9 Strategies To Better Control Your Time - Laura Vanderkam
嘉宾：Laura Vanderkam
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The biggest culprit is this time where you don't even know what you're doing. There's not a good way to describe it. And when I've had people do this, they'll write hours of time, no recollection. Like what happened? Was I abducted? I don't know. We were doing something. It passed. It was there. But it wasn't memorable. It wasn't particularly enjoyable. It was just time. And I think that's often the
biggest culprit for many people. Why do you think it is that people are so overwhelmed when it comes to time management? What's the problem that they're trying to solve? Well, I think the biggest problem for most of us is that time keeps passing no matter what you do. And so it is incredibly hard to spend time mindfully. Um no matter what you do, a week from now, a week will have passed. And so getting, you know, ourselves in the
place where we can step back and and direct that time as much as possible is is challenging, especially as life keeps swirling around us. So, you know, I'm always on the lookout for ways that can help people kind of calm this chaos around us and and make sure that we have something of a say in where our time is going. One of the common threads that I've found between a bunch of different conversations that I've had recently,
whether it's been to do with time management or uh dating, how you're supposed to find your partner, or uh productivity and focus and attention and stuff like that, is intentionality. That seems to be one of the most common What What You can call it whatever you want, right? Like effort, directionality, focus, like being intentional with how you do the thing. And it seems like there are a lot of ways, more than ever,
ways a sensorium of opportunities that we have to be distracted by tons of I think we lay a lot of problems at the feet of the modern 21st century. I The biology hasn't changed, just the options have. But intentionality seems to be like the thing that can cut through it Absolutely. Although I'd argue that, you know, life isn't really that different. Um you know, people have always wasted Um people have always felt busy. I uh at
various points in my life have collected old magazines, um you know, from the 1950s and 1960s. And as you can imagine, many of the articles are on how people feel very busy and, you know, modern life is just so crazy. And of course now people are like, "But they didn't have smart smartphones. They didn't have, you know, internet access." Like What happened? I don't know. Your boss could call you at home. Like if they had
phones, that could happen. Or people got stuck at the office late. Or, you know, we have to fill time with something. And so you can feel oppressed by whatever is going on in your life, even if some future version of the world has entirely different distractions. So, yeah, I you know, we've always managed to waste time. We've always felt like life can just happen to us. We've always needed to take steps to feel more in charge of
our decisions and our time in order to spend life a little bit better. There's a story that I heard about ancient Greece and the ancient Greek word for work. The ancient Greek word for work was translated as not at leisure. And I thought that was very interesting that the Greeks saw work as an aberration. They saw that as the thing that was the outlier. And that leisure time was the thing that was the set
point for humanity. And now that's kind of been a little bit inverted. But yeah, you're right. I mean, you know, you can go back I was learning about uh when bicycles were first invented and it meant that women could go out of the house without a chaperone. And the fact that women could go out of the house without a chaperone was going to cause havoc. And this lady cycled in trousers. And everybody was up in arms because
worse, their legs were on opposite sides of the bike. Couldn't believe how sexualized this woman was as she she wore trousers. She was appropriating male uniforms or whatever. So yeah, you're right. Um It's a very easy get out of jail free card for every generation to lay their challenges at the feet of something that previous generations didn't have to deal with. I don't think that they are somehow entirely different than all of
humanity up till this point. I mean, you at the moment it appears that we still have 24 hours in a day as people always have. And you know, the weeks weeks are a human invention, but days and years are not. So, you know, we've we've been dealing with this for a while. Have weeks always had 7 days in? Well, that's a I mean, if you think like the biblical 7 days of creation and the 7-day cycle of the Sabbath,
that's where sort of that idea comes from. There are There are some cultures that have sort of a different repeating cycle. Like the market day is the every every fifth day, right? And so they have a cycle of 5 days. But if people are listening to this podcast, you're in a place where you have 7 days in a week. So, that's a That's most likely the case. You've looked at thousands of people's schedules. You've
looked at what the most successful people do on a morning, about how women can be a mother and have a career and time management and not drown in it and all that stuff. What do you think most people get wrong when it comes to managing their time? What are the most common major errors that they make? Well, one of the biggest errors is not knowing how much time there is. We We live our lives in weeks. We talked about
this being a human invention, but it's a very useful one. This is how most people structure their lives. You know, Tuesday and Saturday are both typical days in that they both happen just as often. But, you know, your life probably looks different on a Tuesday and a Saturday. Whereas a week contains both of those. So, it's a week is a is a better vision of your life. But most people don't even know that there are 168 hours in a week.
Right? That is a number that people do not have on the top of their heads. It's 24/7. People say 24/7. They do not multiply it through. But the problem of not even knowing this number is that we have all sorts of ideas of how much time we devote to different things in a week. But if we don't even know the denominator, it's kind of hard to get, you know, adequate senses of proportions for different things. I mean, just as
one example, I think a lot of people assume you don't have a lot of time for other things, right? Cuz it's full. It's full time. It's right there in the name. But if you work 40 hours a week, so pretty standard full-time job, sleep 8 hours a night, so that is 56 hours per week. Subtract those from 168, you got 72 hours for other things, which is almost twice as much time as you are working. I mean, it's just but people
don't think that way, right? So, it's it's uh you know, it's the intentionality thing, but it's also a data piece that's missing. And so that's one of the reasons I always suggest people do try tracking their time for a week. Um cuz many people are just surprised to see where the time is, um where it goes, how much time they're sort of unclear what they're actually doing with it because it's spent on, you
know, random stuff that hasn't necessarily been actively chosen or noticed or particularly enjoyed. Is that most of the time that people are surprised that I can't believe I spent so much time doing Is that a lot of the time phone, TV, It certainly can be. I mean, I know many of us have had the experience uh that moment of truth, if you have the screen time app on your iPhone, for instance, that it sends you a message,
in my case Sunday morning. I'm often in the little bit of time I have before my choir rehearsal. And this Sunday morning the church service starts. And I'm getting a ding on my phone telling me, "You watched 3 hours of screen time every day." And I'm like, "What? WHERE DID I DO THIS? You know, I don't I don't remember that happening." But you know, I did. I'm sure it's not making it up. Um And and I think a lot of us have had
that experience that it's more time than we might think. But but it's far from the only culprit. I think, you know, there's obviously, you know, things at work. People spend a ton of time like randomly checking email. People spend a lot of time in meetings that maybe didn't even have to happen or could have been shorter. But I think the biggest culprit is this time where you don't even know what you're doing.
Like how would you even describe it? You know, there's not a good way to describe it. Um And when I've had people do this, like, you know, they'll write like hours of time, no recollection. Like what happened? Was I abducted? Like Who knows? I don't know. We were doing something. It passed. It was there. But it wasn't memorable. It wasn't particularly enjoyable. It was just time. Um and and I think that's often
the biggest culprit for many people. For the people that have got iPhones that have updated it to the most recent iOS, there's a way that you can make your screen time become a widget on your home screen. And what that means is that rather than I mean, it's in the arse end of your settings, right? You're not going You're not going into that. You get the weekly screen time report, which makes you depressed for 1 day a week.
But if you want to make yourself depressed every day of the week, I think you can create a widget. Uh and you can have it and it'll show you the time. And it'll continue to do that. Also, there is another function. Look at me just going down life hacks route here. Sleep now links up with people that if you use a Whoop or a presumably if you use a Fitbit or something else, that'll link in with Apple Health. And you can
create a sleep widget as well, which tells you every single day how much sleep you got last night. And it just It's just there. So, for those things, I think screen time and sleep, two pretty good examples. I'm sure we're going to talk about them today as well. That it's a nice reminder. Whenever you go on your phone, it just reminds you like, "Oh yeah, you did good last night. You would You did good
yesterday. You would the the habits that you're doing are working." Or it gives you a kick if you A little kick if that's what you need. if you didn't quite so much. Yeah, you've got this quote that says, "We don't build the lives we want by saving time. We build the life we want and then time saves itself." What's that mean? Well, generally I want people to focus on the things that they want to spend
more time doing. So, when it comes to time, you know, people are like, "Time management, I need hacks, right? I need ways to shave bits of time off everyday activities." And I guess the idea is that we can add all those little bits of time up and we will magically create these wonderfully awesome lives. Which, you know, is somewhat ridiculous if you think about it. I mean, one of the hacks I've seen are out there is
like if you send a lot of emails where the answer is okay, just type K instead of okay. And like great. Like but even if I'm sending hundreds of emails a day, if I'm typing K instead of okay, does that all of a sudden mean I have an awesome life? Like no, it does not, you There's another step in there. And and that other step is figuring out what you want to spend time on. So, maybe we know what we don't want to
spend time on, but what actively do you want to fill your 168 hours with? And you know, that takes some work to figure out. There's obviously the things we have to do, but there's also things we want to do. What are those things? And if you actively try to put more of those in your life, they tend to crowd out some of that space of nothingness that we talked about where it's not even clear what you are doing. And I've
certainly seen this in my own life. I mean, I mentioned singing in this church choir. And I a couple years ago, I loved to sing in the past and I hadn't done it for a few years. I was like, well, I'd like to get back into it. I'm like, well, you know, how's this going to work? I've got, you know, four small children. Like I've got a job. Where do you find the time? And then I'm like looking at my time
and most most of the evenings are just this like nothingness. It's like half kid interaction kind of hoping they're watching TV so I can putter around the house and do something else. I'm like, you know, I could probably skip one night of that. And they they'd still have me puttering around while they're watching TV or whatever like six out of seven nights. But that one night could be something else. And and you know, so I put it in.
And and it's not always easy to get to rehearsal, but more or less I could fit it in. It just took some of that low value time away and filled in something better. And so when you're trying to think about how we can do that. Like if you, you know, decide on the weekend to go do some fun adventure. You're going to go with friends to an apple orchard and, you know, pick apples and then taste all their ciders and something like that,
something wonderfully fall oriented. Like yeah, you might not spend as much time like sweeping your floor. Like you might not spend as much time getting caught up on email over the weekend, but like probably you'll answer what you have to and like you'll pick up any, you know, really obvious dirt. And you will have had your adventure, too. It like just pushed everything out. So we don't build the lives we want by
saving time with these little hacks typing K instead of okay in our emails. We build the lives we want and then, you know, everything else sorts itself around that. Did you get familiar with the trend of tech bros and crypto people refusing to use upper case characters because typing in lower case and using punctuation would be quicker? I mean, maybe it would. I don't know. What are these people doing with the
rest of their time? I'm very curious. I guess they're building some app that's going to save the world. maybe I I'm going to presume that they're the people that are using superhuman, which is this supercharged email app that some people that seem to send lots of emails use. But yeah, I think it's super interesting to think about the until you have something that you're going to spend your time doing, you're
going to inevitably just fill it with whatever's the most convenient, the path of least resistance. I had this great chat with Ryan Holiday about his new book which used to do with discipline. And he said that unless you have a goal that you're working toward, discipline is never in service of anything. And being disciplined requires you to posit yourself against the thing that you're aiming for. Like unless you have a goal,
what do you what what does discipline look like? Your your day could be your goal could be I want to be the person that watches the most Tik Tok on the planet today. Therefore, the discipline that you would have in order to achieve that goal would be very different to the sort of person that says, I want to spend time outside. I want to spend time with my family and so on and so forth. So yes, thinking about what do I
actually want to do? If and I think that I don't know, maybe working people, especially parents, might feel a bit of guilt if you said, okay, let's say that you had 2 hours to yourself to do what you wanted. What would you do? And if they come back and give you an answer like I'd love to clean the house. I'd love to get ahead on some of the washing. I'd love to prepare the food for next week. Oh, there's a a cupboard. It's like, no,
no, no, no, no. I didn't ask you what would be advantageous to make the remainder of your time more easy. I said, what would you like to do? And I know that my mom is like a really good example of this would be that would be her kind of answer. You know, she would have always been in service to the household and self-care and stuff like that would have been something that she needed to learn over time. So yeah, I think
giving yourself license to actually have things you want to do and then forcing life around that. Like the the dishes they'll wait. They will wait. And and I'm not saying it's easy to figure this out. I mean, so in in Tranquility by Tuesday, one of the rules that I had people try was to take one night for you. And it was this idea taking, you know, 2 hours like on a Thursday night to go do something that
is not work. It is not caring for family members. It is for you that you inherently enjoy. You intrinsically enjoy. And you know, some people did think like, oh, I'll I'll, you know, spend this time doing chores or something like that. And some people couldn't even think of what they would want to do. Like they just hadn't even asked themselves their quest that question cuz you get so wrapped up in
all the things you have to do for work and all the things that need to happen to run a household. And so it's like it it took some time. They had to go back through extracurricular activities they did in high school. Like would would any of those be an option now, you know, or when I'm doing something that's feels pleasant, what is it? You know, brainstorming, looking around at all sorts of lists that you know, community
events and the like. It it takes work. Like imagine this, you know, properly using our leisure time takes work. But I think it's worthwhile work. I think we should take our leisure time seriously because then we can have so much of a better time with it. Yeah, Seth Stephens Davidowitz has this great quote where he says we often confuse a comfortable activity for a worthwhile one. And that this is your thing, right? The
path of least resistance, resorting to something which current you wants to do, but future you is going to regret you doing as opposed to something that current you might find a tiny bit difficult, but future you is going to be very thankful about. So you've got these nine rules that you go through and you did a study, you ran a study with a big fairly big sample size of people and you asked them a bunch of
questions and got them to do all of these different strategies. When it comes to the one which is spending 2 hours for yourself on an evening time, what are you hoping that people going to learn from that? Is it that they have this ability to kind of move time and requirements and urgent stuff around something which is for their self-care? Oh, definitely. That is one of the things I want people to learn. That they
can make time for the things that they want to do. I mean, partly it's just fun, right? I want people to have fun. And and so there's that. And I want them to commit to something. Because when you make a commitment, it actually happens, right? So people be like, oh, I want to read more. I want to take a bubble bath. Well, you know, if your boss wants you to work late on Thursday night, you're not going to be like, no, no, I have an
appointment with my bubble bath. Like your kid wants you to drive them somewhere. You know, like your bathtub isn't going anywhere. You can always push it forward. So then you wind up never doing it. Whereas if you are playing on a softball team, like they need a second baseman, you will show up, right? And and you will go even if life is busy, even if you're tired, even if other people would, you know, kind of
prefer you did something else. And as a result, you will get the benefit of this more active form of of self-care. Yeah, you know, I wanted them to see that. I wanted them to see also that the world does keep spinning if they are not actively attending to professional or family matters for 2 hours. I think a lot of people have this idea that only they can do the things they do. And you know, it this comes from two places. I
mean, sometimes it's arrogance. Like, you know, you hear this with people like, oh, you just can't hire good employees these days. Nobody could ever figure this out like except me. Whatever. Okay, fine, maybe. And and people do this on the home front, too. I mean, there's, you know, forms of like people thinking, you know, no babysitter could ever take care of their kids. Sometimes it's even that they don't think their partner can
manage their children, right? Like this happens all the time. It could be arrogance. It can be fear. Which is the flip side of the same coin that if I allow for the possibility that I don't have to do everything, like what's the point of me, you know? If if things can function in my absence, what is the point of me? And I was like, well, you know, point of view like everyone. We all have inherent worth
apart from anything we do, which is very fortunate because the earth is going to go on spinning in all of our absence. So it's you know, better get our heads around that, you know, and it's like in a cosmic sense it's true. So it's probably going to be true for, you know, 2 hours on a Tuesday night as well. Relinquishing control in that way, I I I feel like that's a lesson for all of the guys that are listening up, the people
that don't have kids yet. If you have been a part of a team, if you've been part of a business, reflect on all of the times that you didn't dare let anybody else touch the presentation before it went out. This is the exact same dynamic. I'm I'm speaking to 23-year-old, 24-year-old me who did 210 Saturdays in a row without a single break setting up a nightclub that I could have paid some student 30 pounds to go and do. But no, no, no,
no, because if the the inflatable wasn't quite over the the lighting rig at the exact right angle, then it was going to look bad. And if it looked bad, maybe that would be the beginning of the end for the company and the the the like just total overbearing neuroticism and a a lack of understanding that other people can do what you do. And yeah, as well, a desire to feel important and and to want to be the crux
of things. This is very much I think British people will probably feel a massive affinity. The Puritan work ethic is it's it's strong. Strong in the British people is the Puritan work ethic. But um yeah, so going back to the first rule, which I can't believe that people don't know, but this may be news to someone that you should give yourself a bedtime. It It, you know, we should all know it. It's kind of amazing how many people
don't do it, though. Um you know, I've seen a couple memes on social media lately. Like one was somebody saying, "I would do absolutely anything to get 8 hours of sleep, except go to bed 8 hours before I need TO WAKE SO, WELL, THERE'S AN IDEA. WE COULD TRY THAT ONE. OR, it it's like uh you know, it 7:00 p.m. me says like, "Oh, I'm going to get I need to get 8 hours of sleep tonight." Midnight me, "Whoops, there it went again." You know,
it's it's just people for many reasons stay up past when we know we should. But, um it's really so much better to get the amount of sleep that you need every single night. And And often people like, "Oh, well, I I can get by on less." And maybe you can for two nights, three nights, but then your body will force you to make it up. Like we have a sleep set point that your body is aiming toward. And if you purposefully skimp on
it for a couple of days, eventually, you know, the piper must be paid and you will, you know, crash somewhere or another. It's often, you know, sleeping in on weekends, but it can be falling asleep on the couch in front of the TV. It's uh you know, sleeping through alarms. It's hitting snooze three times. So, all of these are just ways your body forces you to catch up on sleep. So, you're not saving time.
You're just moving the time somewhere else. And the question is, you know, is staying up between 11:00 p.m. and midnight, like whatever you were doing between 11:00 p.m. and midnight, was that so much better than what you would have done in that other time where your body is forcing you to catch up on the sleep? And most of the time, I'm guessing it probably isn't. Um but, again, you know, we need to do it. So,
figure out what time you need to wake up in the morning, count back the amount of sleep you need. I generally have to be up around 6:30 a.m. for, you know, getting my family ready. I need 7 and 1/2 hours of sleep, so my bedtime is 11:00 p.m. That is just a math problem. It is nothing else. It is just a statement that 6:30 a.m. minus 7 and 1/2 hours gets us to 11:00 p.m. And then you do something before that to
make sure that you can get yourself into bed on time, you know, just an alarm, a note, something that, you know, 30 minutes before, so you can wind down, brush your teeth, lock the doors, whatever it is you need to do. But, I think another part of it, I mean, the reason we're staying up is cuz that's time we can have for ourselves, right? It's, you know, free time. It's like everything's done. You're relaxed.
You're like, it's pleasant. I have control of my time. I can do what I want. Who wants to put an end to that? But, a lot of the other tranquility by Tuesday rules are about giving yourself better leisure time at other points during your day, so you don't have to only get it between 11:00 and midnight. First thing in the morning is also relatively tranquil as well. You know, especially if you can push that wake
time a tiny little bit earlier. And the sort of things that you will do at 6:00 a.m. versus the sort of sort of things that you will do at 11:00 p.m. are going to be very different in terms of how you're going to feel about them the next Yeah, I mean, for the people that have never tracked their sleep using a wearable like Whoop or an Eight Sleep mattress or something, you will be disgusted at how little
sleep you get from the amount of time that you spend in bed. Now, you get it's it's not half, but it's not 100%. And if you get I get somewhere typically between about 18 85% what's called sleep efficiency, at least on this app. Uh and that means that if I'm in bed for 8 hours, I can sometimes get 6 hours and 45 minutes to 6 hours 30 of sleep. Like, hang on a second. I I was in bed for I did the thing. I
did the thing for 8 hours and you're telling me that I've got the amount of sleep that Matthew Walker says is approaching someone that's pre-diabetic if I keep doing that for 4 days in a row. Like, I This wasn't the deal that was made. So, yeah, I think another thing to add on to this, give yourself a bedtime, but I would highly recommend that people get a wearable for a little while. Like get it for
Christmas, right? And just teach yourself, force that red pill down your throat for 90 days to learn, okay, I I actually need to be in bed for 8 hours. Cuz if you're in bed for 7 hours, you would easily easily get under six six hours of five and a half hours of sleep. And that's That's like super intense. Yeah. Well, and I'd point out I mean, I think there's very few people who have like 100% sleep efficiency. I
mean, that's probably just not the way the human body is is built. But, that's fine. It could be that, you know, you have a time in bed and you have a target sleep amount. And the target sleep amount may be low. It may be, you know, 7 hours and your time in bed is 7:45 or 8 or something like that. Or, you know, but as long as it is not, you know, 4 hours, that would Yeah, which would suggest more of a problem. Um it's
possible that those two numbers are are different. I do know it's being in bed for me 7 and 1/2 hours is is what I need to do. I'm I fall asleep pretty quickly. I tend to sleep pretty well. I don't think there's a whole lot I mean, I don't think there's a whole lot of uh not sleeping time, but uh you know, different people have different Plan on Fridays. Yeah, so this is tranquility by Tuesday rule number two. And it is about
thinking through our upcoming weeks holistically, looking at all aspects of our life and looking at the whole week. So, it accomplishes encompasses two parts. The first and most important is to plan. I think everybody needs a designated weekly planning time. You need to look forward to the upcoming week. Ask yourself, "What's most important to me?" In three dimensions, career, relationships, self. Ask what you want to spend your time
doing. Ask what you need to spend your time doing. Solve any logistical problems uh that you can spot when you are looking at the week as a whole. Make sure you have stuff that you are looking forward to. And, you know, you just do this week after week and you can make steady progress toward your long-term goals cuz you're always putting in steps toward the goals and, you know, putting a spot on your calendar for them. And that
tends to, over time, mean you are spending more time on those things. And you're also feeling mark more calm because you're seeing problems that you wouldn't see if you're just looking day to day. Um so, getting out of that day-to-day mindset is how people see like, you know, you've got something huge due on Thursday. Um Wednesday is totally packed. You look at the week as a whole, you say, "Oh, I carve out time
Monday and Tuesday to work on the thing that is due Thursday." Whereas if you were just going day to day, then Wednesday is either a total disaster or, you don't meet your deadline on Thursday. I mean, one of those two things is what going to happen. So, um we do that. So, that's the most important part. But, the Friday part uh is is maybe a little bit more I think Friday is a great time for planning. Um partly because
at least by Friday afternoon, many people are not rearing to go on anything else. Uh it is really hard on Friday afternoon to start making project you know, progress toward your long-term goals. You don't say, "I'm excited about, you know, taking on this new activity right now." Like but, you might be willing to think what future you should do. So, turn what might be wasted time into some of your most productive
minutes of the week. It's business So, if you need to make an appointment, you need to set up a meeting with someone, you're more likely to be successful in doing that uh versus Sunday night, which I know is another popular time for planning. It lets you use more of Monday. Like if you plan on Monday morning, you're not going to really get going on stuff until later in the day Monday. You need to set up
meetings. If you can't do them then, you know, you it's going to be Tuesday. And again, if we're sliding into the weekend on Friday, like we've just massively shortened our week. So, to use all of Monday, you plan on Friday. Um but, sort of the deepest reason is, you know, even people who really love their jobs can start feel a little trepidation on Sunday night if they don't know what's waiting for them on Monday morning. And,
you know, you got all this stuff. You don't know how you're going to deal with it. If you leave Friday afternoon with a plan for Monday, then you can actually enjoy your time off because you're good. Like you solved that problem. You know what is on your plate. You've got your marching orders. Um and I find that really helps people relax. very much like the idea of getting ahead of the week. Functionally, what Have you got a
worksheet? I know that you've got worksheets for other things. Have you got a worksheet for Friday afternoons on your website? Um I don't, but it's it's not complicated. What does it look like? What does the What does the precise process look like? Um so, I have a planner, but, you know, you don't need one. It's For years, I was just using a notebook from Target. Um and I would put my career stuff on the left side of the page.
And, you know, the relationships and personal stuff kind of on the right side of the page. Look at my calendar for the upcoming week and just list, you know, what do I want to do? In these categories. And it wouldn't be long. Like I you know, the notebook is small and I don't want to go over a page. Uh so, that forces a little bit of um reckoning about what can actually fit in a week. And you know,
what is truly most important. I'm not putting stuff like, you know, get kids to school every day or, you know, random stuff with my job. Like I you know, those aren't things that go on there. It's It's more out of the ordinary sort of stuff or steps toward long-term goals. So, as an example, I'm running a 5K with my oldest child on Thanksgiving. I run regularly. He does not. He needs to start doing
that with me. We need to carve out one time. I mean, he's he's going to be faster than me. He just needs to like actually run a few times before this happens, you know, we we were out of practice. So, you know, we need to carve out at least one time in the next week to do a run together. So, I've got that on the list. Like that's a family priority for the upcoming week. And as so that, you know, this isn't a crisis when we get to
Thanksgiving. He's like, "Mom, I can't do it." Like, you know, if we're going to do it together, like we take the steps toward the toward the goals there. Um so it's stuff like that. Move by 3:00 p.m. So this is um another sort of foundational habit. I you know, I love when people exercise, but I think we have sort of a faulty idea of what exercise needs to be. It doesn't need to be an hour in the gym that leaves you covered in sweat.
Uh it doesn't have to involve any equipment. Physical activity in and of itself is good for the human body. We are built to move far more than we truly do. Um so we need to be in the habit of moving every single day. And so I suggest, you know, build this habit by 10 minutes of physical activity at some point before 3:00 p.m. each day. And you say, "Well, I work out in the evening. I go to the gym after work."
That's awesome. Like you keep doing that. But you could still take a 10-minute walk break at some point during your work day before 3:00 p.m. And in fact, that would be a really really good idea. Um because, you know, many jobs involve And many jobs feel like they could be done to sort of back-to-back-to-back going one thing to the next, but everyone takes breaks in some shape, you know, or form. It's just sometimes
they're unintentional. I'm telling people to take an intentional break to do something that is pretty much guaranteed to boost your mood and boost your energy levels. Um look at your day strategically, see where you can squeeze it in. You'll get the benefit of the exercise, of course, but you also get the benefit of benefit of that strategic thinking. If you're looking at your day as a whole, seeing
where the space could go. And it was that strategic mindset, which as much as anything is what I was trying to teach people with this rule. The more that I spent time around guys like Aaron Alexander that does the Align podcast and Ben Greenfield, it I think that the next big fitness movement is going to be beyond progressive overload and weightlifting and zone two cardio and like sort of the stuff that most people understand and
your body is like a battery. It needs to be exposed to the elements. It needs to see sunlight. It needs to enter your eyes. You need to get some time in and around nature. That would be good for you. You need to be near grass. Some of the research is a bit woo for me at the moment, but the guys that are starting to come to the fore seem to be more evidence-based, which gives me more belief in it. And from an N of one total
anecdote, I feel better when I do that stuff. So yeah, I mean, it blows my mind that we have to say and don't get me wrong. Like I've gone through there was there would have been months of me during my 20s where I wouldn't have moved by 3:00 p.m. And what I would have thought is, well, yeah, but I'm going to go and annihilate myself for 90 minutes later on. I'm going to go and lift heavy things with my friends with
loud music playing, so I fixed it. That's not that's not really health or fitness. That's just lifting weights. That's just bodybuilding or whatever like pursuit you're going after. So yeah, I think a more holistic view of what it means to move is something that I would be very very surprised if we don't see like completely on the ascendancy soon. And then talking about habits, three times a week is a habit.
What's that mean? Yeah, so this is about a mindset shift um of many people when they have things they want to do in their lives, their first thought is I should be doing it Um and you know, that's how a lot of people think about habits. Like, "Oh, it's going to be my daily habit." But the truth is even people who have really good habits in life, often they don't do them daily. I mean, one of the occupational hazards of writing about
time management, people always want to tell me about their great daily habits. And I talk to them a little bit more and I find that they often mean Monday through Friday. But that's not daily. That is five times a week, right? So, you know, we're still under seven. We're not at daily. Like, you know, you might consider it a very frequent part of your life, but it isn't every single day. So the question is then, well, how many
days does it have to be to be, you know, an important part of your life? And I I think three is a defensible number. It's often. It's just not always. And it's often a very doable number. Um so I when I ask people in my project to think about things that they wanted to have in their lives more frequently, and I asked them to think about when was the last time you did this, like the majority had done it in the last week
and an even bigger majority had done it within the last month. Like these are things people do sometimes. The question is how can we go from sometimes to regularly? And I think aiming for three times a week tends to be doable. Cuz if you're already doing something once a week, getting to three is not that hard, right? You're just saying, "How can I do this twice more like at some point in my life in the whole of seven days? Can I
find two more spots?" And that is a very doable thing. And then you're the person who's doing it regularly. It can be part of your identity. So what are we talking about here? I mean, it could be a formal workout like going to lift weights, right? That would be something that you might aim to do three times a week. It could be, you know, practicing a musical instrument. Doing that three times a week in a busy life would be enough to
have it feel like it is part of your identity. You know, you are somebody who plays the guitar. You are somebody who is regularly playing the piano um or singing your scales or whatever it happens to be. Uh you know, it might be something like practicing a foreign language. It might be something, you know, relationship based like getting one-on-one time with family members or eating family meals together. It could
be connecting with your partner in some way, shape, or form. Um any of any of these things would make excellent three times a week sort of things. And sure, there are some things that should be done daily, right? Like our moving by 3:00 p.m. I it should happen every single day. But the things that are going to happen daily need to be very small. Cuz in general in life, it is hard to do something every single day. I
have done a few streaks of various points in my life um because I'm obsessed with streaks. I find them Uh but I can also tell you it can wind up being something that you then have to schedule a lot of your life around to make sure that it happens every single day. Allowing for three times a week is just more doable for so many people. When something is doable, then we do it as opposed to sort of lamenting that it
can't be part of our lives, which is what happens when people aim for daily. That's the perfect is the enemy of done, right? Yeah, perfect is the enemy of the good. Perfect is the enemy of done. Aiming for perfect is just a problem. Why is the identity thing a component here? Why is that you mentioned a couple of times you can call yourself a footballer, softballer, guitar player. Why is that a contributor?
Because I think it helps people have a vision of themselves as something that you have more control over, right? That you're not just your job. You are not just, you know, caring for family members or anything you need to do there. There is this other aspect to you that is a different a different identity to use that word again. And And this is, you know, how people get their self-image, too, right?
Like, you know, it's something that you can feel more control over, more autonomy. You can see progress in. All of those things are associated with well-being. Um and And so, you know, I found that people, especially in what I call the busy years of people, you know, are building their careers, raising their families, they do wind up often feeling like they don't have the identity they wish to have. Like they're
they're missing that component. And so, you know, whatever it is, having that be part of your life, you know, part of your life story. This is something I make space for regularly um can can make you feel more like you are making time for what matters. My favorite rule from Atomic Habits by James Clear is never miss two days in a row. And that is exactly the same as what you're talking about here. You know,
three times a week is an acceptable habit. And three times a week also happens to line up with never miss two days in a row. Well, I think you might miss two once, right? If you do three. Cuz you can do Monday, Wednesday, Friday and then you'd miss Saturday, Sunday and do Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Damn it, James. Come on now. But yeah, I in broad for people, too, you know, if if you're doing then you do four times a week,
right? Then you'd never miss two days in a row. If you want to aim for that. Like the exact number doesn't matter. It's more that you want a doable number. And I think for many people three is is probably more doable than aiming for four or five. Yes. Also the momentum as well of having a minimum viable whatever it is. It's so strange. I see it in myself as I've started to try and do new stuff with a new lifestyle out here in
Austin. Trying to build new habits having been the person that's hopped on about, you know, minimum viable and just one push-up's enough and stuff like that. But ego gets in the way and ego tries to tell you, well, yeah, but if if if it's not if it's not if I can't get the optimal amount and maybe I should do a bit of research about how much pickleball I actually should be playing. And no, if I can't get in there for a
full hour, what's the point of going for 15 minutes? Uh and the bottom line I think is intentionality again. Like look, just what did you say? What did you say was a good rule? Good rule was to just do it if you can. To just do it and just get it done. All right. Create a backup slot. Yes. So we need resilient schedules. I mean, people get very frustrated that they make plans to spend time on their
priorities and then life intervenes. Um and the more sort of moving parts you have in your life, the more likely that life will intervene. Um that, you know, you might want to meet with an employee at work to talk about the great things they're doing and then, you know, right before you're supposed to meet, there's some huge client crisis or, you know, on your personal front, you're trying to get together with a friend that you
haven't seen in a while and then, you know, something happens. One of you gets sick or there's, you know, a work emergency for one of you or whatever. And it These things get very frustrating. Like I wanted to make it happen. I did my best. Life intervened. what we need is if people have been invited to outdoor events, you know, that often on the invitation it says a rain date. And this is really just a great
scheduling concept if you think about it. The organizers are acknowledging that much can go predictably wrong with outdoor events. Like it's right there in the rain date name. But there's no question of whether the event will be rescheduled or for when. It will be on the rain date. And so if you want to go to this event, you won't put anything unmovable in the second slot. And by having a rain date, you vastly increase
the chances that the event happens even if not when originally planned. And so if something is important to you in life, you need a rain date for it, right? You need a time where if you're meeting with an employee, you and you know, he both know when this is going to get rescheduled to if the first time doesn't happen. If you and your friend are planning to get together Tuesday night, you know, and it's been planned for a long time
and you really want to make it happen, why not say like, "Look, I want to make Tuesday happen and for some reason it doesn't happen, we are automatically going to reschedule for next Tuesday." Why not that Why not do that? Like right? That That just vastly increases the chances that it happens, that you get together with your friends. Now, I it can get unwieldy to create designated rain dates for everything.
So, you know, for for sort of life in general, it helps to just have more open space. Because then you can put things in the open space when life doesn't go as planned. So if some emergency bumps one of your priorities earlier, you know, you put that priority in the open space. If some great opportunity comes up, you have spots to put it because you have not booked every single minute. And and I actually find that having that
open space allows you to be more open to opportunity. You're not pushing it away cuz you have no time for it, right? You're You're sort of like, "Yeah, you know, stuff comes. I'll I'll read that email from the person I didn't know to see you know, what they have to say or you know, your friend mentions getting together and you're like, "I've got open space to do it." And then you have a conversation that leads to something
really productive. Like open space allows those things to So we need to have open space in our lives and that's what gives us resilient schedules. Have you found a correlation between how busy successful people's schedules are and how successful the successful people are? I mean I think everyone has a different approach cuz I'm sure there are plenty of people who, you know, call themselves successful and are successful that, you
know, have booked themselves solid, right? Like you know, it's fine. We all have different approaches. I do think though, especially you know, a lot of the people who wind up reading my books and listening to my podcasts are women who have kids and also have jobs. And I think I write for everyone, but I found that one of my things that draws people to my work is I have acknowledged that stuff can go
wrong that is totally not your fault that keeps you from doing productive things and you need a plan for it. I mean there's a lot of you know, I don't know if the tech bros or others, you know, who have never had a child care crisis in their life. Like they don't understand the idea that you could have a huge day full of meetings and like your babysitter could call in sick. Like they they do not even get the concept
that that could happen. And yet a lot of people that is their life. And so it's like, you know, thinking about well, what can I do? Like I need backup child care options. I also need backup slots. So if I cannot get to something on one day, where can I go so I'm still a reliable person who meets my obligations in a timely manner. And I, you know, a lot of my audience needs to think about that. And you know, it's it's it's how
you make life work. So yeah, I'm I'm I think that some people can get away with a little bit less open space, but the more moving parts you have in your life, probably the more space you One big adventure, one little adventure. So this is about making life more A lot of adult life can become pretty much the same day-to-day. A lot of people have the experience you know, you get up, get ready for work, you work,
you you know, get to the end of the day, have dinner, watch TV, go to bed. And you do this day after day after day and it's fine. There's nothing wrong with routines because routines make good choices automatic. But when too much sameness stacks up, like all of the it feels like whole years are disappearing into these memory sinkholes where, you know, nothing exists to, you know, distinguish one day, one week, one year
from another. And the solution to this is to start putting in some memorable things. And one big adventure, one little adventure is to have two adventures each week. A big adventure is three to four hours, half a weekend day. A little adventure could be less than an hour, you know, doable on a lunch break, doable on a weekday evening, as long as it's out of the ordinary. And this is a pace that is not going to exhaust or
bankrupt anyone. Like if you like to come home from work and get in your pajamas, four out of five days you can do just that. You know, if you like to spend your weekends on the couch, that is totally fine. You just take three hours to do something other than being on the couch, okay? You know, it's not going to exhaust or bankrupt anyone. But it will change your entire experience of time. Partly cuz you start looking for
things to do. You start being on the lookout for adventures. Like you become an adventurous person. It's part of your identity. You're the one who's looking for that fun thing to do. And you also just create so many more memories. And and our perception of how much time we have is influenced by how many we have of any given unit of time. So the more memories we have of a particular stretch of time, the longer it feels like it
And and so this is creating more memories. It's like not just another week that was like every week. It was like, "No, that's the week that we went mini golfing. That's the week we went for that hike in the state park to see the changing leaves. That's the week we tried that new place that serves the excellent hot chocolate." You know, these are all the things that would make this week different from all other
That's inside of trying to create novelty and variety and intensity in order to make life feel like it goes slower is something that I've kept when three years ago, three and a half years ago I think was the first time you were on the show. I keep on spouting on about that, you know, why is it that life continues to seem like it's going quicker as I get older. I know that I times literally we we have
formula that tell us that time doesn't change its speed. Like at least your subjective passage of time can do, but the objective passage of time doesn't. And yeah, that I think that's so such a good way to look at things. I suppose as well, if you've got little adventures planned out even further ahead, you can enjoy the anticipation of those as they're coming up. And Tim Ferriss has got this idea about having at least four holidays
booked in at once. He's got holidays booked in for 2025 and 2026 and stuff like that because he wants that there is a good amount of joy that you take from the anticipation of going away and doing a trip or something. And you can get excited with your friends and research the cafe that you're going to go to or No, I mean I'm I'm all about anticipation. I mean I think, you know, it can be hard to do more than a year
out for various reasons. You know, I'm I've had the experience personally of you know, thinking I'd do something in in a year and then you know, it's at the same time that we've been like building our family. I have five kids now and you know, you wind up like with a newborn it's like probably that thing isn't happening. So I don't know. It's a different experience I guess. But you know, it I I do think that
making life memorable is a worthwhile endeavor. And that the reason yeah, as we get older it seems that time is accelerating is because we're not putting ourselves outside of our comfort zone at all. Like, you know, that's great with adult life. We get to do what we want to do. Like you don't have to do things that you don't. I mean it's kind of a privilege of of adulthood in some ways, but you know,
one of the reasons people remember high school and college, young adulthood so much is because there was so much that was new. It was, you know, first jobs, moving to new cities, meeting new people, you know, new relationships. You know, and obviously you're not going to do that. Hopefully, you know, if you're settled with someone, you're not starting new relationships. But you need to think about ways that you can make
things feel more novel and intense and maybe a little bit less in your comfort zone. And and it can be hard in the moment, right? Like future us is going to be happy we did it. Current us kind of wants to sit on the couch, right? But but thinking about future us and having that picture of ourselves on the other side can be really helpful in nudging that little action forward. And you know, often adventures are enjoyable things. I
mean it takes a little bit of effort to get going, but then you're going to have fun while you're doing it. You're going to make the memories and you can look back on that afterwards and be grateful that, you know, the current you did decide to not just sit there. What advice would you give to people who struggle with discipline when it comes to those situations? They have the choice between the comfy couch and the
adventure that they promised themselves and they need I don't know, a mantra or a philosophy or somewhere firm to stand that they can push off of in that Yeah, there's a couple things you can do. I mean the most simple is just, you know, have this mantra as plan it and do it anyway. So if you planned it in, it's because you thought you would enjoy it. And and so given that you thought you would when
you were making the plan, there's a pretty good chance that you will. It's just you have to overcome that slight inertia to do it. You can also ask, am I going to be happy to have this as a memory? And if you would, like if you can say, you know, I would probably like to, you know, three hours from now look back and say, "Wow, that was such a beautiful hike through that park with all the changing fall leaves." You know, if if
you're going to be happy to have that memory, then picture yourself having that memory and in the service of that memory, go do that thing, right? Uh you're still going to have downtime. Like, this is the part that, you know, people are like, "Well, I want to relax." I mean, you're going to relax. Like, there is always unstructured time. It's just a question of like, are you going to spend all day doing that, or
you going to have a couple hours to do this other thing, and then have your unstructured time afterwards, having had the memory of doing something different with your time? I love those. I think that's really, really important, and I think that that's a sticking point a lot of people are going to find themselves at. So, yes, both very, very useful. Okay, batch the little things. Yeah, so this is about creating more
open space in our lives for the things that we want to spend time doing. I think many people having have the experience of feeling like the little things in life are just sucking up all your brain space. Um you know, these are small tasks at work. You got to fill out that form for HR. You got to respond to these non-urgent messages. You got to set up that week you know, meeting for 2 weeks from now. It's like, you have to
do these things, but they don't really have to get done Or on the home front, you know, people are like, "I have to order light bulbs. I have to fill out that permission slip for a kid." or whatever it is. And it can feel like you're spending all your time on these things. Each thing probably doesn't take that much time, but but you know, if you're spreading them out over your entire schedule, you can be spending your life on the
minutia, and feeling like you have no time for either deeper work or relaxing. So, the solution is to batch all these things into short windows of time. So, for instance, you could say, you know, in the afternoon between 1:30 and 2:15, I'm going to tackle all these little tasks I have for today. Um and and what that allows you to do is, you know, spend your deeper work time in the morning on other things, right? You you
don't have to be like, "Oh, I well, I was going to be working on this project, but oh god, I got to got to get to that form for HR." Like, no, no. There's a time for that. Now is not that time. But even more importantly, and I think this is uh you know, this what this is comes up a lot is a lot of those little tasks are very effective tools for procrastination. Like, you're like, "Well, I I'm supposed
to be doing this hard project, thinking about where my business is going, and writing up this solution for this and I oh, but I could go order that birthday present on Amazon." And the birthday present, it's done. It's you you cross it off the list. Like, it feels like you accomplished something, even though really it was just distracting you from from something that you should have been putting your
effort into. So, um you know, by batching the little things, you also deprive yourself of some of those easy wins, so that you are going to force yourself to try to get the bigger wins, um knowing that there's a time, you know, that you are going to get all those easy wins together. One of the most uncomfortable realizations is knowing that almost everything that's on your to-do list probably doesn't move you that much
closer to your goals. And that there is one thing today that might contribute 50%, two things that'll probably contribute two 20%s, and then everything else is maybe even like maybe maybe it's even more toward that first one. And uh yeah, you you you flip the bar stool upside down and try to sit on it in a desperate attempt to make yourself feel like you're being productive. Are there any other things when it comes to to-do list
creation, management, writing, are there any other big no-nos or errors that you see people making? People People make their to-do lists too long. If there's anything it's a wish list. Anything in the planet that they might wish to do at some point or another. There's no order to it. There's no sense of urgency to it. There's no sense of what is important now and what is not. And so, of course you don't get
through everything. But if you've got 50 items on your to-do list, you know, you get through seven. Like, the problem is were those seven the things that you meant to do today like you really should have done today, or were they not? Um whereas if you consciously choose only seven things to do today, and you get through those seven things, well, you feel wonderfully accomplished, and like you know that those were the things that
you set out to do, and you you did them. And you know, it there's no virtue in putting something on a to-do list and then not doing it. It's just as not done if you as if you never put it on the list in the first But, you know, now you feel bad because it's sitting there uncrossed off, and you push it to the next day, and push it to the next day, and so on in in eternum. So, um better to think of the to-do list
more as a contract with yourself. That if you're putting something on the to-do list for the day or the week, you really, truly intend to do it. And in order for that to be true, given that as we noted, life comes up, it's got to be short. Like, there's no way around it. You can't fill all available space. It has to be shorter than the available space cuz stuff will come up. And it has to be, you know, very
focused. So, I think that's that's the better way of doing to-do lists. Effortful before effortless, which is my favorite one of the list. Oh, good. Well, this is the last one on the list. This is rule number nine in Tranquility by Tuesday. And this is about how we spend our leisure time. So, even the busiest people have some amount of leisure time. But the problem is that a lot of it is short in duration. It is
uncertain in duration. You know, you don't know, are you going to have 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes? It happens during low energy times. So, you know, at night after you're done with work, done with your chores, that is the leisure time you have. And you know, screen time fills all these constraints incredibly well. Like, you can be on Twitter for 2 minutes or 20 minutes or 2 hours. It doesn't really matter. Like, we'll take
all that time, whatever you want to give it. Um you know, you don't need to plan ahead or, you know, make plans with friends or anything like in order to watch Netflix. Um you don't need to expend a whole lot of energy. It's not making any demands of you. And because of these attributes of screen time, it winds up filling the bulk of our leisure time. And there is nothing wrong with that. Like, I like social media. I like
television. There's a lot of good stuff The problem is that in the abstract, many people would like to spend some of their leisure time on other things, right? They would like to spend some of their leisure time on those things that we always say we don't have time for, like reading, hobbies, uh connecting with friends. And so, in order to make more space for those things, we have to start repurposing some of these smaller
bits of leisure, and some of these low energy times of leisure. So, one of the best ways you can do this is to challenge yourself to do just a few minutes of effortful fun before effortless fun. So, if you've got a spot of time, you're about to pick up your phone, open, you know, one of the e-reading apps. Like, read an ebook for 2 minutes, and then you can go to Twitter, right? Or if you are, you know, put the kids in
bed, or you've, you know, finished your chores, or whatever it is, and you're about to watch Netflix, like do a puzzle for 10 minutes, and then go watch Netflix. And one of two things will happen. Like, often people get so into their effortful fun that they just keep going with it, right? They want to find out what happened in that book. Like, they're seeing the puzzle take shape, you know, they're making progress in
their hobbies. It's very exciting. They stick with it. Um and that's great cuz Facebook will still be there whenever you come back to it. Uh but even if you don't, you've switched the balance. And so, you have at least some more of that high-quality leisure time in your life than you would have had before. And that tends to make people feel more satisfied with their leisure time, and it also tends to make them notice it. I
mean, many people don't even notice those small, you know, screen checks during the day. They don't notice how much time they might have at night before they go to bed that they could devote to various sorts of leisure. But when you are actively choosing some of these more effortful forms of fun, it's hard to not notice it. And so, your narrative becomes like, I do have free I do have leisure time.
I can make time for these things. And and it changes our entire perception of what life is like. I very much like to think about little approaches like that where you every single time that you go to go and do something, you slot an additional bit of friction in beforehand. So, you can also do this, I suppose, in reverse, which is that if you want to do something which is effortless, you could make it more
effortful. So, I have if I try and use my phone after 8:00 p.m. on a night, I'm supposed to stand up when I want to use it. So, I have to go and do it, but I'm like, okay, I'm stood up. You're not on the couch, yeah. Precisely, yeah, because the more sedentary that you are, the longer that you're going to stay on the phone. And you know that the phone after 8:00 p.m. I'm in I'm on CST, and a ton of my
friends are in the UK. And if I'm not out with people in the US, I'm nothing good is happening on my phone after 8:00 p.m., right? So, it's like, okay, well, let's add a little bit of friction in that. The same thing goes for doing little little bits and pieces of work as When it comes to combining all of these rules together, I know that you had a process that people went through, and they sort of batched them and stuff.
I'm going to guess that trying to do all of these at once might be a little overwhelming, and a little too much. Is there a protocol that people should follow when it comes to trying to introduce these? Yeah, so when I did this project, I had 150 people try out these rules over 9 weeks. And what I did is each rule I would introduce each week, right? So, each week they would learn a new rule. Um they would then answer questions
about how they plan to implement it. They would follow up a week later with questions on how it went. And I went in a certain order. The first one is to give yourself a bedtime, precisely everything feels easier when you're getting enough sleep. The second one is to plan on Fridays, and that's because then you can see your week and think where you might do things, like plan in open spaces, and plan in adventures, and
all these sorts of things, right? So, there's an order to it. Um and what I had people do is they would learn a learn the rule, and then add another one. And then add another one. So, hopefully the first one is starting to feel a little bit more ingrained by the time you start the next one. And then, you know, you remind yourself to do both of them. Then, as you're building that, you add in the third one and and and so
forth. And, you know, you don't have to do this. Like, I mean, if it sounded appealing to you to try the Effortful before Effortless Fun, like, go ahead and do that first, you know? There's nothing wrong with doing that. You can certainly try that at any point that you like. But, yeah, I do think that trying to adopt all nine habits at, you know, the exact same moment might be a little bit overwhelming. Um so, you know, maybe
maybe try doing it a week at a time and and see how it goes. And some of them might take a little bit longer to become habits. You might have to remind yourself of some of them a little bit more as you're going through. But, you know, that's like anything. It takes some time to develop habits and to make them stick. Um so, you know, over time, hopefully that will happen. Laura Vanderkam, ladies and gentlemen.
If people want to check out the stuff that you do online, where should they You can come visit my website, which is Um you can learn about Tranquility by Tuesday and all my other books there. Or, learn about my podcast. Um I have a short every weekday morning one called Before Breakfast. That's just a daily tip to help take your day from great to Um and so, yeah, come visit me there. We have a great comment section on my blog.
I'm still blogging. I love blogging. So, love to hear from people there. Thanks, Laura. Thanks so much for having me. What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to