Valuing Time with Laura Vanderkam #090

Laura here in a few minutes. Yeah, she's a complete expert and just really interesting all around person to talk to. So yeah, that should be a really fun conversation real quick. Today on the show, we're drinking a beer called Infinity Bloom by New Grass Brewing Company, And Matt, your mother in law picked this up for us, right, that's pretty sweet. Yeah. This is out of Shelby, North Carolina. This is her hometown where she grew and Kate, my wife, she actually

grew up there for a few years as well. So you know what's so cool is that all these small towns, they all have their their own brewery now, so you can find amazing craft beer pretty much anywhere, which is awesome. Yeah, I love that you can find great craft breweries in small towns like all across the United States. Now used to be like reserve for major cities, and that's just

not the case anymore. So there's are a change in Yeah, tiny craft breweries are where it's at all right, So let's go ahead and introduce our guest for today, Laura Vandercam. She helps people spend more time on what matters and less on what doesn't matter. She is the author of several time management and productivity books, including Juliet's School of Possibilities, Off the Clock, I Know how she does it, What the most successful people do Before Breakfast and a hundred

and sixty eight hours. That's a lot of books. She's prolific. She is the host of the podcast Before Breakfast and the co host with Sarah hart Unger, of the podcast Best of Both Worlds. And she lives outside Philly with her husband and four children. That's also a lot of children and blah over at Laura Vanderkam dot com. Laura truly is a time management expert and we're excited to have her on the show. So Laura, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. All right, We're

so glad to have you, Laura. This is gonna be a really fun conversation. And as you know, Matt and I drink a craft beer every week on our show, and for us, it's this realization that, you know, we are very intentional about how we spend and save our money, but we do realize that it's important to to use our money on things that we enjoy in the here and now today too, and so craft beer kind of reflects that for us, and we're wondering, like, what's your

craft beer? In particular in relation to how you use your time, where do you use your time potentially like ineffectively that people might be surprised that you splurage on your time in that way. Yeah, I love the comparison between time and money and the sense that we we aren't always just going to try and save a few minutes here and there, like sometimes it's worth spending a

ton of time on stuff that you really enjoy. I actually sing in a choir and among the times large as I am making in this week, which is a little bit ridiculous in terms of the sheer number of like kids sports and school activities, and work activities and other such things that have to happen. But I'm um singing with my choir. We're doing a Maller's second Symphony. We're singing with an orchestra out in New Jersey, so

I've been going out there for rehearsals. But you know, singing with the choir takes a ton of time, but it's really fun, and so it's not the sort of thing like, oh, well, could I spend less time on this somehow a little? Why on earth would I want to? So yeah, I would say that that singing is is my equivalent of craft beer. Joel loves to drink the beer,

but you do not want to hear him singing. Well, the reason I'm not having a beer with you guys, I could pretend, I guess for purposes of the podcast, since no one can see me, but I'm I'm singing tonight, And in general, if I drink before I sing, it's general it's just a disaster. Well cool, So let's go

ahead and dive into time a little bit now. So you're obviously really interest in time, and we wanted to know before we kind of start talking about your book, is how did that begin like, how did your fascination with time begin. Was there a pivotable moment that sort of shifted how you view time and sort of it's finite nature, or was it always something that you were aware of? As I look back on my life, I've

always been interested in productivity. I was probably that nerdy kid in school who was planning out her week and had it, you know, when the tests were going to happen, all written in ahead of the time that they were actually happening, which I know it makes me sound like all kinds of fun, but it kind of became more of an intense personal interest when I became a parent for the first time twelve years ago, when my oldest

child was born. And you know, anyone who's been through this transition, any of your listeners, know that it does change how you spend your time. Not only that the children themselves need time and attention, but it's more broader question of like am I spending my time in the ways that I wish to? Am I still, you know, maintaining time for all the other things I want to do. If my spending enough time with my kid, you're accountable for it in a way that you might just not

be if you don't have intense personal responsibilities. And so I began sort of studying how other people were spending their time to make the most of their lives, both professionally and personally, and over time I began writing about that, and that's where my time management books have come from. Okay, speaking of time management books, you recently released a book called Juliette School of Possibilities and I read it in I think one and a half sitting, so I like

almost and I had to finish it quickly. Um the quick read for sure next night. But yeah, it's a super super quick read. But I love to the fact that this it's a story. It's not like do these ten things, here's all these tips and how to manage your time better. But it's this really great story that kind of by us mosis. As you read it, you accumulate some of these tips on how to manage your

time better. And so the main character in the book is Riley, and she's someone who just reminds me of a lot of people I see around me in daily life, right like constantly connected, so consumed with tasks that she doesn't have the time for work and relational opportunities. And so do you think of Riley, does she you represent to you kind of mainstream modern culture and how we can't turn it off? Oh, definitely. I mean I wanted Riley to be a character that a lot of people

could see themselves in. And this is always the thing with a fable and the books out there, they're in the genre of same business fables. The whole hope is that you will see yourself in the main character, and in the course of the main character's journey will also learn things that you can put into place in your own life. And so, yeah, Riley's just a wreck. Um, so hopefully people aren't quite as much a wreck as her,

but her her personal life is falling apart. That might be okay if her career was going great, but it also is not going great because she can't figure out what is important for her to spend her time on. And in the past, she always got ahead by just doing everything, you know, being the person who could get it all done. But once you move into management it becomes a lot more difficult. You can't just do everything.

You have to think about what is most important for you to be doing, and there may not be a right answer, but that's kind of a risk you have to take, and she just has completely no ability to do this. So she's given an ultimatum by her company that she's got thirty days to turn things around or she's out. And of course of this, she winds up at a retreat at a rather strange sounding place called Juliette School of Possibilities, where she meets this mentor figure, Juliette,

who shows her different visions for her life. It actually reminds me a little bit of the Double Worst Product, uh, sort of that character, the sort of NonStop it's like a cross between that and like a Christmas Carol sort of. So I can only imagine that in the middle of that type of lifestyle that that it can be hard for you to see yourself needing to make a change.

So what questions can we ask ourselves to determine if we are struggling with some of those same things as Riley and even just recognize that need for change, Like, how do we self examine to see if we're in a place where we need to do that? Yeah, well, partly it is about how you feel. I mean, if you feel like life is in a crisis, then you feel like you probably need to make a change. But what I often tell people is you really want to see where your time is going, because sometimes people have

made crises that aren't actually there. Uh this is this is something I see a lot that people tell themselves all sorts of stories like I'm I'm failing in every which direction, and then they track their time and realize, hey, I'm actually doing a lot of really cool stuff. It's not nearly as bad as I thought it was. But if it is bad, then we should know. So I

always have people track their time. I mean a couple of days is good, ideally a week and look at it and say, well, how does this time match up with my priorities in life? Because you know, I'm sure this this happens all the time. Life gets busy, time keeps passing, whether we think about how we're spending it

or not. People say with a straight face like, oh, you know, being healthy, being physically fit, it's such a priority for me, and then you look at their time and guess what's not happening so or even just you know, my relationship with my spouse would be a priority. But like between the kids and the job, everything else takes takes, uh, you know, first DIBs at the time, and so it's good to see these things like as it pertains to money.

What that sounds a lot like is tracking or spending, right, And so obviously we talk about money all the time on the show. And if you don't know where your money is going, then how can you make changes To begin that self examination sort of process, you need to know, yeah, like you said, where your hours are going, where your minutes are going. In the same way that if you're trying to turn your finances around, you need to know

what you're actually spending your money on. And like like you said, you might say that exercise is important, or your health is important. Someone that's putting a budget together might say, oh, it's important for me to save. But if in reality you look at your spending and instead all your money is going out to the restaurants, well, you know your actual spending. Your behavior is not reflecting the reality of it. So how do you actually suggest the folks to track her time? So I track my

time on these weekly spreadsheets. Again, I'm sure makes me sound like a lot of fun, but it gets worse. I've been doing this for four years now, which nobody else needs to do. But I have tracked my time for four straight years. These weekly spreadsheets have the days of the week across the top, so Monday through Sunday half hour blocks down the left hand side, going five am to four thirty am, So it is a three thirty six self spreadsheet representing a hundred sixty eight hour

a week. I just write down what I'm doing, and I'm not constantly checking in. I probably check in like three times a day, and I write down what I've done since the last time I checked in. The goal is not to be perfect, like I don't write down, you know, every time I got up and got a glass of water or anything like that. I am trying to get broadly the outlines of my life because even if it's not perfect, you can see so much from

from where the time truly goes. And you mentioned some of the mismatches people have in terms of, you know, how they're spending their money. They're probably huge blind spots people have in terms of how they're spending their money, Like I had no idea I was spending that amount on on X and and people do that with time as well. You know, we are often lead to believe that we spend more time working than we actually do.

There's some some funny data about this. But work tends to be structured, and it tends to involve sort of commitments to other people, and so it kind of expands in our brain, even if the members themselves are not as big as we are imagining. People have a tendency to remember their longest days in their longest weeks as typical, and so, you know, you learn all kinds of interesting stuff.

So what are some of the common culprits then for someone filling out a time log where they're likely to see that they're wasting time, that they're just not using your time effectively. Yeah, well, there's a couple of spots that tend to happen to lots of people. You know, what do you do at night before bed? A lot of people, it is puttering around the house. It's being on social media. It's watching TV, but not with any

real purpose. If you've saved a favorite show to watch in the evening after your kids go to bed, that's great, But for many people that's not actually what's happening. It's sort of just one thing after the flipping around you know, and you're tired. You're you're tired, and you you don't know what you want to do, and so you do whatever is easiest. And I'm not saying you're gonna go run a marathon at that time. But let's say you've been telling yourself, I'd really like to read and I'd

really like to connect with my spouse. Well, guess what, here's some time that you've been clicking around two shows you do not care about that you could read a book and you could connect with your spouse, so that you know, it's that sort of thing. Another thing I see a lot of on weekends. I've been a prefaces by saying nobody needs to plan every second of a

weekend like that. That's not what I'm saying. But if we don't think about how we want to use this block of potential family and leisure time, it's going to get away from you in doing things that you don't actually care about. So being being a little bit intentional about it, you can vastly increase the chances that you spend this time on things that are meaningful or important

for you or the people you care about. I want to swing back to the book for a second, now you mentioned how Juliet, the character there was able to show Riley to possible futures that she had. Yeah, it totally made me think of Charles Dickens at Christmas Stories for sure when I was reading that part of it. But like, how does thinking ahead like that? Like what kind of impact does that how on you as a person when it comes to goal setting? Why is that

so important? And what do you think is most important to focus on or to look for when you are looking ahead, Like what aspects of your life? Yeah, well I would I'm not disappointed to be compared to a Christmas Caroll. I mean, that's a wonderful book, one of

my favorites. So Juliet shows Riley to potential future visions for her life, and one is if she continues as everything is going now, always going after whatever seems brightest and most blinking in front of her, and not making time for the important things, And it's basically that life has just kind of slips away from her, that she's worked so hard for so many years and has no

impact that she can actually point to. The other future is is far more positive when she has made time professionally for the things that matter to her for doing the big projects, the important, long reaching things that she keeps saying she wants to do, but she just never

makes time for amid all the emails and such. And personally too that when she actually really invests time in the relationships that she says matter to her, both her friendships and and potential you know, spouse and children as well. So it's a very different future. And the future she's seeing in that second more positive vision, it's at a dinner given in her honor twenty five years in the future.

And I think this is actually a good practical idea for people to think about that if you're trying to identify, like, what are my long term priorities, what are the things that matter to me? What should I be spending my time on, picture yourself maybe at a dinner given in your honor. Let's say, you know, ten years in the future. We don't have to go twenty five and my my heroin is very young, so she can go twenty five

years in the future. Many of us would would not be wanting to, you know, be in the midst of all this stuff in twenty five years. But um, so let's say ten years from now, a dinner, people are getting up to give toasts about the impact you have had on them personally and on the larger world. What would they be saying? You could go ahead and write

those toasts now if you wanted. And by thinking about what those toasts would be, you start to say like, oh, well, these are the things I could really see myself doing, Like this is the change I'd like to bring to the world, This is how I'd like other people to think of me. Now let me take this. Let me then say, what are some ways I can start spending my time so that I am making steps towards these

this future. Yeah, And interestingly, in in the book, I feel like, you know, Riley is so consumed with her inbox right, her her emails piling up. And I found myself certainly in that situation to where that concept of inbox zero, where it's like trying to get everything done and reply to everyone, feels like that's maybe the best way for me to attack things. But then I found myself when I am in that mind frame not actually

doing the things that matter at my work. And and really I think probably a lot of us find ourselves in that situation where we think replying to emails becomes the most essential part of our job, and we're missing out on some of the more important aspects of what we should be doing. So like, how, in particular do you think people should consider managing their email inbox because that's such an important part of how we work right now. Yeah, I mean, the key thing to remember is that email

expands to fill all available space. So if there is anything you want to do other than email, you have to make sure you carve out the time for that and let email fit around that. As opposed to saying, well, I'll get to those other things as soon as I'm caught up with email, because you will never be caught

up with email. I mean, people who are trying to get down to inbox zero, as they're sending responses to get themselves down, people respond to that and so it comes right back in and and then you're you're stuck. You're back up from where you were. You know, it's it's impossible to stay there, and so it will take any time you give it. You have to choose to spend less time on it. And I'm gonna say, like email is a wonderful tool. Email, I mean, that's how

we've communicated until we've had this this podcast recording. I have on my to do list today to send an email to somebody that's gonna be a well crafted, thought through thing that I want her to, you know, talk to me about something like that's an important email. You know, that's something that I'm choosing to spend time on. An email is a good vehicle for it to happen. But a lot of the stuff that comes in a stuff

you didn't seek out. It's the stuff expectations that are are there, but you didn't ask for them, Like you didn't necessarily actively choose to bring these into your lives. So I think you have to, you know, recognize that it may not always be the most important thing to do.

I know this is very hard um to put email off when it is they're kind of looking at you like, this is undone stuff you have to get to, but it will still be there and still be undone later in the day, whereas your big projects may just not get done if you do that. So once when I was I was deep in the edits on Juliet uh

and I was like, I gotta get through this. I I know I could really make progress today and I'm like, the emails are stacking up, including some from people that I would generally respond to very quickly or you know, offers of speeches. You know, I'd like to say to my client, like, yes, of course I can take that on for you. But I'm like, it will be there this afternoon. They will still love me if I respond

at six pm. I can carve out eight to one or two to do this and to give my best to this project that actually is my top priority right now. And so I did, and you know, everyone still deals

with me. You know, nobody's said like I will never talk with you again because you responded to my email in twenty four hours as opposed to Yeah, I think email is a classic case of you know, something that's urgent versus something that's important, right, And you actually set a line that I think he actually was in the book, right, like the email will still be there, it will still be undone. Yeah, that's all. They recognize that from one

of the characters in the book. But something else that's awesome about the book as well, as you mentioned your your time log that you have on your computer in Excel, but in the back of the book you actually have some tools there for folks to actually start tracking their time. You've got some great questions there for folks to talk about it in small groups or with their friends, and so you totally dive into the more practical ways that folks can start thinking about what it is that they

want to focus on. Like you mentioned the speeches like that, if you can actually think through the speeches that folks will be giving you, you know, hopefully at the towards the end of your life Horenton fifteen years to think through those things. I mean, that's essentially what you have listed out in the back. You have tools there to encourage the reader to think about what is truly important.

And I find that pertains so well to money as well, because we talk about the why behind our money a lot, which is basically like, what is our driving force that is causing us to work hard and to want to earn money. It's not the love of money. It's not that we are trying to amass riches to do who knows what right. It's not that it's that there are certain specific things that I want to be able to do with this with my kids, or I would love to be able to spend this time with my spouse,

not working, but instead with them. So that means say, investing that money now versus versus spending it. And so yeah, I love that you've got some of those tools there in the back of your book. It's fantastic. We would recommend for everyone to check that out. So after the break, we're gonna talk more about being efficient at work as well as being more intentional in your personal life. Are

we're back with Laura vander Camp. We're talking about valuing our time and Laura, let's talk about work here for a second. Um, you mentioned tackling your toughest work in the first hours of your work day. Why do you think that's so important? Well, first, because people tend to have more energy. Then, there have been studies looking at people's reported energy levels through the day and the majority of people are most likely to be in a high

energy mood around eight o'clock in the morning. It's when we've had that first cup of coffee and you feel like you can take on the world. Two pm, you do not feel like you can take on the world. That's when things start to fall apart. Uh, So you know something that could have taken you an hour at eight am is going to take you two hours at

at two pm. As you keep getting distracted and getting alerts from Facebook on your phone, you're like, oh, let me go check that out, and next thing you know, it's it's like four pm and you haven't gotten through what you said you were going to do in the afternoon. So mornings we tend to have more focus most people, in some real night owls, but most people. It also it gives you a chance to do things before the day gets away from you. Because in a lot of

people's jobs, stuff will come in. I mean that's the nature of it. Things will come in that you'll have to deal with, or in your personal life, things will come in that you have to deal with. Whereas if you start with whatever is most important, then you most likely will have done it by the time the emergencies arise. Or if the emergencies arise first thing in the morning, well there's time later in the day to still get

to it. Whereas if you leave it till later in the day, probably that time is going to get taken away from you or you're gonna be too tired to get to it. Productivity is all about self knowledge and every time I say that bit about, you know, do your important work first thing in the morning, somebody raises their hands and I'm a night all. I'm like, okay, you're a night all. Great, that works for you. You do you and everybody else might be interested to know

that most people have more energy first thing in the morning. So, speaking of stretching your days, Laura, you've discussed the importance of taking time to exercise during the work day, how do you suggest to folks to start incorporating exercise without ghosting their coworkers or being sort of like that weird sweaty person in the ddle of the day. You know, like Joel, he bikes to work every day. You show

up kind of sweaty and kind of gross. Gross, but he is that weird sweaty person at he's got that. But how do you suggest the folks to work that in? I mean, the first thing to recognize is that not all exercise needs to leave you hot and sweaty, and it doesn't have to take an hour either. So if you would like to introduce more physical activity into your work day, the easiest thing is to just go for

short walks. Most people take ten to fifteen minute breaks here and there anyway, just use that in a intentional way, go outside, get some fresh air. You can even think of it as like a smoke break without the cigarettes, Like you're going outside walking around, just don't light up, and you're all good, like you've done something healthy instead

of something unhealthy. You know, if you've got a lunch break, like if it's generally understood that people in your office can can take a break, figure out if you could go out a slightly longer walk some days during that, or you know, enlist a colleague. You could even turn one on one meetings into walking meetings. That's a really

great way to even have better conversations. You know, it's hard to have an intense conversation across us a conference board room with someone that you're really trying to convey that you you like them personally. You're just you know, have some difficult things to say, whereas walking around you might be able to pull that off. So I definitely

recommend that. I remember that being one of Steve jobs classic things in his biography was that he would constantly go on walks with folks anytime they had some big discussions to that needed to be to be done. But you know, even if you are, you know, you could go to the gym. I mean people get very concerned about like what people think. But if your work is

getting done and your manager doesn't mind, like, then who cares? Right, Just go do it and come back and you'll probably have enough energy if you go over lunch and come back at one pm to actually get through the afternoon as opposed to suffering from that two pm slump that people who have stayed at their desk and like look at me, I'm looking I'm working through lunch, I'm all productive, and then two pm it's just it's all gone. Yeah,

I was gonna say two pm. S He was like kind of that perfect time of the day to maybe, if nothing else, just dropped down and do like twenty push ups, you know, just because that can be instead of getting that extra cup of coffee or just kind of completely zoning out in in Facebook or social media or something like that, going down uh internet rabbit hole. Doing some sort of physical activity can kind of help elevate you to take on those last couple hours of

work that you need to get done that day. Right, Yeah, definitely, Um, exercise I always say makes time like it doesn't take time. It makes time because your energy levels will go up high enough that you can actually get stuff done. Whereas if you're telling yourself, you know, I don't need breaks, I'm not the kind of person who needs breaks, Well you do, but your brain will take a fake one.

It just won't be very productive. And that's what that's what happens when people lose, you know, thirty minutes into Twitter. All right, So let's talk about meetings because meetings are one of these things that everyone's got a thought about them, and most of us think that we're in too many meetings.

They seem to kind of take over a traditional work day and sometimes, just just like email, meetings can be that time suck where we feel like we haven't actually been able to attend to the actual things that we need to do in our daily job. So you specifically talked recently in a podcast episode about not wasting time meetings and how we use those tools poorly. So how can we make meetings more effective in our work day?

And especially like let's say we're an employee and our boss is the one who's making us attend these meetings that kind of stink, like is there any way that we can gently nudge to kind of shake things up. Yeah, I mean there's there's all sorts of things you can do. One is that sometimes your boss just isn't aware of how many meetings you're in. This can happen all the time. Everyone's in their own little world. Like very rarely are people like trying to make life miserable for other people.

It tends to be more that they just haven't noticed. So it might help to say, well, look, you know, I am booked into twenty five hours a week of meetings that are recurring. Like they don't even have to earn their place on my calendar. They just keep showing up there and and is this what you would like me to be spending my time doing. Could we go through this list and see, you know, could any of these be less frequent, Could they involve fewer people? Could

they not happen? I don't know. Like these are all

ideas that that are worth looking at. If if you are going to have a meeting, the key thing to recognize is that something should change in the world as a result of this meeting taking place, and that meeting should require the participation of everyone who is there for every minute that they are there, and that they are all there to change the thing in the world, like they are necessary for this thing that needs to change, and if it can't meet that standard, it probably doesn't

have to happen or be that long or involve that many people. You know, people invite folks to meetings because it seems nice. It's like, you know, I'm trying to get over the traumas of the middle school cafeteria, and so I'll just invite everyone to come to my meeting. But that's that's not actually helpful um or you know,

trying to keep your boss in the loop. And the person doesn't have anything they're doing at the time, so they come and everyone's happy because they're there, but it's still that wasn't quite what we needed, you know, in order for this thing to happen. So just be very careful that every minute of the meeting is accounted for and that everyone who's there needs to be there. Let's shift you is how to being intentional in our personal lives? How can we do a better job when it comes

to our family and our personal time goals? Do you have some specific strategies that you would recommend to folks. Well, I think the word you just use their intentional is the most important one, because a lot of people aren't intentional about their family or leisure time. And it's the rare person who would show up at work at you know, eight in the morning and have no idea what they were gonna do with the entire day like that. They

hadn't thought through it. Just something will happen. It'll will eventually be at five o'clock and I'll leave like that. That's not how people usually approach work, But people approach their home life like that all the time and be like, well, I get home at five thirty and I guess I'll go to bed at eleven thirty. Something will happen in there. I don't know, It's six hours and it's just not

mindful at all. And again I'm not saying you have to plan every you know, in fifteen minute chunks, like your work there, or send outlook invites for dinner or anything ridiculous like that, but you might want to at least put some intention into it, Like wouldn't it be fun if the kids and I read this book tonight that I love from my childhood, and maybe they will like to that's something that's an intention, Or let's go for a walk after dinner as a family, or it

looks like it's light a little bit later, you know, maybe we could hit the playground before dinner. And you know, if we had a snack what I got home, like, we could do that and have a slightly later dinner or something. But you're thinking it through vastly increases the chances that this time has spent. Well, that's great, And and do you have any thoughts then as far as like overall planning, right, so we're talking about the daily

sort of particulars. I love how what just what you said, even just then, how there are you know, there's six hours between getting home from work and when you go to bed perhaps and even you just saying that made me think, holy crap, six hours, Like there are six hours like that I'm potentially burning. From a sort of macro level, from like a big picture, how would you recommend the folks to think through what they want to want their weeks and what their months and year to

look like? Well, the year, um one exercise I have people do, both professionally and personally sort of think at the end of the year to the end of the upcoming year, what would you like to say you have done? Like so, on the professional front, you can picture yourself giving a professional performance review to yourself and if it was like a stunning review at the end of the year, like she did, X, Y, and Z, Well, what are those things like? What are the things that would make

it an amazing year? Well, now you know what your top professional priorities for the next six months are. And same thing with your personal life too. You could picture yourself at a holiday party and you're telling friends and family you know what you did in your personal life over the course of the year. Well, what would those things be like if it was going to be an awesome year for your family, Like, what would you have done?

I don't know, you know your you ran a ten k with your spouse and you took an extended family trip to Ireland or you you know, just things like this. But if you think about these things, then you can start, you know, making them happen. If you have no idea what they are, good stuff can still come to you, Like I'm not saying it won't, and we should definitely

leave space open for opportunity. But many things that are great require some intention and planning of time as for the weekly, because you asked, you know the year, and then you also asked the week. I planned my weeks on Friday afternoons. And this was a really early episode of Before Breakfast that I did that I said, planned your week on Friday afternoon. And I think this is the one that the most people have written into me about being like, oh my goodness, that was life changing.

Because when you take some time on Friday afternoon to think about the upcoming week, you can say, well, what's important to me? What are my priorities? When can those happen? When can I put those on the schedule. Well, now suddenly you have time on the schedule for things you have said that are important to you. How interesting. You can also take some time to figure out what is already on your calendar for the upcoming week, and you can ask yourself, well, are these things that should be

on my calendar for the upcoming week? Or should I get rid of some of them? Or I can I minimize some of them? Or can somebody else handle some of them? And by doing those two things, putting in space for the stuff that does matter to you, getting rid of stuff that's wound up on your calendar that is not important to you. You just vastly increase the chances that you have a great week where you make

progress on your priorities. And then you do it again the next Friday, and then again you make progress on your priorities, and and this this overtime creates a great life quick follow up then right. A lot of times when folks hear that, they think, oh, man, she's scheduling out her entire next week. It sounds really rigid, And life happens. Right, You've got four kids, there's pulls on us from work, there's pulls on us from our personal lives.

And these are things that we want to do. It's not like these are things that we're going to put the kabash on and say no, we're not going to do this. How do you maintain that structure but at the same time leave a good bit of flexibility there to be able to work those things into your schedule while at the same time feeling like that you're still being productive and sticking to the schedule. Does that make sense? Yes,

it definitely does. And I do not schedule every minute like I don't put things into every minute of my life, and I would say that it's it's a false choice to think that you're even planning every minute or planning nothing. There is such a huge space between planning every second planning nothing at all. Neither one probably serves us very well. You want to be somewhere in the middle with a bit of time that you know you intend to devote to these important things, and then also plenty of open

space for the stuff comes up. I like to say I plan because life doesn't go according to plan. This was very apparent to me a certain week at the end of October where one of the most random things happened, where one of my kids wound up with like multiple er visits. Not fun at all. Um, he's fine, but you know it was. It was something that had to

be dealt with. But I still felt at the end of the week like I had a really good week, and that's because I had identified the Friday before, like, these are the three things that absolutely have to happen, And so when my life flew completely out of order because of this stuff, I knew that these are the three things I was going to do. Everything else could go, but those three things were still going to happen, and I did, Like, in a hundred sixty hours, you can

probably get to three things, right. But you know, if I had had some if I had just had some nebulous idea of oh there's stuff I should do, you know, and but there's just like a hundred things I should do, I wouldn't have gotten to it, and then I would have felt terrible at the end of the week. Yeah, that's those are great thoughts. So all right, you've mentioned you mentioned your kid going to the are and you have four kids, so you have a busy family life.

And you know, Matt's wife is pregnant with with their fourth child. My wife is pregnant with our third child. So we're totally with you on this. Oh yeah, we're there. Her family life becomes obviously like the most fun part of our lives. But then at the same time, there's

just a lot that's required inside of that. So how do you make wise choices with your time, especially when you have a large family, And what does that look like to be intentional on the day to day when it comes to how you incorporate family time into that like hundred sixty eight hours of your week. Yeah, well, I mean I do the bulk of my work while my kids are at school. Um, so then I'm pretty

much around most of the other time. So so right there, there's just a sheer quantity of hours um that, as you know, with multiple children, you do wind up spending a lot of time with them. There's some of the people have this bit of this false notion that if if you have a job, you don't see your family. I was like, well, hundred sixty eight hours a week, you work forty, Like, there's a lot of other time if you subtract forty from eight, so you're you're still

gonna wind up seeing a fair amount of them. But you know, in any given moment. One of the phrases that comes up a lot in in Juliette's School of Possibilities is this idea that expectations are infinite. Time is finite. You are always choosing choose well, And so I try to check in with myself and ask, am I choosing

well right now? And so if I'm having a good conversation with one of my kids at the breakfast table and be like, well, maybe a good choice would just be to sit here, like just keep sitting and probably whatever I was gonna do in five minutes, like I can do inten, you know, and it will be okay that that's a good choice in the moment. Of course, if I'm on a huge deadline for something, it's it's okay to tell the kid. You know, by the way, you can figure out your own homework right now. I

already did sixth grade. This is not my problem. Like you know, if you're truly stumped, come back in an hour or but don't talk to me before then. And you know, I do try to, especially with a larger family, and you guys will appreciate this as your your families are growing too, But attempting to spend some one on one time with each family member goes a long way.

And it doesn't have to be daily. It doesn't have to necessarily even happen every week, because once you have four kids, you wind up batching them to gather for all sorts of activities. But I do one on one days with each of my kids each year, like in the summer, uh, and I try to do something special with them for their birthdays. So that's like eight events

a year, which doesn't you know, a ton. It does take some time, but It doesn't take a ton of time necessarily, but those tend to be things that the kids form really good memories of, and I think that those would be some of the things that the kids would mention of, like, you know, what did you do this year? Oh? Well, I went to an Eagles game with mommy, or we went to the American Girl Cafe in New York with mommy, or various whatever else I've done.

I've played paintball or whatever else I've had to do the kid wants to do. So Yes, it is amazing how meaningful those one on one times are. And you know, my girls right now are five and three, and even if it's just like going to the waffle house for breakfast just the two of us, or just an after dinner walk just the two of us, Um, it's really fun to go do those things as a whole family.

But you're completely right. I think that setting aside one on one time for your spouse and then also for your kids is I mean, it's just instrumental to building

the foundation of an important relationship. I want to mention a listener of ours, Andy, I was talking to him the other day and he mentioned how once his kids he actually has four kids as well, and once they hit four years old, he comes back to visit his parents, just him and that child, just to have this this long extended trip quality time with the grandparents but as well as with him as a father, and they do fun stuff around the city, go to the zoo, you know,

different things like that. But that really stood up to me because you know, what he said was that this is before they start kindergarten, so they're not necessarily locked into the school calendar. Yet I have that flexibility. Why not take this time to deep in that relationship with them? And Laura, I completely agree with you. I mean when they look back at the year, those will be the sort of key stand days or moments whatever it is

that you happen to be doing. And so to hear examples of that, I don't know, that's really inspiring and encouraging to me. And a good thing to spend money on. You know, it doesn't have to be expensive, but if you are going to spend something money on something that might be a good thing. Waffle House very inexpensive. Right do you have waff houses up in Philadelphia? I think we do. Um, you know, I love taking kids out for breakfast too. It's it's a good think. You think,

maybe I just don't go out for breakfast. All right, Well, so okay, I'm curious to get your thoughts on morning routines and even more, and we'll get to that right after the break al Right, we were just talking about waffle house. Let's talk about morning routines, Laura, how can we make our mornings a little less crazy and more of a health you foundation for everyone to start their days. What are some pieces of your morning routine that keep

things peaceful and on track? Yeah, I mean, the key thing to realize with the morning routine is it doesn't have to be an hour long meditation session and then an hour long boot camp and then drinking some ridiculous green drink um that seems terrible. I'm a big fan of breakfast food. In terms of real breakfast food. You want to ask, well, what would make you actually excited to get out of bed? A good morning routine should give you an extra reason to get up, and you

don't have to wake up at four am. I mean, you know, sometimes it's just about getting up a few minutes before you absolutely have to and using that time intentionally. You could meditate of course, or pray or whatever else you do. Um, you could write in a journal, Um, you could do some sort of exercise. That's a great

way to spend your mornings. Or it could be you know, focused family time, Like we're going to have a relaxed family breakfast instead of everyone running around the kitchen all crazed, you know, sit down and eat together and then go about your day. And you know, particularly for families where family dinner may not happen as often as you wish,

family breakfast could be a good substitute. So for me a usual weekday morning, UM, I tend to wake up about sixty five and get myself ready, start making breakfast, and get my middle schooler up about seven fifteen, eat with him, eat with my husband if he's home. UM, and our youngest, the four year old, we sort of have our first shift, and then UM, as he's getting ready, the other two children start coming down. The nine year old and the seven year old come down sort of

the second shift of breakfast. But I'm pretty much in breakfast mode from like seven am to eight am. I and I thought at some point like that's a ridiculous amount of time to spend on breakfast, but it's time I have, so I am they're doing family breakfast stuff from seven to eight are nanny comes at eight. I tend to spend eight to if I'm not doing the middle school carpoal that's when I do a little bit of strength training. I've gotten in this habit of doing

some kettlebell and resistance band stuffs. And then I then I, you know, glance at email or anything that's really small admin stuff. Then get the nine year old and seven year old out to the bus. Come in thirty five to nine is my free writing time, Like I just do writing that isn't going to be published, but I'm just trying stuff out seeing you know, writing practice, and then nine o'clock start my work day. I wanted to ask you about managing distractions. I feel like there's so

much that can distract us in our society today. It's really easy to get sucked away from the task at hand, and and in particular, our phones have become kind of that main culprit for us that just draws our attention away ever so slightly in some cases and then just

way more than slightly in other in other cases. So what impact do you feel like phones are having on our productivity at work, and then also kind of how we're able to have relationships with other people and how can we use our phones as tools as opposed to letting them use us. Well, that's just it. They are tools, and they're very useful tools. I've been obsessed lately with this app that I can point my camera at a

plant and it tells me what it is like. That's kind of fun for when you're out on a hike, like you see like this is well, this is poison IVY, don't touch it. That's a helpful thing to see. Um, but you know, this is the name seek s e K. Pointed at any plant and it tells you and then you look like you know something about botany and that can be exciting for some of us. But yeah, I mean the key is to use it as a tool as opposed to being the thing that is running your life.

You can turn it off, you can not use it at various points, and if you're doing something that you would like to focus on, making a point of not looking at it is great. And I tend to leave it in my bag if I'm having, you know, lunch with someone for instance, I'd never put it somewhere that I would actually see it, because I figured, you know, at the end of the lunch, I can look at it. But you know, if I've chosen to spend this time with this person, pretty much nothing coming in on the

phone is going to be more important than that. You know, people have always felt they're busy. Sometimes people ask me this question of like, oh, well, because of phones, or we are now busier than ever before, Like, no, we're not. People have always thought they were busy. People have always thought they're busier than any other time in the human history.

We're still people. We still get distracted by things. People got distracted by things when all that was coming in was like the facts machine, and they probably got distracted by their facts. Is that they get distracted by colleagues, They get distracted by whatever else memos that we're coming out. Like I just uh, this great quote from Eleanor Roosevelt of all people, I just read her book You You Learned By Living. She she wrote an advice column for

years and but this is her self help book. And she talks about how the mail follows her around, and she'll travel and the mail will follow her around and she gets back to her desk and she has to work long hours on several days to answer all the mail. And I'm like, you could put email in here and it would be the exact same thing, right, Like, Yeah,

people forget that all right. So, uh, In particular, when we're talking about phones, I feel like there are all these little small sections of time that we have throughout the day, and we used to spend them on a board maybe, uh, And now that's just not something we have to deal with. We we never have to be bored because we have our phones in front of us. But you've talked about kind of taking back those smaller sections of your day and trying to use them in

a purposeful manner. So how would you suggest people instead of pulling out their phones when they have a spare five minutes, how can they use those small pockets of time effectively in Well, well, you could do other stuff that's on your phone. I put the Kindle app on my phone a couple of years ago, and so I can start reading the books in these short bits of time. And you can get through a lot of literature in these five minute chunks that you would have been scrolling

around in social media. And it actually adds up pretty quickly. Of course, you don't need to be on your phone. I mean you can use the time to journal, or write a thank you note, or um, go talk to a colleague, or sit in daydream and look at the sky stare at the clouds. It's kind of you know, it's hard to tell yourself you have no time when you can sit there and stare at the clouds. But people will then tell themselves they have no time when they spend the exact same quantity of time on their

phones looking at Instagram. I mean, they still have time. It's just being on your phone doesn't feel relaxing, and so it tends not to register as lee your time, and so then it's gone as if you didn't have it at all. All right, So I've gotten one final question for you, Laura. You gave this really awesome Ted talk back in and one of the things you talked about in there was this example of a broken water heater.

And if any of us had a broken water heater at our house where where water was pouring over the top or something, and and and it was you know, rushing out into our kitchen, living room, whatever, it would literally be the only thing we could focus on, because I mean, what else can you think about when something of that magnitude is happening at your house? And so, yeah, fill us in on what it looks like to kind of prioritize certain things in the way that you would

prioritize a broken water heater in your house. Yeah. So this lady had checked her time for me, and in the course of her week of tracking, this water heater broke, and so she had to spend a ton of time dealing with it, you know, with the flood in her basement and the plumbers and all this stuff. And it was it was like seven hours of her week devoted

to the seven hours. And and so you know, we said, well, at the start of the week, when you said, let's find seven hours for something else, right, let's find seven hours to train for a triathlon. Let's find seven hours to you know, read a quarter of the way through war and peace or something like that, she wouldn't have been able to find the time. So I don't have seven hours, right, But when she had to find seven hours because there's water all over her basement, she found

seven hours. And so I think it's important to view time this way, like if you if something is important enough to you, you will find a way to make the time for it. Something else will go. Well, what is that something else? Because maybe you could make it go even if there isn't water all over your basement, right, And I really do think we can try to treat our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater and get to them with that sort of urgency, that

sense of I have to do this now. Practically, what that means for most people is doing it first thing in the morning, because that's the time when we can do it before everything else gets away from you. That's great, Laura. You know what we kind of keep coming back to, and you said this as well as intentionality, um, and how every minute we spend is our choice in the

same way that every dollar we spend is our choice. Right, Like when it comes to our money, a lot of times we say, well we I just don't have money for that, or you say, oh, well that's just not in the budget. Well it can be in the budget if you actually want it to be in the budget. Right. It's it's a matter of if it's a priority for

you or not. And in Juliet's School of Possibilities. There's a quote in there a character says that if you say that I don't have time, what that really means is that it's not a priority, right, and that we always have time for what matters to us. And so what other ways that if we find ourselves saying that we don't have time, like, what should that remind us

to do? Well? I think it might help. This is sort of a see if you can find one hour, like over the course of the next week, if there's something you've identified that you say, just I don't have time for this, could you find one hour over the next week? And it doesn't even have to be one consecutive hour, and it could be like ten minutes on six days, right or fifteen minutes on four days, But could you find an hour for this? Now? I think

probably you could. If you track your time, you'll probably see well over an hour devoted to at least something that you don't care about. So let's try to do one hour, and at the end of the week if you've done it, great, celebrate. If you haven't asked yourself, why not, like what happened that you couldn't devote one hour to this thing and see what you can do

to address that. But yeah, I mean, it really is a matter of what is a priority to you and if you're not making time for something in your life, but maybe it's not a priority, and that's okay, Like we can acknowledge that, we can say it is not a priority for me to do this. And it's the same thing with money. I mean, you know, there's various things that the world will tell us we have to spend money on. Whether it's having you know, two cars and a family or not. That's maybe that's something that

a family doesn't need, they don't care about it. Maybe it's that you live in a smaller house and use your money to travel. There's various choices you can make if you wish to. They may not be the normal choices, but that's okay. We're all about not normal choices, that's for sure. This has been a really really fun conversation. Laura. We are huge fans of your book and your new podcast Before Breakfast, and can you tell our listeners where

else they can find more out about you? Yeah, if they want to come visit my website, Laura Vanderkam dot com. I blogged. There are usually four times a week and you can learn all about my my podcasts and books. They're awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, and we hope we didn't uh kind of throw out your voice a little bit. We know you're seeing tonight, So thanks for talking to us here. It'll be good. As long as I didn't have the beer too, I

should be good with just speaking. Yes, awesome, Well, thanks so much. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me, all right, Matt. I love that conversation. I love kind of Laura's philosophy, and I love how time and money. You know, really, when it comes down to it, we should be thinking about both similarly. I thought that was that's kind of my takeaway from this episode. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean we we said at the beginning, right, how we know that

time is not money. Time is not intrinsically linked to money. You don't have to have time in order to make money. But like you said, uh, they're really similar. And the way we treat our time the way we we treat our money are very similar. And it comes down a lot to you know, what our priorities are what we're actually gonna do with what we have, and just having a plan and kind of moving forward with that. Yeah, I'm I'm so stoked that we were able to talk

to Laura. She's total pro by the way, super awesome. So glad she was able to join us. Yeah, no doubt. All right, let's get back to the beer real quick. Today on the show, we drank a beer called Infinity Bloom by New Grass Brewing Company. Matt, your mother in law kindly for us. Unlike last time they left a beer in our fridge and you and I drank it for an episode. You remember that one was more of a skull and beer than a donation. Yeah, I sort

of donated by default. Yeah, this one was fantastic. It was a double dry Hopps I p a as a pretty little purple flower here on the can art. What were thoughts, man? Yeah? Man, honestly, I feel like the pretty little purple flower kind of encompasses what the sper tasted like. Yeah, yeah, this is gonna sound kind of weird, but it was soft and luscious. Is is the old is the two words I kind of came up with to describe this beer. It was like super hoppy, but

it didn't have that massive hot bite. It just was reserved in it's in a way, but it's still had like this really full flavor even though it had that kind of soft mouth field. It was I thought it was delicious. Yeah, a lot of floral notes and softness in between you and the hops. Right, Yeah, I was thinking drinking this beer. It's sort of like riding around in a Cadillac. It's just really lush, really cush, you know what I'm saying, Like a buick Er and Cadillac.

I don't know either one, but just just a really comfy car where it doesn't where it feels like you're kind of just floating on a cloud. Yeah. Okay, now that's a good way to say it. So thanks to Mono and Pop that's what my kiddos called them for donating this beer and picking this one up for us for this episode. And if you want links to Laura's website in the books and some of the things that she's up to, go check out the show notes for this episode on our website how to money dot com.

And if you found this episode helpful and enjoyed it, we would love for you to leave a review. Over on Apple Podcasts. And if you feel that Joe and I have room for improvement, we also want to hear from you. Uh. You can leave your message over at our website again at how to money dot com slash do Better. So, Joel, that's gonna be it for this episode, man. Until next time, best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,