#86: Time is a Choice: How to Harness Productivity with Laura Vanderkam

Come on this journey with me each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow.

Fasten your seatbelts.

I'm ready for my close up.

Hi, and welcome back. I'm so glad you're here. This week is interesting. This episode and actually the interview that we're going to get into today is around maximizing time, finding some hacks to be more productive and make the best use of the time that we all have in any given week. And it's funny, it really made me think this week about a few different things. A friend of mine was leaving town and needed someone to stay with her kids. So my son and I moved into my friend's house for the week so that we could look after her two kids while she was gone. And it taught me something so interesting. One, you can always find time by dropping other things, right? By prioritizing. And sometimes you just have to let things go. And definitely that's what I ended up doing this week. Because I will tell you, three kids in Zoom School is much different than what I'm used to. And if you have multiple kids in Zoom School, you totally feel the pain. However, I'm used to one kid in Zoom School. And it's interesting, whatever you become used to, and this is just so true, you find a way to make it work, right? So it could be anything. If your kid is suddenly put, you know, from regular school into Zoom School, it becomes a very different routine for you. And at first that's really hard, but then over time, you become more. More acclimated to it and it becomes more normal. Just like anything, you know, it's just about making the switch, accepting what it is and then moving through it. Doesn't mean you like it, but, you know, you find a way to make it work. So what I've learned through completely walking away from my regular routine this week is that I am so productive in the morning. It's crazy. The amount of work that, that I get done in my regular routine and my regular day to day in the morning is massive. I didn't realize that until my morning routine was changed this week. And it was really eye opening for me. And I think it's worthwhile to take a look at what are your windows of time that you're really maximizing? Because I see for me, my regular routine, my morning's incredibly productive. My middays and afternoon are incredibly productive. I get my workouts in, I make my son dinner. But usually for Me, my productivity drops off anytime after 7:00'. Clock. I'm just, I'm not productive. I, I really kind of don't have that engaged interest any longer. I just wanna, you know, either hang out with my son or work out or, or watch TV or whatever. But, you know, I, I'm starting to pay more attention to the windows of time that really can work for me. And what I've decided from this week is, you know, it's good sometimes to completely disrupt your schedule and your routine because it makes you appreciate the routine and be grateful for the routine more than ever, which is a great takeaway for me from this week and be so grateful for what you have, but also made me realize and appreciate by not having my normal morning routine this week. I'm now so much more aware of the amount of work that I get done and what can be done in windows of time. So it was really eye opening to have a completely different routine this week and realize how much of a creature of habit I am and how my routine is really, you know, a big part of the ability to produce a lot of work for me. And it's just getting to know ourselves and know what works and what doesn't work. But a little disruption every once in a while can be very, very eye opening, as it was for me this week. So it's so funny that this episode today is about, you know, getting the most that you can out of time. And one of the things that I thought about around this conversation is that the power to say no is such an important tool and element in being more productive, more focused, prioritizing what's important to you and letting other things just fall by the wayside. And for me this week, I didn't outright say no, but I let a lot of things fall by the wayside that I typically would not have done. And you know, whether you're in your regular routine or not, you know, just making the choice and having the power to say no. No is a complete sentence. No does not need further justification. But no puts an end to whatever time commitment you would have been taking something else on. And it's an incredibly powerful tool to help you maximize and increase your. For me routine is a really important way for me to be more productive and to get more out of my schedule, out of my day, out of my week, to pay attention to when I am most productive and really jump in, in those windows. And then to leave things like workout or whatever to the times when I'm not as productive. Because once I'm engaged in my workout. I'm just gonna finish it. So knowing yourself and knowing what works for you, you know, it definitely, it helps me so, so much to have that routine and to take advantage of those hours where I am my most productive. When are you your most productive? And are you maximizing those windows to accomplish what you're trying to get done? And are you saying no when the opportunities come up, that they're not going to work for you? You've got to still focus on getting your tasks done, your things accomplished. And I've seen a lot of people, I've been getting a lot of notes on social media that a few people that I know are going dark for the next couple of weeks because it's holiday and that's just their decision is to shut down. And I think that's great if that is something that's important to you that you need to do. For me, I'm looking forward to getting back to my routine this week. It actually seems exciting to me to get back to it because I know how much work I'll be able to get done. So I will not be going dark. I'll actually be making up for lost ground and that will make me feel more organized and accomplished and on top of things. So what will this window of the holidays look like for you? Is it one where you will completely disconnect? Will you say no to some things and lean on your routine in some ways, or will you be maximizing every opportunity that's ahead of you? Making the conscious choice and decision is definitely helpful. And as always, there will be turns, surprises, and the unexpected that we all need to be ready for. So I'm really excited for you to meet my next guest who's going to help shed some light and give some hacks, some different ideas and some opportunities for you to become more productive, better at managing your time. And I mean, she's the expert. So hold tight. We'll be right back.

Meet a different guest each week.

Confidence clear.

Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet my guest today, Laura Vanderkam. This woman has literally done it all. Not only is she the mother of flipping five, which I can't even wait to get into that because I just, I'm blown away. She's a best selling author of not one book, not two multiple books, she's a podcast host, a journalist. She's been cited in the biggest publications out there and, and her TED talk has over 11 million views. She is really doing it all. Laura, thank you so Much for being here.

Thanks so much for having me.

Well, I'll tell you, it's so funny to me. I'm sure you see this, that there's a lot of people on social media and online that haven't done the thing but like to talk about it and direct about it. And with you in regards to productivity and time management, just learning your back history of all that you're responsible for and all that you do. You are so the person that should be instilling the tips and wisdom on everyone.

Well, I do my best. I don't know, sometimes I feel things are a wee bit precarious around here, but I try to figure out what will make life work and what will make the household and my business run smoothly and see where I can pick up tips from other people and what will work in my own life and what might help others as well.

So what led you to this journey? Writing the books, doing the TED Talk, and launching your own business?

Well, I've always been fascinated by time because we all have the same amount of time. I mean, this is really just. You think about people who are doing amazing things in their lives, both professionally and personally. Like, I'm not saying they're not smarter or anything else than the rest of us, but they don't have any more time. And so I've spent my career trying to figure out, well, what are these people doing? Like, how are they allocating the 24 hours we all have each day or the 168 hours we all have each week, and what can the rest of us learn from? And so all my books, my talks, my articles really come from that place of trying to learn how we can best allocate the time that we are all given.

So I saw this funny thing or interesting tweet, I guess, on Twitter a couple weeks ago, and it was a woman kind of somewhat attacking, saying, I'm so sick of everybody saying we all have the same 24 hours. That's BS. Some people have teams of people to watch their kids cook for them, wash for them, and it isn't equal. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, of course life isn't equal. I don't think anyone has ever said that it is. It still is interesting because even if you do have gobs of money, it still takes some effort to figure out how to use it to get to the place where you can optimize those 24 hours in a day. Now, is it harder for people who don't have that? Sure. But I've found people who Start making huge amounts of money, are still sort of stumped of like, well, what am I supposed to do? It's like the time equivalent. As if all your money was, like, burned at the end of every day. Like, you can never buy a second back, right? And so actually making smart choices with the other resources, we might have to be able to optimize the 24 hours we have each day. Not just for getting the most work done or anything, but actually enjoy ourselves too. Because those highly successful people who even have gobs of money, they still have to sleep seven to eight hours a day. They don't get out of that. You can't pay someone else to sleep for you. Most of them probably still want to interact with friends and family members. Somebody else may be doing the cooking for the family, but they are still the one who is the kid's parent or the child of somebody who needs the attention. And sadly, I wish this were not the case. But nobody can exercise for you.

That would be nice.

All the money in the world cannot solve that problem. I mean, you can pay to have a trainer come do stuff, but the trainer isn't doing it for you. You still have to be the one putting in time to make it happen. So I am not denying in any way, shape or form that life is probably easier if you have more resources, whatever those are. If it's money, if it's family support, that's something, you know, if it's skills and talent, if it's good looks, I don't know. Like, there's all sorts of things we can imagine that some people have more of than others. But using all those in order to still, you know, take care of this one entirely limited resource, which is time, is still a puzzle. So a harder puzzle for some than others, but a puzzle for all of us.

You know, hearing you just talk there, you brought up two key things that stuck out to me in my own journey with maximizing time and productivity, and that was sleep and the amount of sleep and exercise. And when I was younger, I didn't put a tremendous amount of value on those two. Or I don't even know if. I mean, I'm sure the information's out there, right? We've seen it, but I never applied it to me like, oh, you only slept five hours every night this week because you've been working so late. Maybe that's actually, actually harming your ability to accomplish things during the day. And as I've gotten older, I am definitely so much more in tune to that and to exercise and that ability to have energy during the day, what role do you see that play across successful people that you've interviewed and worked with?

Yeah, well, I always say that sleep and exercise don't take time. They make time. Because whatever you devote to these things, within reason, is going to be paid back to you, you in terms of better focus and more energy. And the opposite is true as well. Whatever you skimp on these things is going to be taken away from you in terms of a lack of energy, a lack of focus. If you need seven and a half hours of sleep every day and you are chronically getting six and a half, you are not going to get an extra hour of productivity, let's just put it that way. You are, in fact, probably going to take twice as long to do things as you would if you had gotten the amount of sleep that you actually need. And there are definitely some people who are genetically short sleepers. You hear a couple of them. People like, apparently Martha Stewart only sleeps four or five hours a night. That's great. But there are many successful people who do sleep more than that. And there are also some people who are genetically short sleepers who are not very successful. I mean, they just use the extra time to, like, watch TV or something. It's not actually correlated. The vast majority of adults need somewhere between seven and eight hours a day. And you are better off just figuring how you can get that amount and then using the rest of your time to pursue whatever wonderful things you are going to do than trying to sort of squeeze that down one way or another and then paying the price in terms of a lack of focus.

So you mentioned watching tv, and up until this year, I never watched TV ever. And since the pandemic has hit, I have watched more Netflix in this one year than I had in my entire life. I swear to you. Is that something that you're seeing with everyone working from home and just being at home so much more, that we're actually being less productive now that we're home and we should have more time?

Well, I don't know that that's necessarily the case. I mean, there was certainly this fear from a lot of people in the past about, oh, well, if we let our employees work from home, they're just gonna watch Netflix all day. In fact, the opposite tends to be true. Like, most people wind up working longer hours. The data has come in on this that people who can work from home wind up working longer, and they wind up working at nights and on weekends because it's harder to shut it off. So, in fact, people might be better off if there was like, okay, we're done at 6 o'. Clock now go watch Netflix. It's like, okay, well, I'm sort of half working, half not working into the evening. But that said, I mean, yes, it has been a lot harder to seize sort of other forms of leisure this year. And so screen time is a substitute. And if it's a show you love, you know, there's a lot of wonderful television, like great scripts, you know, funny stuff, dramatic stuff, good storytelling. If it is consciously chosen, that is fine. Where it's. The problem is, if people haven't sort of thought about how they want to fit it into their lives, if they haven't weighed it against other options that they could be doing, there are things that you can still do in the pandemic. You can go for a walk outside, right? You can call friends and family, you can read books. And so as long as you are not skimping on these things to do the Netflix time, then great. But if you find that Netflix is crowding all those other things out of your life, then it's time to evaluate that.

So one of the things I just thought about, I was just thinking about routine before the pandemic. And for me, I used to travel a lot on planes. So reading books, I would do audiobooks on planes or read an actual paper book on a plane. And what I've noticed is I've read less books this year because that routine element, that was my go to, you know, I'd pick up a book and I'd plan for it on the airplane, and I couldn't. I'd look forward to that. And that routine has actually diminished my amount of reading. What is your suggestion for getting that productivity, knowing that it's good and beneficial for us to read, but we're home more?

Yeah, well, certainly a lot of people are listening to fewer podcasts because they don't have that daily commute that was a really good time for making your way through audiobooks or waiting, making your way through podcasts. You know, time is still time. So there are ways you can kind of substitute that in. So again, while you're going for a walk, you can listen to a podcast. If you're running an errand, you can listen to a podcast. You can, you know, while folding laundry, listen to a podcast. Those are certainly ways you can get that listening element back in. But, you know, you may need to build in other structures. So maybe it's that you set an alarm for 45 minutes before you plan to be in bed and say, okay, this is my reading time. Like, I'm building it in before bed. You know, read 30 minutes to wind down and then brush my teeth and all that, and I'll go from there. It's about rethinking the structures of our lives and saying, what do I still want to have in my life? And then how can I accommodate that, given that things look a little bit different now?

It's really planning it out and being intentional.

It always is about planning and being intentional with. I mean, time keeps passing whether you think of how you are spending it or not. And so it is so easy to spend time mindlessly. But that is how we waste time. And when I say waste time, I don't mean, like, watching Netflix. I mean, because if you want to watch Netflix and you've chosen that, that is not wasted time or sitting looking at the clouds.

People.

Like, occasionally I get these sort of funny emails from people or sometimes people go to the trouble of, like, writing articles about this that, like, she doesn't get it. You know, I think there's something wonderful about star the clouds. I'm like, so do I. Great. You know, if you have consciously chosen to go outside and look out at a beautiful day, watching the clouds, getting. Feeling the sunshine, relaxing, I love that. That is great. What I don't like is, you know, when people have this story of, like, I have no time whatsoever, and because they're not thinking about how they spend their time, you know, you spend like three hours a day on Instagram. I mean, like, the screen time numbers you can get from, like, the Apple screen time function are slightly embarrassing at times, you know, but that's mindlessness, right? That's not noticing that time is passing. It's something that's effortless, it's easy. It winds up expanding to feel incredible amounts of space. Whereas, you know, half an hour spent outside consciously doing nothing in the sense of, like, looking at the clouds. Well, that's chosen. That's mindful, and that is a great use of time.

I love that. And I'm so glad you brought that up, because when I was watching your talk and reading some of the writings that you've done, I was thinking to myself of, we all know that person out there, typically a mom who's so busy because she's got to be at this game and this practice, and she's working full time and there's no time for anything. And it's this constant rat race of. And in my mind, you know, I had put that person on a pedestal for a long time, they're more productive than I am. But it kind of goes back to what you were saying, that if you want to go sit and look at the clouds and meditate or take time for yourself and make it a priority, you make that happen. Or if you choose to drive your children to every event that there always is and choose to be responsible for A, B, C and D and not allocate to anyone else or not find other ways to free up windows of time for yourself. That's the priorities that you're choosing.

Yeah, well, time is a choice we are always choosing. And there may be consequences to the choices. I'm not saying they're not, but whenever you say I don't have time, what it tends to mean is that it's not a priority. And if that is true, it is true, like, great. But if it is, then maybe we need to rethink things and start to move things around and you know. So yeah, I basically try not to say I'm busy or I don't have time for that or whatever. I have time for stuff, I just don't want to do it.

Do you say that to people? If someone says, oh, I wanted you to see, can I interview for this podcast, you say I have time for it, but that's not a priority right now.

Well, I don't say it quite like that, but I do say no to things. And I also have, you know, just like you can't do everything I A couple times recently this has actually happened to me that I've not been able to do publicity opportunities for things like somebody emails me and says, well could you do an interview on X? And I respond to it usually at the end of the day because that's when I respond to emails that I do not perceive as when you want more.

Start your business with a Northwest Registered.

Agent and get access to thousands of.

Free guides, tools and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business all in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest today. Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U s with over 1500 corporate guides. Real people who know your local laws and can help you in your business every step of the way. Build your business identity fast with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free resources, forms and step by step guides without even creating an account. Sign up for a free account to begin managing your business hub with lawyer drafted operating agreements, bylaws, resolutions, membership certificates, bills of sale, and more. All at no cost. Northwest is your one stop business resource. Learn how to build a professional website, what annual filings your business needs to stay in good standing, and simple explanations of complicated business laws don't wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand and get your complete business Identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit www.northwestregisteredagent.com confidence free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent@www.northwestregisteredagent.com confidence free. If you're like me, you're always looking for ways to feel stronger in your workouts, recover faster from working out, have more energy during your day and preserve your health, mobility and strength as we get older. And mitopure Timeline is giving me that life and it's happening right now and I want it to happen for you too. This supplement really can help you because it supports your health at the foundation by encouraging cellular renewal. MIT Appear is a precise dose of the rare postbiotic Urolithin A. It works by promoting an essential cellular cleanup process that clears out dysfunctional mitochondria AKA your cell's battery packs. Might Appear is the only Uran a supplement on the market clinically proven to target the effects of age related cellular decline. Hello. With regular use you are going to see and feel the difference in the form levels, better workouts, faster recovery, more endurance, all of which are helping you achieve your New Year's goals and making you Feel your best. P.S. might appear shown to deliver double Digigit increases in muscle strength endurance without a change in exercise for the win. Cellular Health is a foundation of well being and longevity. Mito Pure recharges your cells, supporting any goals by helping all of your system work better. I'm excited to share that you can now get 20% off your first timeline purchase. There's never been a better time to experience the benefits of Mitopure. Use my code CONFIDENCE at checkout. To receive 20% off today go to timeline.com confidence that's T I M E L I N E.com confidence.

Urgent top priority stuff. And a couple times people have been like oh, I already had to post it so I guess I'll try to find DNS.com well you know, if you want my productivity advice advice number one is that if you're on email constantly it's hard to do anything else.

That's so interesting that you say that. My computer told me today it was evaluating how quickly I respond to emails and it says on average, during a day, you respond within 30 minutes of receipt of an email. And that might not be the best use of your time. And it was so interesting because I never was aware of it. I never thought about. I didn't have a strategy around. You know, to me, I think of it more as, you know, if I've got the time, go ahead and jump into this and handle it, because something else, you know, then later in the day, I know that I'm blocked out and I won't be able to. What is this right strategy to use for email?

Well, there's no one right strategy. It completely depends on your line of work, what other channels people you communicate with might use. I think in general, though, where we see the productivity losses is when we're constantly available on email. You're better off setting certain windows to check it. And they can be frequent windows. Like, I'm not saying once a day. For many people, that does not work. It doesn't even work to do like twice a day. But let's say every 60 to 90 minutes, you do 10 to 15 minutes in email. Like, that will open up so much more space for focused work than if you are responding every five minutes, looking at what's in there every five minutes. So then you never focus on anything else. Whereas, you know, if you get back to somebody within the hour, like, there's very few things that could not have waited an hour. I mean, you could have been driving somewhere, you could have been in another meeting with someone. Generally, it can wait that long. So even if you are in the line of work where being responsive and being on email is highly prized, I think giving yourself that little extra bit of time can make a world of difference in terms of your ability to do anything else.

You know, to your point of prioritizing things, I had a book that was due on deadline December 1st, and at the end, within November, I wasn't answering email. As soon as that became the priority, it was like everything else just fell by the wayside. Nothing mattered anymore.

Yeah, well, I mean, whatever we choose to focus on in that TED Talk you mentioned, I tell the story of a lady who is very busy. She was tracking her time for me, as I have people do, and her water heater broke. So she has, you know, 75 gallons of water all over her basement, like, and has to deal with this, with the plumbers, the, you know, ruined carpet. And this winds up taking seven hours of her week. And it's not that she magically had seven extra hours in her week, and it's not like she had seven hours that just felt discretionary, that she could throw away to whatever she wanted. It's that when something really big happened that she had to deal with, she found those seven hours. And so really, it's the same thing with life in general. I mean, our priorities can become that sort of big thing. It's not like you magically had less going on in November. It's just that you had something that mattered more to you, and so that's what you chose to focus on. And everything else just fit in around it. And we can bring that level of urgency to the things that are important to us in normal life. Not saying that every month has to be a book deadline, but it's certainly whatever you've identified is important for you to get done today. Like, you can attack it first thing with urgency and gusto and then check your email after that, as opposed to trying to fit it in around email checks every five minutes.

That's such better advice and works so much better. I'm living proof of that. Back into your TED Talk again. I really loved this exercise that you took us through around the annual performance review. Can you share that with us?

People often say with time management, well, you got to focus on your priorities. I mean, I say that all the time too, but what are those priorities? People are like, great, okay, focus on the priorities. But what does that mean? So this exercise is one way to sort of figure out, at least in a professional context, what are your top priorities for kind of the near term future. So, you know, I tell people to picture themselves giving themselves an annual performance review a year from now. We're recording this in December so people could pretend it is December of 2021 and they are evaluating their professional performance over the year. And let's say it's been just an absolutely amazing year for you professionally. Like, popping the champagne corks, just awesome. If that were to be the case, what three to five things would you have done in the course of the year that would have made it so amazing? Like, you, you know, are writing this review. You're like, this year was awesome because I did X. All right, well, what are X, Y and Z? Like? Figure that out that you want to be talking about at the end of 2021. Because if you know that, then you can aim for that, right? You've got time, you've got a year before then. So you can start every time you're making your schedule. As you're planning out your weeks or looking at your daily to do list you say, how is this reflected in my goals for the year? Am I doing something that will move me toward those goals for 2021? And if you are, great. If you are not, well, what could you do? What could you add to the list that would help in that regard? And so, you know, the more time we devote to steps toward these goals, the greater the chance that they will actually come about. It's so true.

Not only taking that big picture moment to jump forward a year from now and say, you know, what would we be proud of? What is important to us? But then also taking that on the week by week and day by day. That's where I know I've gotten lost before, is going, getting in the grind and just having to get, oh, I just need to get through this right now. And losing focus of those bigger goals.

Yeah, well, that's why you gotta make the list and then put the goals somewhere you can see. Because when you are planning out your weeks, you want to at least have this in the, you know, somewhere that these are the things that are important to me. And, you know, there will be other things that come up as well. But if you're not making any progress toward those goals, well, then they are highly unlikely to happen. And again, maybe you decide that's okay. Like life changes, other things come up, plans have to change. But if it is still a goal for you, then it can inform how you spend your time.

So you also get into something that to me was eye opening. I always think of career first when I think of goals. But you bring up in the TED Talk, not only are we looking at the priority list around career, but also relationships and self. And that is not something I had done before. How does that work?

Yeah, well, I mean, we live life in multiple spheres that we're not all professional. You know, we also have relationships with other people we have ourselves we need to take care of and try to be our best selves. So by using these three categories, I think it helps guide us in terms of goal setting. It's actually interesting when you think about the timeline of goals. Actually, when people make big lifetime goals, many of those are more in the professional sphere. So if I tell you to make a bucket list, like, it's almost all gonna be personal stuff. People like, I wanna go to Paris, I wanna run a marathon, I wanna travel the great Silk Road by horseback or something. I mean, these are all things that are not professional. I mean, there may be some professional things on it, but it's almost all personal. And yet then when you get down to the daily and weekly to do list. It seems to be all professional because those are the things that seem to have more immediate deadlines that we need to make progress toward because we are accountable for them. I said, well, there should be some kind of balance between these two. And so for any length of goal, I recommend setting in all these three categories. So make that bucket list with professional items on it too. What do you want to do professionally in the course of your life? And then when you're planning your weeks, make the three categories as well. I like to plan my weeks on Friday afternoon and I make a short three category list of my priorities for the next week. Career, relationships, self. And I find that making it in all three categories the biggest benefit there is. It reminds you that there should be something in all three categories. It is very difficult to make a three category list and then leave one of the categories blank. Like, our brains just don't work that way. We're like, I got to put something in there. So that forces you to think about it. Like, oh yeah, what are my relationship priorities for the next week? What are my personal priorities for the next week? And when you think about it, then you can put it on your calendar. When you put something on your calendar, it vastly increases the chances that it happens.

Absolutely. Why is it Friday afternoon? Why is that the time to use for this?

Well, I am glad you asked that. It has to be something everybody needs some sort of designated weekly planning time because we live our lives in weeks. That tends to be the cycle of life as we actually experiment and so repeating over and over again. And so in order to spend time mindfully, we need to think about this unit of time before we are in it. So planning on Friday means we can look forward to the next week and put in what we need to put in. Friday afternoon tends to be a very low opportunity cost time. Most people are not starting anything new on Friday afternoon. It is almost always wasted time. And if that is the case, well, better to use it for looking forward. Another upside of Friday is that it is during the work week. So for instance, if you need to make appointments, if you need to call people, if you need to make, you know, schedule meetings, if you need to cancel a meeting or something, those people are probably still responding to work calls and emails. And so you can make that happen. Another benefit of Friday is that it is before the weekend. So if you haven't really thought about what you want to do over the weekend, you have a chance to think about it and that Increases the chances that you spend your weekend doing fun things, mindful things, as opposed to just, you know, being like, I don't know, what are we doing? I don't know, what are you doing? Yeah. So. So then you can spend your weekends more mindfully, take advantage of your leisure time. And then the final reason that I think Friday is good is I want to have a plan for Monday morning before I get to Monday morning. One is that it allows you to sort of seize that beginning of the week energy to knock something out instead of wasting that energy deciding what to do. And also, I find that if people suffer from any sort of Sunday evening trepidation, those Sunday night blues. And even if you like your job, it's often that, you know, there's this big stuff waiting for you and you don't know exactly what it is, and you don't have a plan for dealing with it. And so it's kind of churning through your brain. But if you've set a plan on Friday, then you can just let go, like, not think about it again until Monday when you start executing on that plan. And so it gives you permission to relax.

I like that. I had always done my plan on Sunday nights. That was just, for whatever reason, the routine I had created for myself. But I do like that, and I also like learning from you that it does make sense to stop and also put a plan together for the weekend. So many times I would just say put it off till the weekend. You know, I'll take care of that on the weekend as one less thing I'd have to do. But I never really thought that strategically I would be setting myself up, like you said, for a more fun time or, you know, something that we were looking forward to, which is so important right now.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, having fun takes work, and that's. I know that that sounds really terrible, but, you know, just putting a little bit of logistical planning and mindfulness into it increases the chances that you spend your leisure time on things that you truly enjoy and that are rejuvenating to you, as opposed to whatever is just sort of easiest. Because the easiest thing may not wind up being the most rejuvenating or enjoyable. And so you want to make sure you have a good balance.

And that Friday afternoon routine really will set up me up for better success than anyone else, I think, that decides to give this a shot. So I can tell you I'll be moving my planning from Sunday to Friday. So thank you for that. Laura, you had talked a lot about the most Successful people and that they take advantage of early morning. What is that about? As I have never been a super early morning productive person.

Well, I'm not really either, so we can have that in common. It's just I've noticed over the years that whenever you talk to somebody who has a huge job and then they also have a family, for instance, but then they happen to be doing something else, like exercising seriously or writing a novel or painting or whatever, they're always doing it first thing in the morning. And the reason is that this is time that you can have to yourself before everybody else wants a piece of you. Most people have more energy in the morning. Not everybody, but a lot of people do. There are fewer emergencies at 6am than there are at 6pm you know, by 6pm the day can get away from you with things that come up, you know, family responsibilities you have to have. Also, at the end of the day, you're tired. Like, you can tell yourself you're gonna write that great American Novel at 10 o' clock at night. Once you're done with everything else, it's not gonna happen. You're just deluding yourself. You're like, you're like, oh, not tonight. Tonight I'm gonna watch Netflix. Maybe tomorrow night. Whereas if you get up in the morning, you might be able to to do it first thing before you run out of energy with the rest of your day. You know, I know there are plenty of people who are not morning people, and that's fine. But a lot of people who say, I'm not a morning person, what they mean is that they are tired in the morning, but that is a different matter from whether you are a morning person or not. That's a function of how much sleep you got, and that's a function of when you went to bed. So, you know, I always tell people, if you find yourself exhausted in the morning and unable to do cool stuff that you might want to do, try looking at how you are spending your evening. And if you are staying up later than you maybe should, just, you know, scrolling around on your phone, watching Netflix or all that, you might want to cut that off a little bit earlier. Go to bed a little bit earlier.

It's that time of year again.

Everyone knows that the holidays can become overwhelming quickly. So the sooner that you get things done, the better. For both shoppers and businesses, the best time to score great deals during the holidays is Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend. Whether you're an established business or someone who is going to experience their first Black Friday Cyber Monday this year you know that the most important thing you need is a platform that can handle everything that's about to be thrown at you. You don't want to find out that your inventory is off as orders keep coming in, or that your point of sale system cannot keep up with the requests, many from new customers who are buying your products for the first time. You need to make sure that your tools and platform are ready for anything that comes your way during the busiest weekend of the year. And that's why you need Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names to entrepreneurs who will be participating in their first Black Friday Cyber Monday this year, including your girl right here. With creating confidence in everything that we put through Shopify, the 1:1 platform that manages it all, you don't have time to spend hours pouring over every little detail. Me neither. Shopify has thousands of templates and tools to help streamline website creation, making sure that your site isn't just aesthetically pleasing but functional at the same time. Accelerate your content creation. Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product description pages, headlines and even enhance your product photography to help increase your reach during the busiest time of year. You can also stress less knowing that Shopify's award winning customer support teams on standby 247 to help with any issues that arise, allowing you to get back to business as fast as possible this Black Friday. Join the thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing for the first time with Shopify. Sign up for your free trial today at shopify.com/monahan that's shopify.com monahan go to shopify.com monahan and make this Black Friday one to remember as the air turns crisp and the holidays draw near, comfort becomes the best gift of all. Quince delivers layers that last, sweaters, outerwear and everyday essentials that feel luxurious, look timeless and make holiday dressing and gifting effortless. Quince has it all. $50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters made for everyday wear, denim that never goes out of style, silk tops and skirts that add polish and outerwear built to take on the season. Perfect for gifting or upgrading your own wardrobe. Honestly, Quint's Italian wool coats are at the top of my list. The cuts feel designer and the quality rivals high end brands, but without the high end markup. By working directly with ethical top tier factories, Quince skips the middleman and offers prices 50% less than similar brands. I mean, if you want to look like you Are wearing the highest end clothing out there without those huge price tags. Quince is the answer. Literally there's something for every single person on your list. The Mongolian cashmere sweater is the softest sweater I have and it is my go to every day. If you want to elevate your look without paying more. Quince is the answer. Step into the holiday season with layers made to feel good, look polished and last. From quints perfect for gifting or keeping for yourself. Go to quince.com confidence for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com confidence to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com confidence and then you can trade.

Those unproductive evening hours for more productive morning hours. And I don't mean productive in like, you know, doing work like this should be for something you want to do. There's absolutely zero reason to have a morning routine. Like just to be more work for yourself. Like it should be something that you truly want to do but that life is otherwise crowding out. Right. So the example I use is like a kid on Christmas morning. Nobody's ever like, oh, I just want to stay in bed. Like they want to get up, they're excited to do the thing, go see what Santa brought, see what's under the tree. And you're not going to do that every morning, but you want something that's going to motivate you to get out of bed. Like to be like, yes, this is worth getting up for and it's worth going to bed on time for and structuring my life around having that time.

Wow. When you were just talking about people waking up tired and not having energy, it's the same conversation I have with my 13 year old, which is, you aren't just tired right now, you went to bed too late.

Hello.

This is something we can fix. And I actually, to remind myself so I don't lose track of it, I put a timer now every day on my phone. So it just alerts me, you know, 9:30, okay, it's time to start getting everyone in this house ready for bed. 10 o', clock, it's over. You know, it shuts your phone off so that you can't jump on and start scrolling around and just lose track of time again.

Yeah, I find the whole sleep thing pretty funny because people will be like, it's like their bedtime and their wake up time are completely disconnected, whereas it really needs to be a straightforward math problem. Like if you need seven hours of sleep and you need to wake up at 6am, then you need to be in bed by 11pm like, this is just math. It's not going to magically work to go to bed at like 12:30. It's just, you know, I don't know what people are thinking. Yeah. So if you need to be in bed at 11, then set your watch for 10:30 or so so you can wind and get into bed. And people sometimes don't like the idea of a bedtime. I was pulled over from childhood battles or something. You can't make me go to bed. But I said that most adults can't actually sleep in. Life does not accommodate sleeping all morning or anything like that. So the way you sleep in is by going to bed earlier. So it's the exact same thing. It's just on the other side of the sleep duration. So if you can't sleep in, go to bed earlier. And it's just like you're sleeping in. So maybe it seems more of a treat that way.

So with you on that one all day. So now that so many of us, if not all of us, are working from home, I want to talk a little bit about your book, the New Corner Office.

Yeah, so I wrote this one in the spring after everyone started working from home, or a lot of people, I should say, over the course of a couple weeks in March. So in mid March 2020, about a third of American workers had ever worked from home. And by the beginning of April, it was 2/3. I mean, it literally doubled in a span of about 2, 3 weeks. And I had had all sorts of conversations with business leaders in the past. Like, people knew working from home was a growing trend. Like, you know, it's the wave of the future. So I talked to people about this, the wave of the future we should be aware of. And I'd still have people say to me, yeah, fascinating stuff, it would never work for us. Us. I just find this so funny. Like, okay, because the way you email people is totally different than the way everyone else emails people. Right? Like, we all had this ability to work remotely in so many white collar jobs. It's just that there was no impetus to do it. And people kind of liked the idea of looking at their employees working, right? Like, how do I know people are working if I can't see them? Or I built this gleaming office building. Like I want to see people there, right? So ding, ding, ding, those things working against it. But it turns out that if you're if you either go out of business or you let people work from home, you let people work from home. And over the past nine months, people have proven that you can do a lot of things from home. You can do all kinds of work. And the argument in the past, like, people would say, oh, but you know, so many good things happen when you're face to face. And so I don't deny that at all. Like, being face to face is great. It's just that 40 hours a week is probably overkill for most groups of people who are working together. So, you know, you can get the best of both worlds by, let's say, having people in the office two to three days a week and people at home two to three days per week, or people in the office one week a month and people at home the other three weeks. And then you orient the work toward what you're doing. You do your social, you know, intense collaboration on the days you are in the office. You do your focused individual work on the days you are working from home. And that way you have the ability to do focused work and collaborative work as opposed to, you know, what often happens in offices is people are trying to do focused work, but they're getting interrupted every two minutes because somebody wants to come by to talk about, you know, what happened to the cheese on the office salad bar. Like, yes, sometimes you're having amazing collaboration, other times you are just not right. And so, you know, we can try and orientate different work activities to different times, get the best of both.

I totally agree with you. Ideally, having that face to face, like you said, you know, twice a week, and then having that flexibility to work from home those other days where you actually can maximize your time and save on the drive, in the commute, in whatever it may be, seems to make the most sense. But how do you keep people connected in the interim in this window where so many people aren't seeing anyone and you can literally see on the Zoom meetings, they're just fading. They're just so disconnected.

Yeah, although I have to say, Zoom is pretty good. I mean, I know people love to hate on Zoom and Google Meet or whatever else people use, but video conferencing technology is quite awesome. Being able to see someone's face on a screen, I would say is about 75% as good as seeing them in person. I mean, yes, there are some less than awesome things about it, but on the other hand, our brains can't actually distinguish between seeing somebody on a screen and seeing someone in person. Like how Would they have evolved to know the difference and where you see this happen? So, sort of humorously, as anyone who's had a career in television, like, for the rest of their lives, people are coming up to them in the grocery store being like, I know you from somewhere. It's like, no, you don't know me. Like, you just saw me give the weather for 10 years every morning. Right, that's a good point. But it's like you think you know them because we don't understand that it's any different. You know, I had a Zoom Pro account before March 2020. I'm cool that way. Right? And I do video conferences, and there are people I've seen regularly by Zoom who I've actually met in person very, very few times. But I feel like we're really good friends because we have that interaction where we're seeing each other's faces. So you can have friendships, you can have relationships with people who are more far flung than you would if you didn't have that option. So there are things you can also actively do. Like, teams should definitely build social time into their meetings. Partly everyone's going to do it anyway, but actively building it into the agenda means that it's accounted for and you can structure it so everyone can talk and sort of share things about themselves and become close that way. You know, the Zoom happy hour was such a cliche at the beginning of the pandemic. And then we realized, like, no, no, you need to have a facilitated social engagement, but if you do have a facilitator, it can work quite well. So things like book clubs are better than happy hours because you want to everyone talk about a certain topic and you have somebody leading it, which you wouldn't naturally have with a happy hour, but you can do things like that. And then long term, you know, we will get together in person again. It's not like this will never happen again, but it will just be a different form. You know, you can. I've talked with some, you know, very innovative distributed companies who, you know, they bring people together for a week every quarter, and then people work remotely the rest of the time. Those people have very close working relationships. They get to know each other really well during those weeks, you know, four weeks a year, and then the rest of the time that's supplemented through Zoom calls and the like. And you have the same feeling as your close colleagues you work with all the time in person. It's just that you could be anywhere, and so you could hire great people from across the country for Instance, you don't have to hire only from an hour around your headquarters.

I've seen that with, and I wonder if you've seen this too with speaking engagements now through Zoom. There's so much more with the Q and A that I never experienced when I was at live events.

There's definitely some of that. And it's also that we've been learning that virtual events need to be different. It's the same thing. Like with the Zoom Happy Hour doesn't work. It's the Zoom Book Club that can work. And same thing with virtual speeches. They need to be shorter and they need to be more interactive. And so what I've been doing is a lot less of the 45 minute keynote with the sort of half hearted 15 minutes of Q&A versus like 25 minutes of talking with, then, you know, 15 minutes of pre submitted questions with a host who's having a conversation with me and then people chiming in on the chat and then we come in from that. It's just, just, it's very different. It is more. It needs to be more interactive and it should be, you know, and it fortunately mostly is, which is, which is great.

I've really enjoyed watching that happen. And like you said, it's getting really more to what people are looking for from you and answering those questions and having those engaged conversations. Now that people are so aware of your unbelievable tips, where can they find your podcast?

Yeah, so I have a short every weekday morning podcast called Before Breakfast and it's like a five minute episode so you can listen while you're making your coffee or you're curling your hair or putting on your makeup or, you know, getting dressed, whatever it is you do in the morning. And you know, it's a tip that will help you take your day from great to awesome. And so some of them are career focused and most of them are just productivity in general focused. But my goal is to have you say, oh, you know, I think I want to try that. And hopefully if we have enough ideas that we want to try, like, life will keep getting better.

Laura, thank you so much for giving your time to be here today and teach all of us. And thank you for all the work that you're doing. Where can we send everyone to find out everything? Productivity.

Yeah. Well, please come Visit my website, lauravanderkam.com it's just my name and I blog there. I know that's so 2005, but I still enjoy it. And you know, there's links to all my books and podcasts and Stuff like that there.

So we'll include that in the show notes. So hang tight. We'll be right back.

I asked you to try to find your passion. Hi and welcome.

Welcome back.

Okay, let's hit up some of these questions that I've been receiving from you on social media. Hey, Heather, hope you are safe and healthy. Thank you. I had a quick question, if you don't mind sharing some feedback. I know from your post you're writing a book proposal or you were. Any suggestions on how to learn how to write a proposal? So this is so interesting. Oh, it says. She goes on to say, I'm thinking of writing a biography and I think it'd be great if I could actually get paid to write it. So here's the difference. If you self publish, you're the one paying for everything, right? You're paying for the printing, the editing, everything that's on you. But you get to make all the decisions, right? It's all your choice. And you keep 100% of the revenue from the book sales that you have. The opposite opportunity is to go out and get a traditional publishing house to hire you.

But.

But then they own the book, they own the writings, they own the work. And it's their decisions primarily, which is so weird. I self published my first book, which cost a lot of money, right? Cause you have to, if you want 10,000 copies, you have to pay for that printing and it becomes expensive, much more expensive than I thought, I'll tell you that much. But you then keep a hundred percent of the profits. But you also don't have an expert team behind you. And that's the thing that I, when I look back now, I wrote, wrote my first book, confidence creator, in 2018. And what I learned was speed to market was critical for me at that time. I had just been fired and it was really important that I had a product to sell. So I'm glad I self published. However, what I recognized and learned was I don't have any expertise in book sales, in writing books. You know, I was a rookie, I was a beginner and I went out on my own and did it anyhow. Would it have been better if I had a team of experts, experts from a traditional publishing house behind me, teaching me the right way to do it? Probably. I don't know, maybe not, but. But possibly. So that is why I chose to go the traditional publishing route for my next book, which the working title is Leapfrogging Villains and that'll be out in 2021 with Harper Collins leadership. So in Order to get that book deal, what you have to do is number one, you have to get an agent and number two, you have to have a book proposal. I didn't know what any of those things were eight months ago, right. So I simply googled, I wanted to know who the top author was in nonfiction in my genre, and it was Rachel Hollis. So I googled who's Rachel Hollis's agent? Found her agent, pitched myself to her agent. Her agent said, I'm not really interested on the business side that you represent, but my partner could be. Why don't you talk to my partner, Jill? So she connected me to Jill, we hit it off and then she asked me, okay, great, send me a book proposal. And I said, well, I wrote a book but I don't have the proposal, so on and so forth. So she said, you've got to write a proposal. And I said, I have no idea how to do that. What do you recommend I do? And she said, I would recommend that you contact Peter Economy. I reached out to him, we did the book proposal together. So here's the thing. You're going to have to, if you don't know how to write a book proposal, you're going to have to hire someone to help you do it. It is not, not a simple one sheet, it's a mini book. In some ways, it's almost tougher to write than the book. For me, writing the book came somewhat easy, you know, more free flowing. This was, it's more disciplined in regards to, you need to do a market overview, you need to figure out, you know, the why you, the why the book, the audience. You need to compare to different books and how those, those books sold and why those books sold well and why yours well. You need to do a comprehensive portion of the book proposal on sales and marketing and the strategy and approach. So it's much more like a business plan in the book arena than it is a book. So for me that was hard because I hadn't done it before, now I've done one, so I have a template.

To go off of.

But you know, for someone new, you're definitely going to want to hire someone. I hired Peter Economy, he's fantastic. That's who I know and who I worked with. And it worked out. But even though it worked out, we got 14 nos before we got the 15th. Yeah. So that is my experience with the book proposal. Takes quite a bit of time to get it done correctly and you definitely should hire someone to help you get it done. So I don't know if that's the right fit for everyone. But self publishing is the other option if you don't want to go that route. Okay, next question. I was hoping you might be be willing to share your opinion regarding book sales. See, I will have a children's book out soon and I believe I can learn from successful people like yourself, especially parallels to achieve my dreams. Question is, what do you believe was the most important thing you did or continue to do that helped your book sell and be noticed? There's not one thing, there's many things. And see, this is where it kind of cracks me up. I wish it was one thing like, oh, when you achieve this, it's done. No, that is not how it works. There's a tremendous amount of work that goes into selling a book. And I'm laughing because, oh my gosh, it's way more than I thought it would be. Here's what I can tell you what I know from my first book. I haven't sold my second book yet because it doesn't still come out for, you know, in months. But hopefully I'll have learned a lot more from the HarperCollins leadership team. I'm already learning from them right now as they do. They're much more in depth in regards to researching the market, researching the why me, you know, the positioning, the messaging statements. They're much more methodical and they do a lot more research than I ever did when I self published. So what I can explain to you is why or what I learned from self publishing. That's the part I know right now. I don't know the traditional publishing part yet. I'm still learning that. But here's the things that helped counted, you know, and sold books. Number one, social media. Build your community. That is critical. The more people you have in your social media community, the more opportunity you have ultimately to advertise for free. People buy things from people they know like and trust. Trust. And if you have people in your community that are following you and engaging with you, they know like and trust you and they're going to be much more likely to buy your book. They'll understand the why you, they're interested, they're curious and that's probably your biggest and best opportunity. Okay, so that's one piece of it. And that to build a community, you need to show up daily and be committed to serving that community, adding value, being your unique, vulnerable self. Those are all really important things. So social media is very powerful. Then an email list. An email list is a great way to sell a book. Because these people have signed up for your list, they want to know what you have to say. Again, they know like and trust you. And you can see the open rates you can resend to the people that didn't, you know, there's so many strategies around, you know, open rate and subject header lines and how to get people to open emails and then, you know, have a call to action, which would obviously be to buy the book. Another way is when you self publish. Really Amazon is the platform you're looking to become a bestseller on because you can't become a bestseller on most of these other lists if you are self published. So it's really important to get pre sales ahead of time. It's important to activate teams of people, people on your behalf to help promote and push your book. It's important to have a call to action, a deadline. Maybe you just, you do, you know, autograph books for everyone that buys in this window of time. Maybe you do a discounted price on the Kindle version the first week, right? But you need to have a massive push and the weeks leading up to the book going live as well as that first week in order to become a bestseller, becoming a best seller is going to have help you leverage and sell more books moving forward. So that's a strategic marketing advice or direction that I would give people and that definitely helped me. I lucked out in that my book trumped Donald Trump for number one on the business biography list. The first week it came out I took that screenshot and marketed the heck out of my book from that one image, right? So it's figuring out what's unique, what can you market, what angle can you take, positioning can you take and how can you get some impact. Another way is through media and press, right? So you want to show up as an expert, establish yourself as an expert in whatever that is. So for me, that was an expert in business, an expert in sales, an expert in leadership, so that I would get picked up across trades so that people would want to interview me, whether it be be Forbes or Fortune or whoever it is, so that you start showing up and getting recognized as an authority. The more you can show yourself as an expert, the more credibility you have. The more you're picked up and pressed, the more people go back and search your name, the more opportunity you have to sell your book. So then after that, you know, you want to build a social media community, you want an email list, you want to grow that email email list, you want to market yourself, you want to pre sell the book, you Want as many reviews and recommendations of your book as possible. That's a huge piece. The more credibility you have from outsiders outside of you saying the book is great, the better chance you have of other people wanting to buy the book and take a chance on it. You want to show up as an expert in the media. You want to be interviewed so that you can reach a larger audience with your message and with your book.

Book.

And ultimately you want to speak. Getting out and developing some type of a book launch press tour with speaking engagements to as large audiences as you can and even right now, if that just means during COVID you do it virtually. Do it virtually. You can have a huge impact on massive audiences through virtual platforms nowadays and it's very, very impactful. There is also always a way. It's just up to you and I to continue to focus on the solutions and not get discouraged by the obstacles. So set yourself up on your book tour, set yourself up on your virtual speeches and get those book sales going. Remember, people need a call to action. Why should they buy this? What problem are you solving for them? How are you transforming their life and why should they do it right now? How are you going to get them to take action now? Those are my best tips on how to sell books and hopefully I'll have a bunch of new ones after launching my new book with HarperCollins leadership and leaning on them for their expertise. Until next week, I hope you are out there creating your confidence. You know I'm right here with you doing it. Please leave a review a rating and share this on social media with your friends. It'll mean the world to me. Until next week. Keep, keep creating your confidence.

I decided to change that dynamic.

I couldn't be more excited for what.

You'Re going to hear. Start learning and growing.

Inevitably something will happen.

No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.

Come on this journey with me.