Influential Introvert: Communication Coaching for Professionals with Performance Anxiety - How to Find More Time to Podcast with Guest Laura Vanderkam

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

Do you often feel like you never have enough time to do what you want, including podcasting? It’s the worst!   You’re spending hours at your computer and yet nothing is getting done. What is going wrong? And where did the day go?   Imagine how great it would feel if you had all the time you needed to podcast. My guest today says it’s possible because time is more abundant than you think. We can actually stretch it.    Laura Vanderkam is the author of several time management and productivity books, including Juliet’s School of Possibilities, I Know How She Does It, and 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think.    She also speaks at conferences, including at TED; writes for publications like the New York Times; hosts the podcasts Before Breakfast and The New Corner Office, and co-hosts the podcast Best of Both Worlds.   She has five kids and blogs almost every day at Laura Vanderkam.com.   So if Laura can find time to do all that plus hang out with friends and get eight hours of sleep, then there is hope for us all.  *** Hello. I’m Sarah, your host and founder of Podcast Launch Academy. Are you ready to launch a podcast that builds your brand and business, connects you to your global community, and grows your influence? Visit sarahmikutel.com to see how we can work together. Here’s a special treat for you: Use my Buzzsprout affiliate link to sign up for their podcast media hosting and get a $20 Amazon gift certificate. I’ve gotten to know the Buzzsprout team over this last year and love their customer service so much, I moved my shows over there.Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

This is what I want people to understand. There's absolutely no virtue in putting something on a to-do list and then not doing it. Like, it's just as not done as if it was never on the list in the first place. Only now you feel bad, too. Have you been wanting to start a podcast for a while now, but something's holding you back? Maybe it's fear of putting yourself out there or confusion about the technology. I'm Sarah Mikeatel and on podcasting step by step. I'll break down how to podcast. with a little loving motivation to give you the skills and the confidence you need to finally launch that show of your dreams. Let's get started. Most of us dream about all the things that we could achieve if only there were more hours in the day. Well, what if I told you that time is more

abundant than you think and that we can actually stretch time? My guest today is going to tell us how. Laura Vandercam is the author of several time management and productivity books, including Juliet's School of Possibilities. I know how she does it. And 168 hours, you have more time than you think. Laura also speaks at conferences. She has done one of my favorite TED talks. She writes for publications like The New York Times. She hosts the podcast before breakfast, and she co-hosts the podcast Best of Both Worlds. And she has five kids and blogs almost every day. So if Laura can find time to do all the things and also hang out with her friends and also get eight hours of sleep, then there's hope for us all. Historically, I have not been the best with time management. I have mentioned that before on this podcast. But Laura's work has actually had a tremendously positive effect on my productivity this year. And so I'm really honored that

she made the time for this interview. So get ready to have your mind blown as Laura talks us through different strategies we can use to take back our time so we can enjoy more freedom in our lives and more time to pursue what we love. Now into my conversation with Laura. Welcome, Laura. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. So you are a writer and a podcaster. You co-host Best of Both Worlds and you host Before Breakfast. Tell me a little bit more about before breakfast and the purpose of that show. Yeah, so before breakfast launched in March 2019 through IHeartMedia. And it is an every weekday morning podcast. It's just a short dose of productivity inspiration. So something that will help you take your day from great to awesome. It's literally

about five minutes. So I, you know, quick listen in the car, listen while you're doing your hair, making your coffee, whatever it is you do. And hopefully, hopefully people will get something out of it. And you actually have a book called What is it the things that like the most successful people do before breakfast? Yeah, what the most successful people do before breakfast, which is a book about morning routines and using your mornings to achieve things that are difficult if you have a busy life. And I know that the before breakfast formulation really catches people. And so when I was looking for a title for a productivity podcast, that popped right back into my brain. And also just the idea of turning it into part of your morning routine, just something to get you going for the day.

Well, there's definitely something to owning your mornings. I realized that for a long time, I would wake up and my mind would just quickly feel like garbage because I was looking at my phone first thing, looking at social media, just out of habit. I'm like, why am I doing this? And then just set my day off like wrong for the rest of the day. Do you have a favorite story from that book that you like to share? Well, there's a lot of different ones that people do. And I always love the idea of time makeovers as well.

And so when the book came out in paperback, originally it was an e-book. But when it was a paperback, I wound up putting in a bunch of stories about people making over their mornings. And, you know, I always love ones when people realize that, oh, I do have time to work on my novel. or I do have time to exercise. Usually what it means is that a couple mornings a week, you get up a little bit earlier than you otherwise would have. Or at least you set a conscious time that you're going to get out of bed. So quit the snooze button.

Don't keep pressing it, you know, endlessly 36, 45 minutes later, you're still in bed. And, you know, getting up early sounds like it might involve sleeping less. But I found that for many people, that doesn't need to be the case as well. many of us don't use our time before bed all that well. So by cutting off some of the late night social media scrolling, internet, perusing, puttering around the house, you can get to bed a little bit earlier, go to sleep a little bit earlier, wake up a little bit earlier, and turn those unproductive

evening hours into productive morning hours. Yeah, I've heard you say that time is abundant and we can stretch it. How would you describe time freedom? I really like what you have to say about this. Yeah, so time freedom to me means that you are in control of your time and that the vast majority of your time is spent in ways that are aligned with what you wish to be doing in life. You know, it can become very easy to think that time is just happening to us, that we have to do X, Y, or Z. And there are very few things in life that you actually have to do X, Y, or Z. And so developing this sense of agency over your time and consciously filling your time with the things that you would like to have there leads to the sense that the time is abundant and that we are free. So many of us feel like we don't have enough time. And I really like the way that you break down mathematically the hours that we have in a week. Could you break down the math for us? Sure. Well, there are 168 hours in a week.

And so that's 24 times seven, if any of your listeners are wondering about the math. And so one of the reasons I like thinking about time this way is that it actually shows us how much time we have. A week is the cycle of life as we live in. People always say, well, there aren't enough hours in the day. Sure, that's fine. But you don't live your life in days. I mean, a Tuesday and a Saturday, both occur just as often. But your life probably looks pretty different on each of those days.

So if you work 40 hours a week, so standard full-time job, and sleep eight hours a night, so that is 56 hours per week, this leaves 72 hours for other things, which is quite a bit of time. And yet, you know, how many people who have full-time jobs are like, well, I have no time for anything else? I mean, I'm working full time. You can hear it right there in the word, full. It's the full amount of my time. Well, no, it isn't. I mean, the time you're not working is about twice as much time as you are working. And even if you work longer hours or you have a long commute, you know, 50, 60 hours a week occupying that, I mean, you still have 62 hours for other things or 52 hours for other things. I mean, we're still talking a lot of time, even in, you know,

rather extreme hours situations. Now, of course, we may have responsibilities during those other hours, but, you know, people are looking at this context of like, well, I have a family and I have a job, therefore I can't read or I can't exercise or I can't volunteer. well, could you find three to four hours a week for those things? I'm guessing in 72 hours you probably could. Yeah, something that you said that I found fascinating was everybody feels like they're working 75 hour weeks and are getting no sleep at all. But really, you looked at the data and people are really like most are actually working 40 hours a week and they're getting eight hours of sleep, which I found shocking. Yeah, so the problem with time is that it keeps passing whether you think about, where it's going or not. And so most of us actually don't know how we are spending our time.

Now, if you get paid by the hour, then you know how many hours you are working. This is a very straightforward math equation. But things like sleep or if you are in salaried work or things that aren't compensated, like say housework, it becomes very difficult to figure out how many hours you are devoting to these things unless you keep track. Because our minds do funny things. We remember the lengths of things based on how we feel about it and our energy levels rather than how much time it actually took. So shockingly, things that we don't want to do seem to take more time than the things that we do want to do, which is why many people overestimate their work hours, overestimate how much time they devote to housework, underestimate how much free time they have, underestimate how much they sleep.

but there have been many studies, time diary studies, that have people actually talk through the day. So one of the best known ones is called the American Time Use Survey. And if you have listeners in other countries, many countries have their own version of this. But basically what happens is a researcher calls up thousands of Americans rolling over the entire year. So it includes weekends, holidays, weekdays, everything. They ask you how you spent pretty much the previous 24 hours. So talking through from 4 a.m. yesterday to 4 a.m. today, what did you do? Like, so you'd be saying, oh, I, you know, woke up at 6 a.m. And then I, you know, spent 15 minutes showering and doing my hair and getting dressed. And then I drove to work, you know, but you talk through the day. And because of that, you aren't making value judgments about what is a typical day, which is where a lot of the bias comes in. And you also aren't answering questions in a way that's socially desirable. If somebody asks you, like, how much do you work or how much do you sleep or how much time do you hang out with your kids or how much time do you do whatever?

Nobody's going to answer questions in ways that make them look terrible. Right, right. Right. Right. Right. So that's why you can't ask people how many hours they devote to things. You have to actually keep track of the schedule. Yeah.

And so I know that you're a big fan of time tracking to help people, like, get a real view of what their life is like. Tracking time for a week sounds so intimidating to a lot of people, I think. But I know that you said we can do it in like three minutes a day. We can handle three minutes a day for one week. So how can we actually do that? What do you recommend? Well, there's lots of ways to track time. I track my time on weekly spreadsheets. I have some on my website, Laura Vandercom. But you can make your own. I mean, it just has the days of the week, Monday through Sunday, across the top, half hour blocks down the left hand side going from 5 a.m. to 4.30. AM. So it's a 336 cell spreadsheet representing the 168 hour week. And then I just go in and write what I've been doing. I check in about three times a day and describe what I've been doing since the last time I checked in. And there's a little bit of a skill involved in it, getting used to it. Most people are not used to putting words on how they spent their time. But if you kind of think about it, You could get it. I mean, it doesn't have to be exact. It can be sort of broad, you know, commute, 745 to 830, work, 830 to 1230, lunch, 1230 to 1. You know, whatever. You can write these things down,

even if there were distractions in there, even if you may have spent a little bit of time doing something else. It's more important to get the broad picture of life. But yeah, it only takes me about three minutes a day to check in three times and record what I did. And then you have this data that you can then use to decide. what you like, what you don't like, and what you'd like to change. And is this primarily, is like the goal kind of a wake-up call where we think we're doing all of this work, but really if we're tracking our time, we're like, oh, actually, I was just surfing the internet for five hours.

Well, that does happen to some people. I'm not denying that that will happen on occasion. But I don't want people to think that this is about playing gotcha in some ways. Because, you know, I mean, it's like keeping a food journal. I mean, if you're going to sit there and judge yourself over what you've eaten, then it's not actually that useful because you won't keep doing it. Because nobody really wants to sit there and feel terrible about themselves. And so let's not have that as the goal. The goal is to see what your life looks like so that you can make rational choices about

what should go in there, what you like, what you don't like. And the good news is many people discover that they're doing a lot of good stuff. I've seen many stories people have told themselves over the years. The common ones, we're talking about that full-time work takes the full amount of your time. And so many people with full-time jobs assume that they're just never seeing their families. And then they track their time and they realize that they're seeing their families all the time. And that can kind of get rid of any sort of guilt. that might have come up.

Or, you know, somebody has been saying something like, oh, I never read, right? Or I never hang out with my spouse. And then they track their time and see, well, actually, they did read for some amount of time, maybe not as much as they want, but it was some. And some is a very different story from none. And so when you see some, you can start asking good questions, like, well, how can I scale this up over time, you know?

Whereas if you're telling you, the story of none, you can't really do anything with that. So it's more about, yeah, just same as any business decision. If you were trying to figure out if you wanted to open a new store somewhere, you'd probably look at foot traffic. You'd look at how other retailers in the area we're doing. Like, you wouldn't just blindly do it. Same thing with time. If you want to spend your time better, you need to know how you're spending your time now. Because otherwise, how do you know if you're changing the right thing? I really like that where we can look for, bright spots of what we're doing now and how to get more of it. Because I was thinking of it more

as a punishment. If it's a punishment, you're not going to do it. Like, why would you? Well, that was my holdup. But now I like the idea of like seeing like the good spots and how we can get more of it. A lot of us have goals for the year and we might even write down the steps to achieve those goals. But then something happens. And we missed that step of follow. of like actually taking action on these steps, which is planning, I guess, specific time to get these steps done. So could you walk us through how you advise to like plan for the year? Yeah. Well, you're absolutely right that we can have grand ideas about what we'd like to do, but anything we're going to do is going to take time. So if you're not willing to commit a specific

time to those actions, you are more or less saying that you are not going to do them. I mean, that's the truth. I mean, yeah, it sounds great to exercise, but unless there is a time on a specific day that you are planning to do it, then it's not happening. So, you know, I think it's, I'm a big fan of planning. I know not everyone is. There are ways to plan if you're not a planner. This is not about necessarily blocking every minute of every day. And so I don't want people to think that. I think that's, you know, I occasionally read articles where people are mischaracterizing, whatever I said is like, she wants me to plan every minute in the day and I'm a free person

and thus wonderful and better than this horrible way of you in life. I don't plan every minute of every day. I have time to. Yeah. Tell us your ways, Laura. No judgment here. Well, one of the best things you can do is get in the habit. This is very straightforward.

Just plan your weeks on Friday afternoons. So Friday afternoon tends to be a very low opportunity cost time for many people because you aren't doing anything else. Like you are sliding into the weekend. Most people just waste this time at work. So take 20 minutes on Friday afternoon to think about the week ahead and make yourself a short three category priority list. The three categories are career, relationships, and self. And one of the good things about making a three category list is that you're probably going to put something in all three categories. It is very difficult to make a three category list and then leave one of those categories blank. Like we just don't do that.

So you're going to make a short list in each category. And then you're going to look at the next week and see where these things can go. And you're going to schedule them in. And if you want to really be a pro level time manager, you're going to put as much of those steps as, as possible toward the beginning of the week. And the reason is that stuff is going to come up. I mean, it's going to be bad stuff, good stuff, probably a little bit of both. But by doing as much of this toward the beginning of the week as possible, you either get

to the stuff that matters to you before the emergencies happen or if the emergencies happen at the beginning of the week, you've still got time to get to it before the week is over and then you're borrowing time for next week or whatever. But yeah, just by having that simple process in place, you vastly, increase the chances of the things that you want to see happening happening. Okay. So we've got like our projects. How do we break that down by like tasks? The one issue most people run into with to-do lists is that they make them incredibly long. You know, if you put 30 things on your list for a given day, you're not going to do 30 things. You'll do some of those things. But were those the right things? I don't

know. If you do five of 30 things, like the odds that those were the exact, exact important must happen today, five things is low, right? Like, I mean, you know, shooting darts at a dartboard randomly. It's probably not those things. And the other problem is, since you won't get through them, your to-do list becomes this source of unhappiness. Like, you're, you know, constantly feeling like a failure because you're not getting through it. So what's the point of that? This is what I want people to understand. There's absolutely no virtue in putting something on a to-do list and then not doing it. Like, it's just as not done as if it was never on the list in the first place. Only now, you feel bad, too. So it's like the worst of all worlds.

So better to make a very, very short list. And then, you know, that forces you to prioritize. Like, if somebody were to cut off the power to your laptop at 11 a.m. Like, if you were going to have to evacuate your office by noon, like, what would you actually need? need to have gotten done. You are so much better off putting, you know, four things on a list, actually doing those four things, feeling on top of the world. And then, hey, you know, like if you want to go find some more stuff to do, that's awesome. Yeah, I really love that. So we could have like a list somewhere of things that eventually we need to get done. But it's not our to-do list for today. So for our to do for our to-do list today, we can like pick three

things from the master list. And if we get those three things done, then we can go back to our master list for the year and pick something up. Yeah, you can make a master list somewhere else that's not time defined or, you know, even things that you're not completely committed to. And people who've read like David Allen's books know about the idea of a someday maybe list. And so that's a good way to think about it. Like there can be another list. But anything that is for today needs to be committed to for today. Yeah. Do you do time blocking? So different people have different ideas of what this actually means. Yeah, there are a bunch of different ideas. And so I would love to hear what you do. I don't know that I specifically do. In general, for me, there are certain times

of the day that are better suited to certain activities than others. For instance, I'm more likely to exercise than in the morning than I am at 9 p.m. at night. You know, that's probably true for most people. I am more likely to be able to do sort of focused, thoughtful work in the morning and then do more interactive phone calls, meetings, and such in the afternoon. Email is probably better done in small bits of time versus drifting into everything else. And when I've seen people do time blocking well, they can actually, you know, get amazing amounts of things done. I was looking at a time log recently from somebody who was pretty much, you know, working full time from her home, was also homeschooling her children.

And she had made this work by saying, well, mornings are homeschool time. And then afternoons are work time and, you know, had somebody else to watch the kids in the afternoon. But the, you know, by doing it that way every single day and then exercising before the homeschool time, it's like all this stuff happened. It was like, well, most people would think this is completely like non-possible that you could freelance for 35 hours a week and, you know, homeschool all your kids and exercise every day. And by blocking out certain times every single day for these things, she made it work.

But, you know, different people like to do different things. And sometimes people really want to decide on any given day what they feel like doing and what kind of work they feel like doing. And for people who are maybe less of planners, sometimes it helps to have blocks of time where you know in general you're going to do a certain kind of work. And in the moment, you can figure out what would be best. So for instance, if you know that you always work on marketing from three to five in the afternoon, well, any given day, you might feel like calling a different person or writing something up or doing something on social media. But if you know that you do have a certain amount of time devoted to this task, it will happen. And probably you will get to most things that you need to

over time. I like that. So we can plan like specific hours or days of the week for like certain broad areas of work, but then maybe the day before pick the specific tasks of what you're going to work on. Yeah. I have made a bunch of calendars where I have blocked off time for specific things like this. But then I let it slide if other things come up. So do you have any advice on forming habits that we actually stick to? Well, I think when, you know, you say, well, stuff comes up. It's not a surprise that stuff comes up. This is kind of the nature of life. Anyone can plan a perfect schedule. But what really makes for good time management is the ability to deal with stuff that you hadn't known was going to happen.

And the key to that is just leaving open space. So anytime that all your time is blocked and accounted for, you will get off schedule. Like you won't be able to stick with it because something will happen. And where does that stuff go that you were planning to do? So one of the best things you can do is create open space and also designate specific backup slots. So this is something that I definitely,

suggest anytime somebody is frustrated because they keep having a certain thing taken away from them, right? Like I want to work on my novel and I planned my time for Tuesday morning and then darn it if I'm not always getting called into an early morning meeting on Tuesday or Tuesday's the day the kid is sick and home from school. And it can be very frustrating and say, well, if, you know, having that writing time is important to you, it can't just be Tuesday morning. You have to also designate a backup slot. So let's say we, make our plans for Tuesday morning and Thursday morning. Now, if you get it done on Tuesday morning, awesome. Thursday could be an optional. Like maybe you do it then, maybe you don't. Or you give yourself

a break, you know, do something else. But if Tuesday is taken away from you, Thursday is ready to go. And that is how you can make sure that things happen. I really like that backup plan idea. So you've got a million different things going on. And I mentioned earlier that you co-host a podcast, you do your own podcasts. I'm curious about how you manage time for projects like that. And for your podcast specifically, either one. What's your project management for something like that? Well, so for before breakfast, it's just me. So there's a lot of flexibility about when it can happen. I write scripts that I then read and record and send those into the production people. So I generally batch it.

I make a point of if there's five episodes coming out per week, I generally have a schedule of writing five episodes and recording five episodes every week. But I tend to try to do that in batches. So I write five at a time and record five at a time. And so it's not something I'm having to find time for every day. And some weeks I'll try to get a little bit more ahead of it too. So maybe I'll even write 10 and record 10. and that buys me an extra week.

I'm currently several weeks ahead on the schedule, and that's where I like to be because it allows me space to think about it. And if stuff comes up, it's not like, wait, there's no episode for Tuesday. Like, that will never happen because there's a month in the hopper. So, you know, we know by the time of day was coming up

that there was nothing there. With Best of Both Worlds, we are a team. And my co-host has a real job, which is a, is, is an important consideration here because we have to work around that. So she works a 90% schedule, which means she basically has two days off a month, plus she has PTO or whatever.

And so we tend to set our recording times on the days when she is not in the office. And we'll try to batch recordings then. So if we have two days per month, we might do two episodes on each day or do three and try to get a little bit of head that way. And so, yeah, that's generally how we make that work. Yeah, so batching and then you send it to a production place to help you out. Yes, exactly. I'm not a natural planner, and I'm trying to reinvent myself.

I don't know the right way to say that, but I love so much about planning. I know that there's like the science of anticipation where we get a happiness boost when we're thinking about something exciting that's like to come in the future. So I love that. Yeah, I think the key thing is that a lot of people who say they really don't want to plan, they have this idea of planning that it's about planning things you don't want to do. Right. And I don't know why we have this idea. I mean, you can plan things you want to do.

Like, I don't know how many people sit there and be like, gosh, I wish I didn't have tickets to my favorite sports team on Saturday to go sleep and play with my best friend. Gosh, I wish we didn't make that plan. Right, right. That's not, you know, people like those sorts of plans. So why don't think of all your plans in that light? You know, yeah, there's stuff you don't want to do, but don't focus on that. Like, start with the stuff you do want to do. And then, you know, if you got some extra time, get to the stuff that you have to deal with. Yeah, I'm definitely trying to prioritize more what I actually want to do. I'm reading your book 168 hours right now. By reading, I mean listening to you. Oh, excellent. And I realize that one of my biggest time blocks is I'm a maximizer. I want to figure out the best way to do something, not for everything, but for certain things, I realize I have like perfectionist tendencies. And it was a strange realization because I used to think I was totally laid back about everything. But I'm like, all right, I'm starting this business. What's the very best email provider? What's the very best website host? And I kept researching this stuff for like

weeks. Can you talk a little bit about maximizers and what was the other one, satisfizers? Satisfisers. Yeah, this is a great concept from Barry Schwartz in his research. He's the author of a book called The Paradox of Choice. And he divides people into these two categories. And basically, a maximizer wants to get the best of everything, like you were saying, a best website provider, the best hosting, whatever. A satisfacer has a certain set of criteria, and they go with the first option that clears the bar. And while being a maximizer sounds great, like who wouldn't want the best of everything, it winds up wasting an incredible amount of time and mental energy. And in many cases, is not even possible. Like, there is no best host. There is no best website creator. And

There is no, most of the stuff, it's like most of the people who are in the business and have been there for a while are probably pretty decent, right? So, you know, you go with somebody who's in your budget range who can meet your deadlines and probably they're going to be great. And if they're not, like, then you can make a different decision in a little bit. But you will have enough time to make that different decision because you've actually gotten started. Whereas the maximizer can put it off forever because they haven't gotten the best. one yet. Maximizers are also more prone to regret because when you make a decision, which maybe at some point you eventually have to, you come across something that's better. You feel like, oh, this is terrible. This is horrible. I made the wrong choice. Whereas a satisfacer, yes, you met your criteria. So you're happy. Like, yes, maybe something was better, but you met the criteria you put out there. So it's okay. You're still happy. Happy. And it keeps you moving forward to actually living your goals. And you can reform. You don't have to be stuck in one. I'm shifting my mindsets and becoming more of a satisfizer. So thank you. I really love that part of your book. Do you have any final like words of wisdom for people who maybe like they're like, okay, I want to change, but I just can't get there. I keep prioritizing the wrong things and like my happiness, like what I really want to do. It's just I can't get it to the top of the list. Well, it may be that you need a different accountability system for why you're not doing it. Some people are able to hold themselves accountable fairly easily. Other people need somebody else in their life to kind of play the heavy and get over them. I was talking with somebody recently who was a book coach who also did sort of matchmaking between writers and writing coaches. And one of the questions apparently she asked people is,

is, you know, do you need hard pressure? I was like, really? Do people like to get yelled at that they need to turn stuff in? But some people do, right? Like they want to have paid someone who is then on the phone yelling at them if they haven't turned in their pages. I was like, that sounds terrible. Like, why would I need to do that?

I'll just write my pages. But, you know, you have to know yourself. And if you know that that is what it is going to take, like putting money on the line and having someone yelling at you for not doing it, then maybe that's what you need. or maybe it's rewarding yourself profusely. I don't know. Like every time you go to a certain number of classes at your gym, you can buy a new piece of, you know, athletic clothing that you really like. So just figure out what it is that that's going to motivate you and then make it happen.

Oh, yeah. Well, public shame and like announcing what you're going to do is like a good, like if you don't follow through. I saw your creative live a long time ago about there was an accountability thing where you promised to do a certain thing. And if you don't do it, if you don't follow through, then money goes to a charity that you hate. Yeah, this is, I mean, you can do this on your own, but there was a company called Stick that was also facilitating this for people. And so if, for instance, your goal was to work out three times a week and then you didn't, you made a bet with somebody basically and your money would go somewhere that you did not support. I mean, you know, you can think about what these things would be, like maybe the opposite political party from you or the, you know, NRA if you were anti-gun or to an anti-gun group, if you were into guns or something.

You know what I'm saying. Like, it was just something that you would be completely appalled at the idea of supporting. And there you go, you know, for some people, that would be it too. I've heard of people actually putting like embarrassing photos of themselves on social media and setting it to post at like 7 a.m. or something. And so they have to get up and delete it. And that gets them going in the morning. Again, this is not something I would ever do. Because to me, that sounds terrible. Like that's, I mean, and it also is like stuff can go wrong. Right. Like maybe your power goes out overnight. And for some reason, your alarm goes, it doesn't go off. Or you're ill in the middle of the night and you have to sleep in. Just things can happen. Like this. to me sounds terrible, but like for some people it works. So again, if you know yourself, if you know it works, then go with what you want to do. Yeah, accountability. There's different ways to get it. Laura, thank you so much for talking to me. Where can people find out more about you? Well, you can come visit my website, which is laura vandercam.com. And I blog fairly frequently.

I was like it's still 2006 or something. I haven't gotten over that yet. And also on social media, usually as at L. Vandercom. So I'd love to connect with people there. Thank you so much, Laura. Thanks for having me. Okay. Did you have all sorts of sparks flying in your mind as Laura was talking? I have always viewed time management and time tracking as a punishment. That's why I never used to do it because I always thought about reviewing time would be like reviewing everything that I was doing wrong. But I love Laura's mindset that this is an opportunity. to see where things are going right so we can plan more of what we love.

Here's a quick recap of what we have learned today. Plan your week ahead on Friday and bucket what you want to do in the upcoming week into three categories. So that's career, relationships, and self. Make sure that you have enough white space in case something comes up to foil the plans that you make on Friday. Designate backup time slots to complete projects that you can. care about because as we talked about in this episode, maybe you planned on writing that novel on Tuesday. Didn't happen. Well, now you've got your backup time slot on Thursday. Keep your to-do list for the day and the week small and realistic. There is no honor in having a list of 100 to-do items

if we don't finish any of them. Have blocks of time dedicated to specific areas of work. And as Laura said, time blocking is very personal. Some people like to time. block specific pieces of work. Other people just like to dedicate certain hours for certain activity like marketing or exercise. Try tracking how you're spending your time for a week. As Laura said, this doesn't have to take long. It only takes her three minutes a day to see where she's spending her time. Stop mindlessly scrolling social media and doing other things that you don't care about at night. Go to bed earlier so you can get up and enjoy your morning doing whatever you want. a satisfacer and not a maximizer, meaning start making decisions that are good enough, good enough

decisions, and then just move on with your life rather than agonizing over something like, should I do this, should I do that, even at restaurants, should I order this, should I order that, just do it, just make a decision, and then move on, and chances are you'll probably never think about that decision again. And finally, figure out the accountability system that works best for you. Personally, I do find that public shaming works for me. I know Laura doesn't need it, but I realize that if I announce that I'm going to do something publicly, I'm much more likely to do it. Okay, I hope that you found this episode useful. If you did, then please share it with a friend. One of the best ways you can do that is to share it on an Instagram story or

whatever your favorite social media platform is and make sure that you tag me. I'm at Sarah Micahel. That's all for now. Thank you so much for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Thank you for listening to podcasting step by step. You are now one step closer to launching that podcast you've been dreaming about. But I want to get you even closer. I created a free guidebook for you with actionable worksheets called eight mistakes new podcasters make and how to fix them. To find that, head on over to sarahmicatel.com slash fix. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarah micotel.com slash blank no more.