7 Ways to Achieve Tranquility by Tuesday
Episode Stats
Summary
Laura Vanderkam has spent a lot of time thinking about and studying time, and last year she decided to run an experiment to see if the insight she had gained from that study could help average people get a better handle on their time. She had 150 people try out nine different time management rules which were sorted into three categories: Calm the chaos, make good things happen, and waste less time.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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A lot of people feel dissatisfied about how they spend their time.
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They often feel busy, but that busyness doesn't add up to anything.
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Not to fun, not to fulfillment, not to memories.
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My guest, Laura Vanderkam, has spent a lot of time thinking about and studying time.
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And last year, she decided to run an experiment to see if the insight she had gained from that study could help average people get a better handle on their time.
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She had 150 people try out nine different time management rules, which were sorted into three categories.
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Calm the chaos, make good things happen, and waste less time.
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She shares these field-tested strategies from what she called the Tranquility by Tuesday project in her new book by the same name.
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Today on the show, we talk about my seven favorite rules from Tranquility by Tuesday.
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Laura explains why you need to give yourself a bedtime, plan your week on Friday, make a punch list for tackling small tasks, and more.
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We also discuss the principle that can allow you to read 100 books in a year.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash Tuesday.
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All right, Laura Vanderkam, welcome back to the show.
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Thank you so much for having me back. I really appreciate it.
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So you spent your career researching and writing about how people spend their time.
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You do these massive time studies where you have people fill out these extensive time diaries.
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And as we discussed the last time you were on the show, when you ask people how do they feel about how they spend their time,
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But then when you look at their time diaries, they actually have more time than they think they have.
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But they still feel dissatisfied with how they're spending their time.
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Because, you know, most of it, it's like most people, it's taken up with unfulfilling stuff.
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So, you know, life just kind of ends up feeling flat and like a slog.
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Well, then what you started to do, you started to think about how you could help people spend more of their time on the things that matter to them.
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So last year, you started this project called the Tranquility by Tuesday Project.
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And you basically brought in people who were following your work and said,
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let me, maybe we can do something where we can intentionally manipulate things so that we feel better about how we're spending our time.
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So for a lot of times, your work is just like descriptive, right?
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What led you to be like, I'm going to help people actually spend time on things they really enjoy?
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Well, I'm always interested in how people can spend their time better.
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And, you know, I write self-help for busy people.
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So partly I wanted to check if the things I was suggesting for people actually work.
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So I realized over the years as people had shared their schedules with me and were often asking for feedback that I was giving a lot of the same advice.
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So even, you know, when people were in different stages of life or had different sorts of jobs, a lot of the advice turned out to be pretty similar.
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So I honed this down into nine rules that I thought would have the biggest impact and then decided to test them out.
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Like what happens if I have 150 people try out these nine rules for nine weeks?
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And so I measured the people at the beginning in various ways.
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I had them each week learn a new rule, answer questions about how they plan to implement it in their lives.
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Kept measuring people as we did this over and over again for nine weeks, nine rules.
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And I was happy to find that the end of the study, people's time satisfaction had improved to a high degree.
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So I really do think that good habits do translate into being happier about our lives.
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And so you're not just pulling these rules out of the air.
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Like this was based on the research you had done.
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It's like, well, people who are happy do these things.
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So maybe if people are unhappy, if they try them, they might have an improvement as well.
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And this, the Tranquility by Tuesday was to test that idea.
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And I would say that the people who did the project, they weren't unhappy.
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It's just, you know, you're going along in life.
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It's, you're getting done the things that you have to get done.
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And it's just that the space for enjoyment and for feeling like life is, you know, not
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so much this slog of meeting, you know, everything on my to-do list was not so much there.
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Not, not a total lifestyle overhaul, but just if you follow these nine relatively simple
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And people did start feeling better, you know, about their time.
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Like they were making more progress on their goals, but also that they were happier with
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They felt like they were wasting less time on the things that weren't important to them.
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And the first three rules, it's all about gaining more of a sense of control over your
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Because I think a lot of people complain about that.
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I just feel like my schedule just dictates what I do instead of me dictating my schedule.
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But what's interesting, the first rule in order to get more control over your schedule
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So why do adults need to give themselves a bedtime?
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Well, pretty much for the same reason that kids do, all right?
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Like we want to get enough sleep because when we don't get enough sleep most nights, we wind
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up in a very bad mood and we throw tantrums in the ways that adults do.
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Maybe they're not so obvious as children, but it has bad effects on ourselves and everyone
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And I know from time diary projects that most people are getting enough sleep over the course
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The problem is that it can be incredibly disorderly.
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People wind up undershooting on some days and then overshooting on others.
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And so then they're working with the sleep debt.
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And so then they start crashing on the couch at night or sleeping through an alarm or hitting
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And you nap on weekends and then you can't fall asleep Sunday night and then the whole
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It is so much better to get the amount of sleep that you need every single night.
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And since most adults can't really change the time they wake up in the morning, they have
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to be up at certain times for work or family responsibilities.
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The only variable that can move is the time you go to bed the night before.
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So this rule is about telling people, figure out how much sleep you need, look at what
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time you need to wake up in the morning, count back that number of hours of sleep from that
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And this is the time you should be aiming to get in bed as many nights as possible.
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Like if you have a really good reason to blow through it, by all means, be my guest.
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It nudges a choice that, you know, if I'm just scrolling around on my phone and we're coming
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in toward 11 p.m., I should probably get in bed and turn the lights out.
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And in general, what this helps us do is see that a day has a definite size and shape.
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I think a lot of people understand that the day has a beginning when your alarm clock goes
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We're a little bit less clear on the notion that a day has an end.
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But by giving yourself a bedtime, you know, okay, that is the shape of the container, right?
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I can make a lot of choices about what I do with it.
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So I like that because I do think I've noticed in my own life where if I don't have a definite
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bedtime, I start letting stuff kind of bleed in to nighttime.
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And I end up doing stuff that, you know, I probably, you know, you start surfing the
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But if I had a definite time, I'd be like, well, I got it.
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And that way you start making more mindful choices about how you spend that time before
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And that's a time of day that many people find hard to, you know, use well on things that
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But if you know that you are working with, let's say, you know, your kids go to bed at
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But when you know what it definitely looks like, you can make choices and you can say,
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And then, hey, I've got two hours and I can actually watch a movie.
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Or, you know, I want to spend an hour working on a hobby and then an hour watching TV or
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But because you know the shape of the space, you can make mindful choices within it.
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And just that'll help you be more productive the next day, but also just gives you more
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The second rule to give you more structure over your time is plan your week on Friday.
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So I'm sure a lot of people, they might do some sort of planning.
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Well, the most important aspect here is to plan, right?
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Like, you know, if it's a time that works for you, you have a weekly planning time and
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I don't want to convince anyone that if something that's working for you is terrible.
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I mean, one, if you work a sort of Monday through Friday schedule, most people, at least
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by Friday afternoon, are pretty much sliding into the weekend.
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It is really hard to start anything new at that point.
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And so, you know, if you would just be biding your time until it's acceptable to sign off,
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you may as well repurpose some of that time for planning and turn what might be wasted
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time into some of your most productive minutes of the week.
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If you wait to plan until Monday morning, much of the stuff you're executing on won't happen
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until later in the day, Monday, or maybe even Tuesday.
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And again, if Friday is the day we're sliding into the weekend, we've just shortened our work
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week to three days if we're planning on Monday.
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You know, Friday is better than Sunday, which is another time a lot of people plan because
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if you need to make appointments, if you need to call somebody that works at business hours,
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like you can do that on Friday in a way that you can't on Sunday night.
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But I think the most important reason is even people who really enjoy their jobs can often
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feel quite a bit of trepidation on Sunday afternoon going into Sunday evening.
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And what that tends to be is, you know, there's a lot of stuff waiting for you.
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You've got this, you know, a huge workload on Monday, a lot of problems that need to be solved.
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And so your brain is kind of twirling that stuff around in the background.
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And that can make you feel a little bit anxious during time that you should be
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And so if you plan your upcoming week on Friday, then you can go into the weekend
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more relaxed and, you know, not think about it again until you really need to.
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Based on your time research, is there an effective way you found people should plan
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their days like time blocking to, I mean, what have you, is it just what works for you?
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Well, I think this is a matter of knowing yourself and some people really do like to block out
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Other people really enjoy doing lots of different things on any given day and they appreciate the
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I do know that most people do better if they match their sort of most difficult work or
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the work that maybe even doesn't have to be done, the things that are important but not
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urgent, to the time when they are best able to handle it.
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Most people have more energy in the morning, not everybody, but many people do.
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So morning of a workday at least might be a good time for any of that sort of deep work
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And then, you know, if you've got those status meetings where everyone's checking in that,
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yep, you're still doing your job, I mean, if you are going to have those, do those in
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the afternoon when you are not necessarily at your peak productivity time, but you don't
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And I imagine if you're married or, you know, you've got a partner, you need to be thinking
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about doing some sort of weekly planning so that you guys are on the same page too.
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And that might be something that you could do a phone call on Friday.
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I mean, it might be that you do need to do a second weekend planning session if the two
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Although I do know some people who do a sort of work planning on Friday afternoon and then,
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you know, have a fun little after dinner beer with their partner and plan the stuff that
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Who's driving who, you know, if somebody is working late one night, who's covering for
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But yeah, no, it's important to coordinate those sorts of things.
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But you can also sort of be sending those to each other ahead of time too that both of
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you then look at during your Friday planning session.
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So another of these rules to kind of calm the storm is move by 3 p.m.
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I mean, one is that physical activity helps us have more energy.
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There's pretty good evidence that even small bits of physical activity give us a lot of
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And so, you know, what happens in mid-afternoon for many people is they start getting that
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second cup of coffee or else, you know, they don't and they're just, you know, reading
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the same email six times in a row, whereas taking a little break to get up, get some physical
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activity, fresh air if you can, will definitely boost your mood, boost your energy, let you
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But the thing is, in many of us, you know, having such sedentary lifestyles, forcing in a
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10-minute break somewhere to get some physical activity is going to require you to look
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You'll have to look at your day and say, oh, what am I doing?
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And that strategic mindset has benefits far beyond just that it's good to get a little
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You start to look at your day hour by hour, sort of as a general surveying the battlefield,
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like, no, no, we're going to move here at this point and then we're going to do this.
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And I find that that sense of being proactive is good for many things and not just physical
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What were the most common obstacles you found with this rule?
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Well, you know, people would forget that that happens.
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I think a lot of people were concerned, like, particularly if, you know, I did this time
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during 2021 and a lot of people were still dealing with COVID restrictions and the like.
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Many people working from home who had not necessarily been working from home their whole
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lives and were concerned that, you know, if you're not there for 10 minutes, people will
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And, you know, this was a concern people had for a long time.
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But, you know, a lot of people, or if you're in an office, like, getting up and leaving,
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like, shows that you are not just, you know, a complete martyr to the cause.
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And sometimes people are a little bit concerned about coming across as not a complete martyr
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But I will tell you, nobody who tried it had anything bad happen as a result of moving for
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They had been feeling completely worn down, left the office for 10 minutes, came back and,
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you know, had a solution to whatever problem had been bothering them before.
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Even if you think it wouldn't work, even if you start like, oh, I have so much going
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And this doesn't have to be like a full hour-long workout.
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You're just saying, I mean, just like 10 minutes, I mean, even like 10 minutes of like a walk
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I mean, if it's raining, go up and down the stairs or just do some push-ups or sit-ups.
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And, you know, if you can get outside, that's great.
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But, you know, don't hold that out as the goal if that's just going to make you say,
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well, then I can't exercise because I'm not the kind of person who can leave for an hour
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Like if that's going to be the problem, say 10 minutes.
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I'm sure you can find the space somewhere and you will feel better when you do.
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So the move by three rule, first off, movement is good for you.
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You got to exercise and you'll feel better, help you be more productive.
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But also just being intentional, it forces you to, how can I look at my day so I can restructure
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That has carryover effects to other parts of your life.
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We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
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The next set of rules is about helping people do more of what they think is important.
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Because I think a lot of times when people say, oh, I'm just so busy, what they're really
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saying is they're not doing the things that they think are really important.
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Like I've never said, oh, I'm just so busy when I've got all this great stuff that I'm
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I'll say it when I'm like doing stuff I don't really want to do.
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So the first of these rules to do more of what you think is important is three times a
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So I think people often hold out that they need to do things daily or it's not really
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And I don't know why we have that story we tell ourselves.
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I mean, even people who think they have daily habits often don't.
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Like they do these things Monday through Friday and that's five times a week, right?
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And so, you know, if somebody thinks daily is five times a week, it strikes me that three
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And so where this comes in is we all have these things that we want to do more of.
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And we feel like maybe they just can't be part of our identities during what I call the
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If you are building a career, raising a family.
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So maybe it's something like eating family meals or practicing a musical instrument or
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maybe some sort of creative pursuit like writing a blog or some spiritual pursuit, you know,
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reading sacred texts or praying or anything like that.
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And, you know, maybe it would be great to do these things every single day.
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But if we can't, that doesn't mean they can't be part of our lives.
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And often we find that we are doing these things maybe once, maybe even twice a week.
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And so getting to three is not going to require a total lifestyle overhaul.
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It is just going to require a few small tweaks.
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So if you want to eat family meals, but you're not eating, you know, at 6 p.m.
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Monday through Friday, it doesn't work with your schedule.
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I mean, maybe you see that, well, you generally do eat Sunday dinner together.
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And maybe you do eat Saturday morning breakfast together.
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Well, all you have to do is find one more meal in the course of the week.
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And then you are a family that eats together, right?
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And when people aren't trying to aim for doing something seven times a week,
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they nudge themselves to do it that extra time or two and often get to three.
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Whereas if they were holding out for every single day, it just probably wouldn't happen.
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And you make the point too, this three times a week is a habit.
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It forces people to look at things more holistically, right?
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If you do dinner three times a week as a family, that's like 150 times a year you're having
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And it also forces ourselves to look at life in terms of weeks.
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And I really think this is the better unit of measurement to view our lives.
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A normal day is not, you know, Tuesday or Saturday.
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So we want a unit of repeat that includes both of them, which turns out to be a week.
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And so when you start thinking of your life in weeks and saying, well, where could I do
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this thing three times during the course of the 168 hours I have each week?
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It just, you start to approach things as being more doable.
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It seems like something that you can have as part of your identity, even if life is complex
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So yeah, it reduces the stakes, I think, significantly.
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So if there's that one thing that you've been wanting to do for a long time and you've
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been thinking, well, if the only way for it to count is I have to do it every day,
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Just like if I can do it three times a week, you have succeeded.
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I think that can help people make a lot of progress on those things that are important
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Another rule about doing more things that are important to you is it's one big adventure,
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So rule number six in Tranquility by Tuesday is one big adventure and one little adventure.
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And this is to do every week two things that are memorable, sort of out of the ordinary
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novel, things that will create memories for you.
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And before anyone is like, whoa, that sounds a little bit undoable.
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I'm going to clarify that a big adventure is just something that takes maybe three to four
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A little adventure can be something that is less than an hour.
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So doable on a lunch break, doable on a weekday evening, just as long as it is memorable.
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And doing this just changes our experience of time.
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We wind up having a lot of days that seem very similar as adults.
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You know, we get up, we get everyone ready out the door.
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We do our work during the day, collect everyone at the end, have dinner, baths, bed, TV, do
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And there's nothing wrong with routines because they make good choices.
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But when too much routine stacks up, we don't really remember the time at all because there's
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There's nothing that our brains are bothering to hold on to.
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And so if you don't want whole years to disappear into these memory sinkholes, you want to start
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planning in these little, well, biggish, but, you know, not terribly big adventures each
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It might be going to visit a new park where the flowers were blooming.
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So that was something people went to, you know, the local ice cream place on the first
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Somebody was on a business trip and went for a run around the harbor in the city that she
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visited rather than just, you know, get up and go to her meetings.
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It doesn't have to be crazy, but it's just something that is different.
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And when people get themselves in the routine of doing this, one big adventure, one little
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adventure each week, they make time feel more interesting, more like you have stuff to look
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forward to, but it's also not enough to exhaust or bankrupt anyone.
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I think one of the points you made in your last book, when we talked to you off the clock
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was when people say they want more time, oftentimes what they really mean is they want more memories.
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And this one big adventure, one little adventure is what allows you to do that.
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Yeah, it's all about making these memories and time and our perception of time is influenced
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by how many memories we have of a given unit of time.
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That's why people, you know, that's why time feels like it's taking so long on vacation.
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Like why does time seem to expand when you go somewhere exotic?
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Well, it's because your brain has no idea what it needs to remember.
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And that, you know, dense layer of memories makes time feel like it expands, which is
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completely different from our everyday lives where we aren't making that many memories at
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And I think a lot of us would prefer to have it feel like time is expanding rather than time
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And so just this one little habit of building in one big adventure, one little adventure
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each week can make time feel more fun and make time feel more memorable.
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So have you, do you know about Alistair Humphreys?
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So Alistair Humphreys is a really, he's a, he's an adventurer.
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He's like a professional adventurer, but he came with this idea of micro adventures.
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So when we had him on the podcast and I read the book, our family did a micro adventure
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challenge where every, we decided every weekend we're going to do some sort of, it was, I guess
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We're going to go to some roadside attraction on route 66.
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Cause we've got route 66 that runs right by us.
00:23:50.860
I still, it's, it's stuck with me and it's been hard.
00:23:54.460
I mean, as the kids have gotten older, when they're gotten, they've gotten more activities
00:23:57.320
and things like that, it's getting harder to do that.
00:23:59.400
But I know when we were intentional about implementing more adventures in our life, like it does,
00:24:08.580
I think Alistair's bar for adventure was far higher than mine.
00:24:11.600
I think he was, uh, you know, camping out in various places or people weren't expecting
00:24:17.820
You know, probably most of us are not going to do that, but I do think that, I mean, adventure
00:24:23.160
is more a state of mind than it is an objective standard of measurement.
00:24:27.100
So if, you know, your family's looking forward to visiting that, you know, tourist trap somewhere
00:24:31.440
and you go do it and you all sort of ironically enjoy it.
00:24:36.920
And maybe somebody else like an adventure needs to be like, you know, hiking up a huge mountain
00:24:43.700
And if that's not you, that doesn't mean adventures aren't possible for you.
00:24:47.820
It just means that we need to find something that feels novel and exciting and adventurous
00:24:52.420
to us and make a habit of building these things in.
00:24:55.760
So yeah, it could be, you know, like a spur of the moment after dinner, we're going to
00:25:01.020
If that's not something you normally do, then that is 100% an adventure.
00:25:04.420
One thing we've done that that's exciting is just spend the night outside in your backyard.
00:25:10.700
I think my back would find it quite memorable too, but maybe I'll get into that soon.
00:25:18.340
And also trying to, you know, this idea of, you know, one big adventure, one little adventure.
00:25:21.800
Again, it's forcing you to look at your time objectively.
00:25:25.020
You might feel busy and you're rushed, whatever.
00:25:28.360
But if you take a step back, you'll probably see that you do have more control and you can
00:25:37.220
And, you know, people do get busy with kids stuff, but part of the, you know, upside of
00:25:42.340
this rule is it does nudge you to look at what time is available.
00:25:45.840
And I know I had the experience last year of, we had some weekend day when there was like,
00:25:50.720
I don't know, two soccer games, fall baseball, you know, church, everything else.
00:25:57.900
And so I figured out a time, like we had a window, we could, you know, get in the car,
00:26:02.880
drive an hour, hike for two hours, come back for an hour and still make it to the next thing
00:26:08.200
And if I hadn't thought about the weekend ahead of time, there's absolutely no way that we
00:26:13.060
would have just magically done that in the window of time we had.
00:26:17.000
And so it would have felt like the entire weekend was spent doing children's sports.
00:26:20.860
But because we had thought through the weekend ahead of time and looked to see what would
00:26:28.620
It was possible to have the adventure alongside everything else.
00:26:32.640
So another rule, this is rule eight, it's batch little things.
00:26:38.720
Well, we all wind up with a lot of small tasks in life.
00:26:42.920
And these are things that are not terribly urgent, not terribly important, but they still have
00:26:47.560
And I'm sure many of your listeners can feel like they are drowning in these things, whether
00:26:51.700
it's, you know, making appointments, if signing permission slips, paying bills, answering invitations
00:26:59.300
And it can feel like we are always doing these things.
00:27:03.080
And the funny thing about them is, you know, each individual thing, it might take like five
00:27:06.740
seconds, right, to do something, but they can be constantly weighing on us if we don't have
00:27:13.200
So I tell people, like, set a time for dealing with these small tasks.
00:27:18.500
Give yourself a window when you're going to deal with these small tasks, and then don't
00:27:24.620
Because let's say, you know, you've carved out some time for deep work, you know, you're
00:27:29.620
trying to do those important tasks and really struggling with big business concepts you're
00:27:34.900
And then you're like, oh, I need to go fill out that permission slip.
00:27:38.120
Well, you know, you can distract yourself from these things.
00:27:42.020
It did have to happen, but not right that minute.
00:27:43.960
Whereas if you say, okay, from 1.30 to 2.15 in the afternoon, I'm going to go through
00:27:48.540
this punch list of stuff, then the rest of your time is open for the other things.
00:27:56.160
I mean, like, I'm going to do this with chores.
00:27:57.820
Saturday morning, I'm going to do chores from 10 to noon.
00:28:00.760
And what this does is it forces some efficiencies.
00:28:04.140
Like, if it doesn't happen between 10 and noon, it probably wasn't that important.
00:28:08.520
But it also gives you permission to relax the rest of the time.
00:28:12.480
If you find yourself looking at a dirty floor at some other point, you can say, well, there's
00:28:24.180
It's like, I need to add this to my batch list?
00:28:29.800
I try to batch as many of these things as possible on Friday.
00:28:33.020
If it didn't have to happen in any given day, like it wasn't a particularly urgent thing
00:28:37.580
and I can push it to Friday, then I answer all those invitations or pay those bills or
00:28:42.540
whatever it is that I need to do in one fell swoop on Friday.
00:28:46.300
I feel very productive as I cross thing after thing off my list.
00:28:50.040
But yeah, if one of those things comes up or occurs to me at some other point, I put
00:28:53.280
it on that punch list so that I can tackle it then.
00:28:56.160
So your final rule is effortful before effortless.
00:29:00.940
I was reading this chapter and I saw a familiar name in this chapter.
00:29:05.880
Yeah, you used former AOM team member Jeremy Anderberg as an example of someone who follows
00:29:15.040
Well, as you know, Jeremy is an incredible reader, right?
00:29:18.020
He manages to make it through just a shocking number of books and we calculated it through
00:29:24.400
and he's, you know, basically reading, I mean, 100 books a year.
00:29:36.500
So, you know, it's doable, but he is finding two hours a day to read in a life as somebody
00:29:47.580
And so he has carved out time for reading, you know, first in his life.
00:29:52.280
And I think this is something that a lot of people can do.
00:29:54.980
If you have a spot of leisure time that you know is going to happen, challenge yourself
00:29:59.800
to do something like reading or other sorts of effortful fun first before you do passive
00:30:07.500
So maybe you've got an hour at night after the kids go to bed and before you go to bed,
00:30:13.080
you could say, well, I am going to read for 20 minutes and then I can scroll around online
00:30:19.200
or something, or I'm going to do a puzzle for 15 minutes and then I can watch it.
00:30:22.280
The problem is if you start the show first, like you're not going to stop that to go do
00:30:31.160
But you can also do this during little chunks of time.
00:30:33.380
And I think this is sort of Jeremy's secret weapon here of how he squeezes in so much time
00:30:37.360
to read is that he uses those little chunks of time, like five minutes while you are waiting
00:30:41.760
for a phone call to start or five minutes while you are waiting for the carpool to bring
00:30:46.660
Instead of using that time to scroll around online, Twitter, Instagram, all those things,
00:30:54.520
And I'm not saying you have to do it for the whole time.
00:30:56.200
Like if it winds up being longer, if you want to go check social media, fine.
00:30:58.800
But by flipping that automatic order and doing something more effortful first, you can find
00:31:04.020
quite a bit of time in the day in order to make these things happen.
00:31:07.520
Well, that was a trick that I think a lot of people did with a lot of these rules was if
00:31:11.140
a lot of these important things you want to do, they take effort, right?
00:31:16.160
And what a lot of people did is when they did your project, they started thinking of
00:31:20.280
ways, how can I make these effortful tasks more effortless?
00:31:24.220
Like they did some planning ahead so they could do it easily.
00:31:26.980
So with Jeremy, you know, he had the Kindle app on his phone so he could just get in some
00:31:30.780
If you wanted to paint, like you'd have to encourage people to have their painting stuff
00:31:35.800
set up so they could easily just get to it and maybe do five minutes and then move
00:31:39.300
on instead of having like, I got to pull everything out, set it up.
00:31:42.640
Because if that's the case, you're never going to do it.
00:31:48.060
And sometimes even the effortful fun, we can lower the effort quite a bit.
00:31:52.320
I mean, one example I use for people is when I travel, you know, I'm waiting for boarding
00:32:01.980
You don't know, you know, when you need to be ready.
00:32:03.920
Like you're half the time you're standing up because you can't even get a seat anymore in the
00:32:08.320
And, you know, so what I do is I try to read very effortless books.
00:32:12.840
I like to read books on decluttering or home organization.
00:32:16.280
And it's not, you know, Tolstoy, not by any means, but it still feels a little bit better
00:32:30.440
But the more I do effortful fun before effortless fun, the better I feel about my time.
00:32:36.620
With this research you've done and working with people on the Tranquility by Tuesday project,
00:32:40.100
was there a rule or two where you thought if you did this, you'd get a lot of bang for
00:32:46.100
So I think the giving yourself a bedtime rule is probably what, it's what somebody called the
00:32:51.660
least sexy, but the most impactful rule, right?
00:32:55.640
Because simply controlling how much you sleep every day and making sure you get the amount
00:33:01.300
of sleep you need every single day means everything feels far easier, right?
00:33:06.540
It's so much easier to make good choices when you are not sleep deprived.
00:33:11.600
And I think people are surprised by just how much it matters, but it does.
00:33:17.500
And then the second rule to plan on Friday is kind of what, you know, whenever people ask
00:33:22.400
me that question of how do you do it, which I really don't like that question.
00:33:25.300
But when I get asked that, I would say that honestly, it's the Friday planning, like taking
00:33:30.880
some time every week to think about what needs to happen in the upcoming week.
00:33:35.400
What do I want to have happen in the upcoming week?
00:33:37.800
If there are any problems, how can I solve them?
00:33:40.300
Is there something that I am looking forward to?
00:33:42.740
You know, what am I doing that's important professionally?
00:33:46.420
And just taking, you know, 20 minutes on Friday to think through those things and give yourself
00:33:50.700
your marching orders for the next week means that you do calm the chaos.
00:33:54.480
Even if your life is something of a circus, it's like a circus in the sense that it's
00:33:59.520
Like people are moving around those three rings exactly as they are supposed to be moving
00:34:04.220
All the acts are getting where they're supposed to go at the right time.
00:34:07.340
And when things go wrong, there's a plan for dealing with it.
00:34:09.960
So that's probably the second rule that I would say.
00:34:18.440
It is that, you know, once we get control of our lives in that way, it is so much easier
00:34:30.320
Well, Laura, this has been a great conversation.
00:34:31.860
Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:34:34.980
So you can come find me at my website, which is lauravandercam.com.
00:34:41.220
I write about topics of time management usually three or four times a week there.
00:34:47.740
So hope some of your listeners will join me there.
00:34:56.340
She's the author of the book, Tranquility by Tuesday.
00:34:58.600
It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:35:00.940
You can find more information about our work at our website, lauravandercam.com.
00:35:04.540
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash Tuesday, where you can find links to resources
00:35:15.120
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.
00:35:19.780
Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliess.com, where you find our podcast archives,
00:35:23.360
as well as thousands of articles written over the years about pretty much anything you'd
00:35:27.020
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00:35:49.960
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