Create little oases in your schedule
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is that when you find yourself with a little free time, consider taking a break to just relax. You don't always have to do something. Sometimes it's nice to just be. You may have noticed that some cities now have tiny public spaces tucked in between buildings. These green spots have just enough space for some trees, a little grass, and a few park benches. Occasionally there's a swing set or a fountain. It's not much, but what might have been an empty lot or a parking area is activated as a space for relaxing and soaking in the outdoors. These pocket parks, as they are sometimes called, are refreshing oases for city dwellers. They are places to sit outside and read a book, sip your coffee, chat with a friend, or relax. While any given pocket park is small, taken together, they make an urban area feel more lush and inviting. I think it's a useful metaphor for our schedules. We have lots of buildings stuck in there, meetings, deadlines, bringing the kids to soccer, going to that neighborhood hearing. But perhaps we can envision tiny oases in between all of that. The next time you find yourself with fifteen minutes between things, think about pocket parks and consider taking a pocket pause, a little spot for relaxation. I like this idea because no matter how busy you are, and no matter how thoughtfully you plan, you will wind up with stretches of time that are on spoken for. If a meeting cancels and you have a whole hour that is suddenly free, you may want to use it to make progress on a big project. But when you have ten minutes between meetings, or when you are ready twenty minutes before your friend picks you up for the movies, those bits of time can be harder to use. Some folks keep lists of small tasks to cram into these moments, and I get it. It's good to get things done and feel productive, but I strongly recommend batching little tasks so they don't take over your schedule. When you get a little pocket pause in your day, you can just kick your feet up and look out the window. You don't even need to check email. You can just be I know this is hard to imagine, but I think spending a few minutes just relaxing has a few upsides. When we are busy, this feels kind of extravagant, and that's not a bad thing. Taking a pocket pause is the time equivalent of buying yourself flowers. You are worth it. But just as a handful of pocket parks can make an entire city seem green, a handful of pocket pauses in the day can remind you that you do have time. How busy can you be if you take five minutes, four times a day to watch the clouds? If you truly are just relaxing, those five minutes stretches are going to seem quite long. You will start to feel like your schedule is spacious. Indeed, if you take a pocket pause, I'd love to hear how it goes. You could reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia for more podcasts from iHeartMedia, Please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.