oh,
were those people that you hate? Yeah, and then we
do the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Oh god, oh god.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
This is I know. Wait, do I hate myself? I might? Anyway,
what's your or to tell me about your morning rous scene?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I do a lemon water Okay. So the key to
this for everyone listening is pre cut your lemons. I
cut them into four pieces, pre cut them.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
The night before, like at.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
The beginning of the week, usually when we get them, Yeah,
and put them in a bag.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Because if I have to like handle a knife first
thing in the morning, we don't want that. Yeah, we
don't want that. So do lemon water. And then I
get ready and I go to my yoga class.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Usually, oh so wait, what time is this all happening?
But this is into perspective.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
My alarm is set for six thirty in my body
is usually awake by then.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Wow. Yeah, yeah, what time is your yoga class? Eight? Okay? Wow?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, I mean let me be very clear. At sex thirty,
do I do a scroll?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yes, of course I do a little scroll in the
morning too. But it's bad. It's very bad.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
It's the worst you feel it.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
I go through periods of time where I keep the
phone in the other room. We talked about this because
I I'll wake up and I'll just fucking get out.
There's nothing else to do. You know, you've listened to
the birds' board. Now, yeah, it's time to get up.
But when you have the phone, dude, you could stay
in bed all day.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
You could, or you could jump right up. And now
we're gonna have Laura Vanderkam tell us exactly how we're
going to take advantage of those mornings and have a
wonderful day.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Well. I'm Laura Vandercam. I'm the author of several time
management books. I host a podcast called Before Breakfast, which
is all about taking your day from great to awesome.
We talk about productivity throughout the day, but we have
a special emphasis on mornings because I have found over
(02:57):
the years in my research thats are a great time
for getting things done and for many people with busy lives,
if you want to make progress on your personal goals,
that is when it is going to happen. So I'm
a big fan of mornings and I'm very happy to
be here.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I love that you said you're a big fan of mornings,
because I also am a big fan of mornings and
very much identify as a morning person, which was not
always the case, but I am one now. And I
feel like when you say that to people, they kind
of give you a look of like, what's wrong with you?
And it's like, no, wait until you come over to
my side of things, and you'll get it. And so
that is the point of why we have you here today, Laura.
(03:34):
But what I really want to start with is like,
when it actually begins, what do I do the second
that I blink my eyes open in the morning.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Well, if you don't mind, can we start the night before?
We'll go back even absolutely yes, Like if we're starting
at the very beginning, I want to go back further,
let's go open our eyes. Because the truth is good
mornings do start the night before. And sometimes people have
this misconception that it's all about waking up earlier and
(04:07):
earlier and you'll somehow magically be more productive by beating
the sun being up before everybody else. If you haven't
gotten enough sleep, you are not going to be able
to do anything. And so in order to have a
good morning routine, you need to get enough sleep that
you are well rested when you begin the morning routine.
And so that is about when you go to bed
(04:28):
the night before. But the good news is a lot
of people who think they aren't mourning people, it's because
they're not going to bed at a reasonable time the
night before. And if you commit to giving yourself a
regular and reasonable bedtime, you will probably be able to
get up and do more things.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Your book is called What the Most Successful People Do
Before Breakfast, And one of the things that I loved
about it was basically suggesting going to bed in fifteen
minute increments the night before. So if you go to
bed at like eleven pm on Sunday night, we're going
to go to bed at ten forty five. And on
Monday night, we're going to go to bed at ten
thirty and so like just sort of working yourself backwards
(05:08):
to like a little bit of an earlier bedtime. So
that doesn't sound too bad, But I guess the thing
about that is when is this going to feel normal?
When will I get into this routine? Because some people
say it takes three weeks, it takes three months, Like
how long is it going to take me to actually
have this stick and hopefully I'm not going to bed
at four pm the night before.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, we don't want you to go to bed at
four pm. And I do want to say there are
people who are night owls. Biologically you can't really change that,
but most people are not that that is a smaller
percent of the population than probably believes.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
They are night owls.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Again, a lot of people say they're not mourning people,
and it's because they're tired in the morning. But that's
a function of staying up late, scrolling watching Netflix, things
like that. And if you kind of put a stop
to that a little bit earlier and get into bed
a little bit earlier, you might be able to wake
up a little bit earlier and turn some of those
maybe less productive, even less enjoyable, leisure evening hours into
(06:08):
morning hours that you could do more things with. So yeah,
I mean, we're not talking about moving from a one
am bedtime to an eight pm bedtime overnight. That's probably
not reasonable even over years for most people. But if
you haven't been going to bed regularly and sort of
been thinking, well, when am I just going to fall
asleep by the couch? Or you know, we're all go
to bed whatever the mood strikes me, which it may
(06:30):
never if the Internet is particularly interesting that night. You
just want to say, like, what time would I like
to wake up? And then let me count back the
number of hours that I need to sleep and give
myself a bedtime that is that time, and if that's
not roughly when you're going to bed now, you can
slowly start working back toward that. So you know, if
you'd like to wake up at six am and you
(06:50):
need seven hours of sleep, then your bedtime is eleven PM.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
This is a math problem. This is not anything about
what kind of people we are or anything like this,
but we work toward whatever that is for the amount
of sleep you need to get up at the time
that you think is reasonable for you to get up
to achieve your morning goals.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Okay, now we're in the morning. Right now we could
be okay, great, okay, great, we've slept made Yeah, we
feel so refreshed or at least mostly refreshed enough to
take on the day. What do you think that we
should do? Right when your eyes open up, see the world.
Because the thing that I've read a lot is that
within seconds you're supposed to immediately think positively and basically
(07:30):
say I am awesome and this day is going to
be awesome. Is that what we do? Or should I
just that sounds great? Okay? Great?
Speaker 3 (07:36):
I mean I think that is wonderful. If you can
train yourself to wake up with a thought of this
day is going to be great, that's a pretty exciting
way to wake up. I'd be wonderful if we can
treat every morning like Christmas morning. Now, I think a
lot of us are a little bit more cynical that
we're probably not going to quite get our heads around
(07:56):
that sort of enthusiasm every single morning. But one thing
I would encourage you not to do is to first
look at your email. Yeah, that's where people go awrive.
So it's wonderful if you're to start your day with
positive affirmations, But whether that's happening or not, don't go
the other direction and see what has come in overnight,
(08:18):
what ridiculousness people are expecting you from the day, because
you're going to get right out of that good mood
and into a bad mood before we've even gone anywhere.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So another thing that people might do the first thing
in the morning is hit snooze. And I'm curious because
I'm sure you've done a lot of research on this.
Why is it so bad to hit snooze when it
feels so good? Is this something I have but people
should get out of. Is no alarm clock the way
to go?
Speaker 3 (08:42):
I mean, no alarm clock is kind of the gold standard.
If you are getting enough sleep, it is quite possible
to wake up on your own when you intend to
wake up. And I see this with myself. I need
I know from time tracking seven point three to seven
point four hours of sleep per day. Okay, I know
this because I've been tracking my time forever. Most people
(09:02):
aren't quite so ridiculous about things like this. But if
you kind of observe yourself over time, you will start
to see about how much sleep you get over the
long term. Like if you average it out bad nights
and good nights, short nights during the week, longer nights
during the weekends, where does it roughly come out to
over like a month or so, you'll get a number
(09:23):
that's probably about how much your body would like to
get on any given night. We often undershoot or overshoot,
but if we could get that amount, that would be great.
And if you commit to getting to sleep that amount
before you need to wake up, your body is gonna
start getting up. I see this happening with myself for
a long time. I set my alarm at six thirty.
(09:44):
I need seven point three to seven point four hours.
I was trying to get in bed, lights out. Everything
calmed down by eleven PM, and I would wake up
pretty regularly between sixt eighteen and six twenty four. I mean,
it was a beautiful sort of experience, but I don't
want anyone to be late to work, So it's probably
good idea to set an alarm clock just in case
something goes awry with that. But the snooze function, it's
(10:05):
not your friend. It feels good in the moment, but
there are many things that feel good in the moment
that are probably not our friends either, and so I
would like to put the snooze button kind of in
that category, because snooze sleep is lousy sleep. It is
much better to be getting this sort of deep sleep
right up until whatever you're gonna be waking up than
(10:28):
to sleep in these, you know, chunks of eight or
nine minutes or whatever your particular alarm happens to be
set for Wouldn't it be so much better to just
get thirty two minutes of sleep than to get thirty
two minutes of sleep being jolted awake every eight minutes.
That sounds like a far less pleasant thing. I mean,
you're still in bed either way. So just set your
alarm for the time you actually intend to get up,
(10:50):
and if that is ten minutes before you are supposed
to be at your desk at work, maybe there's a
reckoning you need to have with yourself. But let's at
least be honest that that is when you were planning
to get out of bed, instead of having this lying
to yourself idea that you were going to get up
thirty minutes earlier and then you just don't.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah, my wife and I have been doing this, Like
I finally now I'm not using an alarm anymore. I'm
like waking up generally around the same time. And I've
also found that like sometimes maybe if you do wake
up a little earlier, it's generally best to just get
up because like what I'm thinking and I'm hoping you
can confirm, is like you're probably out of that deep
rem cycle sleep and so to go back to sleep
and get a little bit of not quality sleep is
(11:31):
not as good for you as waking up in that
moment where you're completely out of your sleep cycle. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
But if you are up before your alarm, and the
alarm was set for the time that you're having this
morning routine, I mean, it's kind of just bonus time.
So get up if you'd like, or you could just
lie there and think deep thoughts. Maybe we could have
those affirmations we were talking about earlier while you're in
the nice comfy pillow.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I send you some good affirmations, Matt, that you can
use in the morning.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
One of the other things that your book mentions is
bribing yourself, which I'm a huge fan of. So that
sometimes might mean like if I wake up thirty mornings
in a row at six am, and I get up
and I do my routine, then I get to buy
these tickets to go see you do a lipa on
tour this year, which is sounds amazing to me. So
tell me a little bit about bribing. What are some
(12:15):
of the bribing tactics that you have seen really work
for people?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, I mean I want to say here that hopefully
your morning routine is something that feels like a reward
in and of itself, Like I don't want people to
be waking up to do things that they absolutely hate
to do. I mean that seems sort of like to
be defeating the purpose of having this morning routine that's
going to set our day up to be awesome. That said,
(12:39):
if you are, for instance, trying to exercise regularly, and
you are not in the habit of exercising regularly, and
you have determined that mornings are really the only time
where this fits in your life, it might be a
little bit more challenging to build this morning routine where
you get up and do some physical activity if it's
not something you've really done that much in the past,
and so, yeah, totally resort to bribery if that's what
(13:01):
it takes. It could be something in the future, like
tickets to a concert, But maybe it's something that would
make the exercise itself more pleasant, like could you meet
a friend at the gym and so then you've got
a buddy there who's holding you accountable and you get
some social time to gather. Or maybe it's even something
more immediate. Right in general, you're trying to make your
coffee at home and not buy it out. But if
you go to the gym, you can buy it out,
(13:22):
because that's something that will reward you for having started
this habit that you are trying to do. So think
about ways that you can maybe motivate yourself long term.
Also try and have things that are intrinsically enjoyable for you.
But in the meantime it might take some intermediate rewards
just to get things on track.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
So I'm an aspiring morning person. I have been my
entire life. Sometimes I really nail it. There's stretches a
couple months from like on top of it, and then
I slide back into bad habits and stuff. But one
thing that really helped me was I used to work
this job. I was working all the time. I was
there from like nine am to nine pm. It was terrible,
and I started becoming a morning prison because this because
(14:00):
basically I got into this habit road like stay up
late because I wanted to unwind, and then I would
wake up late and I'd be rushing there and like
I was just starting my day like basically on the train,
stressed out late to work, and so I started getting
up earlier because I was like it made me just
feel more in control of my life, Like I'm waking
up for me, not for someone else or a boss
(14:21):
or an employer or a company or whatever. I want
to take care of myself, like I want to eat
something good for me, I want to move my body
a little bit. Kind of reclaiming that time just in
and of itself made me feel like more in control
of my life, which I think speaks to a lot
of different things that you talk about in your books.
But anyway, if that's helpful for anyone, that's kind of
like a great way that I've been able to frame
(14:42):
it for myself.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah, And I would especially say if people do have
the sort of crazy jobs where you never know when
you're going to be done for the day, which I
know some people are in and you cannot control what
time you leave work. However, you can generally control what
time you get to work, right, Like you're the one
who has to get yourself there, so there is a
time you are showing up, and because of that, you
can often work backwards and have some amount of time
(15:07):
that you know you can have for your sell or
your family or anything like that. Mornings maybe where you
can find that sense of agency.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Absolutely, and you write about this in new books like
that we have the most willpower in the morning. And
so if we do have this willpower in the morning,
what kind of activities does that mean we should prioritize.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Well, generally, it's anything that you want to fit in
your life that is important for you in advancing you
towards your goals. But that is hard to find space
for at other points during the day. People sometimes build
morning routines that have lots of different parts, so that
include different things on different days. But it might be
creative work. Maybe you have aspirations to write a play,
(15:49):
but your job is in accounting and you're not going
to be writing the play much during the workday because
you're busy, and at night you get home and your
brain is spent. But in the morning you have that
fresh energy. Often, you know, after that first cup of coffee,
people feel like they can conquer the world. And how
awesome to be able to put that energy of feeling
like you can conquer the world against this creative endeavor,
(16:09):
you know, paying yourself first before you go off and
pay your dues somewhere else. Lots of people do spiritual activities.
If there's some sort of reading of sacred texts or
prayer or meditation or any sort of way that we
are commuting with something bigger than ourselves. That is an
awesome thing to do in the morning. People have relationship
goals that they are trying to advance in the morning,
(16:31):
especially if you do have the sort of job where
you can't spend much quality time with people later in
the day. Maybe it's that you and your spouse have
breakfast together every morning, or you and a friend meete
up to walk in the morning, or you check in
with elderly relatives in the morning because older people happen
to be up earlier. I mean, it's just as our
biological clocks shift over the course of our lifetimes here.
(16:53):
But yeah, these are all things that one could do
in the morning and that would start the day off right.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
When you said relationship goals, I was like, oh, no,
does she want me to swipe on hinge in the morning?
Because that's way.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Worse than looking at my head And there might be
different people on there, and the most true then there
would be at other times, and maybe those are the
people you want to meet.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
I do want to meet the fellow morning people. That
is true. So well that's my new morning routine.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Then first thing, wake up alarm. Okay, maybe not, maybe
we'll save the phone after the affirmation. Yeah, after the
aff Yeah. Another thing you mentioned about doing in the
morning is being outside touching grass. As the children would say,
what is it about being outside that could really help
us out in the morning.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Yeah, Well, with the caveat here that if it's dark
and snowy and whatever when you are waking up, depending
what time we are starting our morning routines, this may
not be the world's most practical thing to go do,
but in general, fresh air, sunlight, if it is available,
are things that are known mood boosters. They make us
feel better. They tend to make us feel like we
have more energy, have a more positive outlook on the
(17:56):
world when we have this exposure to nature, and so
if you can get that as part of your morning routine,
you will feel better. In general, there's obviously some element
of seeing sunshine helping wake us up. I mean that
would be something that our bodies would have developed from
an evolutionary perspective. But again, you know, if you're waking
up at six am in the dead of winter, the
(18:17):
sun's not up for another hour at least, so don't
concern yourself too much with that. But if it is available,
if you'd like to wake up early in July and
go for a run out side, that would be a
wonderful way to start the day.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
The only person where you get better that would be
my wife. If it's snowing and dark, she's like so
styched about it. I have no idea why, but it's
a fact with different.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
People really like people like the quiet. There are a
number of people who perhaps are more introverted and whose
lives involve a lot of other people who really enjoy
mornings precisely because they do have them to themselves, and
so the more desolate it is, the better. So it's like,
(18:56):
you know, the cold, snowy street. It's excellent because there's
definitely no.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Let me get away from this man. Oh okay, right now,
I get it.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
We'll be right back after a quick.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Break, and we're back with more grown up stuff. How
do I don't We touched on this a little bit
in the beginning, and I think it's probably becoming an
increasing issue for a lot of people. Is the phone
(19:28):
at night and in the morning, right, We're on our
phones all day, we plug them into charge next to
us at night, and they're just always on us. And
I really realized that I was struggling with it a lot.
And so there's some cool apps and strategies have come
out recently. There's this app that I was talking to
Lee about that's called Brick, where basically you can brick
your phone and it'll like turn off that you can't
(19:49):
access anything that you would want to, like Instagram or
TikTok or whatever until you like go downstairs and touch
a physical device to like on brick it. So I
keep it downstairs and I sleep upstairs, or I'll straight
up leave my phone in the other room and then
go to bed in my bedroom. So I'm curious to
hear a little bit about, like why is the phone
such a problem when it comes to like the morning
(20:11):
and sleeping and what other things can people do to
kind of like get off the screens and get to
bed and wake up in the morning.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
I think one reason it's such a temptation is it's
a very convenient alarm clock, and so most people just
set an alarm very quickly on their phones. And that's fine.
I mean that's a perfectly useful function for your phone.
But the problem is when people pick up their phones,
they tend not to just turn off the alarm. I mean,
maybe somebody's texted you overnight and that's very exciting, and
you look to see what that is, and you know,
(20:40):
you see that your inbox has a bigger number, and
you look and see what's come in, or you know,
you just have the icons for whatever apps you find
interesting and exciting there on your home screen, and you
know it's just a quick check. But then, of course
it just consumes time, and you may not have as
much time, or maybe don't want to choose to put
(21:01):
your time into those things in the morning, so you
can use things like the brick app or other blocking
functions on there. I think it's also helpful to have
something you want to do instead, because I have certainly
found that when I do want to do things, and
(21:22):
I have something that's in my schedule that I'm planning
to do, I'm just on my phone less. In general.
One reason I wound up joining a choir several years
ago is I realized, like in the evenings, I'm often
just scrolling around doing nothing of consequence, like could I
go take two hours and sing instead, Well, absolutely, I
could do that. So it's just when you fill your
(21:44):
life with good stuff, there is less sort of amorphous
space where we pick up the phone because we're bored
or want to see what's there. And so I think
you could take that same approach to the morning. It's
not just oh, I want to in general work out
at some point before I go to work. It's like, Okay,
I have a plan to run for four miles starting
(22:08):
at six am, and I know it's going to take
me this amount of time, and so I actually do
have to get out there and get doing it. If
I plan to get back and shower before I need
to go catch the bus to get into the office
or something like that. Or you have a creative thing
you're really excited about that you know, it's like, well,
I'm going to work on it for forty five minutes
(22:29):
this morning because I check in with my writing group
on Friday and they are going to ask me about it.
And if I haven't been doing it, it's going to
be obvious when I'm not sending any words around, right.
So I think having these things that you know you
are going to do and that you feel accountable for
doing can push some of that Internet temptation a little
(22:50):
bit further away.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
I used to go to the gym and watch Love
Island on my phone while I was on the elliptical.
But the motivation was I didn't want to see what
the like meme accounts had posted about what had happened
in the episode before, so I was like, I gotta
get on this elliptical, I gotta watch Yeah, I got it.
The only thing I'm doing on my phone is watching
Love Island, and then I can look at Instagram and
(23:13):
then see what the jokes are about, because I don't
want to know who got kicked off or who said
something stupid, and so like that was my motivation of like,
don't let this be spoiled for you, So like, get
out there and get on.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
It, out there and do it. Yeah, yeah, you gotta
stay on top of it.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah. Well, speaking of love, let's talk about most people's
one true love, which is coffee. And this is of
course a very important part of the morning. But a
lot of things will say, don't just get up and
hook yourself up to an ivy of coffee. That's maybe
not the right way to do it. Somebody once used
the phrase inside shower, which grosses me out, but it's
(23:47):
basically like instead of your outside chower washing your body,
it's an inside shower of like putting water into your body.
If I had to hear it, you all have to
hear it. And so you know, that was for a while.
But so there's there's a lot of talk of like
water and stuff. But again, when we're talking about creative
activities reading a book or doing our journal or whatever,
then like it is a nice time to have coffee too.
(24:08):
Where do you stand on, like, at what part of
the morning coffee comes into this routine.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
I don't think that it needs to be a huge
matter about where exactly it is, as long as you
approach everything in moderation. So, like you said, I don't
think anyone should be hooked up to the IV with
caffee at either. For most people, I think if you
try to keep yourself to like two cups of coffee
a day, that's probably wise in general. So then is
(24:35):
just well when do you want them? If one small
cup of coffee helps you get up in the morning
and do whatever it is you're going to do, great,
you know, have it and then maybe you do some
other things and then you need one more later as
a way to kind of focus while you're working on something.
I know a lot of people might have a small
cup of coffee before they exercise, for instance, because it
helps wake them up and makes them feel a little
(24:56):
bit more energetic. But you wouldn't want a huge one
because you know, if you're out running, coffee has certain effects,
and you know you probably don't want to have to
deal with that while you're on the road.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yeah, and I'm guessing too that our last cup of
coffee of the day should be early afternoon at the latest,
so that we are still getting in bed at the
correct time.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah, I would even not say afternoon. I think what
happens for a lot of people. We do tend to
hit an energy slump in mid afternoon, and a lot
of people think that would be a good time to
grab either coffee or canty or if you're one of
those people who's still smoking, which you shouldn't. But that's
why people would go have a smoke break in the
mid afternoon, right, is to wake themselves up. But I
(25:36):
think you could take some of the other parts of
that smoke break, which is that people go outside and
they get fresh air and they get away from their desks.
It's like, okay, we could do all that without actually smoking.
So if you are feeling sluggish mid afternoon, instead of
reaching for coffee or anything else, go take a quick walk,
go outside if you can get some fresh air, get
some sunshine. Even if it's cold, the fresh air will
(25:58):
probably wake you up. Or if if it's not feasible
to go outside, maybe you can go up and down
the stairs of your office building a few times. But
that will give you a lot more energy, and then
you don't need to have caffeine, which can interfere with
trying to get to sleep at a reasonable hour later.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
I feel like we should make candy breaks a thing
now that you mentioned now, which I'll go outside and
eat a piece of candy.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Yeah, probably better than the.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Cigarette, right, Yeah, affirmation and candy. Yeah. One thing that
people say all the time is that breakfast is the
most important meal of the day. And so I would
like to talk to you a little bit about breakfast.
And I'm kind of curious because I've had my own
journey with breakfast and I don't track my sleep, but
one thing I do track is like my macros to
make sure I'm hitting my proteins and my carbs and
my fats. And so basically what I found is if
(26:40):
I'm eating three meals a day, I'm over on all
of those things. And I kind of also realize that,
like breakfast takes a lot of time in the morning.
And so now I'm one of those intermitted fasting people
where I'll have lunch around eleven, we'll have dinner around six,
and like that's enough food for me, and it kind
of freeze up my morning a little bit. You know,
I can wake up and I don't have to have breakfast,
Like I can just like go do something. But then
people say breakfast is important meal to day, So am
(27:01):
I missing out on something? What is the deal with
breakfast in the mornings?
Speaker 3 (27:04):
I think there's been evolving knowledge on this matter, and
breakfast is probably a personal choice based on how you
intend to spend your mornings. For people who are trying
to say train for distance races, I think there is
a real need to have some sort of carbohydrates in
your body before that happens. So if that's you, then
(27:26):
probably you do need something in the morning, you know,
whatever that happens to be. If that is not you,
then maybe it's something different. If you're hungry when you
wake up, I don't think there's any harm in eating
something that's balanced and healthy. First thing. If you are
not hungry when you wake up, I don't think you
have to force food into your mouth just because somebody
has once told you that breakfast is the most important
(27:49):
meal of the day. I seem to recall that that
was like cereal manufacturer, I know, right, pushing that too,
which I'm pretty sure that even if all the way
is the most important of the day, that's probably not
what most of us should be eating at that point.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
That was our candy break because that was basically the sugar. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, that's a good thing to keep in mind.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yeah, I think we've covered most of the basics here
to like really set ourselves up for not only a
productive morning, but productive day to follow. But is there
anything that we haven't touched on yet that are some
of the tasks that you recommend that we do first thing,
whether it's sort of like boring tasks or chores or
things that we can get done in the morning, get
them out of the way, and then go out into
(28:26):
the world and be perfectly smug about being mourning people.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Wow, we perfectly smug. Yeah, that sounds exciting. Well, I
think a number of people do think through their days.
Hopefully you know what your morning routine is and you've
thought through what you intend to do first, But then
what do you plan to do the rest of the day.
What does the hard landscape of your day look like? Meetings, appointments,
what other tasks need to get done and when dwiden
tend to do those around there? And then I would
(28:50):
actually suggest people might want to think about this, think
about what your evenings are going to look like. For
many people, evenings are entirely mindless. You are done with work,
you're either wrestling your kids to bed, or you are
consuming media or whatever it is you're doing. But it's
often not an intentional time of day. But you might
think in the morning, well, if I was going to
(29:11):
do something intentional for thirty minutes in my evening, what
would that be? And by knowing that, you might be
able to look forward to that and have another sort
of productive peak of your day, like oh, I'm going
to read this book in the evening, or I'm going
to practice a musical instrument for thirty minutes of the
evening because I can't do that in the morning because
I'll be waking my spouse up or anything else along
those lines. But with morning routines, I think it's helpful
(29:33):
to realize a couple things. One is, a morning routine
doesn't have to be endless. Like I love writing about
people who have these like three hour morning routines. I
enjoy that love hearing about that, it does not have
to look like that. So if people are like, well,
I can't do that because I have a toddler, or
I have to be at work at six thirty, so
it's just not feasible to wake up that much before
(29:55):
my professional morning starts, it's okay. A morning routine is
anything that but you are choosing to do to start
your day off right. So maybe for you, it's that
you read ten minutes of something meaningful and that is
your morning routine. Or you decide to do a fifteen
minute strength training session and that is your morning routine.
(30:15):
It's only fifteen minutes, but that's great. If you do
it day after day, or at least a couple days
a week, you're going to get stronger and that is
the other thing. A morning routine doesn't have to be
every single morning, and it doesn't always have to look
the same either. I find an interesting thing is even
many people who tell me that they have a daily
morning routine are not doing it seven days a week. Yeah. Yeah,
(30:37):
So when they say daily they mean Monday through Friday.
Sometimes they don't even mean Friday because that's in a
different category entirely. But then we're down to four times
a week. I'm like, Okay, that's not daily, but it's regular. Yeah,
So whatever it is that you're doing, as long as
it's regularly in your life, I think it can still
count as a morning routine. So if it doesn't work
on Thursdays and Sundays for some reason, there is no
(31:00):
reason to beat yourself up about that. That is perfectly fine.
You can choose to do different things too. So if
all you have is fifteen minutes maybe three mornings a week,
you do a strength training session, three mornings a week,
you get up and meditate or do some sort of
creative work, and then one morning you sleep in, that
would be a perfectly fine way to have a morning routine.
I think that would hit all the boxes and be great.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Did someone say sleep in.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Yeah, we've been one morning a week.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, yes, I really do think I'm a person who
needs like nine to ten out like nine definitely, ten
sometimes pretty good. Eight not enough.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Yeah, well, if you know that about yourself, I mean
you just build it in. There's nothing you can do
about it if it's true. Right, Yeah, there's some people
who need less, Like I kept reading for a while
about Martha Stewart needing four to five hours is sleep
every night, which is fine. If that's what she needs,
that's great. But most adults need seven to eight hours.
But there are many adults who need more than eight hours.
(31:53):
And if that's what you need, there's no point in
like denying it and trying to get by on less.
You will just crash. And it's far better to get
the about the amount of sleep you need every single
night than to undershoot several days in a row and
then need to crash for several days in a row.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And you don't have to be like Martha Stewart, you
don't have to be perfect in everything. It's okay find
out what works for you. So, okay, we've been talking
in the morning, but I want to go a little
bit bigger. You've written extensively about just time management in general,
and so, as someone who you know work a ton,
I've got tasks left and right, Like, I'm always thinking
about ways to manage my time and to be a
little bit more productive during the day. So could you
(32:32):
share any like general time management tips tricks with the audience.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
My first tip that I always share with people if
you want to spend your time better is to figure
out exactly where your time is going now, because time
keeps passing no matter what you do. A lot of
people have very faulty impressions of where it actually goes.
And I include myself in this category. Like, until I
started tracking my time regularly, I had all sorts of
(32:57):
ideas of how much time I spent on different categories
in my life. And then I started tracking my time
week after week for a long time, and I realized
that I was often very, very wrong. And it's human nature.
We tend to overestimate things we don't want to do.
Like people tend to overestimate how many hours they are working.
They tend to overestimate how much time they spend on
(33:18):
housework because they don't want to be doing housework. They
underestimate how much leisure time they have because we feel
like we don't have as much as we want. But
not as much as I want is a very different
thing than like none, which is what a lot of
people will tell themselves. So you want to make sure
you are working from good data, and the only way
to get that data is to actually keep track of
your time. So anyone wants to spend their time better,
(33:40):
try to track your time for one week, for one
hundred and sixty eight hours. That is twenty four times
seven one hundred sixty eight hours.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
See where it goes.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
I don't know where it goes, but you will probably
find something interesting. And the upside of doing that is
you may start to see that there are pockets of
time that are either available for you if there is
something you wanted to do, or you could re deploy
that time from something that is less important to you
to something that is more important to you if you
made certain arrangements in your life.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
You're clearly the expert here. But as being the expert,
I'm sure you've tried a lot of different advice out
and I'm sure you're somebody who has. Again, if not daily,
then certainly a regular morning routine. Has there ever been
any mourning routine advice that's been like a suggested habit,
try this, try to do that that you have tried out,
(34:30):
and you've been like, absolutely not, I am not adding
this to my morning. I am not doing this. This
is not a productive way for me to start my day.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
The point of a morning routine is not to do
something in the morning, just to do it in the morning.
It's that for many people, morning is the time that
they can have for themselves and for their own goals
before everybody else wants something from you. And so if
you are in a corporate environment, if you have a family,
these are all obligations or wonderful things, but they're obligations
(34:56):
that you have later in the day, whereas those are
less likely to have various emergencies at say five thirty
in the morning, and so that is time you can
have for yourself. And so that's why people use mornings.
It's not that in and of itself, exercising in the
morning is a much more perfect choice than exercising later
in the day. It's that for many people, you can't
exercise later in the day, and so doing it in
(35:18):
the morning is when you need to. But if your
life is different than feel free to do it whatever
works for you.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
It's good advice. I had mentioned the brick app earlier,
and I'm curious. You know, there's all kinds of to
do list apps, tracking stuff, planning stuff. I'm just curious
if there are any like apps or books or anything
that you recommend that helps you keep better track of
your time.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
So I actually just track my time on spreadsheets. It's Excel. Yeah,
it's functional enough. I have the days of the week
across the top, Monday to Sunday, half hour blocks down
the left hand side, running from five am to four
thirty am. So if anyone's listening to that, feel free
to go make yourself one. You can get one from
my website too if you want to, or vandercam dot com.
(36:00):
But trust me, it's just Excel. It is nothing fancy.
You could do this yourself in two minutes if you
wanted to, and that's simple enough for me. There are
dozens of time tracking apps on the market, and some
people really enjoy using them. There's all sorts of productivity
apps out there as well. I have to say i'm
a little bit skeptical because the problem with apps in
general is that they make your phone more interesting, and
(36:23):
the more things you need to check on the phone,
the more times you will be picking up your phone.
And that would be fine if all you did is
went to your productivity app, but many people don't stay there,
they go elsewhere, and so then whatever time you would
have gained with your productivity app has just been swallowed
up by all these other things that you did with
your time because you picked up your phone. So I'm
(36:45):
pretty low tech for so many things. I actually have
a paper planner, but I love it. I like sitting
there with nothing around me, like no electronics, and writing
out what I intend to do. That's my little treat.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I love that. Also, if anyone does want to make
not even an Excel sheet, but if you want to
just make it actually on paper too, then you can
put little doodles and stickers on it and really jazz
up your whole thing that you're looking at of your
spreadsheet of time. So that's just a little arts and
crafts tip from me.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yeah, and if you are doing it on a spreadsheet,
I know somebody who pastes in photos into their spreadsheet,
Like at the end of the day, they'll put in
a little photo of like what happened, and the cap
columns a little bigger, and as they can do that,
it becomes like a digital scrappy.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Yeah, it's kind of fun. That's great. Well, Laura, you've
given us so many amazing tips. Today. We are ready
to get our regular morning routines on track. But before
we let you go to one last thing. So say
we get into our good groove. But then, of course
there's always going to be that morning mercury will be
retrograde where everything goes wrong. How do we get our
(37:48):
days back on track if our morning just throws us
completely off you know, spilled coffee, late train, all of
that stuff, How do we then just center ourselves and
move on with a smile instead of just crawling back
into which is usually the option I go for.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Yeah, well that's life. I mean, life happens, and I
think it's not reasonable to expect everything to go perfectly
every single day. And one of the reasons I talked
earlier about how even people who say they have a
daily morning routine don't do it every single day is
that I think that that can give us permission that
if it doesn't happen some morning. We don't feel like
(38:23):
it's the end of the world. We don't feel like
we need to stop. One reason to choose things that
you want to do is it will help you get
back in the habit if things do go awry, like
if you get the flu and you can't do your
exercise routine for a week. A lot of people use
that as an excuse to stop exercising completely, right, it's like,
you don't have to do that. Maybe it's that you
didn't like the form of exercise you were doing. Is
(38:45):
there something that you would find more compelling that would
make you want to go back? So you're sad that
you missed, you know, two weeks of your spin class,
but you really do like your spin class, and so
you do want to go back there. I mean, you
should try to find things to include in your morning
routine that are like that you have a more elaborate
morning routine. It might also help to have a short version,
so there is you know, long version of the morning
(39:08):
routine for the mornings when things go as they are
supposed to go. But what is sort of the minimum
viable version of it for a day when that is
not the case and have that in your mind for
mornings when things are not going as you wish, because
then that can also keep you from saying, oh, this
is just terrible, it's never going to work. It's like, well,
I just did something. Yeah, it wasn't everything, but it
was something, and often something is absolutely good enough.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
This conversation has been way more than good enough. Laura.
Thank you so much for sharing so many good tips
with us. I'm like annoyed that it's not morning right now.
I'm ready to start the day all over again. But
you get to tomorrow, so that's not fun.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
And you had mentioned your website, Laura vandercam dot com.
Is there anywhere else that people can find you and
learn more about the work that you do.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Yeah, well, please come check out my before Breakfast podcast.
I also co host one called Best of Both Worlds,
which comes out every Tuesday. Co hosts that with Sarah Hartunger.
We talk about issues of work in life from the
perspective of people who really love both Oh love it.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah, all right, check it out, y'all.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Laura, thank you so much. I would say, have a
great day, but also really have a great morning.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Thanks so much. Thank you. For having me.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Okay, So, Matt, what is one new thing that you
learned from our chat today that you're going to incorporate
into your morning routine for tomorrow?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
The biggest takeaway for me is the night before so crucial.
Do you remember talking about your sliced lemon wedges? How
great is it that you presliced those? That's one last
thing for morning Leah to do.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
It's true, it's like future Leah is so happy. Same
with filling the tea kettle. If you fill your tea
kettle the night before, then all you got to do
is press a little button.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
A little button, or if you've got a timer on
your tea kettle, it'll just start boiling.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
What kind of futuristic equipment are you dealing with?
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Well, I guess I think you've missed your coffey.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Okay, So, but you're going to incorporate the night before routine.
So that means today, are you ready to start a
day changing your morning?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
When I go home, Leah, I'm starting to change the
mornings right now. And I think what I'm gonna do
isn't going to lay out my little workout clothes and
I'm gonna like prep my workout space at home, and
then I can kind of just jump into the clothes
and go downstairs.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Already picturing which workout clothes are gonna lay out for you.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah, I'm gonna have the great top of the black shirt.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
It's amazing, perfect, sounds very fashion.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
But what are you taking away from this discussion with Laura?
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Well, I liked the having a long version and a
short version of a morning routine. That to me feels
good because sometimes, like in the weekday is probably going
to be the short version. The weekends maybe the long version.
So I like that you know you can sort of
modify it depending on the day.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Mm hmm. I love that. I feel like I always
want the long version. Yeah, it's true. You're kind of
setting yourself up for failure when you have a limited time.
For example, like I work in the office. Sometimes this
morning I didn't do shit because I came to the
office and if I had a little short morning routine
that maybe take fifteen minutes instead of an hour.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Did you have time for your juice?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
No, it didn't even juice today. What about the crossword
we did that? Oh, okay, it was a little hair
for the letter. Yeah, it was a little hairy this morning.
We're a little stressed out, but it went well. Okay,
all right, So what's coming up next? On grown up Stuff?
Speaker 2 (42:06):
This is one of my favorite things in the world.
We are going to be talking about voting.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
It's one of the pillars of society but also pillars
of adulthood.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Well, it's not just for the stickers, even though I
do love a sticker, but there is so much more
about it that really, like Chazz is me up. I
get so excited to vote every time, but there's a
lot that we don't really know about it or understand
about it. And so we are going to have an
expert explained voting to us on all levels and why
it's important, and why we need to make sure we're
(42:37):
engaged and out there and filling in those little boxes
and having our voice heard, and how.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Laws vary from state to state, and why you should
be staying on top of your voter registration.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
That is true. So until next time, good luck being
a grown up.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
This is a production of Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. Our
executive producers are Lea Polmery.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
And Matt Stillo. This episode was edited and engineered by
Sierra Spreen
Speaker 1 (43:02):
And we want to thank our teammates at Ruby Studio,
including Sarah You, Ethan Fixel, Rachelswan, Krasnoff, Lydia Kim, Amber Smith,
Harper Waine, Deborgherrett, and Andy Kelly
Ruby.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Good morning, Matt, and welcome to grown up stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
We a but you know that it's not morning right now.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I know, but I wish that it was because it's
the best time of the day, and also because we
are talking about morning routines today.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Okay, well that is true. We have author, podcast hosts
and time management expert. Oh I wish that could be me, right,
Laura Vanderkamp on the show today, and she's going to
achieve the impossible, making us all mourning people.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Mm hmm. Okay, Matt, let's be real. Tell me about
your typical morning routine.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Here's how it really started to go bad. Is that
in college they give you the option to start your
classes at eleven am. An eighteen year old me was like, yes, please,
all classes start later, and I became this terrible morning person.
Where I was obviously his college is staying out late
and whatever. But I feel like I've been on a
ten year trajectory since graduating from college. I've had to
(00:59):
wheel myself into a morning person, and I feel stuck
kind of. But I'm getting better because my wife is
a morning person, and if I don't get up when
she's up, I'm in trouble. Good, good, good, Right, I
should be up. But our little morning routine is we
make some coffee, We do a fresh press green juice. Oh,
were those people that you hate? Yeah, and then we
do the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Oh god, oh god.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
This is I know. Wait, do I hate myself? I might? Anyway,
what's your or to tell me about your morning rous scene?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I do a lemon water Okay. So the key to
this for everyone listening is pre cut your lemons. I
cut them into four pieces, pre cut them.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
The night before, like at.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
The beginning of the week, usually when we get them, Yeah,
and put them in a bag.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Because if I have to like handle a knife first
thing in the morning, we don't want that. Yeah, we
don't want that. So do lemon water. And then I
get ready and I go to my yoga class.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Usually, oh so wait, what time is this all happening?
But this is into perspective.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
My alarm is set for six thirty in my body
is usually awake by then.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Wow. Yeah, yeah, what time is your yoga class? Eight? Okay? Wow?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, I mean let me be very clear. At sex thirty,
do I do a scroll?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yes, of course I do a little scroll in the
morning too. But it's bad. It's very bad.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
It's the worst you feel it.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
I go through periods of time where I keep the
phone in the other room. We talked about this because
I I'll wake up and I'll just fucking get out.
There's nothing else to do. You know, you've listened to
the birds' board. Now, yeah, it's time to get up.
But when you have the phone, dude, you could stay
in bed all day.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
You could, or you could jump right up. And now
we're gonna have Laura Vanderkam tell us exactly how we're
going to take advantage of those mornings and have a
wonderful day.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Well. I'm Laura Vandercam. I'm the author of several time
management books. I host a podcast called Before Breakfast, which
is all about taking your day from great to awesome.
We talk about productivity throughout the day, but we have
a special emphasis on mornings because I have found over
(02:57):
the years in my research thats are a great time
for getting things done and for many people with busy lives,
if you want to make progress on your personal goals,
that is when it is going to happen. So I'm
a big fan of mornings and I'm very happy to
be here.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I love that you said you're a big fan of mornings,
because I also am a big fan of mornings and
very much identify as a morning person, which was not
always the case, but I am one now. And I
feel like when you say that to people, they kind
of give you a look of like, what's wrong with you?
And it's like, no, wait until you come over to
my side of things, and you'll get it. And so
that is the point of why we have you here today, Laura.
(03:34):
But what I really want to start with is like,
when it actually begins, what do I do the second
that I blink my eyes open in the morning.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Well, if you don't mind, can we start the night before?
We'll go back even absolutely yes, Like if we're starting
at the very beginning, I want to go back further,
let's go open our eyes. Because the truth is good
mornings do start the night before. And sometimes people have
this misconception that it's all about waking up earlier and
(04:07):
earlier and you'll somehow magically be more productive by beating
the sun being up before everybody else. If you haven't
gotten enough sleep, you are not going to be able
to do anything. And so in order to have a
good morning routine, you need to get enough sleep that
you are well rested when you begin the morning routine.
And so that is about when you go to bed
(04:28):
the night before. But the good news is a lot
of people who think they aren't mourning people, it's because
they're not going to bed at a reasonable time the
night before. And if you commit to giving yourself a
regular and reasonable bedtime, you will probably be able to
get up and do more things.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Your book is called What the Most Successful People Do
Before Breakfast, And one of the things that I loved
about it was basically suggesting going to bed in fifteen
minute increments the night before. So if you go to
bed at like eleven pm on Sunday night, we're going
to go to bed at ten forty five. And on
Monday night, we're going to go to bed at ten
thirty and so like just sort of working yourself backwards
(05:08):
to like a little bit of an earlier bedtime. So
that doesn't sound too bad, But I guess the thing
about that is when is this going to feel normal?
When will I get into this routine? Because some people
say it takes three weeks, it takes three months, Like
how long is it going to take me to actually
have this stick and hopefully I'm not going to bed
at four pm the night before.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, we don't want you to go to bed at
four pm. And I do want to say there are
people who are night owls. Biologically you can't really change that,
but most people are not that that is a smaller
percent of the population than probably believes.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
They are night owls.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Again, a lot of people say they're not mourning people,
and it's because they're tired in the morning. But that's
a function of staying up late, scrolling watching Netflix, things
like that. And if you kind of put a stop
to that a little bit earlier and get into bed
a little bit earlier, you might be able to wake
up a little bit earlier and turn some of those
maybe less productive, even less enjoyable, leisure evening hours into
(06:08):
morning hours that you could do more things with. So yeah,
I mean, we're not talking about moving from a one
am bedtime to an eight pm bedtime overnight. That's probably
not reasonable even over years for most people. But if
you haven't been going to bed regularly and sort of
been thinking, well, when am I just going to fall
asleep by the couch? Or you know, we're all go
to bed whatever the mood strikes me, which it may
(06:30):
never if the Internet is particularly interesting that night. You
just want to say, like, what time would I like
to wake up? And then let me count back the
number of hours that I need to sleep and give
myself a bedtime that is that time, and if that's
not roughly when you're going to bed now, you can
slowly start working back toward that. So you know, if
you'd like to wake up at six am and you
(06:50):
need seven hours of sleep, then your bedtime is eleven PM.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
This is a math problem. This is not anything about
what kind of people we are or anything like this,
but we work toward whatever that is for the amount
of sleep you need to get up at the time
that you think is reasonable for you to get up
to achieve your morning goals.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Okay, now we're in the morning. Right now we could
be okay, great, okay, great, we've slept made Yeah, we
feel so refreshed or at least mostly refreshed enough to
take on the day. What do you think that we
should do? Right when your eyes open up, see the world.
Because the thing that I've read a lot is that
within seconds you're supposed to immediately think positively and basically
(07:30):
say I am awesome and this day is going to
be awesome. Is that what we do? Or should I
just that sounds great? Okay? Great?
Speaker 3 (07:36):
I mean I think that is wonderful. If you can
train yourself to wake up with a thought of this
day is going to be great, that's a pretty exciting
way to wake up. I'd be wonderful if we can
treat every morning like Christmas morning. Now, I think a
lot of us are a little bit more cynical that
we're probably not going to quite get our heads around
(07:56):
that sort of enthusiasm every single morning. But one thing
I would encourage you not to do is to first
look at your email. Yeah, that's where people go awrive.
So it's wonderful if you're to start your day with
positive affirmations, But whether that's happening or not, don't go
the other direction and see what has come in overnight,
(08:18):
what ridiculousness people are expecting you from the day, because
you're going to get right out of that good mood
and into a bad mood before we've even gone anywhere.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So another thing that people might do the first thing
in the morning is hit snooze. And I'm curious because
I'm sure you've done a lot of research on this.
Why is it so bad to hit snooze when it
feels so good? Is this something I have but people
should get out of. Is no alarm clock the way
to go?
Speaker 3 (08:42):
I mean, no alarm clock is kind of the gold standard.
If you are getting enough sleep, it is quite possible
to wake up on your own when you intend to
wake up. And I see this with myself. I need
I know from time tracking seven point three to seven
point four hours of sleep per day. Okay, I know
this because I've been tracking my time forever. Most people
(09:02):
aren't quite so ridiculous about things like this. But if
you kind of observe yourself over time, you will start
to see about how much sleep you get over the
long term. Like if you average it out bad nights
and good nights, short nights during the week, longer nights
during the weekends, where does it roughly come out to
over like a month or so, you'll get a number
(09:23):
that's probably about how much your body would like to
get on any given night. We often undershoot or overshoot,
but if we could get that amount, that would be great.
And if you commit to getting to sleep that amount
before you need to wake up, your body is gonna
start getting up. I see this happening with myself for
a long time. I set my alarm at six thirty.
(09:44):
I need seven point three to seven point four hours.
I was trying to get in bed, lights out. Everything
calmed down by eleven PM, and I would wake up
pretty regularly between sixt eighteen and six twenty four. I mean,
it was a beautiful sort of experience, but I don't
want anyone to be late to work, So it's probably
good idea to set an alarm clock just in case
something goes awry with that. But the snooze function, it's
(10:05):
not your friend. It feels good in the moment, but
there are many things that feel good in the moment
that are probably not our friends either, and so I
would like to put the snooze button kind of in
that category, because snooze sleep is lousy sleep. It is
much better to be getting this sort of deep sleep
right up until whatever you're gonna be waking up than
(10:28):
to sleep in these, you know, chunks of eight or
nine minutes or whatever your particular alarm happens to be
set for Wouldn't it be so much better to just
get thirty two minutes of sleep than to get thirty
two minutes of sleep being jolted awake every eight minutes.
That sounds like a far less pleasant thing. I mean,
you're still in bed either way. So just set your
alarm for the time you actually intend to get up,
(10:50):
and if that is ten minutes before you are supposed
to be at your desk at work, maybe there's a
reckoning you need to have with yourself. But let's at
least be honest that that is when you were planning
to get out of bed, instead of having this lying
to yourself idea that you were going to get up
thirty minutes earlier and then you just don't.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah, my wife and I have been doing this, Like
I finally now I'm not using an alarm anymore. I'm
like waking up generally around the same time. And I've
also found that like sometimes maybe if you do wake
up a little earlier, it's generally best to just get
up because like what I'm thinking and I'm hoping you
can confirm, is like you're probably out of that deep
rem cycle sleep and so to go back to sleep
and get a little bit of not quality sleep is
(11:31):
not as good for you as waking up in that
moment where you're completely out of your sleep cycle. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
But if you are up before your alarm, and the
alarm was set for the time that you're having this
morning routine, I mean, it's kind of just bonus time.
So get up if you'd like, or you could just
lie there and think deep thoughts. Maybe we could have
those affirmations we were talking about earlier while you're in
the nice comfy pillow.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I send you some good affirmations, Matt, that you can
use in the morning.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
One of the other things that your book mentions is
bribing yourself, which I'm a huge fan of. So that
sometimes might mean like if I wake up thirty mornings
in a row at six am, and I get up
and I do my routine, then I get to buy
these tickets to go see you do a lipa on
tour this year, which is sounds amazing to me. So
tell me a little bit about bribing. What are some
(12:15):
of the bribing tactics that you have seen really work
for people?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, I mean I want to say here that hopefully
your morning routine is something that feels like a reward
in and of itself, Like I don't want people to
be waking up to do things that they absolutely hate
to do. I mean that seems sort of like to
be defeating the purpose of having this morning routine that's
going to set our day up to be awesome. That said,
(12:39):
if you are, for instance, trying to exercise regularly, and
you are not in the habit of exercising regularly, and
you have determined that mornings are really the only time
where this fits in your life, it might be a
little bit more challenging to build this morning routine where
you get up and do some physical activity if it's
not something you've really done that much in the past,
and so, yeah, totally resort to bribery if that's what
(13:01):
it takes. It could be something in the future, like
tickets to a concert, But maybe it's something that would
make the exercise itself more pleasant, like could you meet
a friend at the gym and so then you've got
a buddy there who's holding you accountable and you get
some social time to gather. Or maybe it's even something
more immediate. Right in general, you're trying to make your
coffee at home and not buy it out. But if
you go to the gym, you can buy it out,
(13:22):
because that's something that will reward you for having started
this habit that you are trying to do. So think
about ways that you can maybe motivate yourself long term.
Also try and have things that are intrinsically enjoyable for you.
But in the meantime it might take some intermediate rewards
just to get things on track.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
So I'm an aspiring morning person. I have been my
entire life. Sometimes I really nail it. There's stretches a
couple months from like on top of it, and then
I slide back into bad habits and stuff. But one
thing that really helped me was I used to work
this job. I was working all the time. I was
there from like nine am to nine pm. It was terrible,
and I started becoming a morning prison because this because
(14:00):
basically I got into this habit road like stay up
late because I wanted to unwind, and then I would
wake up late and I'd be rushing there and like
I was just starting my day like basically on the train,
stressed out late to work, and so I started getting
up earlier because I was like it made me just
feel more in control of my life, Like I'm waking
up for me, not for someone else or a boss
(14:21):
or an employer or a company or whatever. I want
to take care of myself, like I want to eat
something good for me, I want to move my body
a little bit. Kind of reclaiming that time just in
and of itself made me feel like more in control
of my life, which I think speaks to a lot
of different things that you talk about in your books.
But anyway, if that's helpful for anyone, that's kind of
like a great way that I've been able to frame
(14:42):
it for myself.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah, And I would especially say if people do have
the sort of crazy jobs where you never know when
you're going to be done for the day, which I
know some people are in and you cannot control what
time you leave work. However, you can generally control what
time you get to work, right, Like you're the one
who has to get yourself there, so there is a
time you are showing up, and because of that, you
can often work backwards and have some amount of time
(15:07):
that you know you can have for your sell or
your family or anything like that. Mornings maybe where you
can find that sense of agency.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Absolutely, and you write about this in new books like
that we have the most willpower in the morning. And
so if we do have this willpower in the morning,
what kind of activities does that mean we should prioritize.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Well, generally, it's anything that you want to fit in
your life that is important for you in advancing you
towards your goals. But that is hard to find space
for at other points during the day. People sometimes build
morning routines that have lots of different parts, so that
include different things on different days. But it might be
creative work. Maybe you have aspirations to write a play,
(15:49):
but your job is in accounting and you're not going
to be writing the play much during the workday because
you're busy, and at night you get home and your
brain is spent. But in the morning you have that
fresh energy. Often, you know, after that first cup of coffee,
people feel like they can conquer the world. And how
awesome to be able to put that energy of feeling
like you can conquer the world against this creative endeavor,
(16:09):
you know, paying yourself first before you go off and
pay your dues somewhere else. Lots of people do spiritual activities.
If there's some sort of reading of sacred texts or
prayer or meditation or any sort of way that we
are commuting with something bigger than ourselves. That is an
awesome thing to do in the morning. People have relationship
goals that they are trying to advance in the morning,
(16:31):
especially if you do have the sort of job where
you can't spend much quality time with people later in
the day. Maybe it's that you and your spouse have
breakfast together every morning, or you and a friend meete
up to walk in the morning, or you check in
with elderly relatives in the morning because older people happen
to be up earlier. I mean, it's just as our
biological clocks shift over the course of our lifetimes here.
(16:53):
But yeah, these are all things that one could do
in the morning and that would start the day off right.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
When you said relationship goals, I was like, oh, no,
does she want me to swipe on hinge in the morning?
Because that's way.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Worse than looking at my head And there might be
different people on there, and the most true then there
would be at other times, and maybe those are the
people you want to meet.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
I do want to meet the fellow morning people. That
is true. So well that's my new morning routine.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Then first thing, wake up alarm. Okay, maybe not, maybe
we'll save the phone after the affirmation. Yeah, after the
aff Yeah. Another thing you mentioned about doing in the
morning is being outside touching grass. As the children would say,
what is it about being outside that could really help
us out in the morning.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Yeah, Well, with the caveat here that if it's dark
and snowy and whatever when you are waking up, depending
what time we are starting our morning routines, this may
not be the world's most practical thing to go do,
but in general, fresh air, sunlight, if it is available,
are things that are known mood boosters. They make us
feel better. They tend to make us feel like we
have more energy, have a more positive outlook on the
(17:56):
world when we have this exposure to nature, and so
if you can get that as part of your morning routine,
you will feel better. In general, there's obviously some element
of seeing sunshine helping wake us up. I mean that
would be something that our bodies would have developed from
an evolutionary perspective. But again, you know, if you're waking
up at six am in the dead of winter, the
(18:17):
sun's not up for another hour at least, so don't
concern yourself too much with that. But if it is available,
if you'd like to wake up early in July and
go for a run out side, that would be a
wonderful way to start the day.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
The only person where you get better that would be
my wife. If it's snowing and dark, she's like so
styched about it. I have no idea why, but it's
a fact with different.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
People really like people like the quiet. There are a
number of people who perhaps are more introverted and whose
lives involve a lot of other people who really enjoy
mornings precisely because they do have them to themselves, and
so the more desolate it is, the better. So it's like,
(18:56):
you know, the cold, snowy street. It's excellent because there's
definitely no.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Let me get away from this man. Oh okay, right now,
I get it.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
We'll be right back after a quick.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Break, and we're back with more grown up stuff. How
do I don't We touched on this a little bit
in the beginning, and I think it's probably becoming an
increasing issue for a lot of people. Is the phone
(19:28):
at night and in the morning, right, We're on our
phones all day, we plug them into charge next to
us at night, and they're just always on us. And
I really realized that I was struggling with it a lot.
And so there's some cool apps and strategies have come
out recently. There's this app that I was talking to
Lee about that's called Brick, where basically you can brick
your phone and it'll like turn off that you can't
(19:49):
access anything that you would want to, like Instagram or
TikTok or whatever until you like go downstairs and touch
a physical device to like on brick it. So I
keep it downstairs and I sleep upstairs, or I'll straight
up leave my phone in the other room and then
go to bed in my bedroom. So I'm curious to
hear a little bit about, like why is the phone
such a problem when it comes to like the morning
(20:11):
and sleeping and what other things can people do to
kind of like get off the screens and get to
bed and wake up in the morning.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
I think one reason it's such a temptation is it's
a very convenient alarm clock, and so most people just
set an alarm very quickly on their phones. And that's fine.
I mean that's a perfectly useful function for your phone.
But the problem is when people pick up their phones,
they tend not to just turn off the alarm. I mean,
maybe somebody's texted you overnight and that's very exciting, and
you look to see what that is, and you know,
(20:40):
you see that your inbox has a bigger number, and
you look and see what's come in, or you know,
you just have the icons for whatever apps you find
interesting and exciting there on your home screen, and you
know it's just a quick check. But then, of course
it just consumes time, and you may not have as
much time, or maybe don't want to choose to put
(21:01):
your time into those things in the morning, so you
can use things like the brick app or other blocking
functions on there. I think it's also helpful to have
something you want to do instead, because I have certainly
found that when I do want to do things, and
(21:22):
I have something that's in my schedule that I'm planning
to do, I'm just on my phone less. In general.
One reason I wound up joining a choir several years
ago is I realized, like in the evenings, I'm often
just scrolling around doing nothing of consequence, like could I
go take two hours and sing instead, Well, absolutely, I
could do that. So it's just when you fill your
(21:44):
life with good stuff, there is less sort of amorphous
space where we pick up the phone because we're bored
or want to see what's there. And so I think
you could take that same approach to the morning. It's
not just oh, I want to in general work out
at some point before I go to work. It's like, Okay,
I have a plan to run for four miles starting
(22:08):
at six am, and I know it's going to take
me this amount of time, and so I actually do
have to get out there and get doing it. If
I plan to get back and shower before I need
to go catch the bus to get into the office
or something like that. Or you have a creative thing
you're really excited about that you know, it's like, well,
I'm going to work on it for forty five minutes
(22:29):
this morning because I check in with my writing group
on Friday and they are going to ask me about it.
And if I haven't been doing it, it's going to
be obvious when I'm not sending any words around, right.
So I think having these things that you know you
are going to do and that you feel accountable for
doing can push some of that Internet temptation a little
(22:50):
bit further away.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
I used to go to the gym and watch Love
Island on my phone while I was on the elliptical.
But the motivation was I didn't want to see what
the like meme accounts had posted about what had happened
in the episode before, so I was like, I gotta
get on this elliptical, I gotta watch Yeah, I got it.
The only thing I'm doing on my phone is watching
Love Island, and then I can look at Instagram and
(23:13):
then see what the jokes are about, because I don't
want to know who got kicked off or who said
something stupid, and so like that was my motivation of like,
don't let this be spoiled for you, So like, get
out there and get on.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
It, out there and do it. Yeah, yeah, you gotta
stay on top of it.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah. Well, speaking of love, let's talk about most people's
one true love, which is coffee. And this is of
course a very important part of the morning. But a
lot of things will say, don't just get up and
hook yourself up to an ivy of coffee. That's maybe
not the right way to do it. Somebody once used
the phrase inside shower, which grosses me out, but it's
(23:47):
basically like instead of your outside chower washing your body,
it's an inside shower of like putting water into your body.
If I had to hear it, you all have to
hear it. And so you know, that was for a while.
But so there's there's a lot of talk of like
water and stuff. But again, when we're talking about creative
activities reading a book or doing our journal or whatever,
then like it is a nice time to have coffee too.
(24:08):
Where do you stand on, like, at what part of
the morning coffee comes into this routine.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
I don't think that it needs to be a huge
matter about where exactly it is, as long as you
approach everything in moderation. So, like you said, I don't
think anyone should be hooked up to the IV with
caffee at either. For most people, I think if you
try to keep yourself to like two cups of coffee
a day, that's probably wise in general. So then is
(24:35):
just well when do you want them? If one small
cup of coffee helps you get up in the morning
and do whatever it is you're going to do, great,
you know, have it and then maybe you do some
other things and then you need one more later as
a way to kind of focus while you're working on something.
I know a lot of people might have a small
cup of coffee before they exercise, for instance, because it
helps wake them up and makes them feel a little
(24:56):
bit more energetic. But you wouldn't want a huge one
because you know, if you're out running, coffee has certain effects,
and you know you probably don't want to have to
deal with that while you're on the road.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yeah, and I'm guessing too that our last cup of
coffee of the day should be early afternoon at the latest,
so that we are still getting in bed at the
correct time.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah, I would even not say afternoon. I think what
happens for a lot of people. We do tend to
hit an energy slump in mid afternoon, and a lot
of people think that would be a good time to
grab either coffee or canty or if you're one of
those people who's still smoking, which you shouldn't. But that's
why people would go have a smoke break in the
mid afternoon, right, is to wake themselves up. But I
(25:36):
think you could take some of the other parts of
that smoke break, which is that people go outside and
they get fresh air and they get away from their desks.
It's like, okay, we could do all that without actually smoking.
So if you are feeling sluggish mid afternoon, instead of
reaching for coffee or anything else, go take a quick walk,
go outside if you can get some fresh air, get
some sunshine. Even if it's cold, the fresh air will
(25:58):
probably wake you up. Or if if it's not feasible
to go outside, maybe you can go up and down
the stairs of your office building a few times. But
that will give you a lot more energy, and then
you don't need to have caffeine, which can interfere with
trying to get to sleep at a reasonable hour later.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
I feel like we should make candy breaks a thing
now that you mentioned now, which I'll go outside and
eat a piece of candy.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Yeah, probably better than the.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Cigarette, right, Yeah, affirmation and candy. Yeah. One thing that
people say all the time is that breakfast is the
most important meal of the day. And so I would
like to talk to you a little bit about breakfast.
And I'm kind of curious because I've had my own
journey with breakfast and I don't track my sleep, but
one thing I do track is like my macros to
make sure I'm hitting my proteins and my carbs and
my fats. And so basically what I found is if
(26:40):
I'm eating three meals a day, I'm over on all
of those things. And I kind of also realize that,
like breakfast takes a lot of time in the morning.
And so now I'm one of those intermitted fasting people
where I'll have lunch around eleven, we'll have dinner around six,
and like that's enough food for me, and it kind
of freeze up my morning a little bit. You know,
I can wake up and I don't have to have breakfast,
Like I can just like go do something. But then
people say breakfast is important meal to day, So am
(27:01):
I missing out on something? What is the deal with
breakfast in the mornings?
Speaker 3 (27:04):
I think there's been evolving knowledge on this matter, and
breakfast is probably a personal choice based on how you
intend to spend your mornings. For people who are trying
to say train for distance races, I think there is
a real need to have some sort of carbohydrates in
your body before that happens. So if that's you, then
(27:26):
probably you do need something in the morning, you know,
whatever that happens to be. If that is not you,
then maybe it's something different. If you're hungry when you
wake up, I don't think there's any harm in eating
something that's balanced and healthy. First thing. If you are
not hungry when you wake up, I don't think you
have to force food into your mouth just because somebody
has once told you that breakfast is the most important
(27:49):
meal of the day. I seem to recall that that
was like cereal manufacturer, I know, right, pushing that too,
which I'm pretty sure that even if all the way
is the most important of the day, that's probably not
what most of us should be eating at that point.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
That was our candy break because that was basically the sugar. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, that's a good thing to keep in mind.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yeah, I think we've covered most of the basics here
to like really set ourselves up for not only a
productive morning, but productive day to follow. But is there
anything that we haven't touched on yet that are some
of the tasks that you recommend that we do first thing,
whether it's sort of like boring tasks or chores or
things that we can get done in the morning, get
them out of the way, and then go out into
(28:26):
the world and be perfectly smug about being mourning people.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Wow, we perfectly smug. Yeah, that sounds exciting. Well, I
think a number of people do think through their days.
Hopefully you know what your morning routine is and you've
thought through what you intend to do first, But then
what do you plan to do the rest of the day.
What does the hard landscape of your day look like? Meetings, appointments,
what other tasks need to get done and when dwiden
tend to do those around there? And then I would
(28:50):
actually suggest people might want to think about this, think
about what your evenings are going to look like. For
many people, evenings are entirely mindless. You are done with work,
you're either wrestling your kids to bed, or you are
consuming media or whatever it is you're doing. But it's
often not an intentional time of day. But you might
think in the morning, well, if I was going to
(29:11):
do something intentional for thirty minutes in my evening, what
would that be? And by knowing that, you might be
able to look forward to that and have another sort
of productive peak of your day, like oh, I'm going
to read this book in the evening, or I'm going
to practice a musical instrument for thirty minutes of the
evening because I can't do that in the morning because
I'll be waking my spouse up or anything else along
those lines. But with morning routines, I think it's helpful
(29:33):
to realize a couple things. One is, a morning routine
doesn't have to be endless. Like I love writing about
people who have these like three hour morning routines. I
enjoy that love hearing about that, it does not have
to look like that. So if people are like, well,
I can't do that because I have a toddler, or
I have to be at work at six thirty, so
it's just not feasible to wake up that much before
(29:55):
my professional morning starts, it's okay. A morning routine is
anything that but you are choosing to do to start
your day off right. So maybe for you, it's that
you read ten minutes of something meaningful and that is
your morning routine. Or you decide to do a fifteen
minute strength training session and that is your morning routine.
(30:15):
It's only fifteen minutes, but that's great. If you do
it day after day, or at least a couple days
a week, you're going to get stronger and that is
the other thing. A morning routine doesn't have to be
every single morning, and it doesn't always have to look
the same either. I find an interesting thing is even
many people who tell me that they have a daily
morning routine are not doing it seven days a week. Yeah. Yeah,
(30:37):
So when they say daily they mean Monday through Friday.
Sometimes they don't even mean Friday because that's in a
different category entirely. But then we're down to four times
a week. I'm like, Okay, that's not daily, but it's regular. Yeah,
So whatever it is that you're doing, as long as
it's regularly in your life, I think it can still
count as a morning routine. So if it doesn't work
on Thursdays and Sundays for some reason, there is no
(31:00):
reason to beat yourself up about that. That is perfectly fine.
You can choose to do different things too. So if
all you have is fifteen minutes maybe three mornings a week,
you do a strength training session, three mornings a week,
you get up and meditate or do some sort of
creative work, and then one morning you sleep in, that
would be a perfectly fine way to have a morning routine.
I think that would hit all the boxes and be great.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Did someone say sleep in.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Yeah, we've been one morning a week.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, yes, I really do think I'm a person who
needs like nine to ten out like nine definitely, ten
sometimes pretty good. Eight not enough.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Yeah, well, if you know that about yourself, I mean
you just build it in. There's nothing you can do
about it if it's true. Right, Yeah, there's some people
who need less, Like I kept reading for a while
about Martha Stewart needing four to five hours is sleep
every night, which is fine. If that's what she needs,
that's great. But most adults need seven to eight hours.
But there are many adults who need more than eight hours.
(31:53):
And if that's what you need, there's no point in
like denying it and trying to get by on less.
You will just crash. And it's far better to get
the about the amount of sleep you need every single
night than to undershoot several days in a row and
then need to crash for several days in a row.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And you don't have to be like Martha Stewart, you
don't have to be perfect in everything. It's okay find
out what works for you. So, okay, we've been talking
in the morning, but I want to go a little
bit bigger. You've written extensively about just time management in general,
and so, as someone who you know work a ton,
I've got tasks left and right, Like, I'm always thinking
about ways to manage my time and to be a
little bit more productive during the day. So could you
(32:32):
share any like general time management tips tricks with the audience.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
My first tip that I always share with people if
you want to spend your time better is to figure
out exactly where your time is going now, because time
keeps passing no matter what you do. A lot of
people have very faulty impressions of where it actually goes.
And I include myself in this category. Like, until I
started tracking my time regularly, I had all sorts of
(32:57):
ideas of how much time I spent on different categories
in my life. And then I started tracking my time
week after week for a long time, and I realized
that I was often very, very wrong. And it's human nature.
We tend to overestimate things we don't want to do.
Like people tend to overestimate how many hours they are working.
They tend to overestimate how much time they spend on
(33:18):
housework because they don't want to be doing housework. They
underestimate how much leisure time they have because we feel
like we don't have as much as we want. But
not as much as I want is a very different
thing than like none, which is what a lot of
people will tell themselves. So you want to make sure
you are working from good data, and the only way
to get that data is to actually keep track of
your time. So anyone wants to spend their time better,
(33:40):
try to track your time for one week, for one
hundred and sixty eight hours. That is twenty four times
seven one hundred sixty eight hours.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
See where it goes.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
I don't know where it goes, but you will probably
find something interesting. And the upside of doing that is
you may start to see that there are pockets of
time that are either available for you if there is
something you wanted to do, or you could re deploy
that time from something that is less important to you
to something that is more important to you if you
made certain arrangements in your life.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
You're clearly the expert here. But as being the expert,
I'm sure you've tried a lot of different advice out
and I'm sure you're somebody who has. Again, if not daily,
then certainly a regular morning routine. Has there ever been
any mourning routine advice that's been like a suggested habit,
try this, try to do that that you have tried out,
(34:30):
and you've been like, absolutely not, I am not adding
this to my morning. I am not doing this. This
is not a productive way for me to start my day.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
The point of a morning routine is not to do
something in the morning, just to do it in the morning.
It's that for many people, morning is the time that
they can have for themselves and for their own goals
before everybody else wants something from you. And so if
you are in a corporate environment, if you have a family,
these are all obligations or wonderful things, but they're obligations
(34:56):
that you have later in the day, whereas those are
less likely to have various emergencies at say five thirty
in the morning, and so that is time you can
have for yourself. And so that's why people use mornings.
It's not that in and of itself, exercising in the
morning is a much more perfect choice than exercising later
in the day. It's that for many people, you can't
exercise later in the day, and so doing it in
(35:18):
the morning is when you need to. But if your
life is different than feel free to do it whatever
works for you.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
It's good advice. I had mentioned the brick app earlier,
and I'm curious. You know, there's all kinds of to
do list apps, tracking stuff, planning stuff. I'm just curious
if there are any like apps or books or anything
that you recommend that helps you keep better track of
your time.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
So I actually just track my time on spreadsheets. It's Excel. Yeah,
it's functional enough. I have the days of the week
across the top, Monday to Sunday, half hour blocks down
the left hand side, running from five am to four
thirty am. So if anyone's listening to that, feel free
to go make yourself one. You can get one from
my website too if you want to, or vandercam dot com.
(36:00):
But trust me, it's just Excel. It is nothing fancy.
You could do this yourself in two minutes if you
wanted to, and that's simple enough for me. There are
dozens of time tracking apps on the market, and some
people really enjoy using them. There's all sorts of productivity
apps out there as well. I have to say i'm
a little bit skeptical because the problem with apps in
general is that they make your phone more interesting, and
(36:23):
the more things you need to check on the phone,
the more times you will be picking up your phone.
And that would be fine if all you did is
went to your productivity app, but many people don't stay there,
they go elsewhere, and so then whatever time you would
have gained with your productivity app has just been swallowed
up by all these other things that you did with
your time because you picked up your phone. So I'm
(36:45):
pretty low tech for so many things. I actually have
a paper planner, but I love it. I like sitting
there with nothing around me, like no electronics, and writing
out what I intend to do. That's my little treat.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I love that. Also, if anyone does want to make
not even an Excel sheet, but if you want to
just make it actually on paper too, then you can
put little doodles and stickers on it and really jazz
up your whole thing that you're looking at of your
spreadsheet of time. So that's just a little arts and
crafts tip from me.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yeah, and if you are doing it on a spreadsheet,
I know somebody who pastes in photos into their spreadsheet,
Like at the end of the day, they'll put in
a little photo of like what happened, and the cap
columns a little bigger, and as they can do that,
it becomes like a digital scrappy.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Yeah, it's kind of fun. That's great. Well, Laura, you've
given us so many amazing tips. Today. We are ready
to get our regular morning routines on track. But before
we let you go to one last thing. So say
we get into our good groove. But then, of course
there's always going to be that morning mercury will be
retrograde where everything goes wrong. How do we get our
(37:48):
days back on track if our morning just throws us
completely off you know, spilled coffee, late train, all of
that stuff, How do we then just center ourselves and
move on with a smile instead of just crawling back
into which is usually the option I go for.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Yeah, well that's life. I mean, life happens, and I
think it's not reasonable to expect everything to go perfectly
every single day. And one of the reasons I talked
earlier about how even people who say they have a
daily morning routine don't do it every single day is
that I think that that can give us permission that
if it doesn't happen some morning. We don't feel like
(38:23):
it's the end of the world. We don't feel like
we need to stop. One reason to choose things that
you want to do is it will help you get
back in the habit if things do go awry, like
if you get the flu and you can't do your
exercise routine for a week. A lot of people use
that as an excuse to stop exercising completely, right, it's like,
you don't have to do that. Maybe it's that you
didn't like the form of exercise you were doing. Is
(38:45):
there something that you would find more compelling that would
make you want to go back? So you're sad that
you missed, you know, two weeks of your spin class,
but you really do like your spin class, and so
you do want to go back there. I mean, you
should try to find things to include in your morning
routine that are like that you have a more elaborate
morning routine. It might also help to have a short version,
so there is you know, long version of the morning
(39:08):
routine for the mornings when things go as they are
supposed to go. But what is sort of the minimum
viable version of it for a day when that is
not the case and have that in your mind for
mornings when things are not going as you wish, because
then that can also keep you from saying, oh, this
is just terrible, it's never going to work. It's like, well,
I just did something. Yeah, it wasn't everything, but it
was something, and often something is absolutely good enough.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
This conversation has been way more than good enough. Laura.
Thank you so much for sharing so many good tips
with us. I'm like annoyed that it's not morning right now.
I'm ready to start the day all over again. But
you get to tomorrow, so that's not fun.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
And you had mentioned your website, Laura vandercam dot com.
Is there anywhere else that people can find you and
learn more about the work that you do.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Yeah, well, please come check out my before Breakfast podcast.
I also co host one called Best of Both Worlds,
which comes out every Tuesday. Co hosts that with Sarah Hartunger.
We talk about issues of work in life from the
perspective of people who really love both Oh love it.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah, all right, check it out, y'all.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Laura, thank you so much. I would say, have a
great day, but also really have a great morning.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Thanks so much. Thank you. For having me.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Okay, So, Matt, what is one new thing that you
learned from our chat today that you're going to incorporate
into your morning routine for tomorrow?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
The biggest takeaway for me is the night before so crucial.
Do you remember talking about your sliced lemon wedges? How
great is it that you presliced those? That's one last
thing for morning Leah to do.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
It's true, it's like future Leah is so happy. Same
with filling the tea kettle. If you fill your tea
kettle the night before, then all you got to do
is press a little button.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
A little button, or if you've got a timer on
your tea kettle, it'll just start boiling.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
What kind of futuristic equipment are you dealing with?
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Well, I guess I think you've missed your coffey.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Okay, So, but you're going to incorporate the night before routine.
So that means today, are you ready to start a
day changing your morning?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
When I go home, Leah, I'm starting to change the
mornings right now. And I think what I'm gonna do
isn't going to lay out my little workout clothes and
I'm gonna like prep my workout space at home, and
then I can kind of just jump into the clothes
and go downstairs.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Already picturing which workout clothes are gonna lay out for you.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah, I'm gonna have the great top of the black shirt.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
It's amazing, perfect, sounds very fashion.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
But what are you taking away from this discussion with Laura?
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Well, I liked the having a long version and a
short version of a morning routine. That to me feels
good because sometimes, like in the weekday is probably going
to be the short version. The weekends maybe the long version.
So I like that you know you can sort of
modify it depending on the day.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Mm hmm. I love that. I feel like I always
want the long version. Yeah, it's true. You're kind of
setting yourself up for failure when you have a limited time.
For example, like I work in the office. Sometimes this
morning I didn't do shit because I came to the
office and if I had a little short morning routine
that maybe take fifteen minutes instead of an hour.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Did you have time for your juice?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
No, it didn't even juice today. What about the crossword
we did that? Oh, okay, it was a little hair
for the letter. Yeah, it was a little hairy this morning.
We're a little stressed out, but it went well. Okay,
all right, So what's coming up next? On grown up Stuff?
Speaker 2 (42:06):
This is one of my favorite things in the world.
We are going to be talking about voting.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
It's one of the pillars of society but also pillars
of adulthood.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Well, it's not just for the stickers, even though I
do love a sticker, but there is so much more
about it that really, like Chazz is me up. I
get so excited to vote every time, but there's a
lot that we don't really know about it or understand
about it. And so we are going to have an
expert explained voting to us on all levels and why
it's important, and why we need to make sure we're
(42:37):
engaged and out there and filling in those little boxes
and having our voice heard, and how.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Laws vary from state to state, and why you should
be staying on top of your voter registration.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
That is true. So until next time, good luck being
a grown up.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
This is a production of Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. Our
executive producers are Lea Polmery.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
And Matt Stillo. This episode was edited and engineered by
Sierra Spreen
Speaker 1 (43:02):
And we want to thank our teammates at Ruby Studio,
including Sarah You, Ethan Fixel, Rachelswan, Krasnoff, Lydia Kim, Amber Smith,
Harper Waine, Deborgherrett, and Andy Kelly
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com