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Good morning.

This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Today's tip is to figure out how much time you actually have available for work beyond your routine tasks.

This will help you get a more realistic sense of what can fit into your days and weeks.

Today's tip, like another this week, comes from my interview with productivity expert

Charlie Gilke.

When I interviewed Charlie for this podcast a few months ago, he recommended that people put

just a few items on their to-do lists each day.

Now, you have heard me say that too, but I liked his explanation, which I think will be helpful for people trying to figure out why this is wise.

Gilke noted that many people spend around 65% of their work days on routine tasks. That means only 35% of the

day is available for the sorts of tasks that aren't routine, which are the kinds of tasks that

tend to make it onto to-do lists. This math is pretty straightforward. If you work an eight-hour day with a 30-minute

lunch, then theoretically you have seven and a half hours to allocate to things. But if about

five hours of your seven and a half hours will be spent on routine matters, this means that on any

given day, you have only two and a half hours for extra tasks. So if you create a to-do list

that assumes seven and a half hours of availability, well, it will take you three days to get through one day's list. No wonder people

feel behind. Not only do people tend to discount the amount of time they spend on routine tasks,

I would add that people tend to overestimate the total number of hours they spend at work.

...