LAURA VANDERKAM: Flexing With Time and Tasks

0:00Being flexible about when things happen often means that you can do things. Whereas if it has to happen at a specific time, that's going to be harder to pull off. Hi, I'm Michael Hyatt. And I'm Megan Hyatt Miller. And this is the Double Win Podcast, where we talk about how to win at work and succeed at life. So here at our company, Full Focus, we have identified nine life domains, body, mind, spirit, love, family, community, money, work, and hobbies. And these domains are going to help you to cultivate the person that you really want to be so that you can live the life that you want to live. Well, today's guests cover a lot of ground, especially in this domain of family.

0:47Yeah, we're super excited about this because we want to introduce you to Laura Vanderkam. She's an expert on time management and productivity. She has a TED Talk that's been seen over 12 million times. is 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-hosts the Best of Both Worlds podcast, which Megan has been on. She hosts the Before Breakfast podcast. She lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband and five children.

1:26Enjoy this conversation. Well, Laura, we're so happy to have you. on the Double Win Podcast. Welcome. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. 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 share that you may not be aware of. All right. Megan, you want to tell her? Yeah. So between the three of us, we have 15 children and each of us have five children. We do. We do. That's right. Isn't that amazing? Okay, so how old are your children? Mine are 17, 14, 12, 9, and 4. When you have 5, you have to think about it.

2:12You really do. And they change all the time, right? Somebody's had a birthday, and so then it's like, my usual recitation of it is off. Yes, ours all just changed. Most of our kids have birthdays between May and August. So we're 23, 20, 16, 14, 5. So we're pretty similar. Yeah, deep into birthday season right now. That's right. That's right. Well, I want to offer some hope to both of you. So all my kids are grown. Megan's the eldest 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. And we'd rather hang out with our kids than anybody.

2:50And I think it's so amazing you guys are working together. I mean, that is just... How cool is that? I aspire to that someday. 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. That's wonderful. 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. But I would love to hear kind of your take on the whole idea of work-life balance.

3:30You'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 do you think about it? 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 if 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 is 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.

4:10So it seems like the only solution ever available is to work less. And of course, if that's the framing that if I am an 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 it just 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.

4:48The 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 want to sort of consider, well, what does the good life look like for me? And what proportion of that is working? Or maybe not even just hours, 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?

5:30And I think if you think about it through that lens, 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. 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 spoke and their challenge is many of them have very demanding constituents, including sometimes their boss, fans, the press, all that stuff.

6:12What would you say to the individual who's in a situation who wants more work-life balance, but they're kind of in an environment that fights against that? Yeah, I think there's a couple things you can do. 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 because you want to 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.

6:52So 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. And they're not giving themselves credit for that in their minds because they had those really long days on the other day. So it's like, oh, I work around the clock. Rockwell, someone wasn't really around the clock. It was a lot, but it wasn't around the clock. And those are different things. We want to make sure we're giving ourselves credit for the space that does exist. But then you also want to say, well, what are the things that I need to do to make life feel sustainable?

7:26And probably if you are in a job like that, it's not that you're sitting down at 6 p.m. for family dinner every night. No one is unveiling a roast, you know, so Norman Rockwell style at 6 p.m. every day. But on the other hand, maybe it's that, well, I want to 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 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.

8:03And, 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. 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, right? So first of all, there's, many of us like being at work because the results are measurable.

8:44There'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. You know, I have no control over this, whatever. 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. Yeah. And I think there really is some exaggeration going on. I always joke in my talks about a young man who told me he was working 180 hours a week at his startup. And you multiply 24 times seven, I don't know, I want to invest in that thing if they figured out how to make more hours than it actually existed a week.

9:26And there've been other studies comparing people's estimated work weeks with time diaries. And let's just say that the higher the number people claim, 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.

10:02So, you know, you want to know where the time is going so you can make rational choices about how you are allocating it. 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 college coaches or GMs and that kind of environment, but everybody goes through seasons that are not ideal. Maybe you have a new baby, or maybe you just took on a new job, or maybe your father who's elderly fell last week and broke his hip, and you're doing some extra care there.

10:45I think the question becomes, well, is the double win only something that happens when, you know, the stars align and the angels sing and it's just perfect. And I think the answer is no. And, you know, I remember when my husband and I had just gotten married and we had our oldest two children are from his first marriage. And the way that our 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.

11:23And you know, what I found is once I stopped fighting against, it has to happen on Christmas day. If I just backed it up two weeks and said, okay, we're going to do, we're going to 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 going to 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.

11:54And 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 has to be all or nothing. I think you can think creatively and that's my takeaway from your answer to that question. Absolutely. Yeah, being creative about when you do things and looking at all of the 168 hours of a week as well. I know that, you know, sometimes people are upset about working on a weekend or something like that. But maybe that's a choice that is because you're taking Tuesday afternoons off to do something else that is important to you.

12:29I know that when 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. And I'd 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 going to be harder to pull off.

13:02Yeah, you know, we talk about this a lot when we talk about setting goals that always life happens. In the course of a year, you start out with your great plan. You know exactly what you're going to do. You think you can see the path to get to this goal. And inevitably, something pops up that derails you in some way. And what we always tell people is you want to remain fiercely committed to the goal, if at all possible. Occasionally, there are times when you actually do have to remove it from your list. But you want to maintain that commitment, if at all possible. But you want to be really flexible on the strategy.

13:32And that helps you be adaptable so you don't have to give up on the goal. You're probably going to get there by far different means than what you thought on January 1. And that's fine 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 I think there's a lot of freedom in that.

14:06And I think that's an empowering way to view it, especially since, you know, I was going to say most of, I think the truth is everybody who listens to 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 going to be kind of a self-sabotaging way of thinking about it. Because, you know, I don't know about you, Laura, but with five kids, there's not really one day ever that is exactly ideal today. As we're recording this, my five-year-old daughter is here at the office with us.

14:41It'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. Oh, no. And so nobody else is in the office. And so, you know, this is like, okay, we're going to just bring her to the office and what I've had today. And that, you know, that that's what it looks like today. It works out. So it's always something. Okay.

15:03So, um, I want to 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, the conversation that we often have is how this whole business of our home life and our family tends to, by default in our culture, land in our laps. Even if we're the CEO at work, the assumption is we're also CEO of our family 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.

15:41We'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? Yeah, I mean, I think it still happens a lot. 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.

16:16It 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 like, I don't know, maybe they think daddy isn't authorized to do something. I'm not sure what the thinking is there. 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 that they send in all the schools, right? But then it's the question, is everyone checking it equally often? So there's challenges with this. But I think that that said, you simply have to decide if you are 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.

17:11And I heard somebody refer to it that way, that their 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, because that's a strategy that people definitely should consider too. Or maybe that we decide certain things don't matter quite as much. And so there, you know, you can use any of those, but you have to decide on some of them. That's really good. My husband, Joel and I, he's a fantastic partner and we've really worked on it in terms of our home life.

17:49And 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 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 going to be important to me.

18:25Because 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 have clean clothes, myself included, but that's probably not something that my kids, when they're, you know, we're at their rehearsal dinner for their wedding, you know, they're going to be like, my mom really was consistent doing the laundry.

19:06You know, I wish it would. I mean, I feel like we deserve that credit. 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. But those are some of the things that I've done on my side. How do you think about delegating things on the home side without feeling guilt or identifying those things? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the guilt part is sort of, you know, I'm sorry that people feel guilt about this.

19:44I mean, for starters, I think if your partner doesn't feel guilt about not doing it, then probably you should follow whatever that pattern is. That's a good point. 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 various administrative tasks or something. And so it's the same on the home front. There are certain things that only you can do.

20:26Presumably, only you can be the partner to your other half. You certainly hope so. 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 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 she wanted her work schedule to look like.

21:08And she was working really long days on certain days and off on other days. And she's like, well, I like to have that time to, you know, do errands, but it means I have really long, you know, hours on other days. And it's 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 want to work fewer hours because I want to hang out with my kids or I want to hang out with my family. I want to go see my parents who are getting older. I want to be, you know, involved in my community doing all these things. Great. Blessing for you.

21:38If you are working fewer hours just to do laundry and errands and things like that, I think there's an economic problem there that you're going to earn a lot more doing your specialized, highly paid labor. And you can have somebody else go do your grocery shopping for you, and that might be the way to do it. And we're probably already doing this in so many ways. I mean, if you subscribe and save on Amazon or if you ever use Instacart or Shipt, you're already doing that in little ways. Those people are not your household employees per se, but they are people who 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.

22:14Yeah. Well, 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 I think that you can choose all sorts of places where the line can be and still feel very good about your life. Well, this really frees up your thinking to be creative and to really more and more narrowly focus your effort on the things where you make your biggest contribution and that you love doing.

22:56And, you know, I said this when I was trying to talk my wife, Gail, into just getting somebody to help with the housekeeping. She had this sense, and we were from this generation, that, well, I should be doing that. You know? No. You know, there's other things that you do really well. And by your own admission, you don't even enjoy this. Yeah.

23:28One 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 one of them I do want to talk about, I think we've got three of these that we've identified that we want to talk about, but give yourself a bedtime. What does that mean? Yes, well, this is actually rule number one in Tranquility by Tuesday, which is about nine rules to make life feel better and calm the chaos and make time for what matters.

24:03And 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 sofa watching television at night.

24:52And 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 want to 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.