Flip the Script

0:00This message comes from Amazon Business. Free your team from time-consuming office tasks with smart business buying tools. Enable buyers to find and purchase items fast. Learn more about the technology, insights, and support available at amazonbusiness.com. This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're going to find. Challenge you.

0:39We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And on the show today, fresh perspectives on the things that stress us out the most. Like having enough time. Yes, that's your plate. All right, everyone, dinner time! You know, we try to have family dinner a few nights per week. But when you have seven people, five children ranging from ages 3 to 16, it can be a little bit hard to get everyone sitting down at the same time. This is Laura Vanderkam.

1:23She's a mother, an author, a public speaker. Yeah, she has a lot going on. Somebody has forgotten to grab a fork or somebody wants to go get a cup of milk or spill something on the floor. You know, somebody wants to go get extras of the pasta or whatever it is. And so people are popping up left and right. Including the husband and the dog. Sometimes the dog will start barking in the middle of dinner, which can add its own little chaos to everything. Helping people cope with chaos is Laura's specialty now. But she was no expert back when she first became a parent and was feeling really overwhelmed.

2:02It really does change your relationship with time. You have this infant that needs somebody with him or her 24-7. And then there's also things that you probably still need to do in your own life. figuring out, well, how can I still devote the time that is necessary to stay employed or to take care of my own health? Will I still see my friends and family when I have this new 24-7 responsibility? Laura had a lot of questions, but the advice she found on how to juggle it all wasn't very satisfying. You know, a lot of what has been written about making space for both work and life, particularly stuff that is aimed at women, has been pretty negative, right, about how challenging it is to have it all or do it all or whatever people want to call it.

2:59But there are people who seem to be building careers that they are happy with, who seem to have, you know, fulfilling family lives. And it made her want to know. How are they spending their hours? Because they don't have any more time than the rest of us. It may be that they are allocating their hours in interesting ways that the rest of us can learn from. After studying how hundreds of the most effective people use their time, Laura became a time management guru. She writes best-selling books, hosts multiple podcasts, and she made time to do this interview just a few days before Christmas. And listen, thank you so much for making the time.

3:44Well, it was you and wrapping presents today. Those were the two things. And Laura says the most important thing for us to remember is... Complexity isn't the enemy. Chaos is the enemy. You can have a very complex life, but if you know where all the pieces need to go, then it can feel very orderly and in control. To me, that is the secret of being calm about life. So let's delve into sort of the research that you've done in terms of studying those people. you often talk about the one thing that we all have, but some of us seem to manage better. Correct. There's 168 hours in a week. And that's a number that a lot of people don't know.

4:26It's weird. We say 24-7 all the time, but we never multiply it. No, I didn't multiply it through until I started writing about this. And then I was like, oh, yeah,

4:42full-time job is 40 hours a week and somebody sleeps eight hours a night, so that is 56 hours per week, we still have 72 waking, non-working hours. You know, many people are concerned that if I work full-time, I don't have time for anything else. But even if we're working full-time hours, even 50 or 60 hours leaves some time for other things. So when we approach it from that perspective, I think we start to look at time in a far more abundant way. And that's hard to see on a Tuesday when you're kind of racing home from work to get dinner on the table. But I promise the time is there somewhere.

5:28Daily life can feel pretty hectic. And then there's a lot to keep us up at night. Global warming, economic uncertainty, how to manage when it feels like the world just keeps moving faster. So on the show today, we're flipping the script with new perspectives and some reminders to keep us out of that doom and gloom spiral and think more proactively about our futures. Laura Vanderkam says that before we move forward to manage our schedules better, we need to take a hard look at how we're spending our time now. Because if you don't know where the time is going now, I mean, how do you know if you're changing the right thing?

6:13So I always suggest people try tracking their time for a week. Here's Laura Vanderkam on the TED stage. I recently did a time diary project looking at 1 ,001 days in the lives of extremely busy women. They had demanding jobs, sometimes their own businesses, kids to care for, maybe parents to care for, community commitments. Busy, busy people. I had them keep track of their time for a week so I could add up how much they worked and slept. One of the women whose time log I studied, she goes out for a Wednesday night for something. She comes home to find that her water heater has broken. And there is now water all over her basement.

6:51So she's dealing with the immediate aftermath at night. Next day, she's got plumbers coming in. day after that, professional cleaning career, dealing with the ruined carpet. All this is being recorded on her time log, winds up taking seven hours of her week. Seven hours. That's like finding an extra hour in the day. But I'm sure if you had asked her at the start of the week, could you find seven hours to train for a triathlon? Could you find seven hours to mentor seven worthy people? I'm sure she would have said what most of us would have said, which is no. Can't you see how busy I am? Yet when she had to find seven hours, because there is water all over her basement, she found seven hours.

7:34And what this shows us is that time is highly elastic. We cannot make more time, but time will stretch to accommodate what we choose to put into it. And so the key to time management is treating our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater. And to get at this, I like to use some language from one of the busiest people I ever interviewed. She was running a small business with 12 people on the payroll. She had six children in her spare time. I remember it was a Thursday morning, and she was not available to speak with me. But the reason she was unavailable to speak with me is that she was out for a hike.

8:14So, of course, this makes me even more intrigued. And when I finally do catch up with her, she explains it like this. She says, listen, Laura, every minute I spend is my choice. And rather than say, I don't have time to do X, Y, or Z, she'd say, I don't do X, Y, or Z because it's not a priority. You're reminding me of a habit that I started, I think, after reading one of your books, which is that I block time on my calendar for relaxing. You know, I was always used to blocking time out for meeting, prep for interview, make sure you pick up the kid at this time. But to actually write down that I was going to relax felt very strange.

8:58But if it's just as important to me as all those other things, I need to put it on the calendar. I think that's a wise idea. Because if you don't do that, time will be spent one way or another. I mean, something is going to fill those 30 minutes, but it might not have been what you would have chosen if you had been a little bit more intentional about it. And so if your goal is to have more relaxed downtime in your life, then absolutely claim the time for that. And then when you get to that time and you're like, well, I could send these six other emails right now. You're like, no, no, no. now is the time for spending 20 minutes relaxing.

9:38Okay, so for people who haven't done this, how do you suggest they start being more intentional? Yeah, for me, it's having at least one designated time during the week where I think about the upcoming week, what needs to happen and what I want to have happen in three spheres of life. My career, my relationships, so that means family and friends, and then for myself. I find a really good time to do this planning is Friday afternoons. Most of us don't use Friday afternoons well. It is hard to start anything new at that point. We are pretty much sliding into the weekend. But we might be willing to think about what future us should be doing.

10:20There might be some people listening who think these two women are insane. Why is it so hard for them to relax? Why does everything have to be so regimented? Well, I would say that my life actually isn't all that regimented. But if we don't claim time for something, something else will claim that time from us. So this is a way of actively creating the life you want as opposed to just letting life happen. Because for most of us, when you just let life happen, that means you're going to spend the time in ways that aren't that meaningful to you. So a lot of the people you're talking about are people who have their own companies.

11:00Maybe they very much are in charge of their own time, in charge of other people's time. Have you also worked with or talked to people who maybe are not having that much autonomy? Maybe are working multiple jobs, maybe not paid enough to be able to outsource some of the things that higher paid people can? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I study people in all different walks of life and have seen time logs from thousands of people now. And even if we don't have complete control over our time, we often have the ability to make choices about some of it. Maybe you don't control what time you leave work, but you might control what time you get there.

11:45You know, if I am not working on one particular day in the next week, that's the day I'm going to prioritize doing this thing. And I think having that mindset of I can make some choices even if I can't make as many as I want is just much more constructive. Whereas when you say, well, I have no free time whatsoever, there's nothing you can do with that. In 168 hours a week, I think we can find time for what matters to you. Because guess what? We don't even need that much time to do amazing things. But when most of us have bits of time, what do we do? Pull out the phone, right? start deleting emails, or otherwise we're puttering around the house or watching TV.

12:25But small moments can have great power. You can use your bits of time for bits of joy. Breaks at work can be used for meditating or praying. If family dinner is out because of your crazy work schedule, maybe family breakfast could be a good substitute. It's about looking at the whole of one's time and seeing where the good stuff can go. I truly believe this. There is time. That's Laura Vanderkam. Her latest book is Tranquility by Tuesday, Nine Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters. You can see her full talk at TED.com. On the show today, flipping the script. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

13:17I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and we'll be right back.

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14:21It's no surprise. Walmart is investing$1 billion in training and development to help associates build lasting careers with or without a degree. In fact, 75 % of Walmart management started in hourly rolls. With benefits like health care, paid parental leave, and tuition support, Walmart isn't just a place to work. It's a place to grow. Learn more at walmart.com slash spark. This message comes from Progressive Insurance and the Name Your Price tool. It helps you find car insurance options in your budget. Try it today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law.

15:02Not available in all states. This message is brought to you by Pushkin Industries with the audiobook Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth. Explore the mind of the beloved science fiction writer who foresaw both the digital age and the political state with astounding clarity. Available wherever you get audiobooks. Hey, it's Manoush. Before we get back to the show, maybe you remember an interactive series we did in the fall called Body Electric. As part of our investigation into how our bodies are adapting to our technology, we asked you to join a study with Columbia University Medical Center. And over 20 ,000 of you signed up to try integrating five-minute gentle movement breaks into every half hour, hour, or two hours of sitting time.

15:51And for the folks who managed to stick with it, the results were pretty astounding. So now we have taken those findings, added more reporting, and put together a quick startup guide with a new invitation. Take the Body Electric Challenge. Put your health before your inbox this year. Just go to npr.org slash body electric to get started, or if you did the project before, bravo. Here's some motivation to keep going. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, flipping the script. Fresh perspectives on some of the things that keep us up at night, like money. And how do we know when we have enough?

16:40It took our next speaker a long time to understand that wealth means different things to different people. We're talking today about something very important, like why some people have more money than others. Like so many folks in the 90s, I was a devout Oprah Winfrey show watcher. This is Aisha Yandoro. She loved watching Oprah and Oprah's onstage pal, Suzy Orman. Favorite money expert, Suzy Orman. She's got it. And so I was introduced to 401ks by Suzy Orman of all people. People first, then money, then things. I remember her. Totally. I think for a lot of women, she was the first time you heard about financial planning.

17:24I think so. Exactly. Every month until you're 65 at a 12 % return, you'll have$1 million. Blonde woman with these really white teeth that was looking at you, telling you to get your financial act together, right? Exactly. And telling you to save yourself first. And this is what you needed to do to be an empowered woman. Together, we can show the world. We'll be right back. Back in a moment. Growing up in Mississippi, Aisha knew her parents weren't rich, but they had everything they needed. Food on the table, presents at Christmastime. And so we didn't have conversations about money. I didn't think about it.

18:01I didn't feel like I was missing anything. But when she got to grad school and started working on a Ph.D. in community psychology, Aisha met people who were loaded. I saw people who were going to Greece and international travel just to lay on beaches. I met people who had more than one home, like multiple vacation homes. And so there was this clear separation of, oh, this is what money looks like. A few years later, a little more sophisticated and ambitious and armed with lots of degrees, Aisha was ready to take on the world. I got my first job postgraduate school and it was the most money at the time that I had ever made.

18:45I was making$70 ,000, and I was like, oh my God, this is so much money. And I was 27, so I was like, oh my God, I'm rich. This is it. With Suzy Orman's voice in her head, she made an appointment with a financial advisor. Aisha wasn't sure how to get started, but her basic financial goals were clear to her. I was very clear that my goals were to be able to take care of my mom and to be able to retire by a specific age. And, like, I remember when I met with the financial advisor, you know, I told him my name, you know, Aisha Yandoro. And he was like, oh, that last name is just a bit too much, so I'm just going to call you Aisha.

19:29And instead of sitting down and recognizing that I had very specific goals with limited information, they talked to me as if I was not deserving of what it was that I was trying to accomplish. So it wasn't, okay, you are interested in opening up a 401k. Do you really understand what that means? Let me walk you through what a 401k is. Let me walk you through what saving each month will look like. I wasn't spoken to like that. I felt like I was being talked down to. And instead of accepting those as being my goals, his response was, I don't know why taking care of your mom is your responsibility.

20:07So even with that, it's an othering. It's, oh, do I belong here? Is this for me? And maybe this world of wealth and riches aren't meant for little Black girls from Jackson, Mississippi. This meeting made Aisha feel completely terrible, invalidated, like her ideas about what money is for were naive. And if she felt this way with a PhD and a well-paid job, How were other women of color without the same opportunities being treated? She never went back to that financial advisor and moved on with her life. She got married, had kids, worked in criminal justice, grant making, and affordable housing. And then Aisha moved back to her home state of Mississippi to start a nonprofit called Springboard to Opportunities, a group that runs after-school programs, health care clinics, and job training.

21:09And it really was a very simple idea that we had. It was how do you go about supporting families that are some of the most impoverished in this country, families that live in affordable housing, how do you go about supporting them as they work to support themselves and their families? That was our very basic goal when we started 10 years ago. But something extraordinary happened when, in 2017, Aisha decided to pose a very simple question to the women they were serving, something that she'd wished she'd been asked in that financial planner's office all those years ago. What do you need? And how can I help?

21:48When we listened, it was moms that needed more money. And it's not like they needed a significant amount of money. It wasn't$10 ,000,$15 ,000 problems. These were not middle-class problems. These were$500 problems,$250 problems. $25 problems. And so I said, OK. Ayesha Yandoro continues from the TED stage. The problem was the lack of cash. No money for pizza on a Friday night was causing stress. Unexpected car repairs were leading to unemployment because people could not get to and from work. So we began to research, how do you give money, not another program, to people experiencing poverty? In 2018, we launched the Magnolia Mothers Trust, this country's first modern guaranteed income program and the first in the world to center its efforts on Black women.

22:43A guaranteed income is a specific amount of money given to a specific population over a set amount of time. It's not a new idea. Jenny Tillman, a mom and welfare activist, called for a guaranteed income way back in 1972. And even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Nixon indicated that a guaranteed income could help solve for poverty. It's not a new idea, but like I said, we are pioneers, and our efforts are working. We provide$1 ,000 a month for 12 months to Black mothers. And our goal is simple, to provide these women with the breathing room they need by giving them the financial resources they need to dream a little bigger.

23:28So Magnolia Mothers Trust is now the country's longest running guaranteed income program. For people who maybe are wondering how this works, can you explain it? Yep. We're doubling the income for most of the women that we work with because on average, our population makes about$13 ,000 a year. And it's a life-changing amount of money because folks are always like, oh my God,$12 ,000 isn't that much money. I'm like,$12 ,000 isn't that much money to people who have money. If you go from making$12 ,000 to making$24 ,000, think about how your life would change. How many moms are on the program right now?

24:05Right now, we have 134 moms. Oh, wow. Can you tell me about one of them? Yeah, so one of the moms who's in it right now is Keisha. She has two kids. She works full-time in the healthcare field as a certified nursing assistant, and she wants to be a nurse. And so what this means about her ability to go back to school, but not only her ability to go back to school, what it means for her and her ability to say yes to some of the things that her kids want, not just her kids' needs. So I guess I'm thinking, like, that's great that for a year you get$12 ,000 and you get, you know, a little bit of breathing space as a mother.

24:47But what happens when the year is over? So that's the thing. I think we don't, I don't think we give enough credit to breathing space. And I don't think we give enough credit or understanding about what it means to have your bandwidth text. When you're living in poverty and you're constantly just waiting for the other shoe to drop, you're just on that hamster wheel. You're just going, going, going, going, going. So for a year, yes, you get$12 ,000, which is amazing. But what it allows you to do is to not operate in scarcity. So you're able to operate an imagination. You're able to plan for the first time.

25:23You're able to see your future for the first time. And that's what we have so many of our moms telling us, that, oh, for the first time, I actually got to think about what I want. One day I was having a conversation with Coco, a mom within a Magnolia Mother's Trust, and I asked her, what is wealth to you? Without skipping a beat, she said, if anything were to happen to me, My family would have the money to cover my burial expenses. Asking more and more women the same question, I have come to learn that wealth is dignifying funerals, the privilege of privacy, the ability to complete school, own a business, or the thrill of being the extravagant auntie.

26:03All of these are definitions of wealth to them. I have never had a mother say to me, wealth is having stocks and bonds, equity in her home, or even a retirement account. Instead, they dream about what a life of ease and care would look like. I was having a conversation with a mom I work with, and I asked if she had six months worth of savings to cover an emergency. She started laughing. She could not even see herself in the equation that I was offering. She said that before the Magnolia Mother's Trust, I didn't even have a savings account, let alone one month worth of savings. I said, okay, let me ask the question differently.

26:44What is wealth to you? She said, oh, that's easy. All of my bills paid every month with a little left over for anything extra. She knew exactly what she needed. Our narrow definition simply did not address her needs. Just to tie it back to your own experience, It sounds like these moms want to give their kids what your parents gave you, which was not having to think about money, not even really giving it a second thought or talking about it because it wasn't an emergency. And that's what felt made you feel like you were rich or made you just not even think about it. OK, now you're going to make me cry because you're right.

27:33You're not talking about big, fancy vacations. You're talking about, like you said, just being able to get pizza on a Friday night. Yeah, that's exactly right. But that's what we do when we say no wealth is have an equity in your home, 401k retirement account, this much in savings, this type of vacation, this type of home. We can all have different definitions of wealth that matter to us. The reality is we should recognize that they all matter. So it's been, as you say, over five years since you first started. Do you see long-term effects of being given a little bit of breathing room financially, a little bit of not feeling so much stress about money?