The Science of Success Podcast

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How The Most Successful People Work From Home with Laura Vanderkam

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In this episode, we dig into what the people who are most successful working from home do each and every day. We dig into how you can manage your time more effectively and how to stay sane and adjust in a world that has you working, living, and playing all in the same four walls. 

Laura Vanderkam is the bestselling author of What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, I Know How She Does It, and 168 Hours, among others. She is the host of the podcasts The New Corner Office and Before Breakfast and the co-host, with Sarah Hart-Unger, of the podcast Best of Both Worlds. Her 2016 TED talk, "How to Gain Control of Your Free Time," has been viewed more than 10 million times. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Fortune, and other publications. Laura has also appeared on national TV Shows such as The Today Show and Fox and Friends.

We discuss…

  • What Laura has been up to since her last appearance on the show.

  • How she's managed to stay productive with everyone else in her family now being home during the workday.

  • How can you learn to structure and organize your day so you ensure you get the most done. 

  • The paradox of how most people find it harder to be productive while working from home despite not having to deal with…

    • Commutes

    • Social Gatherings

    • Workplace Distractions

    • Meaningless Meetings

  • What does the workday structure of a time management expert look like?

  • Why you should manage by tasks you wish to complete, not time itself. 

  • How to set the rhythm for your day so you feel challenged but not stretched too thin. 

  • How to build a team around you that will thrive while working from home. 

  • Why now more than ever you need to think big. 

  • You need to optimize your well being and make sure you're making time for yourself. In the WFH environment, it can be easy to forget to prioritize the things you may have done in the past regularly. 

  • And much more!

Thank you so much for listening!

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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet, bringing the world's top experts right to you. Introducing your hosts, Matt Bodnar and Austin Fabel. 

[00:00:19] AF: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet with over 5 million downloads and listeners in over 100 countries. My name is Austin Fable, and welcome to the show. This week we have another returning guest on the show, Laura Vanderkam. Laura and I dig in to not only some of the key principles behind time management, one of my favorite subjects, but also hone-in on how we can be more effective leaders and get more done while working from home. 

Before we dig in though, are you loving the show and all the content we put out for you each and every week? If so, I would politely ask that you head to our website and sign up for our newsletter. As a subscriber, you’ll not only be the first to get all of our content sent directly to you, but you’ll also get our free course; how to make time for what matters most in your life. It’s super easy. Just go to www.successpodcast.com and sign up right on the homepage today. Or if you’re on the go, just text the word SMARTER, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to 44222.

Lastly, if you haven’t already, go ahead and subscribe to the show. And if you really want to go above and beyond for us, leave us a five-star review. This is how others like you can find the show and also help support us so we can continue to put out great content. 

In our last episode, we dug into some incredibly powerful tools that you can use to deal with uncertainty with our guest, Josh Kaufman. I mean, these days, who isn’t dealing with a large level of uncertainty? Am I right? I’d recommend checking out the interview with Josh just as soon as you get done with our interview with Laura. 

Now, Laura Vanderkam is the bestselling author of what the most successful people do before breakfast. I know how she does it. And 168 hours among others. She’s the host of the podcast, The New Corner Office, and Before Breakfast, and the cohost with Sarah Hart-Unger of the podcast Best of Both Worlds. Her 2016 TED Talk, How to Gain Control of Your Free Time, has been viewed more than 10 million times. Several of those views coming from me personally. Her work has appeared on the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Fast Company, Fortune and other publications, and Laura has also appeared on national television shows such as The Today Show, Fox & Friends, and more. It was great to have a chance to speak with Laura. And without further delay, here is our interview with Laura Vanderkam. 

[00:02:50] AF: Laura, welcome back to the Science of Success. 

[00:02:53] LV: Thank you so much for having me back.

[00:02:55] AF: So, you are a unicorn in our eyes in the sense that you are the first guest to have appeared on the show three times. Congratulations.

[00:03:03] LV: Oh my goodness! So, it’s been a great place to be. I always hear from people every time I’m on. So, I’m glad to have the opportunity. 

[00:03:08] AF: Well, it’s great to hear that. And it’s great to have you on too. I know your first two interviews were with Matt. So I’m really excited to be on the mic this time and dig in. I guess we set off here. I’m a huge time management junkie, and I think that your new book is extremely, extremely relevant. But before we jump in, for listeners who may have subscribed to the Science of Success after your first two interviews, just give us a little bit of a background on you and your journey and how you find yourself where you are today. 

[00:03:33] LV: Yeah. I write books about time management and productivity. I love to study how people who are doing a lot with their time, both professionally and personally allocate their hours, because it turns out that we all have the same 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. And so when you find people who are doing amazing things, it seems like the rest of us could probably learn from that. That's what I have spent my career studying. 

Up until recently, I was doing a lot of speaking on the topic. That business is kind of dead in the water since March. But in the meantime, I’ve been doing more podcasting. I have a couple of shows. One called Before Breakfast. It’s, quick tip, every weekday morning. Take your day from great to awesome. One called the New Corner Office, which is about how to work from home productively and ambitiously. And that's the subject of this most recent book that we’re talking about. It’s a guide on how the most successful people work from home, and hopefully some tips in there for various people who’d like to make this part of their work life long-term. 

[00:04:34] AF: Yeah, and I can't wait to dig in. I think it’s just so timely and so relevant in the world we find ourselves in right now. For those listening right now, we will link to all of your shows and all of your work in the show notes as well so they can find that either on our website or on the notes in this episode. But before we get in, Laura, how are you doing? I mean, it's a weird time for everybody, right? Are you holding up? Kind of as we record this, we’re right in the thick of people going back to school, not going back to school. There're a lot of tough choices being made. How do you find yourself feeling in this time?

[00:05:04] LV: Well, there has been a lot of family togetherness. That’s how I could put it. I have 5 children, including a baby who was born in late December. And so much of his life now has been spent pretty much just hanging around the house, which had some upsides and some downsides, I guess you could say. We’re hanging in there. We now know that our older children will be starting the school year at least virtually. I am hoping to send my five-year-old to an end-person program, a private program that will be not Zoom, since my experience with him and Zoom is that it’s a good way to have objects thrown across the desk and keyboard shut. We’re adjusting. We’re all figuring it out.

[00:05:49] AF: It’s such a crazy time. I mean, I’ve got a two-year-old, and obviously they don't know it's going on. But it will be weird to kind of look back and what I hope will be some semblance of normalcy and be like, “Yeah! First couple years of your life, no one got near anybody. You didn’t see anybody for a long time.” They’d be like, “What are you talking about, dad?” And you’re like, “Yup. It’s just one of those things that I'll probably talk about and my kid will be like, “Oh! Are those the good old days?” 

[00:06:12] LV: Yeah. I mean, my goal of course has been for my kids to think of this time as more of an adventure than anything else. We shall see in future years if that is how they look back on it and remember it. But I am pretty ready to get things back to normal, and hopefully that will happen before too long. 

[00:06:31] AF: Yeah. Well, hopefully it does happen before too long. But in the meantime, let's go ahead and dig in. So, your latest book, The New Corner Office: How the Most Successful People Work from Home. Super relevant. A lot of people find themselves working from home for the first time. Obviously, you and I have been doing this for a while, but it's jarring, right? It's a big change. How can we help people and help the audience more successfully navigate the new landscape that is their work?

[00:06:57] LV: I think it’s helps for people to realize that working from home is a skill. And like any skill, you’re going to be pretty bad at it at the beginning, but you will get better with time and attention. Any so, in March, when a lot of organizations had to go virtual overnight, they had a ton of really bad Zoom calls. People talking all over each other, and people having the pace of work slow considerably, because they’ve been used to just stopping by somebody's cubicle and asking for something. And now they're scheduling a formal 30-minute Zoom call, which can’t happen until two days from now, because everyone else has Zoom calls on the schedule too. People not knowing when work is supposed to end, because they’re used to a commute being the end of the day. And in the absence of that, how do you know when the day is over? How do you know if you’ve put in an honest day's labor? 

So, a lot of real existential angst in addition to the more obvious problems of having kids at home at the same time in this case, or having other family members around or not even having a workspace set up that is conducive to work. I think people can be forgiven for having had a rough transition. But that said, it doesn't seem like this is going anywhere anytime soon. I mean, I wish I could snap my fingers and change it all overnight. But it does appear that remote work is going to be with us for a while. Half crisis have not. And so we need to figure out ways to work productively and ambitiously from home and to figure out those things that weren't necessarily working so well in March, but could work well long term.

[00:08:25] AF: I read an article featuring you in the Washington Post that was pretty eye-opening, essentially saying we have more time now than ever. There's no more commute, right? There're no social gatherings, or ballet recitals we have to go to. Yet, we’re not really getting anything more done. And I think that ties into your kind of initial worry that a lot of people have, is how do I know I’ve actually done on honest day’s work? Why do you think we’re doing less with more time and how can we kind of avoid that anxiety of, “Oh my gosh! Did I do enough today?” when we don't necessarily have the boss looking over our shoulders. 

[00:08:59] LV: Yeah. Well, I think the title of the Washington Post piece was you have time to write that novel. You just don't want to. And I think there's – Well, that may be a little harsh. I think there's something to this, which is that people have used time as an excuse for a great many things. Like, “Oh, I would love to write that novel if only I had time. I’d love to learn to speak French if only I had time.” Of course, I would take up oil painting again if I didn't have a job and kids and whatever else. 

The truth is we probably don't necessarily want to do these things. I mean, so many came out of the blue and said, “Hey, I’m going to give you $200,000 to write a novel over the next six months.” A lot of people would find the time. They’d find the time to do it. You can acknowledge that it’s not necessarily a priority for you right now, and that is perfectly fine. There are other things that might be a priority for you like keeping your job, keeping your kids from going crazy. Staying saying yourself under quarantine orders, whatever it is. These other things can all be bigger priorities. 

Now if you find that you are excited about doing something, then by all means use some of the time that you would've been commuting to do that. And certainly some people have, but other people haven't, and it's probably okay. I think we can rewrite this pandemic narrative. You might list other things that you have done. So, keeping your job, keeping your household running, those are all exciting things. Maybe you’ve done something else. You didn't write that novel, but you managed to write in a journal once a week about your pandemic experience. We can celebrate that as well. So, it may be helpful to just change your expectations a little bit. 

[00:10:32] AF: So then playing off of that, how do we know when we’ve put in an honest day’s work? Because without that supervision and kind of that normal structure we get in an office or a workspace, it can be a little difficult, because you’ll find yourself sitting at home, you’re in a new place and there's really not any of those guardrails. It can be really difficult and cause – At least for me I know, I get a lot of anxiety when I think I should be doing something I'm not. How can we close the laptop eventually after a day of working at home and actually feel good about the work we've done knowing we've accomplished something?

[00:11:02] LV: Yeah. I people that you need to get in the habit of managing your workdays by task rather than time, because when you commute to an office and you sit there for 8 hours and then you commute home, you feel like you have done something, even if you really haven’t. The sheer fact of moving yourself there and being there for a certain number of hours makes you feel like you have put in an honest day's labor. You've done at least the minimum of what is expected of you. Whereas if you're sitting at your house, that is not clear at all. And so if you're feeling unproductive, you feel really, really unproductive without this guardrails around your time of saying, “Okay. Well, I have at least put in my appearance here.” 

So, measuring your day by task rather than time allows you to feel a sense of accomplishment. It also lets you know when you have put in an honest day's labor and when the day could be done. I suggest that people get in the habit of managing themselves, of managing others by daily task list. Set your weekly priorities. Say, “What would make a challenging but doable week? What sort of goals would we set to have a challenging but doable week?” And then how can we break hose down into daily task list? Maybe 3 to 5 challenging but doable tasks each day around the various appointments people might have. 

And then if you do these day after day, then you will feel like you have put in a good day. You’ve done all five. Great! The day is done. It doesn't really matter what time it is, because you know you've been successful. You know you've done what is expected of you. And this can actually be far more motivational. I know, I personally feel far better about saying, “Hey, look at all the work I got done today,” as supposed to, “Hey, it's 5:00.” 5:00 really tells you nothing. Whereas, making progress toward your goals really does. 

[00:12:42] AF: Yeah, that’s so powerful. I mean, I think that's why, also, a lot of times you can look up and it's 5:00 and still feel like you've got nothing done. But if those priorities are outlined and those tasks are outlined and you've given them the appropriate attention, you might look at the clock and it's noon and you already feel great about the day you’ve had. 

[00:12:58] LV: It’s so t rue. And that doesn't mean that the work day is always going to end at noon. I mean, that would be exciting if it did. But a lot of people, if you do this over and over again and day after day, you become a lot better at estimating how much work fits in about eight hours. And that's fine to aim for that, to say, “Okay, these are the amount of tasks that can fit in that time.” But it's not about the time per se, that these are important tasks and I've chosen enough tasks for today that I think that most likely with other stuff coming up as it always does, I will work about eight hours. But it's not that we are aiming for eight hours as the end in and of itself. 

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[00:15:28] AF: So, how do we go about networking and staying social when we’re working from home? A lot of people really enjoy that time kind of interacting with coworkers, the water cooler time, and even just transparently the time you might get with your boss, right? The face time you might have. The time you have to connect and talk about golf, or HBO, or whatever it might be. How do we make sure that we don't start to feel kind of out of sight, out of mind when it comes to our career goals and also the relationships we have at the workplace?

[00:15:56] LV: Well, this is one of those things that I think long-term will be less of a problem than people feel it is right now, because when we come out of the pandemic, I think that people will work from home a lot more than they have in the past. But I think very few organizations will choose to be 100% virtual. I think a lot of places will come to something of a hybrid solution where people are in the office 2 to 3 days per week and at home 2 to 3 days per week, or in the office one week a month and at home three weeks a month, or something like that. 

And so if that is the case, you can consciously choose to focus the socializing, the collaboration, the building those relationships and showing your face on those days when you are in the office. And I'd argue that that's far more efficient. Like a lot of days that people are in the officer or were in the past, six of those hours you're just emailing and calling people in other places, and two of the hours you are interacting with colleagues, and your boss, and all that. So why not concentrate those two hours that you're interacting on a couple days per week and have the hours where you’re just emailing and calling people in other places all take place on the days when you are at home and don't need to commute anywhere? 

Long term, I don’t think this will be an issue. However, it may be for people right now and they're in 100% virtual situation. And there are a couple of things you can do. I mean, one is to pick up the phone and call people, like you are allowed to do that. You don't need a formal meeting with someone in order to chat. If they can't pick up because they’re doing something, they won’t pick up. It is perfectly reasonable to call someone that you work closely with. I think this is a generational thing. Most of the people I know who grew up with like a phone in their house that didn't have color ID or anything, you had to work through other people to get to the person you wanted to talk to. They’re fine with this. They’re fine with using the phone. It’s more younger people who are like, “Wait, you can do that?” Yes, you can do that. You can call people. 

I do like vide chats. I know it’s fun to talk about Zoom fatigue. Everyone loves to hate on Zoom. But the truth is that seeing somebody's face is really about 75% as good as seeing them in-person, and this is because our brains do not appreciate the difference, because why would they? I mean, the way our brains have evolved, when you can see someone, they must be there. And this is why when somebody has a career in television for the rest of their lives, people are coming up to them in the grocery store and be like, “I know you from somewhere.” It’s like, “No. You don't know me from somewhere. You watch my weather report for 10 years on the local TV news station.” But it feels like you know the person. 

So, you can take advantage of this knowledge and say like, “Have video meetings.” You can read each other's faces a little better. Have a better conversation. Feel like you're seeing people, and start your meetings with a little bit of social time too. The truth is everyone is going to do this anyway. Like, every meeting starts with a little bit of chit chat, a little bit of how are you doing? What's going on? We do this anyway. So it's better to formalize it for a few reasons. 

One is you can facilitate it, and thus have everyone talk. So it's not just two people on the call talking the whole time. Everyone can time-in with an answer to a social question, but also it keeps somebody from being like, “We don't have time for this. We got to get to the business of this meeting right out.” And of course that starts the whole meeting in a negative place. 

So, better account for it. Say, “Okay, we start the meeting with five minutes of social time. Then we did the next thing.” And it just goes a long way toward making people still feel connected. 

[00:19:17] AF: Is five minutes the recommended prescription there? Because I always struggle with that too when I get on. It's like, “Oh! Where are you based? How is the weather there? What’s going on?” And there’s that kind of – I usually wait for like a three-second pause and it's like, “Well, shall we get started?” 

[00:19:31] LV: Now, let’s get to business. Let get started. Well, I think if it’s a one-on-one sort of meeting, it can be more organic, because you are literally just talking with another person. It's okay to talk with another person in the way that you would. Now, if you have six people and you are not sort of all standing at a bar in a way that you can casually get off in like two-person three-person conversations and then all come together again. Then it does need to be more facilitated. 

And I think having sort of one minute for each person who is on the call is a pretty good rule of thumb. So the facilitator can have a question. It doesn't have to be too contrived, but I was just thinking of some of those funny little opening questions that like, “Joe, what something you learned yesterday?” Or, “Mary, what does your family do on Sunday?” Or if you were going to do a trip somewhere, where would it be?” Something that's a little bit more structured, or what’s a podcast you can all recommend? A little bit more structured so that people can all contribute. And it also has the upside of then you hear everyone's voice and turn. And one is the most difficult things of running a meeting is making sure that everyone is being included and having their voices heard. Even the people who are not necessarily inclined to speak up over other people who might dominate the conversation. 

So, facilitating it in that way to get everyone used to hearing everyone's voice goes a long way toward having a better meeting.

[00:20:50] AF: And that was something it took me a while to get used to, because we’ve had team calls where there are 30+ people in line. And at the point, the minute per-person rule, I mean, we would not – 

[00:20:59] LV: No. That doesn’t work. 

[00:20:59] AF: And we followed that pretty closely for a while. And it got to be where it got a little bit too much. But I do think it is important to give everyone kind of their own voice and chance to talk on the call, because at least in a lot of organizations, like certain roles have people inherently that will kind of suck oxygen out of the room and talk just to talk. And other people really don't want to. But since we can't be in the same place, it's really important to kind of say, Hey, Laura. What something you learned yesterday?” Or like you said, “What’s a podcast do you recommend?” “Science of Success.” But you know what I mean. I think it’s important because it makes everyone feel a part of the conversation, which can cut down on some of the side effects of the isolation people might be feeling. 

[00:21:39] LV: I just want to say, there should be very, very few 30-person calls ever. 

[00:21:45] AF: Fair enough. Fair enough. 

[00:21:46] LV: Because, in general, when you’re gathering people, you want to have whatever it is you are gathering them for or lead to a decision that requires everyone who is participating. And there's very few things that require 30 people to decide. So, that limits the number of times you would have that many people on anything. 

[00:22:06] AF: Something you mentioned earlier that I've been trying to work through myself. So, I’ll go ahead and ask it [inaudible 00:22:10]. Optimizing your work space, right? So making sure that your workspace is somewhere you feel like you can get things done. What are, if any, some of things we can do to make sure we’re in a place where we feel productive? Because I think a lot of people miss this fact, right? It seems kind of intuitive when you're in the office. You have your space in your office, your cubicle, and you make it your own, and you make sure it’s somewhere you don't mind being. But at home, I think a lot of people are on the couch with the dog and kids running around and there's really no separation from church and state, right? There's no like home life versus work life. What can we do to make sure we actually take time to build the place where we feel productive, and what does that look like?

[00:22:47] LV: Yeah. This is a challenge for a lot of people, because when they first started working from home pretty much overnight in March, a lot of people just grabbed whatever it was available and said like, “Oh! I need a table and chair. Let me go to my kitchen table.” Well, there are upsides to a kitchen table, but there a lot of downsides too. It’s going to be really hard to shut the door against the rest of the family. For instance, if you're sitting in the kitchen, people in and out all day long. 

A lot of kitchens may not be right near a window, for instance. So, you want to have a workspace that is at least reasonably private and quiet. And so that's going to require, ideally, a door that you can shot or at least some sort of privacy around it. Definitely near a window. For a lot of people, needing a door and window, means they're going to be in a bedroom, which some people have a bit of a hang up about. Like you said, the separation of church and state. Wait, I can definitely leave my office then if I’m in my bedroom.” But you can put some sort of screen around it or something to make or not have it face your bed. But having the natural light and a door so important that I would go for it. I would get over that if that's the only place in your house that has it. 

I would also say that if you’re staring down doing this long term, it might be worth looking into moving. I mean, you can go find a place that has the availability for a real dedicated home office. I know my husband and I both have our home office setups right now. Fortunately, he used his for the occasional Friday working from home set up. And then was now been in there full time since March. And we’re really glad we have it. I mean, it would be so hard to be trying to use the same room. Before he had that set up, he would sometimes on Fridays work in this office where I am, and it was just not good. And if we are trying to do that since March, I think we would be driving each other crazy.

[00:24:31] AF: So, flipping the coin a little bit from your kind of external to your internal, and I'm curious as to your personal practices. How do you optimize your health and your well-being when working from home? Because a lot of times even for me, and I've been working from home for several years, but I’ll sit down and all of a sudden I haven’t stood up in like six hours, right? It’s just you get in the zone. But what have you done throughout the years to really make sure you prioritize your well-being during these extended periods of working from home?

[00:24:59] LV: Yeah. There are a lot of things you can do. And sure, people who work from home do not automatically do them. But if you make wise choices, you certainly can have healthier habits than you would working in an office. I mean, partly because commutes take an incredible amount of time, and they take the time that people might have to do these healthy habits. For instance, there's are some evidence that long commutes are negatively associated with physical activity, which makes total sense. When do people exercise? Well, like 7:30 in the morning, 6:00 at night. When are they on the road for work? 7:30 in the morning, 6:00 at night. It's switching that time that you would have had. So people can exercise more. They can maybe sleep more if you don't have to get up so early to get in the car or get on the train to go to work. You might be able to get a little bit more sleep. You might be able to cook healthier meals. You’re not having this commute that’s taking the time that you could have made yourself dinner. You are probably going to go out to eat for lunch less often just because it’s a little bit more of a pain to do so, and your fridge is right there. So you make yourself your lunches. 

And just by cooking at home, people tend to use less salt and fat and other such things in their home cooked dishes versus restaurant ones. There are lots of ways that you can be set up to make healthier choices. Now, does everyone do that? Of course not. There are plenty of people who just go sit at the desk and don't get up for hours. Or who’s like, “Oh! If I don't have a commute, I can stay up twice as late now and watch movies.” Or order the pizza for every meal or something. But you can make healthier choices if you want to. The space becomes more available for that.

[00:26:29] AF: What’s you go-to?

[00:26:31] LV: Well. So, I like to run. I try to do it most days when it's really hot in summer as it is now. I tend to do it before the workday or in the evening, but during the rest of the year, I try to do it in the afternoon, which is when I tend to need a break. So somewhere around midafternoon, I start to feel a little bit like, “Ugh, I’m not getting anything done.” That’s a good sign that I need to stop for a while, go for a run, and I will come back far more energized. 

I almost always eat leftovers for lunch, which is a good habit to be in, I think, because my dinner at night probably had vegetables. So then my lunch has vegetables, and like right there. I'm eating more vegetables. Versus if I was just out grabbing a sandwich or something like that. So that’s what I try to do.

[00:27:13] AF: I’m on the exact same boat. I've been recently trying to get up really, really early and tackle some of the email and everything. But I’ll get up, kind of drink coffee, check email, which I know checking email first thing in the morning can be a recipe for a bad rest of your day, depending what's in the inbox. But I'm the same way. How far do you typically run?

[00:27:29] LV: Usually just about 3 miles. It’s got to be a short thing if it's during the work day. You can fit a half hour workout in. It's a lot harder to do an hour or longer. But 30 minutes is all you really need. It kind of undoes a lot of the sitting that happens the rest of the day. 

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[00:29:15] AF: I'm curious too. So, the book is so timely. I have to ask, was this something you were working on before March and before all this came out? Or is this something that kind of was a product of the world we found ourselves in?

[00:29:26] LV: This was a total product of the world we found ourselves in. So, in March, when all of this was happening, I was still doing my before breakfast podcast and the folks that iHeartMedia noted that there was some interest in a podcast on working from home. And so we decided to launch a new one that had the same format of a short daily tip to help people through their day. That would be focused on working from home. And so that launched on April 1st and realized that there is a lot of material there. 

And so my agent and publisher and I decided, “Well, we could do a book on this topic.” And I had some space to do this as part of a quick career pivot, because for the past few years, I've spent a lot of my time giving speeches at various conferences and corporate events. And guess what stopped happening in mid-March and will not happen for – I don’t know. Two years at this point. Nobody wants to go sit in a convention center with 3,000 of their closest friends right now, and won’t for a while. So that business is pretty much gone. I was looking for something to replace it. So, a new podcast and a new book was one thing I could do. 

[00:30:36] AF: How long did it take to write the book? And did a lot of the bones of the book kind of come from the podcast and the lessons learned there? Because, I mean, it’s only a couple of months. Sometimes you talk to people in writing a book can take years and years. I guess, even based in the beginning of this conversation, you might have had a little more time. But how long did it take? And did a lot of that kind of come from your previous work? Or was that really just lessons learned on the fly?

[00:31:01] LV: Well, I’ve been working from home for years. And, of course, I’ve been writing about careers and workplace habits for years. So, some of the material was stuff that I could recount from past writings. And some stuff that came from the podcast too. And then I interviewed a lot of people who had been working from home before March about what they were doing and you could put that in there too. So the actual writing itself, I think I took about five weeks maybe to write it, because even though it came out in July in order to meet that, we had to basically have it in production by late May. So, if I started in April and have to edit it at the end. Yeah, writing itself was about five weeks. The editing, another week or so. Yeah, it went pretty fast.

[00:31:43] AF: Wow! I'm curious too, kind of zooming out into time management in general. As a time management expert yourself, what is your daily calendar look like? And if you could even provide me a screenshot for the show notes, I’d love that. Because I’m a super nerve when it comes to like I've got 4:45 wake up. I've got for 4:45 to 5:00 coffee. I've got 5:00 to 5:30 email. 5:30 to 6:30, run. I'm just curious, are you that regimented? Or is there kind of a sort of secret formula that you go by for yourself?

[00:32:12] LV: No. I am not that regimented. Partly it’s personality. Also, partly, at my kids are young enough that some of my schedule has to be reactive to them, right? I don't know what time my baby is going to wake up. So, it's pretty hard to determine the start of the day around that. Some days are more structured than others, because I have more things that have to happen at set times. Like today, I had a lot of podcast interviews. And so it's been a lot more structured today than it would have been yesterday where I had fewer of them. And so I was trying to get more of my writing projects done. And so I generally knew over the course of the day, I had to write a certain number of things, and that's what I would do. 

I set short daily to do list and say, “These are the things I have to get done. These are my appointments at various times.” And the goal is always to get everything crossed off by the end of the day. But, yeah, I generally wake up somewhere in the 6 o'clock range, 6 to 7 depending on how the night has gone. Some mornings I run at 7:00, like I’ve been trying to do when it’s been hot out. But some days I don’t. Hang out with the kids. 

I generally start work somewhere between 8:00 and 8:30. That's when my family has childcare. We've had a babysitter Monday through Thursday this summer. And then my husband and I split coverage on Fridays. So, starting the work day between 8:00 and 8:30. Generally, work more or less through the day with a break for lunch, break for dealing with the baby sometimes. Till about 4:00. Then, if it's a nice day, go for a swim with the kids, or eat dinner around 6:00 usually and then hangout as we've been doing for a lot of these many months.

[00:33:44] AF: Yeah, of course. So, what's the one thing you think most people get wrong when it comes to managing their own time?

[00:33:51] LV: I think that it is so easy to be mindless about time, and that is because time keeps passing whether you think about how you are spending it or not. And so, because of that, you could waste it on things that you didn't intend to waste time on. People always ask me, “Well, what are the biggest time wasters?” I don’t know if I’m supposed to say like social media, email, meetings. I don't know. I mean, all these things, sure. 

[00:34:14] AF: All the above. 

[00:34:15] LV: All of the above. They do waste time. But I think the biggest wastes are not thinking about how we’d like to spend our time. So for many people who are so busy with, say, work and kids. They get the kids down for bed. Let’s say it’s 8:00 at night. they're not going to go to bed till 10:30, but they haven't thought about what they might like to do with this restricted, but still leisure time option. And so you do whatever is easiest, which is scroll around online, or watch TV. And next thing you know you’ve spent like 90 minutes on Twitter. It’s like, “Well, did we really want to spend 90 minutes of a busy day? Like our limited leisure time on Twitter?” Or maybe was there something that could've been more restorative? Like having a glass of wine on the porch with your partner? Or taking a bubble bath and reading a magazine? All of these could've occupied that same time and probably felt more leisurely. 

But because you didn't think about that's what you wanted to do, you missed the opportunity to do it. Or not thinking about what you’d like to do on the weekend. And then by the time you’ve made a decision and gone through all that rigmarole, it’s like midway through Saturday and your field of what you can do is artificially limited, because it’s already 3:00 or something like that, or you’ve wasted a lot of energy deciding as supposed to be able to get up and go and do whatever it is you wanted to do. So, by not thinking about time, we waste time. And so the key to that is to think about what you’d like to spend time doing and make sure that those things get into your life.

[00:35:37] AF: That’s such an important point you just made. I can't emphasize that that's really great advice enough, because it's something I've been personally thinking about a lot. Part of it I think is just time here on earth. Obviously, we all have a lot more time. So we’re kind of more stationary. But time is something you can never get back. And it's almost shameful that so many people are just mindless about time, because you're never going to get that second back. And I think as someone who honestly knows way, way too much about World War II and all these things that like fall in these Wikipedia holes for and how H.P. Lovecraft predicted 15 things on YouTube that I could have never seen. I just think it's so important to reemphasize that being mindful of time can almost be a superpower, because you're never going to get it back, and you need to spend it doing the things that you intentionally want to do and accomplish versus spending 90 minutes on Twitter reading about politics or whoever might be ranting that day. 

[00:36:33] LV: Yeah. I mean, if that's what you want to do, great. Then do it mindfully and said, “This is what I am choosing to spend my next 90 minutes on, as supposed to doing it because you haven't thought about anything else that might take a slight bit more of effort. And I don’t anybody listening to this to think like, “Oh, I have to be productive with a capital P or in scare quotes every minute of the day.” I think it’s perfectly fine to have downtime. I just want people to have it be consciously chosen downtime, because when people don't think about what they want their downtime to be, they sort of assume it doesn't exist. There are people who are spending 90 minutes on Twitter who will insist that I have no free time whatsoever. That’s their mindset about their lives. Clearly, you do, and it would be so much more fun and meaningful to spend it on something else. But by telling yourself the story that you have no time whatsoever, you make these effortless choices. So, yeah, I encourage people to really get a sense of where the time goes. I track my time. I encourage anyone else to try it for a week just to see where the hours go. And once you have that data, then you can make decisions. You can decide what you like. You can decide what you don't like. You never have to do it again. But when you know, then you can be a little bit less mindless about it.

[00:37:45] AF: Yeah. Super important clarification you made thereto. There's nothing wrong with being on Twitter in downtime. Just make sure it's what you want to be doing.

[00:37:52] LV: Oh, exactly. Yeah.

[00:37:54] AF: So, you've been very generous with your time. We’re getting ready to come up on the end here, but I do want to ask just a couple of quick questions and then let people know where they can find more. I'm curious, so we all are obviously spending a little more time, and I am trying to be more mindful with things. But I'm curious, what's your favorite movie? I'm trying to come up with a list of recommendations and things that I can do while we are home. Me and my wife love to sit down and watch Netflix every now and again. Do you got any recommendations for us and the audience?

[00:38:22] LV: Oh my goodness. I'm really just not that big a movie person. 

[00:38:25] AF: Oh, come on!

[00:38:26] LV: I don't think I have anything good. I haven't really sat down and watched a movie in a really, really long time. And it's just something I've never found to be my thing. So, does that sound terrible?

[00:38:41] AF: No. I mean, actually that's probably a good thing. But I know you are busier than most. So, let me pivot that then. So if you're not going to recommend a movie, why don’t you recommend a piece of homework for our audience? If there's one thing our audience can do this week to start being more mindful of their time, to really take some of these lessons from working from home and how they can be successful working from home, what's one piece of homework you’d give us to act on over the next seven days?

[00:39:06] LV: Well, I’d encourage people to come up with some form of what I’d call effortful fun. So what is one thing that takes a little bit of effort that you would find genuinely fun? And challenge yourself to do that first before you scroll around on social media or turn on the TV or whatever. And I’m not saying you’d have to spend all night doing it. But let’s just say 20 minutes. Challenge yourself to read for 20 minutes before you turn on the TV, or to do a puzzle for 20 minutes before you turn on the TV or work on your sketches or crossword puzzles or whatever it is you want to do for 20 minutes before you go into the effortless fun. 

And just doing this, you will, A, make space for both. The problem is when we start with the effortless fun, you never get to the effortful fun, because it seems like a lot of work to turn off the TV and then go find your oil paintings or whatever it is. But if you start with the hobby, the connecting with friends, the exercise or the puzzles or games, you’ll get to both, and that can make you feel like you have a lot more balance of leisure time and a lot more fulfilling leisure time too. 

[00:40:11] AF: Yeah, that’s great homework. Laura, thank you again so much for coming on the show. Maybe we’ll go for a 4P here down the road. You just never know what's down the road for us. But I do want to let people know where they can find you. So what's the best place for them to go learn more, check out all the podcasts? Of course, we’ll include all those links in the show notes. But for those that might be listening now in the car or exercising or wherever they may be, where can they find more about you and your work?

[00:40:34] LV: You can come visit me at lauravanderkam.com. That's just my name again. You can go to website. You can find information about my various podcasts and books about the new corner office for N-cents. And I blog there as well. So I’d love to connect with people in the comments.

[00:40:48] AF: Well, Laura, thank you again so much for the time. We hope you have a great rest of your day, and thanks for sharing your wisdom with us and our audience. 

[00:40:55] LV: Thanks so much for having me.

[00:40:57] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you, our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener email.

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