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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of IHeart Radio.

Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Today's tip is that if you have personal priorities you want to fit into your life, don't wait until after work is done to do them. This is especially true if you work long hours. Doing these things early in the day is probably the way to go. I know lots of people listening

to a show called Before Breakfast likely have elaborate morning routines. Sometimes we have these

routines because we love our mornings. But I was reminded lately how if you work long hours, the mornings

become truly important for feeling like you have a life. As part of my media interviews talking

about the time tracking study I did for big time, someone asked me about the so-called

996 schedule that some tech and AI companies were

using. The idea is that you work nine to nine six days a week, with all those hours being about

pushing fast toward your universe-bending work or something like that. You know what?

I think this is a terrible idea. There are massively diminishing returns on extra hours over 50 or so.

If people are at the office 72 hours a week, they are rarely doing 72 hours of quality work. So I made that point.

However, it got me to thinking that if you are in a situation where you're needing to be at the

office until 9 p.m., how you could still wrestle back some space for some things in your personal life.

The key is that you have to use your mornings. Now, if you worked from, let's say, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.,

you would probably use the hours from 6 to 9 p.m. each evening to do personal things.

If you need to be at the office during those times, because quitting time is more like 9 p.m.,

then you can flip this and do the personal things in the 6 to 9 a.m. window before work.

Now, this requires a little creative thinking, and obviously not everything can be done

early. But perhaps one could exercise, have family breakfast, or meet a friend for breakfast,

do a little reading or creative work, and then get to work, around nine.

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