10. LAURA VANDERKAM: Flexing With Time and Tasks

Episode Transcript

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Laura Vanderkam: being flexible about when things happen often means that you can do things, whereas if it has to happen at a specific time, that’s gonna be harder to pull off.

Michael Hyatt: Hi. I am Michael 

Megan Hyatt Miller: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Michael Hyatt: and this is the Double Win Podcast where we talk about how to win at work and succeed at life.

Megan Hyatt Miller: So here at our company, full focus, you know, we have identified nine life domains, body, mind, spirit, love, family, community, money, work, and hobbies. And these domains are gonna help you to cultivate the person that you really wanna be so that you can live the life.

That you wanna live? Well, today’s guests cover a lot of ground, especially in this domain of family.

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, we’re super excited about this because we wanna introduce you to Laura Vander Cam. She’s an expert on time management and productivity. She has a Ted Talk that’s been seen over 12 million times. It’s called How to Gain Control of Your Free Time. She’s the author of several acclaimed books, including Tranquility by Tuesday Off the Clock.

I know how she does it and what the most successful people do Before Breakfast. She co-host the best of both Worlds podcast, which Meghan has been on. She hosts the Before Breakfast podcast She lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband and five children. Enjoy this conversation. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Well, Laura, we’re so happy to have you on the Double Win Podcast. Welcome.

Laura Vanderkam: thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, welcome. We’re excited to have you here. These are topics that are near and dear to our heart, and so there’s a fun fact that the three of us 

Laura Vanderkam: Okay. 

Michael Hyatt: you may not be aware of. 

Laura Vanderkam: All right. 

Michael Hyatt: Megan, you wanna tell her?

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah, so between the three of us, we have 15 and each of us have five children.

We do. We do. That’s right. amazing? Okay. Well, the.

are your children?

Mine are 17, 14, 12, 9, and four. When you have five, you have to think about it because it’s

all the time,

had a birthday and so then it’s like, okay, it’s my, my usual recitation of it is off. So, Ours all just changed. Most of our kids have birthdays between May and August,

Laura Vanderkam: Mm-Hmm.

Megan Hyatt Miller: uh, we’re 23, 20 16, 14, 5, so pretty similar.

Deep into birthday season right now, so,

That’s right.

Michael Hyatt: Well, I wanna offer some hope to both of you. So all my kids are grown. Megan Z, yes, of five, and man, if you can get through the years that you guys are in, your kids become a great source of friendships. absolutely. we’d rather hang out with our kids than anybody.

Laura Vanderkam: And I think it’s so amazing you guys are working together. I mean, that fun. cool is that? That’s, I aspire to that someday.

Michael Hyatt: My youngest daughter works in the business too. She’s 33. She’s our chief marketing officer. She hosts one of our podcasts. But yeah, I feel super blessed to have the two of them in the business.

Laura Vanderkam: That’s wonderful.

Megan Hyatt Miller: Well, let’s talk about this whole idea of work life balance. You know, there’s so much controversy about this. Does it exist? Can we achieve it? You know, is work life integration better? You know, there’s just that whole conversation. Um, but I would love to hear kind of your take. On the whole idea of work-life balance, you’re, you’re not only teaching people how to do it, but you’re also living it as you just shared with those five kids at every age and every stage.

So what does it look like for you and how, how do you think about it?

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah, and I know you guys have talked about this. I mean, the balance metaphor, everyone searches for it. So that tends to be what I use, the language I use. But there’s a problem with the metaphor, right? Which is that. We’re talking about a balance. It’s that work and life are on opposite sides of a scale, and so the only way for one to go up.

For the other to go down. And I don’t know how many people are like, well, I’d like my life to go down right now. So it seems like the only solution ever available is to work less. And of course, if that’s the framing that if I, my employer or something, well, I’m like, well that doesn’t sound very exciting to me.

I don’t want everyone to be working less so I, it just. It winds up being this problem that I don’t think it necessarily needs to be. I mean, certainly one of the things I’ve found, I know you guys have found is that when people have flexibility, like when they have the ability to work from home, they often don’t need to cut their hours.

Right? Like if they are able to do something during the workday, if it’s. Needed. Then they can still work full-time hours. The problem is if they can’t do that, then they start thinking, well, I need to cut my hours in order to have work-life balance. So I think there’s a problem with the metaphor, but that said, if that’s how people are thinking about it, then we wanna sort of consider, well what does the good life look like for me?

And what proportion of that is working? Um, or maybe not even just ours, but what would I like to be accomplishing in my professional life? What would make me feel like I’m making a difference in some corner of the world? And then we can think about that in our personal lives too. I mean, what would my good life look like to make my household and my family run to make sure that I have enough time for all the things that I want to do to make myself a full person?

And I think if you think about it through that lens, um, what would make me feel like I’m winning. In all of these spheres, then you’ll achieve balance, whether you call it that or not.

Michael Hyatt: I’ve got a follow up question to that. Like, let’s say that you’re in a corporation and Megan and I just literally spoke on Saturday to a group of NFL coaches and college, university coaches, and that culture is like work 80 hours a week. And so we were talking to some of the people after we, we spoke, their challenge is of them have very demanding constituents, including sometimes their boss fans, the press, all that stuff.

What would you say to the individual who’s in a situation who wants more work life balance, they’re kind of in an environment that fights against that?

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah, I think there’s a couple things you can do. Um, I mean, one, I always encourage anyone who’s wondering if they’re spending the right amount of time on different things to actually find out how much time you are spending on different things. So keep track of your time. Ideally for a week, not just your working hours, I mean everything, right?

The whole 168 hours of a week. ’cause you wanna see what your life truly looks like. And sometimes what people find out is that it’s not quite as dire as they may have thought. So maybe they are working late, you know, Tuesday and Wednesday and Saturday because of the game schedule or something like that.

But they actually got home at a reasonable time on Monday and Wednesday. Day and they’re not giving themselves credit for that in their minds. ’cause they had those really long days on the other days. So it’s like, oh, I work around the clock. Well, someone wasn’t really around the clock. It was a lot, but it wasn’t around the clock.

And those are different things. We wanna make sure we’re giving ourself credit for the space that does exist. But then you also wanna say, well, what are the things that I need to do to make life feel sustainable?

And probably if you are in a job like that, it’s not that you’re sitting down at 6:00 PM for family dinner every night. No one is unveiling a roast, you know, Norman Rockwell style at 6:00 PM every day. But on the other hand, maybe it’s that, well, I wanna eat with my family three times in the course of the week, right?

So then I look at my week and I say, well, when do I think I that could happen? And maybe it’s that, you know, you. Are in the particular example you gave, people are coaching that’s often in the afternoons and evenings, but maybe you could do a family breakfast, right? You could do a family breakfast on Monday or Sunday, and then you just have to find one other time during the week that works.

And well, you know, we’re eating together pretty regularly, or maybe it’s that I need to get seven hours of sleep a night. Other things can go, but that’s what I need to do to make life feel sustainable. And then you prioritize building that in and. Other things can go, but the non-negotiables happen. So, you know, keeping your eye on that can go a long way toward making life feel more sustainable.

Michael Hyatt: This. This is actually brilliant because I think there’s a cultural press or pressure. To kind of exaggerate the amount of time that you work. Mm-Hmm. So first of all, there’s many of us like being at work because the results are measurable, there’s clear rewards, and it’s easy to make the work sort of the scapegoat to say to your family where it’s a little bit messier, like, gee, I have to work, I have no control over this, But I think forcing ourselves to come to grips with reality. Is probably the first step towards progress in this area, and I love your creative solutions here too.

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah, and I, I think there really is some exaggeration going on. I always joke, joke in my talks about a, a young man who told me he was working 180 hours a week at his startup, and, you know. You multiply 24 times seven like that, I don’t know. I wanna invest in that thing if they figured out how to make more hours than it actually exist in a week.

Uh, you know, and, and there have been other studies comparing people’s estimated work weeks with time diaries. And let’s just say that the higher the number people claim, I. The more likely it is that they are overestimating. And I’m not saying people aren’t working hard and they’re not working long. Like yes, everyone’s working hard.

Everyone’s working long, but one reason to keep track of your time is because you will probably find that the number. Is high and over 40, but it may not be 80 either. And there’s a huge difference between working 65 hours a week and working 80 hours a week. I mean, that’s two hours a day that you have available that you’re not even thinking about.

Um, so you know, you, you wanna know where the time is going so you can make rational choices about how you are allocating it.

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah. Well, I like what you were saying about, you know, if you can’t do dinner at home, you could do breakfast at home. And I think that this sort of flexible thinking is part of what it takes. To get the double win regardless of the season that you’re in, because, you know, most of our listeners are not NFL or you know, college coaches and or GMs in that kind of environment.

But everybody goes through seasons that are not ideal. You know, maybe you have a new baby or maybe you just took on a new job, or maybe you know, your, your father who’s elderly. last week and broke his hip and you’re doing some extra care there. The, I think the question becomes, well, is the double win only something that happens when, you know, the stars align and the angel sing and it’s just perfect and, and I think the answer is no.

And you know, I remember when I had just gotten married and we had, um, our, our oldest two children are from his first marriage. And the way that our, um, parenting plan with his ex-wife was set up is that the oldest two children spent Christmas morning and Christmas Eve with their mom.

And that was really hard for me because, you know, I love holidays, I love all the traditions, I love the meals, I love the food, all that kind of stuff. What I found is once I stopped fighting against, it has to happen on Christmas day. If I just bagged it up two weeks and said, okay, we’re gonna do, we’re gonna do our family Christmas two weeks before and then we can have Christmas Eve, we can have Christmas day.

We don’t have to feel rushed. It’s not like they’re gonna overdose on candy from two houses and you know, all the things. It actually was really wonderful and now that they’re adults and we don’t have to do that anymore. There’s part of me that feels sad because there was something really special about getting to do it kind of on our own terms, and there was no other competition for that time.

And so I think that, you know, like in my family, we really prioritize eating dinner together. That’s very doable. But I think that may not be doable for everybody. But I don’t think it’s has to be all or nothing. I think you can think creatively, and that’s my takeaway from your answer to that question. 

Laura Vanderkam: Absolutely. Yeah. Being creative about when you do things and, and looking at all of the 168 hours of a week as well. Um, I know that, you know, sometimes people are. Upset about working on a weekend or something like that, but it maybe that’s a choice That is because you’re taking Tuesday afternoons off to do something else that is important to you.

Um, I know that when I, 

I 

I’ve only run one marathon. in my life and I think I will never run one again, but when I did that, I tended to take Thursday mornings off work and I would go do my long run then. Um, and I’d, you know, make up the time at night or on a weekend or something like that, but it was just easier for me to do that than make it happen on a Saturday morning when there was a million other things going on with my family.

So it’s, you know, being flexible about when things happen often means that you can do things, whereas if it has to happen at a specific time, that’s gonna be harder to pull off.

Megan Hyatt Miller: know, we talk about this a lot when we talk about setting goals that. Always life happens, you know, in the course of a year, you start out with your great plan, you know exactly what you’re gonna do. You think you can see the path to get to this goal, and inevitably something pops up, you know, that derails you in some way.

And what we always tell people is you wanna remain fiercely committed to the goal. If at all possible, you know, occasionally there are times when you actually do have to remove it from your list, but you wanna maintain that commitment if at all possible. you wanna be really flexible on the strategy and that helps you be adaptable.

So you don’t have to give up on the goal. You’re probably gonna get there by far different means than what you thought on January one. And that’s fine. Um, because the strategy isn’t sacred. And I think in the case of this like family meal idea. The point is sitting down together and connecting and having that ritual, the fact that it happens at dinner versus breakfast for example, doesn’t really matter.

Like that’s just a strategy for how to get everybody sitting down connecting over a shared meal. And it could really happen anytime, you know? So, um, I think there’s a lot of freedom in that and I think that’s an empowering way to view it, especially since, you know, EI was gonna say most of, I think the truth is everybody who listens to the.

This podcast and everybody just in general is going to have so much change that they’re always trying to integrate into their life. And so a rigid understanding of the double win has to look like this is inevitably gonna be kind of a self-sabotaging way of thinking about it. Because, you know, I dunno about you Laura, but with five kids, there’s not really one day ever that, um. Is exactly ideal today as we’re recording this. Uh, my five-year-old daughter is here at the office with us. It’s the start of summer, but she’s not here because of that. She’s here because she’s on the last day of her covid isolation,

Laura Vanderkam: no.

Megan Hyatt Miller: and so nobody else is in the office. And so, you know, this is like, okay, we’re gonna just bring her to the office and let her

Laura Vanderkam: Yep.

Megan Hyatt Miller: today, and that, you know, that that’s what it looks like today.

It works out so.

Laura Vanderkam: It always something.

Megan Hyatt Miller: something. 

Okay. So, um, I wanna ask you a question that I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about on this podcast before, and I’m excited to get your take on it. In my experience, talking with my other friends who are business owners, leaders, other professional women, um, the conversation that we often have is how. This whole, this whole business of our home life and our family tends to, by default in our culture, land in our laps. You know, even if we’re the CEO at work. The assumption is we’re also CEO of our family. You know, in terms of, we’re the ones that know where the kids need to be. We’re the ones that are making the medical decisions.

We’re the ones that are planning meals. We’re the ones that are managing the household. And if we’re fortunate our husbands are, you know, active participants in that, but maybe not so much partners. Do you find that that’s true? Like what, what’s your experience with that whole idea of kind of Mom is default.

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah, I mean I think it still happens a lot. Um, and, and we all know some families where it’s a little bit different and all that, so I’m not certainly saying that every family is like that, but I think there are some pretty strong. Cultural assumptions, and I hear this all the time, like from my readers and listeners that, you know, they’re always the one getting the call from school.

It doesn’t matter if they are in an operating room during surgery and their husband is, you know, got a very, very flexible job. The school always will call them first. And it’s, it’s like, I mean, I don’t know, maybe they think Daddy isn’t. Authorized to do something. I’m not sure what the, what the thinking is there.

Um, and so people come up with things they do. Like they have one Gmail account that’s like Joe and Betty Smith, and that’s the one

Megan Hyatt Miller: smart. I like

that 

Laura Vanderkam: the schools, right? So, and then, but then it’s the question is everyone checking it equally, often. So, you know, there’s, there’s challenges, um, with this, but.

I think that that said, you simply have to decide if you are, you know, a woman who is trying to achieve things in the larger world, in addition to having a happy home life, that you don’t want your home life to be your glass ceiling. And I heard somebody refer to it that way, that, uh, you know, there advancement and their ability to influence the larger world was being limited by what they had.

And it’s like, well then you need to take steps to either even it out. Find other people who can contribute as well. ’cause that’s a, that’s a strategy that people definitely could, should consider too. Yep. maybe that we decide certain things don’t matter quite as much. Um, and so there, you know, you can use any of those, but uh, you have to decide on some of them.

Megan Hyatt Miller: That’s really good. My husband, Joel and I, he’s a fantastic partner and we’ve really worked on it, um, in terms of our home life. And one of the best things that we did was we read the book Fair Play, and I’d love to have Eve Rodsky on at some point to talk about her work because she has such a great methodology for thinking about how do you more equitably divide up. the, the labor of thinking about and planning for and executing all the things that it takes to keep your life moving outside of work. And so that was really, really helpful for us. But then I think to your last point about you have to decide certain things don’t matter. One of the things that I’ve done is to say. There are some things that I’ve just decided are not gonna be important to me because, you know, it’s just kind of like when we talk about work and how do you, how do you manage to get the same results or better results while working fewer hours? You know, if you feel like you’re working too many hours, well you have to focus on the things that only you can do, and you have to delegate, eliminate, automate, or delegate the rest. And from a home perspective, one of the things I’ve realized is, you know, my, and we’re, I want to hear your thoughts on this. My kids probably won’t remember that I did the laundry. You know, that’s not, normally, not that it’s not important, it’s very important for people to have clean clothes, myself included. But that’s probably not something that my kids, when they’re, um, you know, were at their rehearsal dinner for their wedding, you know, they’re gonna be like, my mom really was consistent doing the laundry. You know, probably

Laura Vanderkam: She was on it.

Megan Hyatt Miller: I wish it would. I mean, I feel like we deserve that credit. Um, so that’s something that I delegate or like volunteering in the classroom for me.

I just don’t do it. I send stuff all the time. I’m like, listen, you need me to send something. I’m your girl. Like, please text me. I’ll make it happen. You know, you need 48 cupcakes. It’s done. Um, but those are some of the things that I’ve done on my side. How do you think about, um, delegating things on the home side without feeling guilt or identifying those things?

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the guilt part is sort of. You know, I’m, I’m sorry that people feel guilt about this. I mean, for starters, I think I’m not, if your partner doesn’t feel guilt about not doing it, then probably you should follow whatever that pattern is. a good Um, but also, you know, I don’t feel guilt at work because I have people working with me doing things.

It’s just that it’s helping to magnify. My impact, right? It doesn’t make sense for me to be doing, I don’t know, email formatting and then, you know, not writing a book or running my podcast because I’m so busy doing, um, various administrative tasks or something. And so it’s the same on the home front.

There are certain things that only you can do, um, presumably only you can be. The partner to your other half. Um, you certainly hope so. Um, only you can, and their other parents can be the parent to your children, but lots of people can do your laundry. Lots of people can do other things like grocery shopping or cooking or, um, home maintenance or mowing the lawn or whatever else it is.

And so trying to make sure that you are focusing your time on those things that matter. And then, you know, make sure that you’re trading off the right things. I mean, I had a conversation with a physician the other day who was considering what her, she wanted her work schedule to look like and she. Was working really long days, on certain days and off on other days.

And she’s like, well, I’d like to have that time to, you know, do errands, but it means I have really long, you know, hours on other days. And I was like, well, okay, I’m betting that you could get somebody else to do your errands for you like you are trading off. It’s one thing to say, I wanna work fewer hours ’cause I wanna hang out with my kids, or I wanna hang out with my family.

I wanna go see my parents who are getting older. I wanna be, you know, involved in my community doing all these things. Great blessing for you. If you are working fewer hours just to do laundry and errands and things like that. I think, you know, there’s an economic problem there that you’re gonna earn a lot more doing your specialized, highly paid labor and you can have somebody else, you know, go do your grocery shopping for you and that might be the way to do it.

Megan Hyatt Miller: doing this in so many ways. I mean, if you subscribe and save on Amazon, or if you ever use Instacart or shipped, you’re already doing that

Laura Vanderkam: You’re doing it. Yeah.

Megan Hyatt Miller: those people are not your household employees per se, but they are people who are, are doing some of those tasks that, as it turns out, I think we all learned during covid, we’re not the only people that can do.

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah. Well, and, and that’s the thing. I mean, sometimes people have some sort of guilt about certain kinds of outsourcing, but nobody does everything for themselves. I mean, you mail a letter, you are not driving it to Wisconsin on your own, like you are not churning your own butter. Most people are not darning their own socks.

Like, there are so many things that we do not do, and so it’s just a question of where is the line and, and I think that there you can choose all sorts of places where the line can be and still feel very good about your life.

Michael Hyatt: Well, this really frees up your thinking to be creative. And, and to really more and more narrowly focus your effort things where you make your biggest contribution and that you love doing. And you know, I’ve, I said this when I was trying to talk my wife Gail, into just getting somebody to help with the house.

Housekeeping. She had this sense, and we were from this generation that, well, I should be doing that. No, you know, there’s other things that you do really well, and by your own admission, you don’t even enjoy this.

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah.

 

Michael Hyatt: one of the things you talk about in Tranquility by Tuesday is some practical ways, practical strategies to calm the chaos.

And we don’t have time to talk about all nine and people can get the book, we’ll have links to the books and all that in the show notes. But what if I do wanna talk about, I think we’ve got three of these that we’ve identified that we wanna talk about, but give yourself a bedtime. What does that mean?

Laura Vanderkam: Yes, well this is actually rule number one in Tranquility by Tuesday, um, which is about nine rules to make life feel better and calm the chaos and make time for what matters. And rule number one, give yourself a bedtime is not complicated. Somebody said to me, you know, this is the least sexy, but the most impactful rule of anything that I have taught them because most.

People need a certain amount of sleep to be at their best. You know, most adults, it’s probably somewhere between seven and eight hours a day. And what I found through my time diary studies is most people actually do get that over a longer period of time. Right. But for a lot of people it is not. Achieved in any sort of orderly fashion.

So they are sleeping short amounts on some nights, and then they are crashing on the weekend or sleeping through an alarm later in the week or falling asleep on the tele, you know, on the sofa watching television at night. And so you’re getting the sleep, but it’s not done in an orderly way. It is so much better to get the amount of sleep you need every single night, right?

You’re not saving time by skimping somewhere and making it up somewhere else. You wanna get the amount you need. Most adults have to wake up at a set time. For work or family responsibilities, right? People set an alarm. That’s just what they do. They have to get up. So the variable that can move is when you go to bed the night before.

So you take the amount of sleep you need, take the time, you plan to wake up, count back. This is just a math problem that is your bedtime, and then you structure your evening to be in bed by that point. So for me, during the school year, I have to be up at six 30 to get my kids up and moving. I need seven and a half hours of sleep.

So my bedtime is 11:00 PM. And so usually somewhere around 10 30, I’m making sure that I’m gonna be in bed by 11 o’clock. Am I in my pajamas? Have I brushed my teeth? Am I reading in bed? Or whatever it is that we’re doing. But you know, having that sense that we’re winding down toward 11 means it’s possible to be in bed and have lights out at 11.

So if you do this, I promise you, you will have more energy. You will have more focus, you will feel better about life, you will get more done. And if you are doubting me, just, just try it for a week and, and see what happens.

Michael Hyatt: I love this. You know, one of the things I’ve learned to do with this is because I wear this aura ring that Mm-hmm. my sleep. There’s a difference between time and bed time of sleep. So I factor in that into my algorithm of what time I go to bed. Because I know it’s going to typically take me 20 to 30 minutes to fall asleep, you know, is another problem to solve.

But in the meantime, I wanna make sure that I’m actually asleep for eight hours and I’m monitor the quality of my sleep too. But I think I totally agree with you. Yeah. know, when you’re, when you’re tired, everybody, including the people in your family, seems stupid. And the more sleep I get, the smarter they get.

Laura Vanderkam: Yes, it’s interesting.

Well, and.

Megan Hyatt Miller: works. Okay.

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah, I mean, it’s a different amount for everyone, and certainly these sleep trackers are allowing people to get a little bit more granular in it. I tend to need seven and a half hours in bed. I don’t actually know what that means in terms of my sleep quality. I tend to sleep pretty well.

I’m not waking up in the middle of the night. I tend to fall asleep pretty quickly. So for me, the numbers are probably pretty close. Other people may have a different experience, but probably figure out both, right? Like if you have. Whatever, 90% sleep efficiency, then you would need to be in bed 10% more than the amount of sleep you need and, and just calculate from there.

Megan Hyatt Miller: That’s really good. Okay, so another thing that you talk about in Tranquility by Tuesday is the idea of move by 3:00 PM Can you talk a little bit about that?

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah, so this is another one of those. Very simple and yet. Very important rules for making life feel better. Um, there’s a couple parts of this. I mean, one is just physical activity as a known mood booster. Interesting research on people doing short bursts of activity. Their energy levels rise considerably. Stay there for a while, and you know, it doesn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to think that you’re getting more done if you feel more energetic than if you don’t.

But it’s, it’s not just about that. It’s that people need to think about where they’re gonna put breaks into their schedule. In order to maximize their productivity. Everyone goes through these energy dips. You know, you start out in the morning, you can conquer the world after that first cup of coffee, usually around two o’clock, three o’clock in the afternoon, no longer thinking you’re conquering the world more thinking about a nap at that point.

And that is a sign that you probably need a break. And so by thinking through your day and saying, well, where could I take? 10 minutes to go move my body. You’ll be more strategic about your entire calendar 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Hmm. 

Laura Vanderkam: and you know, look at it. Where can I take a break? Well, once you’re doing that, once you’re surveying your whole day and seeing where the spaces might be, and when I’m doing things, you’re already ahead of the game in terms of thinking through what the day looks like, what you plan to accomplish, how you’re gonna manage your energy in order to get that all done.

Megan Hyatt Miller: know, one of my favorite things to do, um, with regard to movement is to, when I have my weekly call with my assistant, Elizabeth, assuming we’re not being swarmed by a cicada, I. Which at this very moment we are here in Tennessee. Um, I like to do that on the phone while I’m walking. You know, I find that she’s usually has questions for me, so you gotta pick the right kind of meeting for this where you’re not needing to take notes. Um, maybe and there’s somebody else that’s, um, been, you know, deputized to be the note taker, but it’s a great way to activate creative thinking. To really engage in the conversation in a different way.

And I think it’s also a way that you can get an hour of walking midday, you know, if the weather’s nice and it, and you come back and you really do feel rejuvenated. It’s not, it’s not a break exactly in the way that you’re talking about, but it is a way. To break up just being sedentary all day long, or staring at a screen all day long.

It’s like we kind of forget sometimes we can use the phone too. It doesn’t have to be all zoom, you know? It’s kind of our default these days. But anyway, that’s just another creative way of getting some movement in the day. Even if you didn’t get to do it first thing in the morning, which is kind of ideal probably.

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah, absolutely. And even if you do move first thing in the morning, I think you could still take a 10 minute break sometime later in the day to move your body again. Right. And I mean, it’s, it’s good to exercise, but it’s also good to take breaks and you know, our energy levels go up and down during the day, so the more you can put in, the better.

Megan Hyatt Miller: I

like a 10 minute, um, kind of standard for that because that feels very doable.

Laura Vanderkam: Yes.

Megan Hyatt Miller: we’re saying you gotta go for 30 or 45 minutes and you’re gonna need to shower. You know, people, people are gonna be like, no, that, that doesn’t work. But 10 minutes. I mean, that’s just kinda like walk around the block.

Laura Vanderkam: Absolutely you can do it. I have met very few people who could not do this, um, even in various sorts of jobs.

Michael Hyatt: One of your other rules, Laura, is plan on Fridays, and that’s kind of a new idea to me because I typically plan Sunday Mm-hmm. But I want to hear your process and why. Why you say this.

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah, so this rule to plan on Fridays, it’s, again, it’s two things. The first and most important is to plan. So if you have a weekly planning time. Good job. Excellent. You can stick with it. I’m not kind of trying and convince you to change everything, um, but I do think you need a weekly planning time because it’s important to look at the upcoming week and ask what you need and want to do with your time.

And I strongly encourage people to look in three different spheres. So the professional. The relationship sphere. So things you were doing with family and friends, and then personal things that you do for your own spiritual, emotional, mental, physical health, right? And think about what’s most important in each of these.

Make sure you’ve got time for that. Um, look at what other obligations you have. Make sure you are prepared for those things. things. Um, and and then, you know, you’re good, right? You’ve got a, you’ve got your marching orders for the week ahead. the the second part of it though, why Fridays is. I know a lot of people plan on Sunday nights, so they plan on Monday mornings.

Those are both very popular times, but I think Friday has a few upsides to it. The first is that most people are not doing anything else of consequence on Friday and particularly Friday afternoon. A lot of people are sliding into the weekend at that point, and it is very hard to start anything new, but you might be willing to think about what future you should be doing and, and so it’s easier to think like.

I need to call three potential clients versus actually picking up the phone on Friday and calling those three clients. So you’re like, well, I’ll, I’ll future me will do that. But you know, by taking those minutes, you can turn what is often wasted time into some of your best, most productive time of the week.

Um, the other upside is that it’s business hours. So if you need to set up a meeting with someone, if you need to call an office to make an appointment. You can do that. Whereas Sunday night you may not be able to do that. I mean, probably your dentist office is not open and taking appointments or, you know, if you send emails to the people you work with, setting up meetings on Sunday night, they may respond because they’re working with you, but they may not be happy about it either.

Um, so maybe better to put those, uh, during business hours on Friday. It also gives you a chance to think about the weekend. So if you haven’t thought about the weekend. A lot of times people are so busy they get to the weekend, they’re like, I wanna do nothing. You’re not gonna do nothing. It’s impossible to do nothing.

You’ll do something, but it might not be nearly as rejuvenating as if you’d put a tiny bit of thought into it. So if you haven’t thought about the upcoming weekend, it gives you one more chance. To do that, but it also, and I think this is kind of, to me, the biggest benefit of it. Even people who absolutely love their jobs can feel a little bit of trepidation on Sunday afternoon and Sunday night, because you know, there’s.

All this stuff waiting for you on Monday, and you don’t know how you’re going to deal with it. And so it’s always going in the back of your brain like, oh, well, you know, I know I need to do X, Y, and Z, and I know I’m, I’ve gotta remember to think about that. And so if you don’t play until Sunday night, that’s still going in your brain until Sunday night. Whereas if you plan on Friday, you know what you’re doing on Monday. Ideally your brain can take a little bit more of a break, um, and, and get rid of some of those Sunday scaries that people experience.

Michael Hyatt: Okay. I’m totally sold.

Laura Vanderkam: Well, I didn’t mean to mess up your whole system here, so I mean, I don’t know. I’m sorry.

Michael Hyatt: I li I like messing it up occasionally, but this, those are really compelling reasons, so I’m gonna try it for 30 Okay. and me know how it goes. it goes.

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah.

Megan Hyatt Miller: Laura. Um, years ago when we first launched the Full Focus Planner, I used the planner very consistently. Monday through Friday, you know, and I’d always do my planning on Sunday night. Used it through the week, but I almost never used it on the weekends. And I was that person who, you know, was very focused during the week.

And when the weekend came, I just kind of like wanted it to be unstructured. I wanted to just not think about anything and I didn’t want that kind of structure. the last year or so, maybe, maybe two, I’ve started using the planner. Through the weekend and it’s been really helpful for me and, and I think part of the reason is because I wanna be intentional about what kind of rejuvenation. I get, you know, that, that if I’m not thoughtful about it, that I just kind of drift through the weekend and it can actually be all work. I mean, I’m, I’m that person who I either wanna do nothing or I wanna like, paint the whole house this weekend, you know? Uh, and I wanna be really productive and that can be very exhausting.

Get to Sunday night and I’m like, oh, I, I gotta go back to work so I get a break, you know? Um, but I think the, the other thing is that. Kind of like we talk about with going to bed on time or having a bedtime. You know, the success of your day actually starts the night before. I think the success of your week starts the weekend before, and there are so many things that we can do over the weekend if we’re intentional about it.

That can set us up for a great week. You know, maybe it’s even thinking about something like a meal plan or grocery shopping, if you’re going to eat food and make sure you have the fuel you need to perform at a high level. That’s not gonna happen by accident. You know, it’s probably not happening through the Chick-fil-A drive-through.

It’s probably happening because you, like in our case, you planned your meals and you ordered your groceries and you picked ’em up, or they got delivered, and then now you have what you need for dinner every night. You’re not asking a question at five o’clock. Oh, what are we gonna have? Oh, well, I forgot to take, you know, this outta the freezer, or, we don’t have this ingredient.

So I think there’s a real value in doing this planning on the week or on the, on the Friday, leading into the weekend. So that you can be intentional about what are those few things that will set me up for a fantastic week that if I don’t think about till Sunday night, there just won’t be enough time to do it. And I’ll just sort of be like, you know, rolling into Monday morning with my tires on fire.

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah. Well, and, and I think it’s, it’s not even just about that. It’s that making sure that you have space for things that are rejuvenating for you and that are fun for you because. When you have five kids, somebody’s gonna have something on the weekend inevitably, and you will get the kids to the things that they need to do.

You will get them to the soccer tournament, you will get them to the ballet class, you will go to the jazz band concert. You will do those things, however. You may then do nothing for you because you’re like, well, we got so much going on. Whereas if you think about it ahead of time and map out who needs to be where, when you might say like, oh, well actually I’ve got two hours between the soccer tournament and the jazz band concert, and if I’m intentional about it, I could do something that would be fun for me.

During that time, instead of just letting it disappear. ’cause you assume you’re so busy so you don’t think about it and then you wind up, you know, on Instagram for two hours or something like that. So, you know, having that intention and that plan means there is time for fun as opposed to it all being half todos

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah,

Michael Hyatt: This is so good. Well, listen, we could talk you’re our kind of people, we could talk forever 

Laura Vanderkam: hours. 

Michael Hyatt: topic. And by the way, thank you for endorsing when at work and Succeed at Life. You know, I, I knew when you did that, we were kindred spirits. So we have three questions. Think of this as a lightning round.

Brief 

Laura Vanderkam: Okay. 

Michael Hyatt: but we just wanna ask you a few questions about the double win. 

Laura Vanderkam: All right. 

Michael Hyatt: Are you, game?

Laura Vanderkam: I’m game. Let’s do it.

Michael Hyatt: Okay? What’s your biggest obstacle personally for getting the double win?

Laura Vanderkam: So, you know, this is constantly, um, I. A work in progress, but I think evening hours are hard to use. Well, and 

Michael Hyatt: agree. 

Laura Vanderkam: weekday evening hours. I especially, so Monday through Thursday, let’s say you’re done with work at like five 30 and go to bed at 10 30. I mean, it’s five hours. And that’s four days, that’s like 20 hours of your week.

And I think many of us are not terribly intentional during that time. You’re, you know, doing what you have to do with kid activities, probably people are getting fed. Um, you’re getting people to bed if you need to help with that ’cause you’ve got little kids. But then we don’t think about how to make that time fun and meaningful.

Um, and so I’m really thinking about that. Like, can I go into the evening with an intention or two? And if I do, I find it tends to go a lot better. So I mean, it, I, I’m not gonna lie to you, there’s a lot of nights where I’m like yelling at people to get in bed, and then I’m scrolling around online for the rest of the time.

But last night I was good. I, um, I. Said, okay, we’re gonna have this for dinner. This is all planned. And then even better, one of my kids turned out to have an assignment from his home ec class that he needed to cook. And I’m like, Ooh, I’ve got a double win here. So he cooked. I took the little kids, my youngest boys outside after dinner.

We call this. Toad time, time outside after dinner. And so 

Megan Hyatt Miller: I 

Laura Vanderkam: we went out and played, ’cause it’s summer now and so it was good to be out. So we were out for a while doing that. Um, and then we had a, a little bit of downtime in the evening as people are like getting ready, you know, have, watch a quick show or whatever.

I worked on a puzzle. I really love thousand piece puzzles and that’s kind of my. Brainless leisure time thing of choice. So I spent some time working on that. So, you know, the evening I had a good dinner that I didn’t have to cook. Um, I went outside and got some puzzle time. So that was, that was a win. I.

Megan Hyatt Miller: That’s

Michael Hyatt: I love that. Okay. Second question. How do you personally know when you’ve either achieved the double win or you’re moving toward it? What are sort of the signs that that’s working? I.

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah, I feel like this incredible sense of energy, um, and. I find, you know, again, working against that metaphor of balance, whether on opposite sides of the scale, I find actually when I feel like I’ve really won big in one of those categories, that it gives me a lot of energy for the other one. So if I’ve been working hard on something professionally and it happens and I come out of that feeling like I’m on top of the world and. Magically enough, I am a more present parent. I’m like, well, you know, I’m not worried about that so I can, you know, spend the time reading or doing this, you know, sitting around having a conversation with my teenagers and I, I feel then like I’m winning at that. But the same thing, it goes the other way too.

Like, um, you know, that I can sometimes feel like something really cool has happened. Like maybe one of my kids has come to talk to me about something that’s really deep and important and I’m like, wow, I feel so amazing. That they are willing to trust me and are willing to do that. And so maybe, you know, I have good things in the world that I can share, and then I wanna take that over to the work side as well.

And, and so yeah, I, I feel this tremendous sense of energy and often it is a win in one side that then propels me to be my best self in the other one as well.

Michael Hyatt: I like that. Okay. Third and final question, what’s one ritual or routine that helps you do what you do? It’s like an essential thing. That’s an anchor kind of ritual. 

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah, well, we have talked about the Friday planning and, and honestly, when people ask me that horrible question of how do you do it, that that is what I say, that I say, that the Friday planning is really a, a key part of it. Um, and I tend to come up with a weekly plan, um, for everyone. All involved stakeholders, uh, who are involved in the running of my household for the next week.

So everyone knows what they’re doing and people give me information. I tend to be the clearinghouse for it. Um, but when we all have that, we at least know what we’re doing and there’s a lot less worries about it. And things change. I mean, things change all the time, but I find that if you have a plan when things have to change, you know what you’re changing from. You know how to pivot as opposed to just, you know, wildly in the dark. No idea. I mean, so like the other morning when a tree fell across our yard, our, our street, so nobody could get out. Um, I. We were, we were able to pivot on what had to happen because we knew what was going to happen. So I thought through everything, I was like, okay, well this is the morning.

The cleaning service comes. They can’t get to our house. So I called and figure out another time that they can come, because I still really want my house to get clean as opposed to being, like having this crisis where they’re, they can’t come and then I’m getting charged for them not coming. And you know, it’s just knowing what’s supposed to happen means you can then pivot when you need to.

Megan Hyatt Miller: I think that’s such a great point. I love that and I find that to be true as well. We, we live and die by our calendar. In the Miller House, and I can’t even imagine trying to manage it otherwise, you know, we’ve got everybody’s stuff on there and if we need to adjust as we often do, we can. So

Laura, this has been such a great conversation.

I feel so much kinship with you. Our lives are very similar, I

Laura Vanderkam: yes.

Megan Hyatt Miller: And I feel like I’ve learned a lot from you, um, other than your, your book, um, by Tuesday, which I know is available, Amazon, wherever books are sold. How can people learn more about your work and find out what you have to offer?

Laura Vanderkam: Yeah, well you can come visit my website, which is laura vander cam.com. That’s just my name. Um, and you can find information about my different books and podcasts. And I still blog like four times a week. I enjoy it. I’m pretty old school. It’s like it’s still 2005 around here. Um, I. that. Yeah. Yeah. Why not? Right?

I like, I like doing it. Um, and then, you know, I know a lot of your listeners are obviously interested in issues of work and life, and I co-host a podcast called Best of Both Worlds, um, that you have been a guest on Megan and, uh, I with my co-host, Sarah Hart Unger. We talk about family and career from the perspective of people who truly enjoy both.

So just as you guys do. And, uh, so people might wanna check that out.

Megan Hyatt Miller: Fantastic. Well, we’re always excited to have more resources around the double win to offer our community, so thank you for being one of those that we really trust and respect, and

Laura Vanderkam: Thanks.

Megan Hyatt Miller: again for being on with us today.

Michael Hyatt: Yeah. Thanks Laura.

Laura Vanderkam: Thanks for having me.

Michael Hyatt: Okay. So that was a fun interview

Megan Hyatt Miller: was. 

Michael Hyatt: and, and it was fun because. She has five kids. I have five kids. You have five 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah, 

Michael Hyatt: and we’re trying to balance all this stuff and sometimes I feel like, you know, a juggler I could use another arm.

Megan Hyatt Miller: right. You could probably use like octopus arms because of all your grandkids.

Michael Hyatt: That’s true. 10 of ’em. We’re gonna have to get name tags before 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Pretty, Pretty, definitely that will need to happen. Well, you know, there were several things that I loved in particular about this conversation. The whole part where we talked about kind of creative thinking, and I think you, that was when you asked her about the NFL question, you know, of these coaches and, um, big time college coaches and football and, you know, they work crazy hours and.

Can they also have the double win? And I thought what she said about, well, if you can’t do dinner as a family, could you do breakfast? It just sort of changes the conversation and breaks some of the artificial constraints that I think we sort of default to without thinking about it. It really got me thinking about how to do things in a different way that ultimately achieves the outcome we want, but be flexible on the how.

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, that was a big takeaway for me too. I also like the takeaway of her challenging how much we’re actually working

be, because I think sometimes we, we make it bigger than it needs to 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yep. 

Michael Hyatt: and what that creates is a sort of helplessness on our part. Like we really can’t do anything about it. But if we suddenly discover that it’s more manageable than that.

And we have more free time than we think. It’s just, then it becomes a question of stewardship. How are we using those hours? So that was a big takeaway for me too, as well as planning on Fridays. I really am gonna try 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah. ‘

Michael Hyatt: cause she made a very compelling case for that to 

Megan Hyatt Miller: I agree on that. Back to the idea of how much you’re really working. You know, it’s funny because, um, you and I have had this conversation kind of offline a fair amount, and that is that sometimes it’s not the quantity I. Of work that you’re doing. That’s the problem, which you can still feel burnt out or exhausted professionally, even if you’re working a reasonable number of hours because sometimes the kind of work you’re doing, we really didn’t get into this in our conversation, but certainly it’s something we wanna talk more about on the show is the kind of work you’re doing or what part of the work you’re doing can be the thing that’s actually draining, not the quantity.

I think that is a conversation that we need to explore more because it’s easy to just, again, kind of get in that black and white thinking of like, if I’m worn out, if I feel burned out, it’s probably ’cause I’m working too much. It might just be that the kind of work you’re doing, you’re not naturally wired for, you don’t have enough passion or proficiency in, and consequently like it’s sucking the life out of you. Well, I hope  you  got your own takeaways from this show. I think it was such a good conversation. And if you’ve enjoyed the show, which we certainly hope you did, uh, I just wanna ask you to hit that little subscribe button at the top of, uh, your, your podcast app. Subscribe to the show that helps us get it in front of more people as well as if you have just a second, we would love it if you would leave a review for the show because.

We want to get this message of the double win, winning at work and succeeding at life to as many people as possible, and that really happens because of visibility. So you can help us out with that mission and be a part of it with us. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you next week.