The Liz Moody Podcast - Top Time Expert: You Can Have A Career, Family AND Free Time—Here's How

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi friends, I just wanted to quickly pop in and let you know that I have launched a brand new YouTube channel and I would love your help and support with it. I started a YouTube channel over a year and a half ago without knowing anything about YouTube and it just did not grow like I had dreamed it would if I'm being very honest. But since then, I have learned so much about the YouTube world and I am now so excited to launch the brand new The Liz Moody Podcast channel. I'm sharing lots of YouTube shorts. I'm going ham over there. I'm sharing completely new content only found on YouTube. And then in a couple of weeks, I'll be releasing some YouTube exclusive podcast content, as well as the full video podcast episodes that you all love. You can search Liz Moody TV on YouTube to find or subscribe to my new channel.

Starting point is 00:00:44 That is Liz Moody, T, like the letter T and then the letter V. Thank you so much in advance for checking it out and for subscribing. My goal, I'm just going to put it out there and be honest with you guys, my goal is to get to 100,000 subscribers by the summer and have a real presence over there like the male podcasters all do. And your help is so, so appreciated. All right, now let's get into today's episode. You've probably heard a million different time management strategies by now, but you still feel busy. You still feel exhausted and you don't feel like you have the time to do the things that you love. Today, we are going to change that. I surveyed thousands of Liz Moody podcast listeners and I found that there are four very special.

Starting point is 00:01:26 specific hurdles that basically all of us run into when we are trying all the different time management strategies that are out there. We are burnt out and we're exhausted, so we feel too depleted to actually use the free time that we have. We cannot figure out what to prioritize. Everything feels important. Everything feels necessary. We procrastinate. And we can't figure out how long things actually take. So schedules just fall apart. Today, we're going to talk about exactly how to overcome those hurdles, like pragmatic, actionable steps that work when nothing else has. And then here's the other catch. We are not talking about time management so that you can get more done. We are not on this planet to cram in more productivity until we die. We are talking

Starting point is 00:02:12 about time management so that you can create a life that feels good, a life that is filled with joy and fun and pleasure. My guest today is Laura Vandercombe. She is a time management researcher who has studied thousands of people's real-time logs. She is the best-selling author of multiple books, including her newest big time. And she is somebody who runs a business and has five kids, five kids. And she still finds time to sing and acquire every single week. She does not magically create more hours in a week. She has figured out how to use the hours that we all have.

Starting point is 00:02:47 And today she's going to help you do the same. Welcome to the Liz Moody podcast where we skip past the BN. and get you actual solutions to your real problems so that you can feel as good as possible every single day. We're not going to tell you, you can do it. You got this. We're going to tell you exactly how. Laura Vandercom, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Okay, so we're going to get into so many things. I actually pulled my audience and I found that there were four time management issues that they all had in common. So we're going to get into that. But I want to just start with what feels like your

Starting point is 00:03:21 core thesis to me. I feel like your core thesis is that we all have enough time to do the things that we want to do with our lives, to have fun, to have pleasure, to have joy. But so many of us feel so time compressed, so busy, so exhausted. So what's up with that dissonance? Yeah, well, life is all about the stories that we tell ourselves. And I really do believe that we have enough time for the things that we want to do. We may need to be creative. We need to make some choices. But we can make it work. or smart people, we can figure it out. But if we're walking around telling ourselves this story that we don't have enough time,

Starting point is 00:03:55 then you're constantly approaching life with this sense of time scarcity. And anytime you're rushing for something, anytime you're feeling a little bit behind, you're like, oh, this is life, right? This is how life is, as opposed to noticing other moments where maybe you have a few minutes

Starting point is 00:04:11 where you can just relax and do something fun. And when you have that story of time scarcity, you don't think about how you want to use those moments. And so you do whatever is easiest, which tends to be doom scrolling these days. But we can use that time for other things. And that's what I'm always encouraging people to do. So your idea is that if we change our relationship to time,

Starting point is 00:04:31 we will actually change the way that we approach the time that we have. And then we'll get to do the things that we want with our lives. Absolutely. There are 168 hours in a week. It actually is a lot of time. And many people who have full-time jobs, for instance, are like, oh, I spend my entire life working. It's like, okay, well, it might feel that way

Starting point is 00:04:48 in the middle of a crunched Tuesday work day. But if you're working 50 hours a week and sleeping eight hours a night, so that's 56 hours a week, you've got 62 hours for other things. Like, it's still more time than you're working, right? But we don't see that time. We don't think about it.

Starting point is 00:05:04 We don't notice it because it's not as intense. And so we need to change our relationship so we've seen time from a more holistic perspective. You've tracked your own time a lot. You've tracked thousands of people's time. What surprised you in those results? Our responsibilities, the things we have to do, tend not to take quite as much time as we think they do. And it's human nature to think that the things that we don't want to do take more time than they do.

Starting point is 00:05:30 We also underestimate how much time we spend on the things that we want to do, right? So people pretty close to universally overestimate how many hours they are working. I mean, unless you're getting paid by the hour, if you are, then you know how many hours you're working. But if you aren't, then we tend to overestimate that. We tend to overestimate how much time we spend on housework. I mean, nobody likes emptying the dishwasher, so we think it takes like three hours. It doesn't. Is it because these boring things loom large in our heads? When I clean, I'm like, that took forever. It's because I hated it, kind of. That is actually exactly how time works. So anything that is tedious, boring, unpleasant seems to take a lot longer than it might actually take in real time.

Starting point is 00:06:11 Whereas the things we want to do seem to take less time. Like if you're out for dinner with old friends, the whole evening is going to fly by. You'll look up. The dessert course is gone. You're like, where did all that time go? Well, that could have been just as much time, probably more time than you were cleaning your house. But of course, it felt a lot shorter.

Starting point is 00:06:27 It's so interesting. I've made that connection, especially with the positive stuff. I talk about something called the novelty rule all the time where it's like do novel things so that you slow down time and you remember your life a little bit more. I've never thought about that in terms of retrospectively putting together the narrative where I look back in my week and I'm like, oh, my God, I spent so much time working.

Starting point is 00:06:46 I spent so much time doing chores because that time stretched out and felt longer. So one of the things that I've certainly tried to do in my own life is actively put more little adventures in that are novel and intense, but more fun. Because then you look back on the week. It's not just, oh, I spend all this time working. I spend all this time doing chores. Like, oh, yeah, well, that was the week that I tried that new restaurant I've never been to. That was the week that I went running in a new place.

Starting point is 00:07:14 When you put new little adventures into your life, you create more memories. And memories is what makes time seem to slow down. I also want to establish your bona fides. You run a business. You have five kids, yes. That is so many kids. That's a lot of kids. It does seem like a lot of kids sometimes.

Starting point is 00:07:29 And you still have free time. We're going to get into so many specific strategies. But at the beginning of this episode, I want you to speak to the person who's like, I really don't have free time. Like you don't understand. I heard from so many listeners who are like, if you have kids, you cannot do time management. they make it impossible.

Starting point is 00:07:44 If you have kids in a full-time job, blah, blah, blah. Speak to the person who's like, I swear to you, Laura, I do not have free time. I get it that everyone feels overwhelmed at times. But I want you to just try to keep an open mind. One of the best things you can do, and we'll talk more about this, I'm sure, is to try keeping track of your time for a week. Because I have found in my research that when people do this, they can often change many of the catastrophic stories that they are telling themselves.

Starting point is 00:08:12 they see that work doesn't take all their time. They see that they are spending quality time with their families. They see that there is some discretionary time. It may not be as much time as they want. I totally buy that. But it isn't zero either. And we can celebrate the time that is there and maybe make some choices that allow us to have more time in the long run.

Starting point is 00:08:33 Why am I so adverse to time tracking? I don't know if you've ever worked in a, you know, like legal or accounting type field. Some people have done that and they've been scarred for life. by the experience and I'm like, please don't ever make me track time. I had to bill my time in six minute increments for years and I don't want to do that ever again. But even people in those fields, it's like, okay, I want people to track their time because one of the reasons lawyers and accountants feel like they are working all the time is because they are so aware of their time at work,

Starting point is 00:09:01 because it is documented in six minute increments. We don't do that with our personal time, which is one reason that we feel like we don't have any personal time. It doesn't have anywhere near that same level of intention. Now, I'm not suggesting that people log every six minutes for the rest of their lives. I have tracked my time for 11 years. I did it in half hour increments. And what that just means is I check in about three times a day. And I write down what I did since the last time I checked in. I can usually remember a couple of hours. And if it goes a little longer, I'll approximate. So it doesn't have to be perfect. But I've been doing this for 11 years now. It is not onerous at all. It feels like brushing my teeth. But it has given me an awareness of my time

Starting point is 00:09:41 that has given me this perspective of time abundance that I'm hoping to share with everyone else. I want to know why it sounds so terrible. Because it's something that I hear from you a lot. I've heard from other time management experts and everybody's like, okay, just like see where your time is going. I love the idea that we value what we measure essentially, like that measurement looms large in our brain. And so if we're only measuring time at work and we're not measuring our leisure time, we're not putting that same value on our leisure time. But I'm like, what's my hurdle? Like, why does this sound just like the worst thing to do, even though I understand its value? I think sometimes it's also about experimenting with the tool.

Starting point is 00:10:18 So I have tracked my time on weekly spreadsheets. A lot of people hear the word spreadsheet and their eyes glaze over there. That's me. I will never do this. I will never do this. But there's lots of time tracking apps on the market, and some of them are very low touch. You just click, like, when you start an activity and then click and start another activity and you fill in the data later or it guesses based on your location.

Starting point is 00:10:37 Are there any that you like? Well, some people have used toggle, which is T-O-G-G-G-E. There's a free version of it. That's a good one to start because there is a free version. And if you're making the case that we should be tracking our time, is the goal that we see how much free time we have, is the goal that we see where we are wasting time? What would you hope people would be reflecting on at the end of this exercise? You don't need to worry that you'll find out your wasting time. Everybody waste time. I mean, that is not the goal of this. I waste tons of time. I can tell you after 11 years of time tracking, there is wasted time on every single log when I look back on my week. It is really not about figuring out how much time we are wasting. It is about knowing that the truth sets us free. We want to make sure that the stories we are telling ourselves about our lives are actually true, right?

Starting point is 00:11:19 Because people are like, well, I want to spend my time better. But if you don't know where the time is going now, I mean, how do you even know if you're changing the right thing, right? You wouldn't make any business decision with no data. You wouldn't make any sort of research or scientific decision with no data. You want to have the data so you can know what is taking a lot of time, what isn't taking a lot of time, how do I feel about those things, approach it with a spirit of curiosity. Okay, so I pulled my listeners. I surveyed thousands of people. I asked people what were

Starting point is 00:11:46 their biggest challenges with time management, and they really fell into four categories. So let's get into those. The first thing is people just felt too burnt out and exhausted to take advantage of the time that they have. So if we have all of this free time ostensibly, why do we feel so exhausted and burnt out? So one of the problems with many people's schedules is that our free time comes at moments when we have low energy or we are less prepared to use the time. So for instance, you mentioned a lot of people talking about kids and feeling like they had no free time once they had kids. People with young kids often are able to get the kids to bed on the earlier side. And then you've got this time after the kids go to bed. But of course, you're so exhausted from having battled to get the kids

Starting point is 00:12:29 to bed that you don't feel like doing anything except sort of lying on the couch. And maybe you and your partner are lying on the couch together, like scrolling around online where there's something on the TV. You know, this describes. a lot of evenings that many of us have spent. And yes, we have very limited energy at that time of day. But we might think of like, well, what are some fun things that don't require a ton of energy that I might want to do instead? So as an example, I've started doing puzzles. I hate a puzzle. Easy puzzles. I fell into the trap. The first like few puzzles I tried had like 200 pieces of blue sky and I'm like, I hate this. But fortunately, I kept going. I got smaller puzzles. I got puzzles with

Starting point is 00:13:08 brighter artwork, like terrible art, but good puzzles. But you can't, like, make the argument that a puzzle is as engaging as watching a TV show. And these days, our attention spans are so messed with that even a TV show is kind of too boring for many of us. Like, we're watching the TV show and we're scrolling on our phone at the same time. So how do you not just get so bored when you're doing a puzzle? Yeah. Well, I think in general, we want to approach our leisure time, knowing that it might happen

Starting point is 00:13:34 and having some intention for how we might want to use it. And so maybe that's making a list of things that you would like to do at a moment when you have more energy. So you can brainstorm that list. And so when you get to the moment, you're like, oh, I like to read e-books. It's just as easy as opening Instagram on my phone, right? I can just open the Kindle app and read a good book. So maybe that's something you'd want to do. But one of the things you can also do is try to manage your energy so that you are having more of your better hours.

Starting point is 00:14:04 during your leisure time. And I think some of this is about if you have an intention for the evening, you tend to manage your energy towards it, maybe a couple that doesn't have young kids, for instance, wants to play a board game with the neighbors. Like, if you go into your evening knowing that's what you're planning on doing, like, you'll manage your energy so you're excited about it, you're going into it, like you'll have a great time. But you're not going to get home from work at 630 and magically be like, I know what, let's go have a party with the neighbors playing a board game. Like, that doesn't happen, right? You have to have the intention going into it. And then you can manage your energy to make it work. You're almost suggesting that a big part of the energy

Starting point is 00:14:39 equation is the startup cost, the decision fatigue, and you're saying take that out of it, and perhaps you'll actually have the energy for the fun thing. Absolutely. One of the reasons people wind up losing big chunks of their weekend, which is another potential leisure time that we could be enjoying, is you wake up on Saturday morning not knowing what you're going to do. And I'm all for spontaneity, but sometimes we need to at least have an initial plan that they spontaneity can then happen in conjunction with that, like, let's go hike in that park that's an hour away. We'll go on this trail that people have said is really good. And then maybe something cool and serendipitous will happen after that. Like you'll stop at a fun little farm

Starting point is 00:15:16 stand you see on the way back. You'll find a neat restaurant that you want to go to or, you know, maybe it's a cool overlook that you can see. But you still had the initial event that was an intention. And so you're able to use your weekend as opposed to waking up Saturday morning and be, what do you want to do? I don't know. What do you want to do? I don't want to do anything and then just sit around. The other tip that this reminds me of yours that I love is to have committed plans on weekdays that you can carve out this time for yourself. So I know you're in a choir, correct?

Starting point is 00:15:44 Yes. Talk to us about why having this committed plan is different than being like, I'm going to hang out and read or I'm going to take care of myself during this time. Yeah, I think everybody needs something in their life that is not work and is not caring for family members. It is something that is intrinsically enjoyable for you. and makes you feel like a whole person, right? Like you have a broader identity than just that you are an employee or a mom or a wife or a husband or anything else. So something that is unique to you that you love.

Starting point is 00:16:15 And people hear that for me and they're like, yes, I like to read. I like to take bubble baths. I need to spend more time taking bubble baths or something like that. That's going to be my self-care. I'm like, okay, well, the problem with that sort of leisure time and me time, it can be great. But if that's your thing, it can happen at any point. And it doesn't have any particular claim on a schedule. Like if your manager wants you to work late, you're not going to be like, well, no, tonight was my reading night.

Starting point is 00:16:43 You know, if your spouse needs to go do something and you've got the kids, you're not going to be like hauling in a favor from a friend or texting a babysitter because, you know, tonight's my reading night. So it won't happen. Whereas if you have a commitment, especially one that involves leaving the house and that, involves other people, you will do it. So seven o'clock on Thursday nights, I'm at choir practice. There's nothing flexible about it. It's not bending for everyone else. There are people expecting me to be there. And so I go. It rises up the hierarchy in my schedule and everything else fits around it. And so that's how self-care actually happens as opposed to, you know, I want to take more bubble baths. Well, your bathtub isn't going anywhere. What immediately occurred to me when I first heard

Starting point is 00:17:29 you say this, is that male hobbies tend to have this inherently built into them. And female hobbies, like the bubble bath or the reading or whatever, often don't. So like, if you've set up your golf game for the weekend, you've got to be there. You've booked the quarter to the tea time or whatever they're doing. And like you've committed to your friends or there's a game on and it's on at a certain time. And I know that I'm doing some gender stereotyping here. But I do think there's something interesting about women's hobbies having more flexibility sometimes and thus those being the first ones to get pushed aside when anything else comes up. Yeah. A lot of people think flexibility and a schedule is inherently a virtue. It can be. But the problem is when things are infinitely flexible,

Starting point is 00:18:12 I mean, if they can happen at any point, they will happen at no point unless you are very good at pushing back and setting boundaries and a lot of people aren't. Whereas an appointment, something you are expected to be at at a certain time, you make happen. What pushback do you get from people when you say, perhaps you could put this two-hour appointment on your calendar for yourself? Well, the first thing, of course, is I don't have anyone to watch my kids, right? So you mentioned that you have a lot of busy parents watching this. So one thing I always suggest is if you are in a two-parent household, you actually sit down and have a conversation with your other half of like, hey, both of us feel like we are not getting enough time for our interests. We both have things we would like to do in our lives, and we are not getting enough time.

Starting point is 00:18:53 What if we trade off? Each of us gets one night a week to go do something that we want to do. Maybe it's playing a pickleball league, sing in a choir, maybe it's a friend's outing that you want to do every week, go with your running club. I take Tuesday night, you take Thursday night.

Starting point is 00:19:07 You might be surprised at how excited your other half will be about this. Now, I know that doesn't describe all families, but maybe there's some other adult in your life that you could work out a similar swap with. There's a relative, a neighbor, a friend, you know, that you take Thursday night, they take Tuesday night.

Starting point is 00:19:21 Sometimes people have unpredictable works, schedules, and I get that. But you could try tracking your time and seeing if there is any level of predictability to it. Maybe it's that Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, you're often working late, but Thursday is more open. A lot of work weeks have more of a push at the beginning, and they're slower toward the end. So maybe it's something you could commit to on Thursday night, but it maybe doesn't have to be a night. Maybe it's that your time is going to be a Friday morning thing that you've managed to make work or a Saturday morning thing that you have managed to make work, but something that you can commit to that is not work, is not caring for family. And yet,

Starting point is 00:19:57 some people really do believe that the world will stop if they take two hours away from their responsibilities. And I get it. Like, sometimes people are doing really challenging things. You know, I've had readers who are, you know, caring for ill family members. And, you know, you can't just leave them. And I'm not suggesting that. But what would happen to that person if you had an emergency? Like, I mean, you need some sort of backup, right? And if you can figure out a backup for if something terrible happened to you, then maybe you can figure out a backup for two hours on a Tuesday night. I don't know quite how to articulate this, but one thing I feel like we're talking about is this tension between the things I have to do and the things that I get to do.

Starting point is 00:20:35 And you're saying you actually have more time to do the things you get to do than you think. And I feel like we live in a moment where the have-toes are kind of like piling up more and more and more. So you need to be working out in this way for this long. You need to be. meal prepping and you need to be having your house look a certain way so that it looks good on social or if somebody you drop by or whatever. And then we're also working full-time jobs. Some people have kids. Some people don't. But it does feel like the have-to list just keep stacking up and up and up. Did that show up in any of your time data that you were analyzing or looking at? Well, I would respectfully say that a lot of that is a choice. We shouldn't confuse

Starting point is 00:21:17 things that are hobbies or necessities. And there are certain things that are necessities at some level, but rise more to hobbies when we spend a lot of time on them. So it is possible to eat fairly simply. If you want to eat more elaborately, that's exciting for you, but that is more of a hobby than a necessity, as long as you and your family are eating reasonably healthy meals. Same thing with home decor. You know, I love a good Instagram shot like anyone else, but that is either your business of content creation or a hobby that you enjoy posting photos, I think a minimum level of cleanliness. So it's orderly enough for people to live their lives without a big problem.

Starting point is 00:21:58 It takes less time than the Instagram level. Actually, it brings me to the second thing that I hear from listeners all the time, which is a prioritization issue. So a lot of listeners said things like, I cannot for the life of me figure out what's top priority. Everything feels like it's top priority. Somebody else said so many things feel like priority. already that I get frozen and I do nothing, how can we figure out what we should actually be

Starting point is 00:22:21 prioritizing and what we can let go of? So I suggest that all people, I mean, especially busy people, create a regular weekly planning time. Some point in your calendar where you kind of step outside the flow of time and ask yourself what you want the next week to look like. What would make the next week good? Like what would make it feel satisfying if you got to the end of it. Good or like I got to get this done this done this done this done? Well, there's an overlap between the two, right? We want to satisfying might be the right word. Like satisfying is I made progress on my big professional goals. I made progress on my relationship goals. I made progress on my personal goals. Right. Those are the three domains that a lot of people could sort of organize their

Starting point is 00:23:07 lives into. But looking forward to the next week, what would I most like to see happen in my professional life? What would it feel like a really good week? with my friends and family, what would make this next week feel like a really good week? And then for myself, what would make me feel like I hit it out of the park this week? And you set aside a little bit of time to do that. And you look at your calendar. You say, well, where can those things go, right? Because there's probably other stuff happening in the week as well.

Starting point is 00:23:38 But you want to get a grip on what's going on in the week and what space is available and where you can put these priorities if they're not already on your calendar in various forms. And then when you get to your weekly planning time again the next week, do a quick look back. Did it happen? Did it not? If it didn't, what can we learn from that? Again, we're approaching this with the spirit of curiosity. And if it didn't, maybe it's that the goal was too ambitious. Maybe it's that stuff came up, but stuff always comes up. So we need to build a schedule that allows for stuff to come up. And if it did, we can celebrate and then we can, you know, move forward and set our goals for the next week. How big should these goals be? So like with professional goals, I'm thinking I'm writing a book

Starting point is 00:24:13 right now, would it be like, I want to do X words for this book? Or is it like, I want to nail the presentation I have on Wednesday? Like for professional goals specifically, what size should they be? Well, both of those would be good goals for the next week. That maybe, you know, if you have a big presentation next week, you are not also probably going to write like 10,000 words, right? Okay. So you're already trying to figure out, you know, within the time that is available, what would be reasonable for me to do and yet feels satisfying? So if, if you're already trying to If I'm looking at my list and I say, okay, I've got this big presentation. What that means is not only am I nailing it on Wednesday when I'm giving it, I want to make sure that I carve out an hour on Monday and Tuesday to run through it before, so I troubleshoot.

Starting point is 00:24:54 If you know that's your priority, then you are more motivated to find time to devote to that priority. But then knowing that you're carving out that hour, maybe you're going to turn down the word count that you're expecting of yourself a little bit. Maybe this week is more of like a 2,000 word count kind of week. and then you look and see, well, where roughly am I going to be doing that? And you can do this with your personal goals as well. I mean, just knowing that something is on your calendar and it is a priority can encourage you to treat it with more respect when I was doing my weekly planning, looking forward to the next week.

Starting point is 00:25:26 One of the things that's on my calendar that's a personal priority is my youngest child's parent teacher conference. And you can approach that as just like, okay, I got to be there and see how he's doing and look with concern at, you know, any problematic drawings he's done or, you know, should he be writing his A's better or whatever? But I could also think about, okay, well, maybe my husband and I should chat before that about what we want to talk about with the teacher. And so then we go in with the questions we want to ask and we make the most of that time

Starting point is 00:25:57 that we have and how are we going to talk about it with our kid after? And, you know, by approaching it that way, we elevate its status and the week to treat it as a priority. You're not trying to like shove in like, oh, wait, we should chat about this in the car on the way over and now we're already feeling rushed. I don't know what to call what you're saying, but is this interesting thing of like by forcing yourself to pick one thing saying that's going to be my needle mover for this week. That's going to make this week feel really good. And then saying, what do I actually need to get there? You're not rushed and harried and struggling to hit that thing because you're planning backwards towards that one thing. And that is the wonderful thing about planning in weeks because a week is short enough and close enough.

Starting point is 00:26:37 that you can see what's coming up, right? Most of us are not going to be completely blindsided by what is happening in the next week. However, it is long enough that we can view time more holistically. Like if we know we have this big presentation on Wednesday, we can think, well, what needs to happen before Wednesday? I need to carve out time Monday and Tuesday to practice. When you get to Wednesday, you're not feeling frantic like I didn't prepare as much as I want. Knowing I have this parent-teacher conference on Friday, I know, well, I need to chat with my husband before Friday about this. And so we go into it with a plan. And I make sure that those things happen. And the whole week feels a lot more calm. And also what I really like about this, I had Cal Newport, who wrote the book

Starting point is 00:27:17 Deep Work on the podcast and a bunch of other really phenomenal books. And he talks a lot about the difference between being busy and being productive. And a lot of us spend a lot of time being busy, like responding to a million emails, but not actually moving the ball forward on the things that matter to us. And by sitting down and saying, what is the one thing that would matter to me this week? You kind of give yourself a little buffer against spending your entire week being busy but not productive. And you'll keep moving forward on everything if you do this. The problem is if you set a goal to do this presentation and to write 10,000 words and to do some other big thing professionally, you're probably not going to get to all of it. And then you're going to feel bad

Starting point is 00:27:57 at the end of the week. And you're going to have to re put it on for next week or something. Whereas if you set more limited goals, you can actually achieve them, and then you can move forward and set new goals and keep making progress. Did you know that more than two-thirds of protein powders tested have lead levels above California's Prop 65 safety limits? And in some cases, they have more than 10 times over. And a broader study found that nearly half of top-selling U.S. protein powders exceeded those safety limits with more than 20% clocking in at twice the allowed levels. This is so important because protein is something that a lot of us consume every single day, trying to be healthier, and then we're consuming something that's actually making us less healthy. A huge wellness tenant that I talk about is pay attention to the stuff that you do a lot, like every single day. The occasional stuff does not matter nearly as much, but that's why protein powder matters a lot.

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Starting point is 00:29:20 There's bourbon vanilla, which has real vanilla seeds from Madagascar, and dark chocolate, which has organic cocoa powder. I also just really quick because I do take this every single day. I want to shout out their creatine. I take it every single morning for my brain health. I have an entire episode about creatine if you want to dive further into that, but TLDR, the hype is very real and very justified based on the research. And then I also take their fish oil, which has the specific ratio of DHA and EPA that my RD said is best for inflammation and for brain health. And again, if you're taking these things daily, you want them to be as pure as possible, which is what Puri's whole brand is all about. Right now, you can get 32% off of

Starting point is 00:30:01 your Puri grass-fed way when you start a subscription, plus a free shaker worth $25 on your first order, totaling $49 in savings. Go to Puri.com slash Liz Moody and use code Liz Moody at checkout for this exclusive offer. You're going to get a discount on any of their products if you use code Liz Moody, but then this is an extra special offer. So go to Puri.com and use code Liz Moody. The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like if it's off gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life. And most conventional mattresses are loaded with synthetic foams, flame retardants, microplastics, and more.

Starting point is 00:30:40 Plus, if it's not comfy, you're going to be tossing and turning. You're going to be really hot. And sleep is the foundation of health. It is so important. Because of all of this, if I were not going to invest in any other part of my house, no other things in my house, I would invest in my mattress. And in fact, I have four years well before I had much money to spend on any of these things because it is such a big needle mover.

Starting point is 00:31:02 The birch mattress is incredible. It is made with organic cotton, natural latex, and ethically sourced wool. So it has literally no off-gassing. You can not smell anything right when you unbox it. It has no micropastics, no synthetic foams or flame retardants. And the wool makes it so breathable, which if you've listened to this podcast for more than five minutes, you know that I run very, very hot. Like I am a furnace. Zach has basically accepted that sleeping next to me is like sleeping next to like a little fire. And the birch mattress has been a

Starting point is 00:31:35 game changer for that. It's made me sleep so much better. Like I can see my sleep score going up because I'm not hot all night long. It's also hypoallergenic, which is really worth paying attention to if you find yourself waking up stuffy or congested. Dust mites in a conventional mattress can actually impact your breathing and your sleep quality without you even realizing it. And again, we need to need to be able to breathe to get good sleep and getting good sleep is the foundation of our health. And then comfort-wise, Zach sleeps on his back and then I sleep on my side and my stomach. So we have two completely different sleep styles and we both wake up feeling really good, no aches and pains. CNN actually named the Birch mattress, the best mattress for side sleepers

Starting point is 00:32:15 and Wired named it the best organic mattress period. So there you go. Birch has options for every kind of sleeper in your household. They have three firmness layers. I like the Lux Natural, which is the medium one. And then parents, they even have a Birch Kids natural mattress. Birch ships right to your door. It sets up in minutes and it comes with 120 night risk-free trial. So if it is not for you, they will pick it up for free. You have nothing to lose here.

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Starting point is 00:33:15 I think with emails, some of this is more self-imposed with instant responses to messages. Is possible that your boss wants you to respond instant? It's also possible that he or she might not notice if you have a slight delay, like 30 minutes. And it is such a gift to yourself to give yourself 30 minutes out of your inbox to focus on other things and then check. And there are a million reasons. Somebody might not have responded to something in 30 minutes. I mean, you could have been driving. You could have been in the bathroom.

Starting point is 00:33:42 If you're getting back to people within an hour even, like you're very responsive. It's just that you're not constantly in your inbox. So you could be responsive without being immediately responsive. I would also say that on the personal front, one of the traps people fall into is because you can do things. You do. And this may be that people have inadequate child care. It doesn't really work to work and to also be trying to watch your children. The kids are going to be upset.

Starting point is 00:34:16 You're going to feel frazzled. You're not going to make as much progress on your work as you would have. It would have been better to, you know, even if you're working from home, hire the, after school sitter to come be there from three to five while you calmly finish your work day and then you can give your full focus to your family when you sign off from work as opposed to multitasking from three to five trying to meet everyone's needs at once. It's such an interesting sentiment just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it. Like just because it is literally technically possible does not mean that it is actually helpful in that situation. That's very permission

Starting point is 00:34:47 giving. What else do you see people get wrong about prioritization? The things that are shouting loudest at us are not always the things that we truly need to do first. And sometimes people have a hard time not responding to stuff that is demanding a response. But if you can even push forward when you engage with that a little bit further, then you will buy yourself more time for focusing on bigger things. So during a work day, for instance, if you look at the upcoming day, and let's say you have three larger tasks that you want to do, and, you know, they all will take about an hour. If you have your first meeting at 10, if you roll in at 9 and start checking email, putting out fires, you won't get to do any of those big tasks until after the meeting is done,

Starting point is 00:35:35 at which point some other things might have come up. Whereas if you decide to tackle that thing first, and maybe you even come into work at like 8.30 and do the task for an hour and then have 30 minutes to prep for that 10 o'clock meeting, maybe you'll be able to leave earlier because you got through that thing as opposed to needing to do it at 4 o'clock once everything is calmed down and then it takes longer than you want because you're tired. Why are we all in the habit of just checking our email first thing? Because I know that it takes like the least amount of my mental energy. I'm wasting my best thinking hours, but it's still the first thing I do. Well, it's open loops. It's communication. We're social creatures. I mean, we want to know and we don't want to feel like we're out of the loop on something.

Starting point is 00:36:15 It's also like a little dopamine hit. A little dopamine hit for sure. Yeah, there's something to like maybe today I got the email. that will change my life. It's true. It's like a lottery. Which has never happened. I've got some awesome emails in my life. There have been a few, but not enough. It's an intermittent reward.

Starting point is 00:36:30 It's a very intermittent reward for sure. But I'm not saying don't check your email. It's just you want to do it at a time that works best for you. And it's generally something that can go in low energy times or small pockets of time. So if you have bigger chunks of time, you want to use that for what it's best suited for. What if our boss or our partner or our families want us to prioritize some, different than we want to prioritize for ourselves. Well, life is an ongoing negotiation. And you won't get everything you want, but if you don't ask for what you want, you will get

Starting point is 00:37:01 none of what you want, probably. So it's worth having a conversation about it with the idea that we're all in this together. Presumably your manager wants you to get great things done. Presumably your partner wants to have a happy life with you. Presumably your children want you to be a fun parent. There are things that have to happen for those happy, one things to occur, and some of that is you having boundaries around your time. One listener wrote in, I often find I can't get in the mental state to do the hard things until some of the smaller things are taken care of and out of my mind, like getting the kitchen cleaned up or decluttering my desk.

Starting point is 00:37:36 But by the time I do those things, there's no time left for the hard stuff. So how do we overcome that hurdle? Yeah, this is so common. The phrase I've heard is like clearing the decks, right? And this is a naval warfare practice apparently, like in the 1800s when you have these big naval ships that we're having these big battles. You have to tie down everything on the deck before you go into the battle. Oh, interesting. Because otherwise, stuff's flying around. Makes sense. But we are not fighting in 19th century naval war battle. So with that in mind,

Starting point is 00:38:08 the problem is we all run out of steam. And so when you devote a lot of that energy to decluttering your desk, cleaning the kitchen before you settle down to work, you won't have the energy to do the difficult things. I know it's hard. One thing I do, I recommend creating a batching time for lots of little tasks. And if a task occurs to you

Starting point is 00:38:30 at some other point that you would like to do, just write it on a list. Like I call it the later list. And it's like, I know that task is there. I'm not going to forget it now, so I don't have to keep thinking about it. But I don't have to stop what I'm doing right now to go do it.

Starting point is 00:38:43 I'm going to put it on the later list and then at some time later, when it's a low energy chunk of time, I will get through all of those things. As for the clutter, I don't know. This is maybe one of these things, especially women have been socialized, that you're not allowed to do anything

Starting point is 00:38:57 if your house is a mess, which I'm not sure how many men suffer from that delusion that, you know, life begins only when you put your house in order. I think a lot of women feel like it's a reflection of their value as a person or their capabilities or people are judging them more for it than men feel. Especially if you're working from home, this can be a big problem

Starting point is 00:39:14 because then you never get to your work. So if you can set up some space that is designated for your work, you really, really should. Take over one of your kids' bedrooms, you know, or kick them out of it. Get a spot in the basement. But some space that is just for your work where you can close the door and it can stay in this pristine state that will not be altered. As for just relaxing at the house, if you can't relax if your house is a mess, maybe you can just clean one room and shut the door and sit in there. I feel like all the people who are like clean people are sitting there and they're like, I can feel. I can feel the clutter. I can feel the clutter in my living room, even if I'm in my pristine

Starting point is 00:39:50 bedroom with the door shut. I mean, I will say as a very messy person, I have had many, many people over to my house when it is disgusting and nobody's ever judged me for it. Like, I still have friends. Maybe they judge me. They never say anything. Maybe they've gotten over it, right? They've gotten over it. Like, I still have very strong friendships with the people who have seen my house in a state of disarray. So I think if we can maybe loosen our reins on that story a little bit, it might free up some time. Have you heard of the? expression eating the frog? I have. So for people who aren't familiar, there's this idea of like, do the hardest thing first. Eat the frog in the morning and then you have this, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:40:24 like wave of energy or whatever to go about the rest of your day. And then there's this other camp of time management experts who are like, no, do a few little things, get some winds under your belt. And then you'll be able to go about the rest of your day. What's your take? I think you have to know yourself. In general, people have more discipline and focus earlier in the day before we spend the day making difficult decisions, dealing with challenging people, all of which takes a little bit of that discipline and focus. And so we are depleted later in the day. So we should eat the frog. Probably. Now, that said, maybe you've got a schedule where you only have 20 minutes first thing in the morning and then you have something you have to do that's time specific. So if that's the case,

Starting point is 00:41:04 then probably you want to do a bunch of little tasks in that 20 minutes and do your frog eating after whatever scheduled event you have first. I mean, you have to know your own schedule and know yourself. But if you are not as productive as you want to be and you've been following one of these approaches, maybe it's time to try the other one. I also heard this from a lot of people with like the have to do, want to do kind of crossover stuff. Like people are like, oh, I want to do a workout at the end of my day, but I lose motivation by then. Is there any ways that we can re-up our motivation stores throughout the day? Well, I think going into the evening, thinking about what you want to do in the evening and also managing your energy so that you

Starting point is 00:41:40 have the evening. I mean, for many people, If you're going to work out, it's going to need to be a stop on the way home from work, for instance, because once you go home, it's over. You're not getting back out. It's such, no, I mean, like you say it almost as if it's a given. And I think that that immediately rings true to me and probably to many people listening. And yet we're like, no, but I can just go home this way. I can just go home and change. And I can go eat a little dinner.

Starting point is 00:42:03 I'll watch a show. And then I'll go back out. And then, of course, it never happens. It never happens. Now, if you have a treadmill in your basement that you are willing to use, I mean, maybe there's some way you can bribe yourself, like you watch your favorite show on the treadmill, you know, that maybe that will work for you, or maybe it's that you like lower key workouts in the evening. One thing I've been doing a lot lately to reset my energy for the evening is going out a 5 p.m. walk. Physical activity is a known

Starting point is 00:42:25 mood and energy booster. And it's a good reset for the end of the day. It's like, okay, workday is over. And now I am giving myself more energy so I can go into the evening as a person with energy. And so I can enjoy this time as opposed to feeling so depleted through all of it. Yeah, I like that as a one-to punch of like plan your evenings with intention so that you don't need to waste the startup cost, the discipline, the decision-making all of that by the time you get to the evenings. And then on top of that boost your energy with a little five-minute walk. And then maybe that will get you over that hump of like, I'm just going to lay down and scroll because everything else feels so hard right now. Exactly. Yeah, I love that. Are there other

Starting point is 00:43:05 roadblocks that you see people run into when trying to do harder things specifically, where they're kind of wasting time because they don't want to do that hard thing? Procrastination is a challenge for all of us. I think one of the biggest problems there is people haven't broken whatever big project they're doing into small enough steps. And that is a skill like anything else to break a giant project into very doable steps that you feel very limited resistance to doing. So if it's a giant presentation you need to pull together, you can think about, well, what is a step? You know, maybe it's that I'm just going to put my bio on the slide, right, with my picture. That's very easy. Or I know the title of the presentation. I'm going to create that slide. Oh, I could just do a

Starting point is 00:43:49 little bit of the outline. And next thing you know, it's going. But each of those have been very doable steps and you don't feel so much resistance to something that is a concrete action. It's when we don't know what to do that we procrastinate. Like, do my taxes. Like, that's undoable. What does that even mean? Whereas pull together all my business credit card statements. Okay, that is a step I can do. So would that be something when we're making our plan of our like personal goal work? What was the third goal?

Starting point is 00:44:16 Professional relationships and self. Okay. So when we're making our plan for maybe that's our self one is to do our taxes that week. That doesn't sound like a fun self goal, but okay. But would we're making our plan for the week make it as specific as we possibly can? Yes. Even if the goal for the week is, you know, sending my stuff into the accountant, that needs to be broken down into steps that would need to happen for it to be usable for set accountant.

Starting point is 00:44:38 That was the third thing that I heard from listeners over and over and over in terms of time management struggles was procrastination. People are like, I make a plan and then I waste so much time procrastinating that I fall off of every single thing that I have scheduled on my plan. Why do we procrastinate and how can we begin to break that cycle? So in addition to the problem of not breaking stuff down into small enough steps, I would suggest that sometimes people don't want to do the thing that they are procrastinating. Yeah, I don't want to do a lot of stuff that I'm supposed to do all day. If I'm being honest, like, I really don't. Well, I got to. Well, sometimes we do and sometimes we don't, right? And so I think it's important to step back and recognize this.

Starting point is 00:45:18 Many things are not required over the long call. Now, that doesn't mean we get out of doing something that we have agreed to do now. But if you are truly dreading, pushing forward something that is like a work project, that is a message to you that that's not the kind of project you really want to be doing. And again, you don't get out of it this time. But finishing this project may be the first step toward a life where you don't have to do that in the future because you are going to work to negotiate for different projects. You're going to try to get yourself assigned to a different place within your organization. You are going to be meeting with your manager and saying, hey, this other project I did six months ago, I think really leveraged my skills. I would like to be. You would like,

Starting point is 00:46:02 to do more of that, right? And so you can get to a place where you don't have as many of those things that you are dreading. Use procrastination as information. As information. I love that. Okay, so can you do that for like, I procrastinate before I do my workout every single day? Well, it's possible you don't like your workout. I mean, maybe you do. Maybe it just requires that little initiation. And once you're in it, you're like, yay, this is the best thing ever. We live in this world where we have been given so many incredibly easy ways to spend our time. Like, it is so much easier for me to lay there and scroll on social media and just, like, have the hours fly by than it is for me to get my butt up and, like, go and do some lunges.

Starting point is 00:46:40 Yeah. Well, you can remind yourself of how you have felt in a mere 20 minutes, right? And you're like, I am 20 minutes away from feeling on top of the world if I just go get started on this workout. But if people are feeling over and over again, like, they just don't want to do the workout many times they are not doing it because they are dreading it. Then there are many, many ways to exercise in this world. And maybe you can find one that you dread less.

Starting point is 00:47:05 Maybe you can tie it to something that you truly love to do. I mean, if it's running or walking with a friend, for instance, you know, that's the only way you're going to see your busy friend because she doesn't have time for anything except meeting you to exercise. Well, now you're a lot more motivated. Is there anything in your life that you wanted to have become a habit and you struggled to make it a habit and then you like hacked your way into turning into a habit? I, like many people, have put off strength training

Starting point is 00:47:29 until I became more of a lady of a certain age who has been told that I need to do it for my bones and such things. So a couple of years ago, I wound up hiring a trainer who I meet with virtually once a week. So I know I'm going to do it at least once a week. And I'm also kind of a frugal person. So rather than hiring him multiple times a week, I just remember what he had me do and do it again

Starting point is 00:47:53 because, you know, different things motivate different people. Yeah. Well, and to the frugality point, signing up for something where you'll lose money, I assume if you cancel it, is a great way to keep a commitment. It's a great way to keep a commitment. So, yeah, if you want to, you know, play an instrument more, like sign up for lessons in a place that has a very strict, like, 24-hour cancellation policy because you will find a way to be done with that work project

Starting point is 00:48:15 to get to your 6.30 p.m. flute lesson if you're going to lose your money. Yeah, I have such an aversion to losing money. Okay, so when we're procrastinating, first of all, we're using that as valuable information. Second of all, in the moment, we're maybe picturing what will I feel like on the other side of this thing. Is there anything else that like when we're laying there and we're like, just do the presentation, Liz, just do the workout, just do the meal prep, just meditate. Like, can we do anything else in that moment to get ourselves over the hump? Well, if it is a multi-step project, maybe you don't want to eat that frog. Maybe we want to start with the easiest part.

Starting point is 00:48:47 because when you do, then often the other parts are not nearly as hard. And I trick myself into this all the time. So, you know, I generally try not to take on things to write that I don't want to write, but, you know, sometimes I wind up with them. And so I just copied, like, the summary of what it was going to be, like, on a Word document. And then I, like, put a space in the middle of it. So I had, like, two paragraphs of it. And then, like, fill in one more line that I knew was going to have.

Starting point is 00:49:11 And then, oh, well, this could be the intro. And then, oh, here's a good walkoff. And next thing you know, you have the whole thing written. Mm-hmm. It's same as when I write anything. I always tell people if you're writing something, do the shittiest first draft, like almost stream of consciousness of first draft because it feels so good to just have anything on the page and then you can make it better later.

Starting point is 00:49:29 You can turn something into something better much more easily than nothing into something. Nothing into something. Yeah, that's so interesting. Okay. This is like a little bit different of a type of procrastination, but a listener wrote in, I cannot get myself to do things when a deadline is far away, so I always end up scrambling last minute. How can we trick ourselves into starting sooner?

Starting point is 00:49:46 You can create earlier deadlines for smaller parts of things. But then the question is, well, how do you make it feel real? Real, yeah. This is something for work and you are working with a team or working with a manager. Get those people to hold you accountable. For the earlier deadlines. For the earlier deadlines. Interesting.

Starting point is 00:50:03 Say to your manager, hey, you know, they probably don't want to micromanage you. But you're like, in this case, I would like it. So we'd be like, I want to get you the first part of this next week. They're like, oh, I'm sure you'll do great. And it's like, no, no, no. You need to tell me that I need to have it in by Friday. I'm like, okay, I will tell you that you need to have it on Friday. I want you to be mean about it. Like, I want you to stand over me and say, I don't have to do it. Or maybe it's an accountability group. Like a lot of people have found it very helpful to have an accountability partner or an

Starting point is 00:50:31 accountability group who will complain if you haven't done what you said you were going to do, right? And be like, why are you putting this off again? Why are you doing this? You know better than this. And like, maybe you don't want that disappointed email. So you make yourself to do it. The fourth thing that I heard from listeners over and over is that they really struggle with time blindness. That's why this time management stuff is just not working for them. So they cannot figure out how long things actually take. A listener wrote in, I underestimate the time that it takes to do things. I assume I can do way too much per day. How can we properly estimate how long things take other than time? Well, I'm sorry. That's like saying, how can I build wealth, Liz, without saving money?

Starting point is 00:51:12 Okay, so is that your top recommendation? Like track your time guys? It is helpful because it's pretty hard to write down day after day that your commute took 30 minutes and to keep telling yourself that it's 15. I mean, maybe you can do it. Maybe. Yeah. But eventually the data stacks up to such a degree that it becomes hard to convince yourself that the afternoon pickup takes 20 minutes when in fact it takes an hour. Are there certain things that you feel like people commonly forget to kind of estimate the time of? The transition time involved in.

Starting point is 00:51:45 anything. I mean, you know, like, you got to go pee when you leave the house. Between when you're putting on your shoes and when you are getting in your car and backing it out of the drive, the space is not zero. If you think it's zero, that explains why you were five to ten minutes late everywhere. And if there's people getting in the car with you, it's going to take even more time, right? So building in this transition time, if people are chronically late, sometimes it just helps to add 15 minutes to everything. Is it bad to say, though, that if I knew I patted in 15 minutes, I'd be like, well, I've got 15 minutes. I can do whatever for the next 15 minutes.

Starting point is 00:52:18 So I do think that time tracking will establish the data that can help you have a more truthful story. You can build in transition time because many people have forgotten to do that. However, if people are finding sort of chronic time blindness, it might be worth looking into whether you have ADHD or otherwise neurodiverse because that is a very common symptom of it. and a lot of adult women in particular have not been diagnosed because they are very high functioning. They don't look like a little boy who's acting out in class, which is what people think it is. But many times that's, that is what is going on. Are there things that people who have ADHD should be doing differently when it comes to time management? So I'm not an expert on this by any means.

Starting point is 00:52:59 My advice is just someone who's seen a lot of time logs and some of those have been from people who are neurodiverse. just be aware that things take time, like building in the extra time, having some sort of like alarm system to remind you about things because you won't remember. You'll tell yourself you're remember, but you won't. So have your watch tell you, right? We're walking around with devices on us all the time. I have spoken with some experts on this. And just to remind yourself that you are not constantly behind in life. Like you don't need to tell yourself this story that you're always behind. People tend to feel that they're behind, so they're constantly rushing. But then the rushing makes things go even worse. And so then they feel more frantic. You just calm down,

Starting point is 00:53:46 do one thing at a time. You'll get there eventually. Try to get rid of the word should. See how things go. Okay. So those were the four big reasons that I found from my audience that, like, this time management stuff isn't working for me. It was time blindness. It was procrastination. It was prioritization. And it was this feeling of like exhaustion. and burnout. Are there other reasons that you found in your research? Like, there's so much time management advice out there. And yet we all feel like we cannot manage our time. Is there other reasons you ran into? So I think there's a lot of, you know, cultural stories out there that people just accept blindly. I mean, one is that even just in our language, like full-time work,

Starting point is 00:54:28 it must be the full amount of your time. Yet it isn't, you know, 40 hours a week when there are 168 hours a week. There's more time. It is not the full amount of anyone's time. There's a lot of time for other things. So if we're telling ourselves the story that I don't have time for anything else because I have a full-time job, well, you know, maybe we can see where the time goes and and rethink that. Or like the idea that you can't relax if your house is a mess. That's another story, right? That I need to be filling my time looking busy if the time, you know, if the house is a mess or if I'm at work, I have to look busy, right? That's what people expect and have people say, well, I'll read an e-book on my phone because

Starting point is 00:55:09 it looks like I'm still working. It's like, okay, well, you know, we're all just engaged in these sort of subterfuge of these stories that we tell ourselves. Including almost this like busy as a badge of honor. Like, how are you? I'm so busy. I'm so stressed. It almost feels like you're important.

Starting point is 00:55:27 You're doing life. I don't know what. It feels like somebody. you hear commonly as a response and it almost feels like people wear it like a badge of honor. Yeah, well, saying how busy you are, it means that there's a high demand for your time, which means that you are important. And I mean, that's great. I'm glad people are important. But it's interesting that some of the most important people I've ever studied kind of do try to exercise more control over their schedule to be a little bit less busy. So they have space for the

Starting point is 00:55:53 things that come up, that rise up to them or that they want to seek new opportunities. Oh, that's interesting. How, yeah, were there differences in? your research between like people who made a lot of money and people who didn't make a lot of money in the ways that they managed their time or were their differences in the ways really successful people manage their time versus less successful people. It is different for everyone and different people operate in different ways. However, I will say that people who are in it for the long haul are careful about their energy. And so if you have some senior leader who they're going to be dealing with stuff all day long as it gets surfaced to them. They need to be careful about

Starting point is 00:56:31 making sure they have the capacity to deal with that. And so I found that many of those people are more careful about building in space for things like exercise. So it happens. So they're like putting on their calendar things that impact energy. Things that impact energy so that when they have four intense argumentative meetings in a row, because that's what's been surfaced up to them, right? All the easy stuff has been dealt with at lower levels that they are able to deal with it calmly. In your research, was there anything that you found universally was a good use of free time that people like got the most out of their free time if they did X?

Starting point is 00:57:09 I think it's more just seeing that somebody is intentional about their time. I'm a big fan of little adventures. And often this looks like something fun during the week. And a lot of people do not do fun things during the week. I mean, it just feel like we can't. We're like getting through the week to get through the week. And, you know, one person, I think the way they put it, they went to like a quiz night at a bar on a Tuesday. And they're like, it felt like it was cheating, right?

Starting point is 00:57:35 I didn't think you were allowed to do something like that on a Tuesday. It's like, well, there's no rule that Tuesdays have to be boring or terrible. So when I see a time log that somebody has had some sort of little adventure during the week, I'm like, oh, this person thinks about their time. I've been drinking element every single day for literally years. I usually use one packet a day, but I break it up. and I kind of spike my water throughout the day. So it makes my water taste amazing and it helps me stay consistently hydrated, which for me means more energy, fewer headaches, and way clearer thinking.

Starting point is 00:58:07 That's like probably the biggest difference I notice is my brain just works so much better. Research actually shows that you hydrate better when you sip throughout the day instead of chugging all at once. An element makes that so much easier because plain water is honestly so boring and I just will not drink enough of it otherwise. I even use a glass straw because research also shows that you will drink more water if you drink it through a straw. Right now, I'm obsessed with the lemonade salt flavor. It's my favorite hands down. Zach and I fight over who gets the last packets that we have left. Although I also love watermelon, but like lemonade, oh, it's so good. I also love muddling a few

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Starting point is 01:01:28 weekends like mini vacations. Can you tell me about that? Yeah, this was a great study that was done by Cassie Holmes and some other researchers that going into a weekend, they told half the subjects to just treat it like a normal weekend and then measured them on various dimensions afterwards. And the other half, they said, treat this upcoming weekend like a vacation, behave in ways that you would on a vacation. Well, obviously, they didn't go anywhere. I mean, people are not, like, suddenly taking off for the Bahamas for two days in the middle of normal life. But people who were told to treat their weekends as a vacation reported enjoying the time a lot more.

Starting point is 01:02:04 And they didn't view their weekends as, like, a time to get caught up on chores. Like, a lot of us saying, oh, the weekends want to get caught up on shorts. Well, if it's a vacation, you're not getting caught up on chores, right? That's not what we do on our vacation. So they're more likely to relax and do social things and have fun. And we get these two days every week. I mean, I know not all jobs are Monday through Friday with Saturday and Sunday off, but a lot of people's are. And so if you do get two days off each week, being like, this is a vacation will give you a much more fun, satisfying life.

Starting point is 01:02:36 And nothing's different. You're not changing anything big about your life. You're just using the time that you already have. I was going to ask, what does that look like in practice? Like, do we need to be, I don't know, like waking up late and drinking pinia coladas? Well, you could. Okay. If that was something that would be enjoyable for you, but maybe it's that you say, well, oh, I'd love to meet a friend. I'd love to have a fun dinner with my family somewhere we don't normally go or maybe we'll try a new recipe or like, oh, it'd be fun to watch this movie. You would have the intention about it as opposed to like just sort of letting the weekend disappear. Because you don't let your vacation disappear. That's a time you've thought about and like, oh, we're to do these fun things on a vacation.

Starting point is 01:03:14 Yeah, I just want to underline the word intentionality. We've used it a lot in this conversation. And I do think that it's so important for all of us to internalize that the world is going to force us to be intentional about all the things we're doing to make money and to like be a person on this planet. But it's not going to force us to be intentional about enjoying our time. And like you're really saying like, look, you're going to have this forced paying attention to all this stuff.

Starting point is 01:03:40 Force that same intentionality over here to enjoying your time. Yeah. And when I encourage people to do planning, like, I'm just. Like to do a weekly planning. A lot of people are like, I don't like to plan. I don't like to plan. Because in your mind, planning is about things you don't want to do. But I know you're going to do the things you need to do.

Starting point is 01:03:57 This is a question about making sure that the things you want to do fit in your life. So we talked about examples of plans for the work component. What would be a good example of like a personal plan and a relationship plan? Well, a good relationship plan. Like as you're making your weekly plan, I like to do this on Thursdays or Fridays. Looking forward to the upcoming week is like, huh, I don't think I'm getting together. with friends a lot lately. I'm going to text a friend that I haven't seen in a while and see if she wants to do whatever. Could she grab coffee? Can she go for a walk? Maybe it doesn't work. Then maybe

Starting point is 01:04:25 you reach out to somebody else, but maybe it does. And now you have something really fun, like a relationship that is going to get, you know, attention over the next week. And you will probably look forward to it. Like now your next week looks a lot more like, oh, life isn't all terrible because I'm getting together with my friend over the weekend. And I'm going to think about that in all the days leading up to the next weekend. Or on the personal front, I mean, maybe it's that you're going to do a particular workout that you really enjoy or you're going to get a massage or you are going to make time for a particular hobby.

Starting point is 01:04:58 Somebody's like a quilter and they're going to go to a special quilting class on a Sunday. That would be a fun personal priority. Which, again, is different than just saying, I will quilt on Sunday. I will quilt on Sunday. I want you to like throw a quilting bee. I want you to invite like 10 friends over and all quilt together. That's something that will happen and you'll have a ton of fun and we'll make that weekend quite memorable.

Starting point is 01:05:17 Yeah, I love that. Make an argument for Friday. For planning. Well, because I know a lot of people who have gotten their heads around the idea of doing weekly planning, either doing Sunday night or they do it Monday morning. And both have their arguments. And if you have a really good planning practice and you've chosen one of those times, like I don't need to change it for you. Like, do what works in your life. But the upside of choosing Friday, and particularly, something like Friday afternoon, as most people are not doing anything else productive at that point. They are sliding into the weekend, right? So if you would just be wasting that time until it's acceptable to quit, well, you may as well repurpose that time to look forward to the next week and that you will turn some of this unproductive time into some of your most productive minutes

Starting point is 01:06:00 of the week. You can also think about your weekend. I started doing this weekly planning late in the week, looking forward to the next Monday to Sunday week. So if you're planning on Friday, looking forward to the next Monday to Sunday week, you're actually planning the weekend that is eight to nine days ahead. If you have at least a loose idea of what you want to do in the weekend eight to nine days from now, then you can tighten up your plan for the upcoming weekend if you're planning on Friday, right?

Starting point is 01:06:24 So you look at what you initially planned a week before, say, now how can I adjust that? Like double plan it a little bit. Based on what came up, based on the weather, whatever. So you're double planning your weekends. That right there is going to make your weekends a lot more fun and intentional because, like, you're planning them twice. But even more than that, I think planning on Friday helps get rid of the Sunday scurries.

Starting point is 01:06:45 Because even people who love what they do often come into Sunday afternoon feeling this trepidation. Because they know there's a ton of stuff waiting for the Monday morning. They don't know what it is. They don't know how they're going to deal with it. And so in the back of their brain, they're just going through all the possibilities and all the things they need to do. Whereas if you end Friday with a plan for what you're going to do on Monday and you know what's coming up in the next week and how you intend to tackle it, can actually let your brain check out for the weekend. That doesn't even happen if you're planning on Sunday night because you still have to think about it through the weekend until you do your planning on Sunday night.

Starting point is 01:07:14 Yeah, it's so smart. Another thing you say that I absolutely love is that three times a week is a habit. You don't have to do something every single day to be a habit. Can you talk to me about the advantage of switching that thinking? I really encourage everyone to think of their lives in terms of weeks instead of days. People say to me, like, Laura, there's not enough time to get to everything I want to do in the day. And I agree, because there isn't. Like you're not going to do everything that is important to you every single day. But we don't have to. And a lot of the things that people claim to be daily habits are not. Like people are like, oh, I go to work every day. Well, many people, it's five days a week, right? It's not seven days a week. There are seven days in a week. By looking at time holistically, looking at the whole of 168 hours, you know, we see how much space there is. I maintain that anything that happens three times a week is happening regularly enough to be part of our identity. Right? Somebody who went to the gym Monday, Wednesday, and Friday would think of themselves as a regular exerciser. So I think we can use that same mindset for anything else you want to do. But that means

Starting point is 01:08:15 that so many more things can be part of our identity than if we're aiming for daily. Like if you want to be the kind of family that eats together, right, has regularly family meals. Like you're probably not sitting down at 6 p.m. every night, Monday to Friday to, you know, some gigantic, fresh home cooked meal. Many of us are not doing that. But like maybe you're having Sunday dinner together or like Saturday morning breakfast. You just need to find one time during the week. Like maybe Tuesday dinner works for everyone to sit down together. Now, three family meals a week, right?

Starting point is 01:08:43 You are a family that eats together. People will tell me, like, they're never doing something or not doing something at all or very infrequently. And then they track their time. And they realize whatever this thing, they're claiming that they never do enough or don't do enough of, they have done once in the last week. But that's not none, right?

Starting point is 01:09:02 And if you're doing it once, all you have to do is like add two more times. And it's a habit. And that's often doable with small lifestyle tweaks, not like a total life overhaul. One listener wrote in, My partner sucks at managing their time, which bleeds into my day and ends up with me taking on tasks

Starting point is 01:09:21 just to get them done. How can I help them manage their time better? Sadly, it is not possible to manage anyone else's time for them. I know. And this is a challenge that I'm sure many of your, listeners are very productive people. And if there are other people in their lives who are not quite as productive, that can't, sometimes feel like, why can't they just get their act together? And maybe they should get their act together. But, you know, if these are people that you love and you want to

Starting point is 01:09:46 have in your life, you know, we can think about what their other gifts are. And then think about how we can manage our lives so that the fallout doesn't affect us. Yeah. So I think that's the thing that we worry about is like, well, if they don't get their shit done, but they're my partner. It impacts me and then my time management gets screwed up because I didn't plan to do all their tasks too. So how can we mitigate the fallout? Well, you can plan for them not to do what they're going to do. Where this leads to resentment, for instance, let's say somebody does want to sing and a choir on Tuesday nights at 7 o'clock. And their partner is supposed to be home from work by then to cover that, but they're not because their time management is not very good. And they have trouble figuring out that

Starting point is 01:10:24 they need to leave work by 615 in order to make this possible. And like they don't even think when it's 6.15 and then you are resentful because you didn't get to do this. I agree that that is not a good thing. You don't have any responsibility to cover for Thursday for them in that situation. But you can also hire a sitter for Tuesday night and just know that when it is a problem, it's not going to keep you from doing your fun thing. Is there anything that you tell women to do differently in terms of like, you know, the mental load conversation and like women are taking on a lot more of these time burdens in their lives at home. There's a couple things we can do, and I really do agree that it is important to reduce

Starting point is 01:11:04 the mental load, because when we have a lot of mental clutter about all the things we're supposed to be doing, it keeps us from being open to opportunity and keeps us from being open to sort of serendipitous, wonderful things that can come into our lives. We're not ready to seize those opportunities because it's like, but I have all this stuff going on. I don't have space for anything new. So trying to batch the little things, I mean, one of the reasons I'm so evangelical about batching the little things is because it keeps them from taking over the rest of our calendar.

Starting point is 01:11:33 So if you're working on some really important deep work project, you don't want to be constantly like, and I need to stop this to go fill out that permission slip. And I need to stop this to go order that birthday present for the birthday party my kid is going to this weekend. And I need to schedule that dentist appointment. So put that all on the list. Keep the list running so you're not forgetting it. You're going to do it. But you're going to do it at 4 p.m. when you're already spent. And you don't, you know, you protect that time for your important work. In general, having full ownership, I believe you've interviewed Ivrodski, who has talked about the importance of vertical ownership of things that one person is completely responsible for a domain, which means that they have to take

Starting point is 01:12:15 accountability for it in a way where if somebody else is going to take part of it, then it's like, oh, well, I'm just like working for that person. I'm their sous chef, and I don't really like that role. you know, if you're fully responsible for something. And that includes an agreed-upon level of execution. That's something that Eve talks about a lot, because I hear from a lot of people where they're like, well, I don't want my partner to own grocery shopping and dinner prep because they won't do it as well as me.

Starting point is 01:12:38 And they agreed-upon execution level, I think is a really important part of that. And with that, though, our agreed-upon level of execution does not need to be Martha Stewart level. Or our level. Or-I-level. I've had this conversation. You know, women have a certain idea of what something needs to be done. But just because that's what mom thinks it is, if it's not a matter of health or safety, it's not automatically the case.

Starting point is 01:13:02 Like, for instance, small children do not need to be bathed nightly. And so we have this situation where, like, dad agrees to do it half the time. But in dad's mind, two or three times a week is fine. So he's going to do it twice a week. Well, in her mind, they have to be daily. So she's doing it five times a week and she's bad because it seems like she's doing it all the time. But if you could just both do it twice a week. Yeah, that's interesting.

Starting point is 01:13:22 I'm also going to negate myself and make an argument for time tracking here, which is that if both partners in a relationship tracked their time, you would get a really good sense of who's contributing what to the household in a very stark and inarguable way, which could be really helpful for those mental load conversations. It could. And you might be surprised. The other person might be doing stuff that you haven't even thought about because it's so far out of your mental domain because they have taken full responsibility for it. So that's good to know. Yeah, it is good to know. I want to talk about morning routines for a second. You wrote an entire book about morning routines. Why are morning routines important? For many people, this is time you can have for yourself before everybody else wants a piece of you. So we talked about how difficult it is to exercise in the evening once you have gotten home, gotten your comfy shoes on. You're not motivated to go do it again. In the mornings, people tend to have more discipline and energy and focus. There are fewer work emergencies at like five, 30 a.m. versus 5.30 p.m. People haven't gotten to that yet. So this is a time that tends to be more protected. That said, there is nothing magical about mornings. It is that for many busy people,

Starting point is 01:14:36 if you have a family and a full-time job, that is when you can do something like creative work or exercise. If you are able to do those at other points of the day, you do not have to wake up at 5 a.m. Just to do them. And where I see this coming to be issue is a lot of people think, well, I have to get up early to exercise. And then they're still staying up later at night and then you're burning the candle at both ends. And sometimes this is because people are not giving themselves permission to do things that are important to them at times when there are family members around. But, you know, especially if the kids are not toddlers that need to be constantly watched, you can, in fact, go run on a treadmill in an evening. You know, you could go to the gym if you have teenage kids who

Starting point is 01:15:16 can stay home with the younger ones. Like these are all things you can do. You don't have to be around for every second. Do you think there's something with a morning routine about setting the tone or setting ourselves up for the day that we want to have? I think that is why a lot of people do find it appealing. We talked about eating the frog, but if you score a win earlier in the day, sometimes that makes you feel like you've already done something. Even if the rest of the day goes off the rails, well, I've already written a thousand words in my novel and I've gotten a workout in. Like, clearly life is good. I'm a productive person. And that can be very motivating for people. If you are an early morning person or if it works well in your life to do it, I think it's great.

Starting point is 01:15:51 Mornings tend to be more routine. So if you build it into your morning routine, it will happen, whereas the end of the day tends to be more all over the place. So for a lot of people, it really does work. And you know, you just have to make sure you go to bed early enough that you can get up to do those things. When you were researching your book, what the most successful people do before breakfast, was there anything that you found that successful people had in common in terms of

Starting point is 01:16:12 their morning routines? Exercise often happens in the morning for people who are going to do it. just because life gets busy. It also feels like the thing you need a lot of willpower to do. You need the willpower to do. Yeah. And it also, though, if you do it, I can say this as a person who used to hate exercise. It does give you more energy.

Starting point is 01:16:30 It makes you happier, calmer, all these things for the rest of your day. If you can use that willpower, you can, like, turn that will power into all these other things that will benefit you all day long. Yeah. It's a great energy boost. People have said exercise is my caffeine. I wouldn't go that far. But it does feel good to have your exercise done early in the day.

Starting point is 01:16:46 But, you know, I don't wake up an exercise early. I prefer to either do it during the day or in the evening. I do it in the evening, too. I feel like it helps me bleed all of, like, the anxiety and stress from the day off before then I get into my relaxation mode in the evening, which I really like. So I do think there is something to, like, find what works for you. Is there anything you still struggle with when it comes to time management? I scroll around all the time.

Starting point is 01:17:06 Like, I mean, I waste gobs of time online, and I'm not terrifically proud of that. But the good news is I know from tracking my time that I do enough other productive things that if time is wasted, it's not the end of the world. What I've been struggling with lately is trying to figure out, again, how to use smaller chunks of time. My kids go to various schools that start at wildly varying times. And so the morning features these small chunks of time between somebody getting out the door and somebody else getting out the door. And so, you know, wind up with like 20 minutes and then something has to happen. And then like 20 minutes and something has to happen. So using those 20 minutes

Starting point is 01:17:43 for something that is not pointless, you know, I really have to think about it. I struggle with that a lot, too. I have like 10 minutes between a meeting and then that's always when I default to scrolling. Yeah, scrolling or the email checking. So I've been trying to think about like work tasks that can be done quickly. And in general, I don't like to start my days with low energy quick tasks, but that's not the real start of my work day. The real start of my work day is when everyone is out the door, it's quiet.

Starting point is 01:18:13 I'm sitting in my office. Now it's time to begin. So if I understand that that is the beginning of my workday and that is when I'm doing the big tasks, those two 20-minute chunks before then can be used for answering a quick email or setting an appointment or writing something quickly, putting up a quick post somewhere, that kind of thing. Okay. So in the same way we kind of want to get ahead of our leisure time and we want to be like,

Starting point is 01:18:35 okay, when I have this time that I want to enjoy, what do I really enjoy and take the decision fatigue out of it? And these little pockets of time, maybe we can decide ahead of time like, oh, I could use a pocket of time for this, this, this, this and this. And one of the things that helps me with this is making my to-do list for each day the night before. So before I go on my 5 p.m. walk, I like to take a five minutes or so to just make my to-do list for the next day. And I look at what appointments I have, what's time-specific, and what are my priorities that I'm pulling from my weekly list and where can those go?

Starting point is 01:19:06 And sometimes there are like quick things I need to do and I'll put those on the list. And then I can understand that those are things that would be good to knock off in those 20 minute chunks. Do you have any other rules for your to-do list? Like some people are like only put three things on it or like how do you approach a to-do list? So my general thought for a daily to-do list is that to-do means today. So I am only going to put something on my list that I truly intend to do that day. And given that life happens, the list has to be relatively short. This list is going to have to still get done even if I get a call from a school nurse that one of my children has some weird rash and I need to come pick them up right now, right? So given that that could happen,

Starting point is 01:19:49 is this to-do list still doable? Now, the upside of that is that I often finish quite early, but there's always other things I can go do, right? I can go pull things off the weekly priority list that I hadn't put on the day's list. You know, it's like a bonus or do it earlier than I don't have to do it tomorrow. Having that short list and knowing I intend to get through all of it means I trust myself to put something on a future day. Like if I knows I have something big on Thursday, I don't have to put it, you know, the preparation for it all on Monday. Like I trust myself to do it Wednesday because I know I will do it.

Starting point is 01:20:22 I don't worry that I won't. Are there any other tools or tactics or mindset shifts that you could offer to the person who's like, I've listened to all these time management episodes and I still feel so tired, so burnt out, so much like I don't have this time for myself? Is there any other like specific changes you think? that person could be making? Well, if you are the sort of person who does the things on your to-do list, you might try putting fun stuff on your to-do list. This is something I've started doing as well. I write about what I call the golden hours, which are hours after work and before bed.

Starting point is 01:20:54 Just your golden years or the years after you retire, you can spend with family on leisure time. Now, your golden hours are a mini version of that every day. This is, you know, time that is available for family and leisure. I really think people's lives are improved by choosing just a 30-minute intention for the evening, something fun, that they would like to do. do that would make the evening feel like it happened. And to convince myself to do this, I've started actually putting it on my to-do list. And then you get to cross it off. Play the piano for 15 minutes. Do a puzzle for 30 minutes. Read this magazine that came in the mail. And when it's on my to-do list, I'm like, oh, I need to do it. It's on my to-do list. So, and then I cross it off. And I'm like,

Starting point is 01:21:31 I've just tricked myself into having fun. I love that. I love that so much. Okay, we're going to do a Little quicky speed round. What one thing about time management that you wish everyone knew? So time management is not just about cramming more stuff in. A lot of people hear that and are like, oh, I'm so over it. I don't want to be more productive. I'm tired. I get it. We all are. And I don't care how productive you are. I want you to enjoy your life. To me, time management is about making the most of this amazing resource we have. I mean, here, how improbable that we are here on this planet with time to manage, you know? What a gift. We get to choose. We have so much agency over what we can do with that. So time management is about making sure that we are enjoying that time,

Starting point is 01:22:17 that we are having meaningful work, that we are engaged in rich relationships, that we have time for our own personal passions. And that's what I want people to manage their time toward. This can be in the realm of time management or anything else, but what's one habit that changed your life. Well, that evening hour intention has been quite nice. And some of this is just stage of life. And so if you've got listeners who have really little kids, I understand that the evenings are very hard to use for your own personal intentions, but they don't stay little forever. Like, time has opened up in the last few years. How old are your kids? My youngest is now six. Okay. Which is, you know, still relatively young, but there's a big difference between six and two.

Starting point is 01:22:56 So now that I don't have any two-year-olds, I feel like I have more control over my time and especially like evening time, for instance, and weekend time. Now that I am challenging myself to have this specific intentional, what I call effortful fun in the evening, it's made my weekday evenings a lot better. When you had like the little little kids, was there any micro tool or micro habit that you could rely on to feel like you had more control of your time? Well, it's making sure that somebody else is sharing their care. So that's having a specific, you know, schedule with your partner of like, okay, if I covered this time during the week, because maybe you were traveling, I really need you to take the kids on Saturday because I need some time for myself. Or doing like the swap with a friend.

Starting point is 01:23:40 Or doing the swap with a friend. You watch mine. Or availing yourself of other resources. I'm the gym. Gym childcare, you know, or something at your house of worship. Some places have stuff like that. But something to know that you have some time that you can use for yourself. So now I don't have to carve out every minute for that. But during those years I did. But it wasn't impossible. I was still able to do things like singing my choir. I just had to make the arrangements for it. So you were with your five kids at home and a baby, you were singing in your choir? Yes. Wow. That's inspirational. We love it. I just, I think it is nice that you can point to that. I have five kids at home. That has required having a babysitter on call for that evening. So if something happened, I could still go. Right. But I think it's worth the resources. I'm willing to invest in my happiness. And I would encourage other people to do so as well.

Starting point is 01:24:30 Yeah. There is some of something. money prioritization that can be part of this conversation as well. And obviously there's levels of privilege and all of that, but I do think saying like having time to myself is important to me, is there a way to fit that into my budget? I drive a 15 year old car because I don't care about that, but I do care about my time. What is one thing that listeners can do the second that they turn off this podcast episode to begin to feel a little bit more of a sense of spaciousness and joy with their time? You know what I'm going to say. What's the minimum amount of time we got a time check. Minimilar time. We've got a time check. To see, like, to get some benefits.

Starting point is 01:25:05 I think a couple of days could be okay, but don't just do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I want people to do at least a weekend day. Okay. So you could do Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. You know, you could do Thursday, Friday, Saturday. But making sure you get at least some picture of life that's work and not work or school or not school or whatever, you know, just making sure you're getting at least slightly more of a holistic sense of your life. Now, if you get, get through three days, you may find yourself thinking, well, that wasn't so hard. I could do another day. I could do another day.

Starting point is 01:25:36 And pretty soon you're at seven. It really isn't that hard, I promise. Okay. I'm going to try. I'm going to commit to doing three days. I would love anybody listening or watching to commit to doing three days with me. If you're committed, say it in the comments so we can all hold each other accountable. And then I'm also going to commit to doing one personal, one relationship, and one work plan for my next week.

Starting point is 01:25:55 I think that's just like such a great tip. So if you're also done to do that, I would love to hear from you in the comments, maybe share one of your plans for the week. so we can all like inspire each other with what those plans might be. Laura, you are amazing. You've written like 70 million books, but tell us in your own words a little bit about your newest one, Big Time. Yeah, Big Time is a simple path to time abundance. This book is about how to fall in love with your schedule.

Starting point is 01:26:17 I really do think that is possible. And when we get over this mindset of time scarcity and develop more of a sense of time abundance, we can start to see that, you know, time is our friend, right? It's here with us for the journey. We can achieve things over periods of time that we couldn't right away. So I hope everyone reading this will come out of it with a sense of like, yes, I get to do amazing things with my time.

Starting point is 01:26:43 I'm looking forward to things in my life. I love where my time is going. It's such a different approach. It's not like I'm going to beat time into submission. It's like I'm going to gently hold time's hand and walk through life with it. Yeah. Why do our metaphors do violence? I don't know.

Starting point is 01:26:56 We beat the clock. We're racing against it. You know, we're killing time. You know, we have a messed up relationship with time. Yeah. And you're here to fix it. I'm here to fix it. I want us to love time.

Starting point is 01:27:06 Thank you, Laura. Thank you for having me. That is all for this episode of the Liz Moody podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I would so appreciate if you would share it with somebody that you think would love it too. It is my goal to get as much life-changing information out to as many people as possible. And you sharing episodes with people is 100% the thing that makes that happen. I would also love to hear from you in the coming.

Starting point is 01:27:29 any thoughts or questions or opinions that you have on this episode. Make sure that you're subscribed to the podcast on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, wherever you like to listen. You can find every single discount code that you heard in this episode and tons more at Liz Moody.com slash codes. It is the best way to save money on amazing vetted products. Truly, our brand partners make the best products in the world. That is why they're our beloved brand partners. And it's the best way to support the show and keep it completely free for you. and we so appreciate it. Okay, I love you,

Starting point is 01:28:00 and I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician,

Starting point is 01:28:14 a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.

The Liz Moody Podcast - Top Time Expert: You Can Have A Career, Family AND Free Time—Here's How

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