Plan in a different place

Shift your location to shift your mindset

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Good Morning.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to plan in a different place. By moving
yourself physically to a different location, you can create a
little psychological space for thinking about how you'd like to

(00:32):
spend your time in the future. Longtime listeners know that
I recommend having a designated weekly planning time when you
think about your professional and personal priorities for the upcoming week.
Longtime listeners also know that I recommend doing this on
Fridays if that happens to be a low key day

(00:54):
for you, or maybe even Thursday if that works better
for your schedule. Lately, I have been doing this planning
on Thursdays to get a little ahead of things and
so I can come back to the planning on Friday
if I have forgotten something. Anyway, every other Thursday morning,

(01:15):
our cleaning service tackles the first floor of our house,
which is where my home office is located, so I
need to leave my office and go elsewhere for an
hour or so. Sometimes I just go upstairs or outside.
Other times I go to the library or a coffee shop.

(01:37):
I started moving out of necessity, so I'm not a
nuisance when people are trying to vacuum. But I have
found that I really enjoy doing my weekly planning during
this little field trip, even if I am only in
a different part of my house. I am not at
my desk, so I find myself able to think a

(01:59):
little more creatively about what I should do over the
next week, or how I should structure my schedule. I
come up with ideas for my podcasts and newsletters. I
think about potential long term plans and what I might
want to tackle in the near term. I am guessing

(02:21):
that you might find the same thing. The first and
most important step is to do some sort of weekly planning.
It absolutely doesn't matter if you have a fancy planner
or pen, or where or when you do your planning,
as long as you do it.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
So commit to that first. But once you have made
that commitment, you might want to experiment with getting slightly
outside of your usual execution zone. If you do most
of your work at your desk and you have space
in your office for a chair, you might just go
sit in that chair, or go sit in a conference

(03:01):
room or at the kitchen table. If you're normally at
a desk in a home office elsewhere, if the weather
is nice, you could go sit at a table outside,
or take a quick field trip to a nearby sandwich
place where you buy yourself lunch and write down your
intentions for the next week. I think this relocation works,

(03:22):
at least in part because you're less likely to be distracted.
I mean, sure, you can see emails coming in on
your phone just the same as you can at your desk,
but somehow it can feel less like this is what
you are supposed to be doing with your time. If
people tend to come talk to you at your desk,

(03:43):
they might be less likely to do that if you
are elsewhere. Even just seeing different scenery can put you
in a different frame of mind. Planning and execution are
different things. They are both important, but it makes sense
that we draw on slightly different skills and parts of

(04:04):
our brain to do them. By separating these out a
bit physically, we can be a bit more intentional about both.
In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
here's to making the most of our times. Thanks for

(04:32):
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

(04:55):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.