How to let go of the guilt

and even making space for physical activity. Whatever you are telling yourself that you never do is probably happening on some occasion, so you can let go of the guilt and just get on with your life. Today's tip, like others this week, comes from my book I Know How She Does It, which came out ten years ago. For the book, I collected time diary data from one thousand and one days in the lives of women with big

jobs and families. I found that in the one hundred and sixty eight hours that make up a week, it is possible to work, spend time with family, sleep, exercise, read, or do anything you truly care about. Lots of people are successfully having it all. For the book, I wanted to study how people spent their time, so I had them track their time for a week. This was straightforward enough, but collecting the data had a surprising side effect. Most people don't actually know how they spend their time. I

mean they have ideas. Maybe everyone at your workplace talks about their sixty hour work weeks, or maybe people claim they're lucky to get six hours of sleep. Maybe you have heard people lament that they never see their families. People can walk around with these stories, but the data often show otherwise. Most of the women who track their time for me turned out to be working reasonable hours.

The average was forty four hours a week. Some work more, of course, but the nature of an average is that many people work less too. They also turned out to be getting a reasonable amount of sleep. It is human nature to remember our worst nights as typical, but a bad night tends to be followed but not so bad night. Most people don't have infants. People slept on average fifty four hours a week, which averages out to seven point

seven hours per day. Subtract forty four and fifty four from one hundred and sixty eight and you get seventy hours for other things. So it is not surprising that people spent a lot of time with their families. That is the nature of sharing a home with people. You are around them most mornings and evenings, and on the weekends and so forth. It would not be unusual for people to be spending thirty five to forty hours a week around their kids, even with full time work hours.

This was quite a revelation. After all, people who work thirty five to forty hours for pay don't complain that they never see their jobs. A lot of women walk around with the story that if they're not seeing their kids at ten am on Tuesday, it doesn't count, but there are a lot of other hours in the week. Seeing these numbers changed people's stories. As one woman told me, I used to feel guilt. I don't feel guilt anymore.

If you are worried that you are under investing in some area of your life, you might try tracking your time too. My guess is that whatever you are worried about, you will see that you are doing something at least some amount of the time. Maybe you claim you never exercise, but you do go to the gym once and went for a walk once during the week. That is twice. That is not nothing. If you want to do more amazing, but there is no reason to tell yourself the never story.

And if we are worried that you are not seeing your kids, you might track that time too. Perhaps it might not be as much time as you want, but it might be as well. Tracking time often makes people feel better about their time. I actually know this to be true from my time diary projects, where time satisfaction levels rise after a week of tracking. So if you want to banish the guilt, maybe you can try tracking as well. You just might be surprised at what the

data show in the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.