Something You Should Know - Why People Cheat & The Best Advice for People Who Are Too Busy

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

When you sit down to eat, several things affect how MUCH you eat and how much you enjoy the food. I begin this episode by revealing how the environment and atmosphere of the room in which you are eating can have a big impact. When you learn the details, you can use this information to help you eat less while enjoying your food more. (http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/outreach/musiclight.html) Sometimes people in relationships cheat. No secret there. But why? Are we programmed to cheat? Are humans, by nature, NOT monogamous? And what can you do if there has been cheating in your relationship? These are all important questions addressed by my guest Dr. Kenneth Rosenberg. Dr. Rosenberg is a board certified addiction psychiatrist, sex addiction counselor and he is author of the book Infidelity: Why Men and Women Cheat (https://amzn.to/2J2slRL) He also has a quiz on his website so you can assess your cheating potential. Go to : https://drkenrosenberg.com/ When you go to a business function you are often given a name tag to wear. So which side of your chest should you put it on - left or right – or does it even matter? While in the scheme of things it may not matter much, there is a correct side and it all has to do with function. I’ll tell you which side is the better side according to etiquette experts. (http://emilypost.com/2009/05/right-or-left-where-to-wear-a-name-badge/) In our culture we are obsessed with saving time. We have gadgets and apps and systems all designed to make us more productive so we get more done in less time. But then what do you do with the time you saved? Probably use it to get more things done. So what’s the point? For a different look at how you spend your time and what you spend it on, listen to my guest, Laura Vanderkam, author of the book Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done (https://amzn.to/2xs4325). She has been speaking and writing about this topic for a while and has some interesting insight and practical advice I think you will enjoy hearing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, how much you eat and how much you enjoy what you eat depends in part on the room you're sitting in. I'll explain. Then, cheating in relationships. How much does it happen? And why is it so tempting to so many? The problem with sexuality is what's forbidden is often very, very enticing to us sexually. Very, very attractive to us. So staying within the rules, staying within lines, sometimes is not such a turn-on. Plus, when you have to wear a name tag at a business function, there's actually a proper way and a proper place to wear it.

And some great advice for people who feel like they're always too busy and always too rushed. You know, I had 900 busy people track their time for a day, and I found that the people who felt most starved for time, most stressed and rushed, actually spent more time watching TV and on social media than the people who felt the least stressed. All this today on Something You Should Know. As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about.

And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done Ted Talks. Well, you see, Ted Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new Ted Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily.

And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Something You should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. You know, when you're in the podcasting business, as I am, and you talk to other people in the business,

or you talk to people who listen to podcasts a lot, you kind of assume that everybody knows what it means to subscribe to a podcast. And yet, I often come across people who don't know what it means. They don't know, A, how to do it, and B, they don't understand the concept because the word subscription is usually tied to money. I mean, when you subscribe to the newspaper or you subscribe to Netflix, a subscription usually costs money. But podcasts, for the most part, are free. But people hear subscription and they think, oh, maybe I better not.

And some people don't know that on iTunes and pretty much any other platform, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, you can subscribe to a podcast for free with basically the click of a button, and then the podcasts are sent to you when new episodes come out rather than you having to remember to go get them. So if you haven't subscribed to this podcast, I recommend you do.

It's easy. Just go to whatever platform you're listening on, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, any of those, and you can subscribe and get every episode. First up today, does the environment you're in have any effect on how much food you eat? Well, to find out, an experiment was conducted at a fast food restaurant in Illinois. Does the environment you're in have any effect on how much food you eat? Well, to find out, an experiment was conducted at a fast food restaurant in Illinois. It was a Hardee's fast food restaurant. A section of the restaurant was equipped with soft lighting, jazz music, and it was transformed into basically a fine dining environment.

Participants were randomly selected to eat in either the unchanged part of the restaurant or the fine dining part of the restaurant. The food was the same regardless of which part of the restaurant people sat in, and then their behavior was recorded. Interestingly, even though participants in the fine dining area ate for longer than those in the main dining area, they actually consumed less food. Those in the fine dining area were also no more likely to order extra food. Another surprising result is that even though participants in the fine dining part ate less food, they actually rated the food as more enjoyable. So changing the atmosphere can change food consumption and food satisfaction. Specifically, the researchers said dim lighting, slow music,

and a more relaxed atmosphere can help people eat slower and eat less, and it will likely work just as well at home as it does in a restaurant. And that is something you should know. For as long as there have been people in relationships, people have cheated on those relationships. And yet in any relationship, probably nothing causes more hurt, more pain, and more problems than when a partner cheats. However, it's also long been argued that humans are not naturally monogamous, that having only one partner for a long period of time is unnatural, humans like variety. So why is cheating considered to be so wrong?

And is the damage done by cheating irreparable? These are questions you've probably thought about, and here with some really good answers is Dr. Kenneth Rosenberg. Dr. Rosenberg is a board-certified addiction psychiatrist, a sex addiction counselor, and author of the book Infidelity, Why Men and Women Cheat. Hey, Dr. Rosenberg, welcome. Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here.

So at some level, it seems that cheating is and always will be a byproduct of relationships. Affairs happen, flings happen. So let's start with how often do they happen? How many people cheat? 20% of married people cheat. 50% of dating people cheat. The numbers are pretty stable, except for the women. The women are cheating much more than they used to.

And it doesn't matter if the numbers are big or small. If you're the betrayed partner who finds on email or the phone, which is how it usually happens, that your partner is having an affair or multiple affairs, the numbers mean nothing. You're devastated. It's a big issue. That your partner is having an affair or multiple affairs, the numbers mean nothing. You're devastated. It's a big issue. And everybody knows that there is probably nothing that's going to screw up a relationship more than infidelity. So when you ask the people who do it, who knowingly cheat, why they did it, what do they say? Well, they have many reasons. There's many reasons why people are unfaithful.

About half of them say, I was happy in my marriage. I just had the opportunity. I had the opportunity. I was affordable. It was accessible. It was a good way to escape from my life, wherever I was, to escape. Many people have the Sir Edmund Hillary answer to why did he climb Everest, which is because it was there.

And so people do it because they have the option to do it. Some people do it because they're dissatisfied. Some people do it because they want something new and they're novelty seekers. Everyone has their own reason, but we are biologically primed to look for different partners. And that's often a struggle that most people deal with in some way, shape, or form. And we can't have our cake and eat it too, although some people try and often fail miserably. But what about the argument that people, and maybe men in particular, are biologically not monogamous, that they're here to make babies and to procreate with as many women as possible?

So the urge is to do that, and the urge is not to settle down with one person for the rest of your life. Well, look, men and women cheat for different reasons. And traditionally speaking, women cheat more for an emotional connection. Men cheat more for a sexual fling or connection. That's changing. Increasingly, we see, particularly among people under the age of 35 years old, that men and women are looking to cheat for often the same reasons. But biologically, women are just as prime as men to cheat. In fact, there's a biological model for this.

There's an animal called the vole, V-O-L-E. It's a rodent that lives in the prairies and the meadows. And there's a certain kind of vole that is monogamous. And when you study this vole, you find it's not completely monogamous. That in the middle of the night, some of those monogamous voles who are bonding for life go out and find another partner just for a sexual fling. And they come back to their partner in the morning. They're biologically primed. And there's biological reasons why they're monogamous,

which we could talk about later. But the point is that both male and female voles cheat just as much. In fact, when you see who cheats more, it's the females, not the males. So yeah, there are different reasons why people cheat. Men are driven by testosterone. They have more testosterone than women have. There's some biological reasons why men may be drawn more towards sex and women are drawn more towards emotion. But when women have more sexual agency in their lives, more economic independence in their lives, That picture is changing. Can we say with any kind of certainty that human beings or men or women are more monogamous than the other or are not monogamous at all

and that marriage and fidelity is really kind of an artificial restriction that we're putting on people? I think we could say that as a species, we struggle with dual mandates. We struggle with the desire to socially bond and stay committed, and often that means staying faithful. We also struggle with the desire to procreate as much as possible. And we have to live with that imperfection. And we have to live with the fact that we can't always satisfy and scratch every itch.

That sometimes we have to sacrifice one for the other. Why? Pardon me? Why? Why can't we? Great question. We're talking about cheating. We're not talking about polyamory or any kind of thing you want to do.

We're talking about saying to your partner, I'm there for you. And not only there socially for the kids, I'm there for you sexually. And sweetheart, I never want to be with anyone else. I'm yours forever. So you're basically lying to your partner. That's the problem. That's what we're talking about. That's cheating.

In polyamorous relationships, you could have three partners. You could agree to have four partners. But then sometimes people want five or six. And the problem with sexuality is what's forbidden is often very, very enticing to us sexually. It's very, very attractive to us. So staying within the rules, staying within the lines, sometimes is not such a turn on. We could do whatever we want. We can make up the rules. But the only thing I'm advocating is that you be honest about the rules are, what the rules are, and you keep your word. And you try to live in accordance with your ideals. And that's not so easy. We're talking about cheating. And my guest is psychiatrist Dr. Kenneth Rosenberg.

He's the author of the book, Infidelity, Why Men and Women Cheat. You know, it's amazing to me that over 80% of people, 80% of people think life insurance costs double what it actually costs. Not only that, almost 100% of people think buying life insurance has to be a big pain in the neck. The truth is a healthy 35-year-old can get a half million dollars in coverage for less than $30 a month. And getting life insurance doesn't have to be complicated

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it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue.

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Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now. So Dr. Rosenberg, question. Do open marriages really work? Oh, often they do, of course. All kinds of marriages work. Open marriages definitely can work, but they require more negotiation than monogamous relationships. In a relationship, if a partner cheats, let's say the husband cheats on his wife, because, as you had said earlier, a lot of cheating happens simply because the opportunity presents itself, and, you know, I did it because it was there. But that excuse or that explanation doesn't ever really hold much water with the other injured party.

They never say, oh, well, if that's the only reason you did it, no problem. No, people often feel a great sense of betrayal upon hearing it. Right. And often the people who experience that betrayal have what I would call betrayal trauma. They feel devastated.

Because, you know, when you think that your life is one way and then you discover it's another way, that could be devastating to a lot of people, men and women. And yet the person who did it, did it just because it's there. And that does seem like, you know, I ate the cookie because it was there. It's no big deal. I just, there it was, and I was hungry, so I ate it.

And yet, but when you eat the cookie, it isn't devastating to your diet, but it's devastating to your marriage. It can really be devastating to the marriage. I mean, you know, every partnership is different. Some people could tolerate your eating a cookie. Some people could tolerate your thinking about a cookie. Some people cannot tolerate your even looking at a cookie. So, you know, every marriage has its own set of rules, and every couple is unique.

What do you do with those feelings, then? If you feel like you really want to cheat, and yet you don't want to cheat and ruin your marriage, what are you supposed to do with that? There are many solutions. One is to talk about it and have an honest conversation. We've been married for 20 years. Do we still feel the same way we did earlier about fidelity and keeping our marital vows? Can we see other people? How are we going to do that? But I would say that life is full of compromises, and there is no perfect solution.

And early on in the book, I say if you're looking for five steps to happiness or a surefire way to have your cake and eat it too, kind of return this book and just get your money back. I'm a psychiatrist. I see people who struggle, and I know that struggle is really part of the human existence. And what I ask people for is to understand the struggle, and I know that struggle is really part of the human existence. And what I ask people for is to understand the struggle, to understand where it comes from biologically, psychologically, culturally, and really try to be compassionate towards themselves and the other.

I know there's no one single answer to this, but if human beings are programmed to want variety, if cheating is so available and possible, why is it so devastating? I mean, I know that seems like an obvious question, but as a psychiatrist, what's your answer? You know, when you look at the research on relationships, what makes a relationship work is not necessarily sexual fidelity, but emotional fidelity. The willingness to have your partners back, to keep your partner first and foremost, and to not betray the trust of your partner, to not, you know, let something else or someone else take your heart away.

If someone in a marriage or relationship believes that infidelity is unforgivable, is it unforgivable? Well, people change. I mean, you have to find out why they feel it's unforgivable. A lot of people feel it's unforgivable because they've been so hurt in the past, or they feel so insecure, or they feel so helpless. A lot of anger and a lot of resentment comes from a place of feeling really helpless in your life and in your marriage. There's a lot of reasons why we feel what we feel, right? And it doesn't always have to do with the other person. It often has to do with us and our background and our predicament and our own psychology. I'm not saying that infidelity is a forgivable offense,

but when someone cannot forgive and forget, there often are other reasons why, and those need to be uncovered and discussed. Well, how do you ever forget? Would you ever forget if your partner cheated on you and they had made a promise that they wouldn't? That is the problem. People don't forget. I have many couples in my practice in which the man or the woman who's cheated on the betrayed partner becomes what I call a surveillance monster. They're constantly checking the emails and constantly going into the other person's personal stuff

and checking their phone and going back to reading through old emails and doing what I call pain shopping, P-A-I-N shopping, where they're just kind of relentlessly going through it. The brain is capable of a little bit of forgetting, but if you reinforce it every day and deluge it with trauma and repeat the trauma, there's less likelihood that you're going to maybe not forget, but at least put it on the back burner.

I can imagine people hearing you say that and think, how could you not do that? How could you not be suspicious going forward? And how could you trust somebody when, in many people's eyes, it's the ultimate betrayal? Yes, when trust has been broken, it's very, very hard to get it back. And that is, in fact, the real dilemma of the betrayed partner. You can never know for sure. There's no test you can give your partner to figure out if they've been cheating.

I mean, what are you going to do? Give them a polygraph test every time they come home? You know, connect them up to electrodes and say, you know, what did you do? And then you don't have a marriage. You have a hostage takeover situation. You know, so you can't really know for sure. And you have to, like many things in life, live with the uncertainty. Or not.

Or not. Or separate. But, you know, the grass is not always greener, looks it. But, you know, in every relationship there's a challenge. And that's why some people rather not know, and I really understand that and respect that. Because once they know, they can't get over it. That grass is always greener thing. I mean, isn't that a big part of this? That is a big pull to a lot of people that no matter what your circumstance, there's always something better and maybe you ought to go look. So we like novelty.

We like newness. We often think the grass is greener and we're biologically primed to do that. Our species has depended on it, has depended on our desire to procreate, even when we're tired from the hunt or weary from the day. So that's a very strong biological imperative. Yeah, well, that need for novelty flies right in the face of this need for social bonding that marriage creates. So you've got two opposing forces here. That's what keeps me in business.

Right. And writing books and showing up on podcasts and all of that. So there's no easy answer for this. But I guess there's comfort in the fact that I think probably everybody struggles with this. Well, I think that's the point. And, you know, it's much, it's very easy to make this an us versus them issue and vilify the, you know, the cheater and vilify the people who are having unfaithful relationships, but it's very, very common. And as I say, you know, 50% of people who are dating cheat, 20% of married people at least cheat. And it depends on what you call cheating, thinking about another person, fantasizing about another

person, or, you know, for better or for worse, new national pastime of watching pornography. You know, some people consider that cheating. So this is something that as humans we have to live with, and in a virtual age, age of the Internet, we have to live with more because cheating is now easier than ever. It's very easy to find a partner. My patients say, you know, they're like rock stars of yesteryear. You know, they have all these options simply because they have a phone.

And they could reach out to people very easily. Or they could get lost in fantasy very easily. Lastly, because you had said, you know, I encourage couples to talk about this, don't you think that even the bringing up of this topic could cause a lot of trouble? Yes. So talking about this is not for everyone. I mean, there are some couples who really can't address it, as they can't address a lot of conflicts.

And that's why I wrote the book, because at least, you know, you could open the book and see that this is not an uncommon phenomenon and that people often struggle with this. There's strong biological reasons. It doesn't excuse the cheater, but there's something to be said for millions of years of evolution which have brought us to the point that not only do we want a family and not only do we want to socially bond, but we also want to procreate and we also want novelty.

And that's a human struggle that I think we have to come to terms with. And as I say at the beginning of the book, I say, you know, if there's six easy steps to happiness, sell this book and I'll buy the one that says six easy steps to happiness because it's not so easy. We have to live with conflict as humans. Now, people may not want to know this, but you have a test on your website that people can take to see if they're likely to cheat. What's the website? It's drkenrosenberg.com. And you'll find a link to the website in the show notes for this episode, as well as a link to his book on Amazon. The book is called Infidelity, Why Men and Women Cheat,

and it is by my guest, Dr. Ken Rosenberg. Thanks, Ken. Appreciate you being here. Thank you so much. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity,

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Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown.

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check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. It seems to me that for as long as I can remember, there has always been in our culture, there has always been this desire to save time, to get more done in less time. So everybody is running around trying to be more productive and get more things done. But it also seems that those people who get more things done quicker then just take on more things to do to fill up the time they saved getting those other things done quicker. Maybe there's a better way to look at time and productivity. And joining me to discuss that is Laura Vanderkam. Laura's been looking at this exact topic for a while now.

She has a great TED Talk called How to Gain Control of Your Free Time. She's written several books on this, including one called What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. And her new book is called Off the Clock, Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done. Hi, Laura. Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. So how do you look at this? I mean, today we have more gadgets, more apps, more virtual assistants, more things that help us get so much done so quickly, and yet we still want to get more done. Are we ever going to get to the point where we can just go, okay, good, that's fine. We're as productive as we need to be.

Or will this just go on? Is it just human nature or something that we must cram more things into less time? Well, the funny thing is people have always felt that they were busy and starved for time, which is sort of funny if you think about back in the day of people being sort of in the same towns their whole lives and not having any of the electronic things that we have. But, you know, people have always felt like they have a lot going on. That's just the sort of nature of life. And they probably did.

I mean, if you consider, like, you know, washing your clothes by hand, milking your own cows, I mean, these things, washing your clothes by hand, milking your own cows, I mean, these things take time. So I think that it's really more about what stories we choose to tell ourselves. And if you walk around with a story that I'm so busy I have no time for anything, then you start to find evidence to support it. But if you walk around with a different story, namely, I have time for the things that are important to me, then you can start to find evidence for that too, and I think that's a much more useful story. I couldn't agree more, because it does seem to me anyway that a lot of people say they're busy,

but when you look closer, it's not that they're really busy doing anything, they're just busy being busy. And a lot of the times when people say, my perception is that when people say, I'm busy, it means I'm too busy to do what you want me to do. In other words, I don't want to do what you want to do, so my excuse is that I'm busy. I totally agree. And you know, every moment has, every life has moments of feeling a bit crazed and busy. It's just whether you choose to make those into your narrative and into your identity. And I think there's certainly something with modern life that we like to talk about how busy we are.

It's a nice way of saying how important we are, but you're not going to walk around being like, I just want to tell you how important I am. And so instead it's like, oh, I'm so busy. Everyone wants a piece of me, both at work and at home. I've got all these demands on my time, which means that the demand for my time is high, which is, again, a way of saying how important we are. Yeah, but it's one thing to tell other people how busy you are because that keeps them out of your life because you're too busy for them. But it's another thing to tell yourself how busy you are when maybe you're not.

And I'm wondering, and you would know, when people are so convinced that they're so busy, is there something else going on? Well, I think that it's sometimes about building up our own sense of self, right? That we want to make sure we feel that our time is in demand, that, you know, if lots of people want our time, then our time must be very valuable. And that's one way to convince ourselves. I think we also just become sort of part of this identity of, you know, a person who has a lot going on. And then when we have open space, sometimes we look for ways to

fill it. And I'm not saying that there aren't times of life that are very busy. I'm sure you have listeners who have, for instance, new babies or who are in a really crunch time at work or possibly even both. These times of life do happen. But certainly looking over the whole of life, they tend to be relatively limited periods of time. And so I think we need to have that broader perspective, both in terms of sort of a micro sense, like I always tell people to look at the whole week instead of any individual day, like there's never going to be enough hours in the day to get to everything, but there probably are enough hours in a week to get to everything. And then also looking over the whole of our lives, like, you know, there's only a few years

where things are truly crunched, and then there are periods of life where things are a little bit less crunched, too. But I think that gets back to priorities as much as it is a time management problem. Because if somebody has something they want to do, and they claim they want to do it, they can find the time in the next week to get it done. So it's like, I'll sometimes ask people to be a guest on this show and people will sometimes say, oh, I'd love to, but I'm booked out for the next three months. And I'm thinking, what? You know, wait a minute. To be a guest on this show, I mean, yeah, it's nice if you are prepared to be a guest, but the interview itself only takes 20 minutes and you do it from your house.

So if you can't find 20 minutes in the next three months, then maybe this is a priority problem more than it's a time management problem. So anyway, if people are feeling that, gosh, I feel so busy, I don't want to feel so busy. What are the strategies that work? What can people do to kind of turn that off? Well, one of the best strategies is not to fill time. What you talked about earlier, some people just like to make themselves busy for the sake of being busy. I think a really good question, whenever people ask you to do something,

and the funny thing is the further it is in the future, the more it feels like we're kind of assigning it to a different person. Like, oh, yeah, it'll never be October. October me won't be busy, right? It's like I can take this on. So in order to actually feel like the real pain of what it will be to have this thing in your schedule, ask yourself if you would do it tomorrow. And if you would do it tomorrow, then great.

If you'd move stuff around or cancel things to make this opportunity fit, you'll probably feel the same way later on. But if your answer would be absolutely no way would I ever do this tomorrow, that's probably what your answer should be for the future too. I think another thing you can just do when you're asked to do something is instead of looking like do I have space on my schedule, first ask if it's the right thing to do. You know, just because you have space on your schedule doesn't mean that you have to say yes to something. And one way to think about this is that some awesome opportunity might come up.

And if your schedule is absolutely jam-packed, you won't be able to take it on. Whereas if you have open space, then you can sort of invite these opportunities into your life. How do people that do this well look at their time? How do they schedule it? How do they prioritize it? How far in advance do they schedule it? And how do they schedule it? Is it, you know, this ends at 12 o'clock, so this starts at 12.01, or is there

space in between? I mean, what does it look like when you're doing what you're talking about well? Well, the first thing it looks like is being clear on what you would like to have in your time. Because, you know, there's all these things that are coming to you, and the question is like, oh, should I do this, this, that people are asking me to do, but you have to start with first, well, what do I think is important for me to be doing? What practical steps could I put into my schedule to take me closer to those goals? And where can I fit those in? And not just professional goals. I mean, I always ask people to make themselves a priority list that has three categories, career, relationships, and self, because it's pretty hard to make a three-category list and then leave one of the categories blank.

So that right there can kind of nudge you to think about what is important to you in all these spheres of life and then consider where these things can go on your calendar. So I think that's the first aspect, is people are incredibly mindful of their time and whether they are making progress toward their goals. What about, though, because my experience is that life is messy and you can plan things great, but then something happens, the car breaks, something happens with your kid in school and you've got to go down for a meeting and you already have a meeting scheduled, and, you know, life gets in the way of your

schedule sometimes. Well, that's one reason not to schedule too tightly and to leave open space, because the more open space you have, the more you can deal with things that are going to come up. Like the fact that things are going to come up is not surprising. You don't necessarily know what those things will be, but they fall into that category of, you know, known unknowns. I think that's quoting Donald Rumsfeld there, but these things that are known unknowns, you don't know what they will be, but you know something will come up. That's almost a sure thing in the course of a full life. So, for instance, one thing you can do is, you know, if you think about your work day, don't schedule eight hours of meetings. As much as possible, maybe only commit four hours of activities,

because that way when stuff comes up, you've got four hours to put it in. Particularly people who have kids and stuff comes up with that. As much as possible, doing all the things that you have to do as close to the start of the week as possible means that when things come up, you've already made progress as opposed to feeling behind. Is there a good strategy, do you think, for how to plan a day? Like, what do you do better in the morning that maybe other things could wait till the afternoon?

Different people have different energy peaks at different times. However, most people are more focused and disciplined in the morning, and then they start getting a little bit more tired in the afternoon. So in general, if you have work that requires a lot of mental focus and discipline, you are better off scheduling that probably around 8, 9 in the morning, right? After you've had that first cup of coffee and you're ready to take on everything, you can put that there. If there is also maybe if it's a meeting that requires a ton of concentration, like you're dealing with a very difficult issue, that might be better done in the morning too. So generally more focused work in the morning,

more give and take type stuff in the afternoon, but always make sure you build in some breaks during the day too so you can manage your energy. It's my experience, well, it's my experience, but also what I've observed with others is that you're more likely to schedule and plan out, you know, work or busy things, school, kids, that kind of thing, but you're less likely to plan, you know, a bike ride or a trip to the beach because, well, that's so frivolous. I know a lot of people don't like the idea of planning their leisure time. Like, that sounds just like a contradiction in terms. But if you're a busy person, like if you've got a lot going on in your life, I mean, your leisure time is too precious to be

totally leisurely about it. And what happens if you don't think about it is that you'll just wind up doing the most effortless things, which tends to be watching television, surfing the web, sort of just puttering around the house. And that can be fine for some of it, but it's not terribly rejuvenating to do any of those things. So you have effortless fun, and then you have the category of effortful fun. Effortful

fun takes some planning, takes some work. It's stuff like meeting friends for dinner or, you know, organizing a picnic with your family. But you tend to enjoy those things so much more and draw so much more energy from them and create great memories by doing them. And so you want to make sure you have a good balance between the effortless fun and the effortful fun. And don't automatically skip the effortful fun just because it seems like a little bit of work. Well, I love your message that so much of this is just the story we tell ourselves that we're so busy when maybe we're not so busy. I find, you know, it's about being intentional about your time. It's about not filling time with things that you don't find important. Oddly enough, it can be about putting adventures into your life

because the more kind of cool, fun, well, as you said, the effortful, fun things you put into your life, the more in control of your time you feel, and thus the more time you feel like you have. And finally, it's also about spending time with friends and family. It turns out that people who spend a lot of time with the people that they enjoy and are close to have a different perception of time than people who don't spend as much time interacting with people in person. What do you mean?

Well, you know, I had 900 busy people track their time for a day, and I asked them questions about how they felt about their time, and I found that the people who felt most starved for time, most stressed and rushed, actually spent more time watching TV and on social media than the people who felt the least stressed. People who felt the least stressed tended to spend more time interacting with human beings in person rather than online. And, you know, the internet's wonderful, but it can't do everything for us. It's really those face-to-face personal interactions, like especially friends and family, that really make us feel like life is good and make us feel like we have the time for the things we want to do. So the more time we invest in those things, the better off we are.

Well, that's really interesting. I'd never thought of that. And what you said about scheduling intentional fun changes your feeling about your busyness. Who would have thought? People have this sense sometimes that time is slipping through their fingers. They can't remember where all the time is going. And part of that, when we say, you know, we don't remember where the time went, we don't know where the time goes, it's that we don't remember where the time went because there was nothing memorable about it. And so this idea of putting in effortful fun is what makes these memories. You know, you think about the memories you have in life,

it is often things like going to a dinner party with a friend or, you know, a special vacation you took or a great concert you went to or even some, you know, professional awards you got, but that took a lot of effort to achieve. I mean, none of these things are effortless, and yet they're so amazing. As we look back on it, these are the things that make up our lives. So you want to try to do a few more of those things, and then maybe a little bit less time of the sort of mindless scrolling around. Well, great. Thanks, Laura. Laura Vanderkam has been my guest. Her book is called Off the Clock, Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done, and you'll find a link to her book at

Amazon in the show notes. Thanks for spending time with us, Laura. Oh, thank you so much. Okay, Laura. Bye. Bye. I'm sure you've been to a convention or a meeting or a seminar or just at your kid's school at a parent's night. You're often presented with a name badge to wear on your chest so people know who you are. So where does that name badge go? Well, even though it's easier for right-handed people to put the name tag on their left side, it should actually go on the right side. And the reason is purely functional. When you're shaking right hand to right hand, the other person has easier eye contact with both you and the name tag if it's on your right side. That way helps the

person remember your name and associate your name with your face, which is the purpose of wearing a name tag in the first place. And that is something you should know. Please remember to subscribe to this podcast, and if you have a moment to leave a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you listen to podcasts, a rating and review is always appreciated. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro,

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