Rebecca: Hello and welcome to the Sequoia Breeze Podcast, a breath of fresh air for your homeschool. I am your host, Rebecca La Savio.
Welcome, listeners. I'm really excited to have a special guest today, Laura Vanderkam, who is an author, and I'm going to let her introduce herself in a minute. I first came across her listening to the Read Aloud Revival podcast with Sarah McKenzie.
And as I listened to her talk about her book Tranquility, by Tuesday, she had me hooked. All I needed was that title.
So.
So we're gonna talk about that and some other things today. So welcome, Laura.
Laura: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about these topics.
Rebecca: So go ahead and introduce. I think you're fascinating. Introduce yourself a little bit and explain what you write about and why.
Laura: Yeah. So I write about time management and productivity.
My goal is always to make people feel like they do have enough hours in the day and in the week to do the things that are important to them. I know everyone listening to this is a productive person doing the things that they have to do, but I want to make sure that you feel like you have the time to do the things that you do want to do.
A little bit about me. I live outside Philadelphia.
I have five children who range in age from 6 to 18.
Rebecca: I have found your books to be really interesting as just the way of switching how we see and how we think about time.
Is it a hundred and no? What? How many hours in a week Is it 168 hours?
Laura: Yeah, it's good. You know, people say 24, 7. No one ever multiplies it through, but it's a good number to know.
Rebecca: Talk to us about why that's important.
Laura: Well, because we live our lives in weeks, right? If you think about how you structure your life,
mostly the repeating pattern of, like, your work schedule, your family schedule,
when the trash gets picked up, I mean, that's all on units of a week, right.
And yet people often don't know that there are 168 hours in a week. And so if you don't know that there are 168 hours in a week, it's pretty hard to figure out how to rationally allocate time to things.
Right. You know,
how much time should you be spending on,
you know, housework or exercise or,
you know, getting together with friends or work or being in the car or sleeping? What, what all the different categories of things people do.
If we don't know what the denominator is, we're trying to just guessing on the proportion in the numerator. So I always want people to know that number and then ideally figure out where their 168 hours are going and think about where they would like their 168 hours to go in Tranquility by Tuesday.
Rebecca: You basically are talking about getting a hold of those hours,
figuring out where you're using them and where you want to use them. And then you have several rules to help you sort of gain control over that. Is that a fair way to describe that?
Laura: I would say that is, yeah. These are my nine favorite time management rules that sort of have come out of studying thousands of people's schedules at this point and realizing I was often giving the exact same advice to people even with very different lives.
So these are nine rules that I think will help just about anyone spend their time better.
Rebecca: One of the ones that I,
I think is really useful for the, for us as homeschooling families is the three times a week is a habit.
I think we often think, you know, we have to do spelling every single day. Talk to us about what,
what,
what is the principle behind three times? I mean there's, there's seven days in a week. How is three a habit?
Laura: Well, it helps us to view time in terms of a week that we are aiming for multiple times a week instead of every single day. Because the problem is people often get discouraged because there are things want to do but they don't see how they can fit all of them in 168 and in 24 hours.
Right. So it's like people are, well, I need to, you know, cover all these subjects in my homeschooling practice and I have these paid work projects I'm doing and I'm involved in my community and I would like to, you know, tackle these home projects and I would like to see my friend and I would like to learn French and whatever else there is that you would like to do.
And it doesn't all seem to fit in 24 hours. And it probably doesn't,
but we don't live our lives in 24 hours. We live our lives in 168 hours a week. And so when we look at the whole of the week, we see that we have more space.
This also came out of talking with a lot of people about their so called daily habits. It's a bit of an occupational hazard of writing about time management that people often want to tell me about their great daily habits.
And so I'd be talking with somebody about, you know, like I go to the gym Every day. I was like, oh, really?
Rebecca: That's great.
Laura: Like, you know,
365 days a year. And it turns out that the person goes like Monday to Thursday, right? And that was sort of counting as daily.
And I get it, it's a lot. But that's four times a week, right? That is not actually every day.
I find that when we say we do things daily,
what we often mean is we do them frequently. So then we are just arguing over what frequently means.
And I think three times a week is a defensible number for something that is occurring routinely in your life.
Like, it's not never happening. It's happening quite frequently,
but it isn't every day. And it's often just a much more doable number. So if you are doing spelling three times a week consistently, you are doing a lot of spelling.
If you're doing any other topic, you're teaching your kids Spanish, or if you're, you know, covering, you know, different whatever it is. Like, if you're doing it three times a week, it is a habit and it is part of your identity.
And I bet you could probably get to three in a way that aiming for seven times a week isn't going to happen. I mean, most people are not planning on, you know, doing their homeschooling lessons seven days a week, right?
You know, it's like we think of ourselves as doing things daily, like, oh, hey, go to work daily. No, you don't. You go five days a week. Right?
These are, these are, you know,
these things we talk about as daily often aren't.
Rebecca: And if we think most people's exercise routines are aiming for three times a week, or if you've got lots of different older kids and activities and you get dinner together as a family three days a week,
that's a pretty. Your family will remember that you've.
Laura: And it can be part of your identity. You can be a family that eats together regularly, eating together three times a week. Now, that doesn't mean that you've got a pot roast appearing on your table at 6pm Monday through Friday, but it doesn't have to be that.
You know, you have pancakes together on Saturday morning, Sunday dinner one time during the week, and now you're a family that eats together.
Rebecca: So after I heard you the first time, I went looking for other podcasts and things, and I was listening to you talk about this book in a few different contexts. And when I finally got the book, when it finally arrived, one of the chapters, I realized I hadn't heard you talk about And I immediately was like,
ooh, tell me more.
Was Rule 5 about creating a backup slot? Tell us a little bit about the principle of creating a backup slot so
Laura: anyone can create a perfect schedule.
I think that the true time management masters create a resilient schedule that allows them to keep moving forward toward their goals,
even when life happens. And people often get very discouraged that, you know, I meant to do X, whatever X is. I meant to get to the gym. I meant to,
you know, do this big project with my kids. I meant to, you know, set up a birthday party for my, you know, extended family. They're all gathering for somebody. I meant to do these things.
And then life happened, right? Like the roof sprang a leak, the kids got sick. You know,
biggest client blew up that project. We now need to do something else. All these things happen, but they are not unanticipatable.
Life always happens.
We want to build a schedule that allows us to keep moving forward to our goals,
even when the randomness of life, as it usually happens,
is all still going on.
So one of the best ways to do that is to create the equivalent of a rain date for anything that is important to you. So if anyone's been invited to sort of an outdoor event,
sometimes the hosts will have a rain date, which is a second date that that event could occur if it rains on the first one. And what I love about this concept is you are acknowledging that much can go predictably wrong outside.
Like, it's right there in the rain date name.
But you're not saying, oh, will this event happen or not? You know, if it. If it gets rained out in the first time, what's going to happen? Well, it will be rescheduled for the rain date.
And if you truly want to go, you know, not to put anything on movable in the second slot. And so by setting a rain date, you greatly increase the chances that the original event happens, even if not at the original time.
And so I think in life, we need a lot more rain dates. Like, we need to acknowledge that something could happen. And this time, we have decided to devote to our priorities.
Could be taken away from us, but if it is taken away from us,
where is it going to go? We need a backup slot for it. Now, that gets kind of unwieldy as the various priorities stack up. You know, if you're trying to set two slots for everything that's really important in your life, it's.
It's gonna get a little bit difficult eventually. But one way to get at this is just to leave more Open space in general.
Like, if Fridays are fairly open in your schedule and something big happens on Tuesday that you have to deal with,
everything that got displaced from Tuesday that you were planning to do can go on Friday.
And now you are not borrowing time from the future.
You can still get to the things you meant to do this week.
Rebecca: It's interesting you say that, because as I was reading that chapter, I realized, oh, I used to do this. I used to plan out school for my kids Monday through Thursday.
And then Friday was that catch all day. It was, oh, we had a doctor's appointment, or we had a field trip that day, or we just had really bad attitudes and didn't get nearly as much done as we wanted to.
And so then Friday could be that makeup day. And if we didn't need it,
I always had things I wanted to do
Laura: that,
you know, you can always fill the time. People are like, well, what will I do with the open time? Oh, come on. You'll fill. You'll fill it.
And as I wrote it, keeping it open allows you to have it if you need it.
Rebecca: And you even said in there, you know, if you find yourself dreaming, like, what would I do with that extra time? And you find yourself just dreaming about a quiet cup of coffee that it might be time to schedule a cup of coffee, Which I did find myself dreaming.
Laura: Yeah. I mean, that is the one thing I. I put that rule. And people are always like, you know, in order to get people to plan this time in, I've sort of dream, you know, tell people, well, think about what you do if it was open.
What wonderful thing would you do, sort of as a motivational factor, to get people to leave open space? But then, of course, I realized that made people feel sad because they didn't get to use the time for that thing, because, of course, life happened.
And then the things that they didn't do went into the backup slot. So I was like, okay, we gotta change this.
Yes. I want you to daydream about what you would do with extra time. And then let's just go ahead and put that in and we'll leave backup slide. You know, maybe we'll need to be a little bit more disciplined about taking on fewer things, but that's okay.
Rebecca: Well,
yes, and that's actually an interesting.
I feel like that's implicit in a lot of what you said,
while not always being explicit, but that in order to plan these things out, you do have to be realistic about those 168 hours.
Laura: You can fit a lot in 168 hours. You cannot fit everything in 168 hours. I mean it helps to know how much time things actually take.
I've been tracking my time for a great many years and one of the upsides of that is I think I have a more realistic sense of how long the things that I do repeatedly actually take me.
And so that helps with making plans, right? Because if you've got three two hour activities,
they cannot fit in five hours. This is not a question of your discipline, it's not a question of how much you want it. It's a matter of physics, right? And so we cannot put more into a space of time than actually fits in there.
I think, you know, people sometimes love the idea of having a lengthy to do list. Like look how busy I am, look at all the things I have going on.
Like, no, you, you want a to do list you can actually get through.
And that means that you need to make hard choices. But yes,
come what happens, we're going to do this thing today and maybe two other things.
Everything else on top of that is kind of gravy.
But if we make very limited choices, then we do those things, we move on and we can keep making progress.
Rebecca: I love that you have five kids because even though your books are sort of business oriented, I know I can ask you this question.
Totally understand as,
as we make our plans, there's always a kid factor, right? The best laid plans can be waylaid by a lost shoe or a kid whose math book fell in the sink.
Like so is,
is that creating a backup slot part of surviving the kid factor? Like kids, kids and schedules don't,
they don't,
they don't mix in some ways because they don't understand time and because they don't know the big picture and they don't know your to do list.
So how,
how do you, as you are working through your schedule, allow for that sort of kid factor?
Laura: So I think there's a couple answers to this. I mean, one, yes, you want to leave more time than you think you need. You know, there's always the idea of people who are going to an event that's at 10am and they live 10 minutes away.
And so they think they need to be in the car at 9:50 and that guarantees you will be late.
Because if you're getting your shoes on at 9:50,
well, it takes some non zero amount of time to get shoes on. Particularly if one has gone missing.
You get in the car. Like getting in the car does not take zero time. When you're Doing seat belts and car seats or anything like that. And then you drive somewhere and you need to park and all this time is passing, you know, definitely will take more than 10 minutes.
So, I mean, one of the things about being realistic about how long things take is making sure you are leaving enough time for transitions.
That said, I think kids can learn to be respectful of people's schedules. They can learn about time. That is a life skill that they will need to know. Especially, you know, people who are homeschooling are going to need to teach their kids the idea of project management.
You know, I have a big paper that you are writing that you are turning into me two weeks from now.
How are you going to organize your time before that so all the constituent steps fit in and you could leave it till the last minute. But, oh, interesting.
We have, you know, friends coming from out of town. The night before we said this is going to, you know, that we want to be done with this. And so maybe that's not the best night for it.
And you start to get these ideas through conversations of where the time is going.
I also think, you know, with bigger families,
it helps to have really strong house rules on things like where shoes go.
Spoken from experience. Here we, we have a mudroom that all shoes come off. They never leave that room. If a shoe is found elsewhere in the house, it is immediately returned to the mudroom before anything else can happen,
which is, which has helped us with getting out the door on time.
Rebecca: How do you keep the people and relationships in your life as top priority when you're working so hard to create these schedules? You're, you're, you know,
as I'm reading through the book, I'm like, oh, this sounds amazing. But I could also see myself getting to a point of accidentally serving the schedule instead of the schedule serving me.
But I don't think that's the heart of what you're trying to teach here at all.
Laura: I really do believe that, that people are a good use of time.
So if you keep repeating that phrase to yourself as you are going about your schedule, I think you will be well served. That said, I really don't think this is an either or sort of thing.
There is nothing incompatible about schedules and relationships. And in fact, in many cases,
having a good grip on your schedule is what allows you to spend time nurturing relationships.
I really love spending one on one time with my kids. With five of them, that is not so easy, right? But that if I plan ahead and make sure that the other kids are occupied with something Else or if there's a time one kid will be available and the others won't,
I can seize that time. And I know to build relationship,
you know,
care into that time as opposed to letting it just pass me by. But if I didn't have a good sense of the schedule, I wouldn't be able to do that.
Getting together with friends, for instance, this is something that a lot of people struggle with during the busy years when they have young kids. Or especially people who are also, you know, building careers at the same time.
How do we fit in space for friendship? Well, it's not going to just randomly happen. Like it is unlikely that your friends are just going to show up at your house.
I mean, maybe they will. I love if you have that sort of relationship with them. You all live in the same neighborhood. That sounds great, but most people do not have that.
And so you're going to need to know the times that you are available and check if they are available and make a plan and figure out what you're going to do if something comes up that, you know, you can have a backup slot if something takes over the first slot.
That also, you know, requires planning, requires thinking about the schedule if you want to spend time with your spouse.
Another high quality pursuit for our time.
But many people in the busy years kind of let that relationship fall down the hierarchy in their schedules. And it's because it takes active schedule management to make time with your spouse happen.
And so you're not just ships passing at night.
So I get what we're saying, that we don't want the schedule to be the top and people to be under that. But I think in order for us to spend time with the people we love, we need to know our schedule.
We need to have a good sense of control of our schedule, managing the moving parts so that there is space for what matters to us.
Rebecca: The intentionality of creating the schedule and being fully aware of it allows you the freedom to either know where your wiggle room is or to decide what goes in it and what doesn't instead of just crashing into things.
Laura: No, I mean it's, it's, it takes a lot of logistical work, but I think the payoff is very much there. And, and the week before we were recording this, I took a two night trip to Boston to go see my, some friends who are lived out of town but were in Boston.
You know, they were far flung and they were in Boston so I could go see them there and to go see my son who is in college in Boston and So that required a lot of logistical things to happen.
The schedule with four other children is always complex. You know, my husband works as well and, you know, one kid needed to be brought to the high school at 2am One of the nights I was gone to, you know, be on the bus for the school Disney trip.
I mean, there was just all sorts of things going on during this time.
And so we had to figure out the whole schedule. But I'm so glad I did because then I got to spend time with my college kid that I wouldn't have otherwise, you know, and so I think we don't want to shy away from really getting to.
Into these logistical details because it is the freedom to do things that comes from doing that.
Rebecca: The other chapter that I want to hit on on this book before we dive into the next one, is something I've heard a lot about over the years and have personally really struggled to get my head around the idea of batching the little things.
And so I was eating up that chapter, trying.
Trying to learn a skill that I know I don't really have. And it.
One of the things that I feel like is when. When you're at home, especially sometimes it can all feel like little things, important little things. But it feels like your whole day is sort of wipe this counter,
redirect this child, give this lesson.
It can frequently feel like it's a whole series of little things. And so I'd love for you to talk about that concept, a little bit of batching the little things to be.
To use our time in a less scattered way.
Laura: Yeah, so the idea is we all, all have sort of small administrative tasks in life that we need to do.
And this may also include small tasks around the house as well.
And the tendency is just to do them when they are right in front of us often because, well, they have to be done eventually.
And so it feels productive and you get the satisfaction of it being done. Like if it's on your to do list, you get to cross it off. And that's pretty exciting.
You know, we. We're productive people, we like doing that sort of thing. But the problem is that you can feel like you are always doing the little things and you don't get to the big things because you've got 20 other little things that you gotta do.
And you're like, well, I better get to them before I have space for the big stuff. But the problem is then you run out of time and you run out of energy.
So I would, I would distinguish here of what a little Thing is, I would argue that,
you know, directing a child is not necessarily a little thing. That's something that can't necessarily be moved to another time,
but cleaning the counter is.
And so instead of spending our life cleaning the counter and then seeing it, you know, something else, like there's paper that shouldn't be on the kitchen table, that's there. So we go put that away.
And then when we're putting that away, we see a glass that's in the other room and we go put that back. And then, you know, there's something in the dishwasher that shouldn't be in the dishwasher as you take that out and wash that.
And then while you're putting that away, you see that there's, you know,
other mess in the kitchen. You know, you can spend your life doing this and feel like time just disappears and you've gotten nowhere, right? Like, messes are reappearing in the places where you just were.
So I suggest that when people are thinking about things like housework, you carve out a time to do it.
And then as much as possible,
if you are not in that window of time,
don't do it.
So if you find yourself looking at a mess in your kitchen at time when it is not kitchen cleaning time,
you are allowed to relax, you are allowed to focus on other things,
because there is a time for cleaning that kitchen, and now is not that time. And by batching all those cleaning tasks, you'll be efficient and you'll keep it from taking over the rest of your schedule.
Same with lots of administrative tasks. So this is things like filling out that form, you know, ordering that new textbook, you know, maybe booking a plane flight somewhere, you know, ordering a birthday present,
wrapping the birthday present, all. All these things that people do,
and those are tasks that do need to get done,
but none of them necessarily is all that urgent. And so I challenge people to take a block of low energy time,
keep a running list,
and then go through all of them and maybe do this once a week or so, or maybe you have to do it slightly more frequently, depending on the nature of what kind of tasks build up for you.
But then when you find yourself thinking some other time, like, oh, I need to fill out that form, I need to order that birthday present again, there is a time for that.
Now is not that time. You are not gonna forget it. Cause you're keeping a list of these things, right? So you're not gonna forget them. You don't have to keep thinking about them.
You put them on the List. But there's a time for that.
Now is not that time.
I can focus on the bigger things I can think about. You know, what are my goals for homeschooling this year? You know, what would I like to see us do as travel over the time when we're not in school?
What would I like to see my life looking like three years from now? You don't have to, you know, put that off. You could actually sit there and think about things like that because you aren't dealing with all the little stuff right then.
Rebecca: So, you know, there's a time maybe you sit down after lunch and spend half an hour or on Tuesdays, you give it an hour and a half or something to call the doctor, answer the emails, whatever.
You don't need to respond to that email while you're waiting for your kiddo to answer this math problem. And so you're not really present.
Laura: You're.
Rebecca: You're distracted. Put the phone away. You'll have time to answer those things because that's already set aside and established. You can give your full attention to the thing you're in right now,
even if that's.
This is time to sit and think about.
Laura: I don't know.
Rebecca: I love life.
Laura: Yeah, but. But, yeah, being present. What you're doing is great. Without thinking, oh, I need to go clean the kitchen.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Cause that's, that's allowed. There's a time for that later. It's. It's okay if I'm letting it sit right now.
So once you get some pers. I find that one. Your new book follows this one, I think,
conceptually, very well. It's sort of tranquility. By Tuesday, get ahold of your schedule, understand what should be in it, what shouldn't be in it, and how to make it all flow in a way that makes a lot of sense.
And then once you have started to have a handle on that, you can dive into your new book called Big Time.
And in your.
In your introduction, you say that this book is about what happens when you truly believe that time is abundant.
And I love that idea because we all do feel like we're scrambling for time so often. So tell us.
Tell us about your new book. It's as we're recording this, not even out yet, so it's. I'm sure you're really excited, so we'd love to hear about it.
Laura: Yeah. So Big Time is a subtitle, A Simple Path to Time Abundance. And as you said, it's about what happens when you believe that time is not scarce, right. That the stories we are telling ourselves of time scarcity are incomplete.
There may be moments where we feel rushed and starved for time, but that is not the whole picture of life.
And this was really a book that came out of looking at some of my favorite topics in time and some new research I did into how people spend their time and what can make people feel like they have time for the things that they want to do.
So, among other things, I had hundreds of people track their time for a week and measured how they felt about their time. And I'm happy to report that people who track their time feel better about their time.
I looked at how busy people will organize and plan their schedules. So we learned that complexity and chaos are not the same thing at all.
I look at spending evening hours better. This is time that is hard to use. Well, weekday evenings, many people are tired from, you know, homeschooling from work, from all the other things we're doing during the day, get into the evening, and now what?
It's easy to let this time pass us by or whatever time you have after work. And that is not claimed by other responsibilities.
But, you know, we can use this time for things that are rejuvenating, things that are meaningful for us.
You know, we talk about,
you know, baking, breaking big projects down into tiny steps, that even the. The biggest things can be done.
If you just choose a very small step each day and stick with it. The. The virtue of consistency can get you a very far way.
So these are all just my favorite topics in time knit together with this thread of time abundance. And I hope people will walk away feeling like, yes, I, I do have time for what matters to me.
Rebecca: Talk to me about complexity and chaos are not the same thing.
Laura: Well, it's what we talked about earlier with the shoes always being in the mudroom. There are lots of ways that you can organize a complex system, whether that's a household business, an organization that allow for,
you know, resiliency, but also allow for things to be done without thinking about them all that much. And so you can keep moving forward toward where you want to go.
And I use the metaphor of a circus.
And often when people say life is a circus,
I think they're misusing this, this metaphor. They, they, they're saying like, oh, everything's chaotic. I don't know, there's monkeys everywhere, you know, that sort of thing.
But that's just a slander against the circus world. Because if you've ever really studied a circus, it is the most organized operation you have ever seen.
Like if you've got acrobats doing stunts, all of those stunts are going to be executed within the fraction of a second, right? It is incredibly well planned.
One act is coming on while another is leaving and there's barely any transition time between. Or if there is, if it's somehow taking longer,
there's a clown there entertaining you, right? So you don't even notice that this transition is happening. I like to think of the circus as being a three ring circus. For many people that would be career,
relationships and self. You could think about planning out all those spheres. Or maybe for some people listening to this, it's their homeschooling practice and then the relationships and themselves.
But all these different spheres, there's a lot going on in them, but it is all well orchestrated.
And not just that there's a net.
Like in a circus, when people are doing stunts, there is a net under them. Because the idea is mistakes are going to happen.
We don't want them to happen, but they happen. And if they do, we don't want it to be a disaster.
And so similar with our lives as we are planning our lives, we need that net, right? We need that backup slot. We need to build a resilience schedule that when one part of our life goes awry, the rest doesn't all fall apart.
So I aspire to have my life be a circus. Like I love this idea of my life being complex but not being chaotic at all. And when I'm doing things well, it is orderly.
Sometimes I'm not doing things well. But we, we do try to more often than not be our better selves.
Rebecca: That's.
I love that picture.
That's really an endless. And the intersecting circles of attention and priority that, that all need,
they need to be paid attention to. You can't ignore yourself, you can't ignore your relationships, you can't ignore your work or your homeschool. You've got to give them that organizational attention.
Laura: Yeah, all three. All three. Cause if you only have one ring, you don't have a three ring circus. That's not very interesting.
Rebecca: The other thing that you said as you were telling us about your book that caught my attention is something I've been talking with listeners about on this podcast in the past, which is consistency.
Earlier we were talking about how creating the schedule and being in charge of it allows us freedom, Which I think consistency is a similar thing that when you have consistency, it allows you to then have more freedom.
I think that that's a really important topic for when it comes to kids and when, especially when we're talking about educating our kiddos at home as well,
Laura: Small things done repeatedly really do add up. We talked about three times a week as a habit. If you do something three times a week, 50 times a year, you know, 52 weeks in a year, 50 weeks in a year, whatever you want to use, that's 150 times a year.
I mean, there are very few things that if you do them 150 times, will not be better at the end of that than at the beginning that you will not have made progress on if you make 150 steps in something that is worth moving toward.
So, you know, I think this idea of time will pass anyway.
But the difference between doing nothing and doing just a little bit more than nothing is cumulatively huge.
And one example I use in Big Time is. Is a project maybe some people on here want to try with their children.
Don't. Don't blame me is reading the book War and Peace,
which is known for being a big book. It's also a very good book,
but it is very big. That is what people know it for. But it turns out that War and Peace has 361 very short chapters.
Each chapter is about four pages long,
so you could read one chapter a day,
which I did over 20, 21.
And each day it took me less than 10 minutes. You know, I'd sit down and read it. I could just do it at night before bed. I could do it in my office like before I started my workday, or if I had, you know, a little bit of downtime on the weekend,
just pick up the book and read, you know, four pages. Sometimes it was even less. Some of the chapters are two pages. Right.
But I just kept doing that day after day after day.
And on December 27, I finished the book. You know, small things done repeatedly do, in fact, add up. And it was. It was actually a great way to read it because I didn't, you know, race through parts that are, you know, maybe a little bit more dull.
But, you know, so it goes with anything, right? And, you know, I was so taken with this idea that, like,
I just read War and Peace. You know, I. I could tell myself I have no time. But I'm the kind of person who apparently has time to read War and Peace.
Like, no, we don't need to belabor the fact that it was less than 10 minutes a day, but, you know, you do less than 10 minutes a day over the course of a year, and you can get through something big.
So I decided to do other projects like that. You know, another year I read all the works of Shakespeare.
Now, the Complete Anthology of Shakespeare. If you, you know, buy one of those big bound volumes, it's about 10, 24 pages. One of the popular ones that's out there.
You do the math. That is reading three pages a day over the course of the year. So I just read three pages of Shakespeare each day for a year. At the end of the year, I had read everything.
Right? I mean, and this is. You can do this for all sorts of huge projects, and each day, it's not that discouraging because it's so little.
Like, I read through all the works of Jane Austen, and anyone who's done that, like, you know, Mansfield park is.
Rebecca: Really.
Laura: Takes some work to get through it.
Pride and Prejudice is amazing. I don't know what she was doing with Mansfield park, but, you know, I was like,
it's only 10 pages a day. Like, I can do 10 pages a day. And I got through it at the rate I thought I would. And, you know, now I can say I have done it.
And I didn't lose faith, because, again, it was not that much on any given day.
Rebecca: That's really incredible to see how much can be accomplished. And I think especially when we apply it to kids, because kids are small steps. You know, we need lots and lots of little steps.
And that's a really interesting way to think about it. For people like me, I'm a. I tend to turn things into projects without meaning to. I'm not very good at incremental.
I'd rather do one big project all at once.
As I'm looking at your. The book Big Time,
you're talking a lot about how you can.
Well, again, in the introduction, even just. You talk about how we can develop real affection for whatever time we get to experience,
and you can fall in love with your schedule. And that feels particularly apropos for parents whose kids are growing up so much more quickly than we would like them to.
And time often can feel overburdened with, whether it's, you know, conflicting schedules of different kiddos and activities and parents and work and school and all of those different things.
You.
You have a chapter called Stop Wishing Time Away.
And that was like, ooh,
it can be easy when it's a rough day or a rough phase to wish that time away. But be careful, parents, because for what. What you ask, for what you wish for.
Talk to us a little bit about not wishing time away.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, time is gonna pass. No matter what you do. So you can wish it away or you can enjoy it. I think it's best to enjoy the time we can.
I, you know, have five kids. So I'm not gonna say enjoy every minute because I know that when you've got like three kids with you screaming in the supermarket and throwing things off the shelf, it's pretty hard to enjoy every minute of that.
So I'm not going to set that out as a goal because we will all just fall short.
However, I do think that if you have this mindset that I would like to be in love with my schedule, it's going to open up a different way of thinking because you are going to look for ways to not feel like a put upon martyr doing everything for everybody and be like,
well, what can I do in my schedule that I truly enjoy? Like, what are the things that make me feel excited about life? And there's probably things within,
you know, homeschooling. Like there's a certain subject, maybe you studied it in school and you love it. You can't wait to introduce your kids to it. When you get to that and start to see their eyes like open as they're understanding it, like, that's the kind of thing you're like,
oh, I love how I am spending my time. Or maybe it's that, you know, getting to spend time with a dear friend. Or maybe it's a particular hobby you have that, you know, even if you're only finding like two, three hours a week for, for it.
That's a lot, right? That's a lot. If you have a creative pursuit you're doing for that amount of time, that can shape your whole experience of your schedule and change the story we're telling ourselves.
So think about how can we make our lives look like a schedule that we would love?
Tell ourselves a story that we are in love with our schedules. I'm certainly becoming more aware of that now as my kids are getting older. I'm not so much of a little kid person.
I mean, I had a lot of babies, I love babies. But I really like it more as they get older and I get to have like real conversations with them and actually do fun stuff with my kids.
And so now I'm really seeing what it feels like to love this time with the children and really kind of try to do things with it, to savor it and to stretch it out as much as possible, knowing that, you know, when they get to that stage that they are old enough to have those cool conversations,
you, you are on A timer, because they are off,
you know, gonna be launched into the, the larger world on their own. And that's the goal. That's the goal. That's what you're preparing them for. But we can certainly enjoy the time in the meantime.
Rebecca: You mentioned it earlier, but can you talk a little bit more about those golden hours, the end of the day,
and how that can be used in a way that can even perhaps help you to love your schedule a little more?
Laura: Yeah, so we talk about like the golden years, which is after people retire these years after paid work when you can enjoy family and leisure time.
And we get a little miniature version of that in daily life that you do your work for the day and then you have family and leisure time afterwards. So instead of the golden years, we have our golden hours for people who work sort of more nine to five kind of schedules.
That would be in the evening. You're, you're five to whatever you go to bed. But I know people work different schedules. It's just after your paid labors are through and whatever time you have decided will be your family and leisure time,
how can we make the most of that time? It's hard.
Very few people use evening hours. Well, I've written all sorts of things about people's elaborate morning routines. I find even people with elaborate morning routines often let the evenings just completely fly on by because everyone's tired,
right. We have limited energy,
we're doing the things we have to do. Everyone has to get fed, they have to go to bed. Like there are things that have to happen.
However,
the things that have to happen tend not to consume the entirety of this time.
Somebody who is done with work responsibilities at like 5:30pm and who goes to bed at 10:30pm has five hours to work with here,
probably your responsibilities don't take all of that.
But you know, whatever it is, if you, you work overnights and then, you know,
you have decided that the afternoons are the time you have for this, like you're still working with some chunk of time.
What would you like to do with it? And we're not going to be,
you know, doing every 15 minutes something different. We're not gonna have like work levels of productivity during this. But you might be able to set some sort of 30 minute intention of something that is enjoyable to you that is not work or is not like the physical care of family members.
Right. It could be something fun with your family, but not like the actual like you know, getting dinner into a baby or whatever it is.
So you, what is that Thing going to be.
And, you know, it might need to be lower energy.
Something like doing a puzzle for 30 minutes or reading for 30 minutes or going for a family walk.
It might be practicing a musical instrument. That could be cool to have your kids see you practicing a musical instrument. And particularly if you're always trying to make them practice their musical instruments.
Right.
Can be a good role model here.
But something. And what this does is it keeps us from losing all this time. Like we feel like we actually did something.
And people have discretionary time during this. It's just we often spend it scrolling around online or, you know, going through Netflix and trying to figure out what we're gonna watch and not really landing on anything until it's too late to start anything big.
A little intentionality with this leisure time goes a long way.
Rebecca: It is so easy to just let evenings slip by and,
you know, let your kids watch TV instead of playing a game or doing something that's a little bit, you know,
and sometimes TV is bonding time too. But to. To have that be a decision instead of just accidentally falling into it. I love the idea of that being so.
Being thoughtful. And the other thing I noticed about Evening Times as I was reading through your books is that when you talk about things like setting aside, creating that extra hour, the extra time in case things fall apart, or when you talk about batching the little things, you never in your book suggested that you do that at 8pm as you were giving ideas and brainstorming.
You never suggested that any of those things go into those golden hours. And it was, it was interesting to watch you give lots of different lifestyles and suggestions and ways to fit a lot of these things in.
And yet that was never one that you mentioned as being an option. And I think allowing our minds and our bodies and our relationships to relax in those hours is important.
And they.
That seemed to be an implicit.
Laura: Yeah,
I mean, you know, a lot of people do try to get caught up on chores at night, but your house is. I mean, you can clean it, but it's still going to get dirty again.
I mean, if you're living with other people, that's the reality of it. I mean, maybe you can cleanse, like close.
Clean one room, close the door, sitting there. Maybe they. That will help. But no, I mean,
people deserve to relax. You deserve to rest and to enjoy your life. And you're not constantly behind some arbitrary standard that you need to get to.
Rebecca: I don't know who's.
Laura: There's no 11pm Home inspection. Nobody's Coming around to make sure there are no toys on the floor, like, you may as well enjoy your life.
Rebecca: The other thing I really appreciated as I've listened to you and read your words,
is you do have an emphasis, like there is that third circle of self.
And I sometimes find that when others have addressed that circle, it can feel a little selfish. It can be protect your you time or go and splurge on this or that.
And I have found that as you're encouraging us to allow ourselves some time, we didn't even talk about the one night of week is for yourself and those kinds of things.
You aren't talking about spas and massages and things that are sort of indulgent. You're usually talking about things that add actual value,
whether that's learning a new skill, learning a new language. I know you talk about singing in a choir and that can bless other people.
I have really appreciated the attitude that is wrapped up in how we're allowing ourselves time so that we are healthier, more rich individuals, not just strictly relaxed.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, I. I call this active self care.
And I think everyone deserves to be interested in their own lives.
And that means having something in your life that is not work or caring for family members.
And, you know, homeschooling is important. It's wonderful.
But it can't be your whole identity. You need something that is for you.
And I don't know, taking a bubble bath doesn't sound to me like what I want my identity to be. I want it to be something that involves getting better at a skill and working toward something bigger.
For me, that is singing. I actually now sing in two choirs, which may be a little bit ridiculous, but I enjoy it.
Always tackling some difficult musical works, trying to get better at it,
you know, and over time, I like to think that I do. And we're working toward performances all the time, and then I get to perform, and that's exciting as well.
And it feels so much more meaningful to me than, yeah, like, there's nothing wrong with bubble baths or getting a manicure or getting a massage. Those are fun ways to spend time as well.
But I really. I feel like a broken record. Always telling people I need busy people need a hobby. Like you need something and figure out what that is. It might take some work to figure out what it is.
This is when I first started writing about this. I'm like, oh, yeah? Well, people want me to help them find time for their hobby. And then I realized the number of people were like, I have no idea.
What I would even do.
And I'm like, okay, well, we gotta step back on that. But you could consider this a project like anything else project,
find a hobby. So over the next six to 12 months, you are gonna find something that you are passionate about that you can devote a couple of hours to each week.
That is not work, not caring for family members.
And try to make a commitment to it. Because when you make a commitment to it, something you do, maybe every week,
you will do it. It will rise up the hierarchy of your schedule in a way that just, you know, having more bubble baths won't.
Rebecca: I love this too. Because as homeschoolers, we cannot teach our kids everything there is to teach them.
So what we have to teach them is how to learn. We have to teach them to want to learn and to be able to seek out that information and continue to teach themselves.
And so if we as their parents can model that lifelong learning,
then we are continuing to give our kids a gift in that, showing them how this works and how much it can enrich their lives. So,
Laura, thank you so much for being here. Big Time comes out when?
Laura: May 5, so please pick up a copy and you can also come Visit my website, lauravandercam.com to learn more about my podcast newsletters, what I'm up to, more about my books in general.
Rebecca: Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate you sharing your wisdom and experience with us.
Laura: Thanks for having me.
Rebecca: Thanks so much for being here today, listeners. I hope you took something valuable for my conversation with with Laura Vanderkam.
If so, please be sure to check out her books Tranquility by Tuesday and her brand new release, Big Time Out. Now,
before we go, as always, I would love to hear from you. Send me an email@podcastsequoiagrove.org and let me know what you are inspired by today after this conversation. What kinds of things did you learn or do you plan on implementing?
This has been another episode of the Sequoia Breeze podcast, a breath of fresh air for your homeschool. I am your host, Rebecca La Savio.