Second Cup: Know when you won't get much done

0:03Speaker 1:Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is to know and acknowledge stretches of time when you will not be getting much done. You can plan your life more rationally when your expectations match reality. Today's tip comes from the podcast Best Laid Plans, which is hosted by Sarah Hart Unger, my co-host on my other podcast, Best of Both Worlds. On a recent episode, Sarah read a note from a listener that described how she divided the year. She thought of the year in five quintiles, and one of those quintiles went from Thanksgiving to the end of her children's holiday break. Now, if you do the math... that is not going to be a very long quintile. There is maybe a week in November, and then they had a longish, like three-week holiday break from late December to early January. So we are talking a stretch of time that is maybe seven to eight weeks in total. This is not mathematically a fifth of the year.

1:26Speaker 1:But the reason this person divided her year up this way is that she realized she basically never got much done during this stretch of time. Because her kids were out of school so much, they tended to take their vacations then or go visit family. The three to four weeks or so that her kids were in school between Thanksgiving and Christmas break were often stuffed with other activities. The space available to work was limited. She could try to plow through, or she could acknowledge that this was just not going to be a very productive time. And she could think of the season accordingly. She could have limited expectations for her business and probably feel happier when she met these low expectations versus setting high expectations that would crash into reality. I think this is a smart idea.

2:30Speaker 1:Many of us have stretches of time that are simply not going to be productive. Maybe you cover for a colleague who tends to take a vacation in late June, and then the 4th of July causes a series of interruptions to the usual schedule. And then you tend to take your vacation in mid-July. Probably, this is just not going to be the stretch of time when you can launch some big new speculative project. If you have got young kids who tend to get sick like clockwork in February and March, then maybe you need to take this into account when you plan out your year. It's not that you won't get anything done, but the odds that you get through all eight to nine weeks of February and March without getting sick yourself are low. Now, obviously, you can't trot out excuses all 52 weeks of the year, though perhaps they would be reasonable for much of the time.

3:29Speaker 1:The woman who didn't get much done between Thanksgiving and New Year's worked in a tax education field. This meant she poured it on from January to April and would often make a lot of her revenue during this time. If you are going to have a slow season, you probably need a fast season at some other point. It might even help to note your busy seasons for work and set your expectations for your personal life accordingly. But when we don't acknowledge these stretches that lean one way or another, we start to feel perpetually behind, whatever sphere of life that happens to be in. When you acknowledge that you won't be productive for a particular chunk of time, on the other hand, you can enjoy that time a lot more. You are still getting the same amount done, but at least now you don't feel bad as well.

4:29Speaker 1: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 LauraVanderkam.com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeart Media. For more podcasts from iHeart Media, please visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.