I'm Paul Muldoon, a poet who over the past several years has had the good fortune to record hours of conversations with one of the world's greatest songwriters, Sir Paul McCartney. The result is our new

podcast McCartney A Life in Lyrics. Listen to McCartney A Life in L lyrics on the I-Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.

Good morning. This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast Podcast.

Today's tip is about how to think of progress

when we're talking about relationships

rather than basic tasks.

Progress is motivational.

Sadly, the converse of that is also true.

When progress is less obvious, it can be hard to feel motivated.

Fortunately, there are some ways to recreate a sense of progress,

no matter what kind of work we're talking about.

Today's tip comes out of a question I got from a before breakfast listener who had recently left her job,

partly to spend more time caring for her daughter, who is on the autism spectrum.

The listener noted that her daughter was needing to interact with people more, and this was definitely challenging, she wrote.

She needs more support to cope with how exhausting elementary school is.

The listener was also studying to pursue a new career as a chaplain.

All of these are worthy endeavors.

But as she noted, I'm so used to measuring and valuing my time by tasks finished.

Parenting and researching are both activities that are not task oriented.

I find myself struggling to measure my progress and feeling unaccomplished after lots of time well spent.

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