Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeart Radio.

Good morning.

This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast Podcast.

Today's tip is about fitting big fun into small moments.

Long time listeners know that I like to talk about effortless fun and effortful fun.

The effortless variety is straightforward, watching TV, scrolling through social media.

Effortful fun, on the other hand, is leisure that takes a bit more effort, like reading

or creative hobbies, or chatting with a friend.

In general, the latter feels more rewarding, but it tends to get crowded out by the, well,

effortlessness of effortless fun.

So we spend our time on Facebook, liking friends' posts, rather than talking with them.

Now, I know that there are reasons why we resort to effortless fun instead of the effortful

variety.

Sometimes we lack the energy to do anything else.

But an equally important reason is that we often feel like we don't have enough time

to get into our favorite effortful fun.

Maybe we only have five minutes or so.

No one is going to pull out the sewing machine in that small chunk of time, or make pastries

or call the friend who likes to talk for an hour.

While you can read in bits of time, it can be frustrating to have to put down a juicy

novel after five minutes, which means it can feel easier not to bother.

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