Laura Vanderkam: The Boss of Time Management (Season 2, Episode 12)

I do try to set out at the beginning of the week and say, well, what are the most important things to accomplish both professionally and personally? I tend to make my priority lists in 3 categories: career, relationships, and self.

Welcome to Take the Long View with Matt Hall. This is a podcast to reframe the way you think about your money, emotion, and time. The goal? Helping you put the odds of long-term success on your side. Today, I'm excited to talk with writer, speaker, and podcaster Laura Vanderkam. Laura's goal is simple and powerful, to help us spend time on things that matter and less on things that don't. Laura Vanderkam has written a number of successful books on time management and productivity, including "Juliet's School of Possibilities," "Off the Clock: I Know How She Does It," "What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast," "168 Hours," and "All the Money in the World," among others. Laura's work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fortune, Fast Company, and she's appeared on numerous television programs, including the Today Show and CBS This Morning, hundreds of radio segments, and has spoken about time and productivity to audiences of all sizes. Listen to this, her TED Talk, "How to Gain Control of Your Free Time," has been viewed nearly 11 million times. And Laura has two podcasts. She's the co-host of the podcast The Best of Both Worlds and the every weekday morning podcast called Before Breakfast, featuring productivity tips designed to take listeners' days from great to awesome. I listen to that one frequently. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and five children. Wow. Uh, Laura, one of my favorite proclamations that you have goes something like this: Whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, a self-starter or someone who prefers detailed directions, you can do your clearest thinking and deepest work at home and have more energy left over to achieve personal goals or fuel bigger professional ambitions. In fact, soon you might find it hard to imagine working any other way. And I can't wait to talk to you about this. Welcome to Take the Long View.

Thank you so much for having me.

Okay, so I think we should probably start. There's a lot for us to unpack in there. You've written so much and talked so much about so many different things. I feel like that my challenge in preparation here was to zoom in on what matters most. And I thought one of the things where I really am curious, I want to start with you on is How did you get to this place where you were studying time for a living? How'd this become your focus?

Yeah, well, it, you know, I didn't grow up saying I want to be a time management expert, and I can't claim that I am always on time everywhere either. Um, but I find time fascinating because we all have the same amount of it. And so while there are people who have more money or who are smarter or better looking than the rest of us, they don't have more time. And so all of us are just trying to make the most of the 24 hours that we have each day, the 168 hours we have each week. And so I began studying it and, you know, writing about it, writing articles. And then once you write one book on a topic, that is what you become known for. And fortunately, I find it fascinating enough that I keep finding new angles and trying to put those out into the world.

Well, you are doing it. I remember— this is kind of a weird segue, but it's what's in my head. I remember my dad listening to a country song when I was a kid, and I think it was called "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool." And I think this relates to you in that you were into remote work from— or work from home— before it was cool, before it was a thing. How do you feel now with everyone joining you in the place you've been for some time?

Well, I feel vindicated that it is not just a work-life balance perk. That is for people who wish to take their foot off the gas in terms of their careers. And that is what working from home has been seen for so long. It's like, okay, well, maybe this person has been with our organization for like 10 years now. So I guess we can trust them to work from home one day a week, but only Friday, because everyone knows that Friday is the least productive day of the week. So we want to minimize the opportunity cost here, right? And I had business leaders tell me for years things like, I'm looking at the future trends, the future of work, like remote work, that's something we should know about, but it will never work for us. Right? Like, that was, that was basically the line. It would never work for us. I don't know, because the way these people were emailing and calling people was somehow so special that it couldn't be done anywhere else than the office. And then the pandemic happened, and it's like, oh wait, you know, that meeting could in fact have been a Zoom call. Like, that phone call could have been an email. There are ways to stay connected. There are ways to do our jobs. There's ways to, you you know, brainstorm new ideas, all these things without seeing each other in the office 40 hours a week. Now, I'm not saying that we don't have to see each other in person sometimes. I think, you know, many people have been missing that during the pandemic, but I think we're going to come to a different place of where that balance is, that it doesn't just have to be, you know, one day a week for people who've been with the organization for 10 years. Like, maybe everyone can try working from home 2 to 3 days per week and in the office 2 to 3 days per week so we can get the upsides of both locations.

Yeah, I have to admit, when I absorbed the audio version of your book, The New Corner Office: How the Most Successful People Work from Home, I was one of those leaders who believed that work from home was a perk or a concession, and it was— if you were lucky enough to get it, you probably got it on Fridays. And I would say this experience, meaning the pandemic, has definitely changed that perspective, along with reading and listening to your work. And really you flip it on its head, this whole idea, and talk about how you can actually turn being cooped up into an advantage. What are some of the things that you think the public misunderstands or that, you know, people you speak to or write to misunderstand, like me, about how working remotely really can be an advantage, that it's not a concession?

Well, there are a couple of things. I mean, one is that people tend to work best under certain conditions, and those may or may not exist in your office environment. Even something as simple as the temperature. I know a lot of people in the summers have frozen in an over-air-conditioned office. It is very hard to be productive if your fingers are turning blue. You know, there are distractions in the office. I mean, yes, it's great to be able to talk to your colleagues about exciting new ideas. Sometimes your colleagues are not talking with you about exciting new ideas. They're talking about like what happened to the cheese in the salad bar in the cafeteria. You're like, I'm trying to do my work here. All right, please, like, let me finish this and then we can talk about the cheese. But it's very distracting in that way. So again, there are upsides to seeing each other in person, but I think 40 hours per week in the same place is probably overkill. But then there's also certain things when you're in an office environment, there become very, very strong group norms. There are norms about what time you show up. There are norms about what time you leave. There are norms about needing to have certain things on your screen. If people walk past you, there are norms about, you know, like leaving in the middle of the day. Now, if it's a progressive office, like, you're not gonna get fired for leaving in the middle of the day. But it makes you feel a little weird of like, oh, I'm gonna go have coffee with this person outside our organization who could be useful long term. But like, why aren't I having coffee with my colleagues? I should be having coffee with my colleagues. Like, they're gonna look at me. Why am I leaving? You know, it's just, there are these very strong group norms in any situation like that. And those disappear when you are working at home. And sometimes it's good to have these norms. You know, maybe some people find it hard to focus if they don't have them, but a lot of people, they don't pursue certain opportunities because of the group time norms. And so those are worth reconsidering.

Yeah. Well, how do we do great work while we're sitting in the same spot where we normally watch Netflix? I like this. You've posed this question in your book and you have answers.

Well, I think it's— I mean, I had to put that in the description partly because that's like what my editor made me say. You know, when people were first working from home in March, there was this whole like Netflix thing, like, oh my gosh, you know, how are we going to know people aren't watching Netflix all day? I've seen hundreds of work from home schedules over the years. I have never seen somebody spend a whole day watching Netflix. I mean, I've seen maybe like a 30-minute show over lunch, you know, but that's like a break, right? That's, that's not the same thing at all. Most dedicated, driven professionals are not going to sit there watching Netflix all day. In fact, the problem is the opposite, that people don't know when to quit. Like they will keep going all night because they can still see their laptop. And so it becomes very hard for them to shut it down and go do whatever they need to do in their personal lives. I would say if you do find yourself distracted by household things, which is far more likely to be laundry and other such productive-seeming things than Netflix, try to find yourself a space that is separate. A lot of people first set up their work-from-home place at like the kitchen table because it was a flat surface with a chair. And if you didn't have a home office, like, that was the flat surface with the chair. Longer term into this, you need to find someplace that's a little bit more out of the way, a little bit more private, a little bit more removed from the rest of your life. If you don't have a separate spot, you know, a corner of your bedroom might work because it's probably got a window and it's probably got a door. You just maybe direct yourself so you're not looking at your bed all day if you don't want to do that. But, you know, maybe it's somewhere else. Maybe it's that you can convert part of your garage or part of your basement or a kid's room during the day if they're off at school or something. Or you couldn't move. But like, the truth is, find someplace that allows you to have at least some separation, because many people do like to be able to close the door and say, okay, now I'm in work mode. You know, I have my little ritual, sit down with my coffee, I'm in work mode. Now I take my breaks, you know, when I'm done, shut it, close the door, I'm done for the day. Um, have your shutdown ritual as well.

Shutdown ritual— going back to when you work from home, you may not turn it off. You may be working during waking hours. Not working hours. What are your suggestions around creating those boundaries?

Yeah, well, it's funny 'cause at the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of people were doing like required 9:00 AM check-ins on Slack or Zoom or something, I guess, again, thinking that people were going to be watching Netflix all day if they didn't have this required 9:00 AM check-in. But I liked your idea of like, you know, having a goodbye as well. Like if you're gonna have people check in at 9 o'clock, you check them out at 5 o'clock because that way you're bookending the day. And letting people know that it is time to go. There would be a time in an office where everyone would start drifting out the door. This recreates the same thing. Now you don't have to do this, of course. I, I find in many cases people can shift their hours and work slightly different hours, and that might work better for them personally. And that's great. In which case, come up with another way to indicate to yourself that the day is done. I personally like just focusing more on task rather than what time it is. I make myself a to-do list for the day. And when I have checked the list off, the day is done, whatever time that happens to be. I mean, it's almost always a normal quitting time because I figured out what fits in 8 hours, but that is when the day is done. You can also come up with other things like writing in a journal, writing tomorrow's to-do list, calling a colleague to say goodbye. If you have a dog, for instance, you could go walk the dog at a certain time. And then when you come back, you are no longer in work mode. You don't have children you need to pick up somewhere, sending a sitter home. These are all ways that you can create some sort of end of day ritual and say, once I've done that, Now I am back in personal mode, even if I can see my computer from where I am in the rest of the house.

You have 5 children.

I do.

You have multiple podcasts. You've written how many total books?

A lot.

A lot, yeah.

I lose track, yes.

And, you know, before my guests, before the pandemic, you were probably traveling to give speeches. How do you do it all?

I don't know. I mean, you know, it's, I think about how I want to allocate my time, and I, you know, probably fail on multiple fronts multiple times per day. But I do try to set out at the beginning of the week and say, well, what are the most important things to accomplish both professionally and personally? I tend to make my priority lists in 3 categories: career, relationships, and self. And so every Friday, sit down, make that priority list for the next week.

Wait, pause, because this is an important point that you hit on in your book. You plan the next week on Fridays.

I do, because I want to hit Monday knowing what I need to do for the week. So, I mean, that has a couple upsides. One is I don't have to think about it over the weekend because I've already got a plan for Monday. If there's things I need to do that require talking to other people to set them up, like, most people are at their desks still on Friday, whereas if I try to plan on Sunday, like, I might not reach them, you know. And we also— we have the most energy at the start of anything, so you want to really seize that Monday morning energy. For execution as opposed to deciding. The other upside of Friday is that like Friday afternoon, no one's doing anything anyway. Like, this is total wasted time, so you may as well use it for thinking about what future you should be doing. And if you haven't thought about what you're doing over the weekend, this gives you a chance to come up with some stuff. So it's, it's really got great— all sorts of things going for it.

Yeah, the number one thing that keeps hitting me is it gets rid of that Sunday night anxiety of having to plan. Like, you get— I don't know if you've ever felt this, but Sunday night you start thinking about if everything's set up just right for the next week to run smoothly. And I love the Friday plan ahead idea. I'm gonna have to execute that myself.

If you think about work and personal stuff, I mean, then you know it all has a place, and you know that you're not dropping too many balls because you've put it into the schedule. And then you check in next Friday and see if you've done it. If you have, great. If you haven't, go from there.

This is kind of a selfish question, but what do you think leaders could do to better support their teams in remote work?

Well, I think there's a couple of things. One is being really good at communication, being clear, like, what are the expectations for your performance? And then, you know, when people meet those expectations, awesome. You know, it doesn't have to be about spending 8 hours in a seat. It can be like, these are the things I want you to accomplish this week, or that we've come up with together for the day. Or the week or the month or whatever. And then when they're done, great, we celebrate that. If we're getting off track, then we come back in and see what the issue is and what we can do. In this time in particular, I think there is, you know, a lot of people are juggling more caregiving responsibilities than they normally would because of virtual schooling in many districts, or, you know, other child care arrangements are not available for whatever reason. And so I think being understanding of that is going to go a long way. I mean, we won't be in this pandemic forever. And if you've got an A+ employee who's kind of operating in the sort of B range at the moment because of their intense personal responsibilities, being like, that B is great. We love that B. Let's stick with that B. Don't walk out the door, right? Like, we'll get back to A+ eventually. Like, we love you for the B right now. That can go a long way in buying people's loyalty. Yeah.

What about— I hear this or feel this sometimes. I just got off a call with someone who's in sort of business development or sales. And I don't know that people articulate this often, but how can you maintain or grow your network or nurture relationships when you're spending less face-to-face time with people?

Well, the interesting thing is that video conferencing is actually pretty good. Yeah, those of us who had Zoom Pro accounts before March 2020 were, were kind of aware of this. You know, we started working from home in like 2000. No, the video conferencing was terrible, but now it is good. And everyone has Zoom fatigue, but seeing each other's faces on a screen, I think, is like about 75% as good as seeing each other in person. Like, our brains do not recognize the difference between seeing someone on a screen and seeing them in person. This is why people who have worked in television for years, like people are coming up to them in the grocery store for years afterwards being like, I know you from somewhere. Like, no, you don't. Like you saw that person give the weather report for 10 years and you think you know them, right? Because our brains have not evolved to understand screens. And so because of that, like, as long as you are seeing people's faces relatively frequently, you feel like you do know them. So that's fine for the people that you are you know, seeing relatively frequently that you already knew. I think establishing sort of new relationships is a little bit more challenging for people because most of us aren't like, okay, let's just have a random Zoom call with somebody I've never met before. Like, you want a little bit more of a casual first get-together that, you know, you met at a conference, and then now you start exchanging emails and go out. So, you know, it depends. I mean, one is to just say, okay, well, the pandemic won't go on forever. Eventually we will be back at conferences and we will be meeting new people. But you can also just start reaching out to people virtually. There's all kinds of ways to create more of a digital water cooler. You know, certainly following people on social media, leaving, you know, comments on articles they've posted on LinkedIn, like, you know, leaving anything that is thoughtful responses gets noticed a lot. You know, I feel like I know people who comment on my blog frequently, even though I don't. But if I met them in person, I'd feel like we were old friends just because they've been contributing thoughtful ideas for years. And there's so many ways to do that with people now, and I think those things will grow more as we come out of this, but you can certainly lay a very strong foundation now.

I really like in your TED Talk, you mentioned a professional you interviewed, and she talks about how she doesn't say that she's too busy. She has a different response.

Yeah, she said she would never say that I don't have time to to do X, Y, or Z. Instead, she would say, "I don't do X, Y, or Z because it's not a priority." And her point was that this is more accurate language. Like, I tell you I don't have time to iron my sheets. Like, I do. Somebody was gonna pay me $100,000 to iron my sheets, I would totally do it, right? But that is not gonna happen. Like, there's certain things that just don't rise up the priority list because they don't, they're not big enough priorities for us right now. And sometimes that can be hard to acknowledge because there are things that we feel should be priorities or that the world at large wants to be priorities. And they aren't for us right now. And that's okay. Like, I think we can acknowledge that, but having this mindset puts us back in charge of our time as opposed to being at the mercy of some larger force, you know, that we don't have time for X, Y, or Z. Well, you do. It's just, you're not doing it right now. You have time to write that novel in quarantine. You just don't want to.

You've studied so many successful people and written so much. At one point, I remember you told me this, that one of your most popular books you didn't think was your best book, but it had the best title. It was What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, because high achievers want to get out there and get some advantage before everybody else. But in studying all the people you've studied and studying time logs and in all of your writing and work, What do you think is sort of the common denominator you see in the people you view as truly successful or truly high achievers?

I think that achieving good things with our time requires being mindful of our time because time keeps passing whether you think about where it's going or not. And so it is very easy to spend time on whatever is right in front of you, whatever is clamoring for your attention right now. Or whatever seems easiest. And so, you know, in work, we're always putting out fires. At home, we do effortless stuff like watch TV or surf the web. So actually thinking through our time before we're in it allows us to make different choices and say, well, instead of just putting out these fires, what are the important things I need to tackle in my professional life and where can I make time for this? And in my personal life, what would be the high-quality things I would enjoy doing that would be meaningful and enjoyable for myself and the people I care about? And then where can those go in my schedule? And, you know, there— people have different styles. I mean, there's some people who like to wake up early, they could do great things before breakfast, and there are some high achievers who are night owls. And there's some people who like to plan every minute and some people who just have sort of more blocked ideas of when things will happen. There are some people who are total Type A and then some who are maybe more, you know, creatively oriented, stuff comes from anywhere. But thinking about our time is really the key to using it well. And so I find that that tends to be the common denominator among people who are using time well.

In your Before Breakfast podcasts, they're almost all like 3 to 6 minutes, 5 minutes, something like that. How did you make that choice? And what's the reaction compared to, say, longer form stuff you do?

Well, it's just different. This was a decision made, you know, jointly with iHeartMedia, who's the producer of that podcast, that they had this sense that people might like short tips, but that they needed to be frequent then in order to keep people coming back for more of them. And, you know, there's economic things too. I mean, a short podcast that you run two ads on is like you can do a lot of them, right? But You know, I, I like it. I mean, it's, it's like blog posts, only it's the audio form of them. And so I found it fairly easy to transition into writing those from what I'd been blogging about for years, or advice columns I'd been writing for years. I really enjoy doing a conversational podcast. I have one, Best of Both Worlds, with Sarah Hart Unger. The two of us talk work and family issues every week, and that's a lot of fun. Um, but it's just different if you want to listen to something that gives you a little shot of adrenaline in the morning to get going, then before breakfast, you know, listen to it while you're drinking your coffee and you'll take your day from great to awesome. But if you want to hear people chatting about something, having a conversation, then you're listening to a different sort of podcast.

Why do you think, uh, 11 million people watched your 8-minute TED Talk? What magic did you capture?

TED has a great reach, so I mean, I don't think if I just posted it on YouTube myself it would have that many million views. But, you know, I think we are all looking for ways to spend our time better. We would all like to maximize our free time, and that was hinted at in the title. You know, and there's some good stories in there too. I talk about a lady who, you know, was tracking her time for me and had her— in the course of the week she was tracking, her water heater broke. And so there's water all over her basement, and this emergency requires 7 hours of her time, which, you know, if we try to find 7 hours before the week started, like, we probably wouldn't have been able to find 7 hours. But when we have to find 7 hours, we do. And I think a lot of people can relate to that. And the idea of we wanna treat our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater, choosing to find time for them first, treating them with that urgency, and then we get great things done.

Yeah, I really like that story and recommend anyone listening to this take 8 minutes and watch Laura's TED Talk, it's awesome. Can you think of an example in your life where you've taken a long view or where patience and discipline has really paid off in your own life or career? Part of the reason I'm asking this is because I really like the style of how you present productivity and time management because it doesn't have this sort of restlessness about it, like you have to extract every ounce of value out of every second of your time. It feels like it has an ease about it. There's a patience about it. And I'm so wondering if, if you have an example where you've taken a longer view and where patience and discipline has really paid off?

Well, I think whether I'm patient or not, a lot of my career has required me to sort of take the long view because nothing has been like overnight success on anything. I mean, my first time management book, 168 Hours, got some great coverage. The sales weren't particularly swift at the beginning, but the good news is it sells often as many copies now per week as it sold when it first came out. Um, and that's 10 years ago. So, you know, that's, It's great to have something that is taking the long view in that, that the book will still be around and still be selling, you know, 10 years after it comes out. Building my speaking career has also required patience and the long view. Right now, a particular amount of patience and long view because I'm not doing really much of anything in terms of going places and giving speeches, you know, but I'd been giving time management talks here and there for years. It started coming a little bit more frequently, more frequently, and then I got to give that TED Talk, and that really helped boost it up another notch and kept going from there. I do trust it will come back eventually, but you know, this sort of— I'm imagining there's going to be at least an 18 to 24 month hiatus here before people want to go stand in a crowded conference hall with 3,000 of their closest friends. So, you know, we'll get there eventually, but it's going to be a while.

Did that part of your career come naturally, the being on stage part? The writers I know in my life aren't necessarily keen to being on stage, but you seem to do it very well. Did that come naturally?

No, I mean, nothing comes naturally. Public speaking is a skill like anything else. And so the first times you do it, you are utterly terrible at it, but you get better the more you do it. You think about what audiences react to. And by the time the pandemic hit, I was doing enough speaking gigs that it wasn't like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna get up on stage in front of 1,000 people. It's like, yes, 'cause that's called Tuesday. And so, you know, if there's any sort of stage fright associated with it, it's gone by that point, which is good because it's a great way to reach a lot of people.

Let's quickly jump back to a couple quick-hitting things from the new Corner Office. What do you mean when you say manage by task, not time?

I mean that we should think what we're intending to do for the day, like what are the 3 to 5 tasks that are most important for me to get done today. List those out, assign a time to them if you want, but when those tasks are done, then you've had a good day. And it doesn't necessarily matter what time it is. I mean, generally it's gonna be about 5 o'clock because most people get pretty good at figuring out what fits in 8 hours. But the point is not that it was exactly 8 hours because you're not commuting somewhere and commuting home. It doesn't exactly matter when it happens. It's more that these are the things that make a good day. I'm gonna do them, I'm gonna relax, I'm gonna do it again tomorrow.

Yeah, I like how you say results matter more than how long you're sitting in your chair, because I think in the old framework, how long you sit in your chair is really the answer.

Yes, exactly.

What do you mean when you say get the rhythm right?

We want to think about how a day starts, and as we talked about earlier, how the day ends, because otherwise people will just work into the night. So, you know, figure out when you're going to take breaks, how you can manage your energy, and you will get a lot more done.

What does it mean when you say build your team?

Well, you know, working at home doesn't mean necessarily always working by yourself. You want to make sure that you are nurturing those relationships you have with colleagues, with people outside your office too, and, you know, making sure that that is still part of your day even if you're not seeing each other in person.

Think big.

Well, there's nothing small about working from home. In the past, we were thinking about it as taking your feet off the gas. That, you know, this is a work-life balance accommodation. But in fact, you know, when you work from home, you can still think big and think strategically about your career, like how to become a thought leader, for instance, how you might become known for something, and then be able to leverage that into more opportunities.

And last but not least, you say optimize for well-being.

Yeah, well, the good news about working from home is that you can make some healthier choices if you wish to. A lot of people trade off commuting time for exercising time because that's when they would be working out. You have the opportunity often to eat more healthfully just because you have access to your fridge and your leftovers and your stove and all that stuff for lunch that you might not at an office. You know, you can just work how you work best, and there are lots of mental health upsides in being able to go outside at the time that's best for you without worrying about those group time norms, or, you know, working in jeans, or having a great view out your office window because you control it, as opposed to being in a cubicle somewhere. So, you know, you want to take advantage of those strategic opportunities that working from home presents.

I love it, I love it. And, um, you've changed the frame or the way I look at, uh, working from home or working remotely or working from anywhere, and I appreciate that. I'm sure the listeners will too. If people want to learn more about you, where should they check you out?

They can come visit my website, which is lauravanderkam.com, or check out the Before Breakfast podcast as well. That'd be a great way to get into something with just a few minutes.

Yes, and you have a very soothing voice in that podcast. I like it. I like it.

Thanks so much.

All right, Laura, thanks for doing this and thanks for your contribution to helping us manage and make the most of our time. I love it.

Thanks for having me.

All right, see you later.

Bye.

Wow, amazing story. I'm Buddy Reisinger, a longtime member of the Hill Investment Group team that helps translate Matt's thinking into action for our clients. If you want to learn more about evidence-based investing or gaining back weeks of your life, head on over to our website hillinvestmentgroup.com and order a complimentary copy of Matt's book, Odds On, or even better, set up a complimentary call or meeting. And we look forward to hearing your story. Please note, the information shared in this podcast is not intended as advice. The intent is to share meaningful experiences. I am likely not your advisor, nor wealth manager, nor financial planner, and my opinions are my own and not necessarily shared by Hill Investment Investing involves risk. Consult a professional before implementing an investment strategy. Thank you.