Try random acts of kindness with Kathleen Paley

Lawyer and podcaster Kathleen Paley shares strategies for doing good, and making daily life better

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one. It's part
of my series of interviews with people talking about how
they take their days from great to awesome. I am

(00:26):
so excited to introduce you today to Kathleen Paley, who
is a lawyer, a dedicated volunteer, a mother, and a podcaster,
among other things. And what I love about talking with
Kathleen is that she is always looking for ways to
make the world around her better as she is also
looking for ways to make her own life run well. So, Kathleen,

(00:47):
welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Good morning, Thank you for having me. I'm just honored
to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Awesome. Well, please tell our little listeners a little bit
about yourself.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, I'll try not to repeat what you do share,
but you're right. I'm a lawyer and a mom. I
have two teen preteen kiddos, and I'm a litigator of
the big law firm in DC. And you put those
together and that's a lot to handle. But I don't
want that to be all of life. So I have

(01:18):
a few volunteer gigs and have so many kind of
thoughts about using our time and our resources in effective
efficient ways that I was like, you know what, I
got to start a podcast too to talk about all this.
So there are a lot of balls in the air,
and that makes for a very busy but also very

(01:39):
fun life.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Awesome. Well, I wonder if you could talk through a
little bit about your morning routine, and from what I understand,
you have more of a hybrid schedule where some days
you are working from home and some days you are
in your office, and obviously some days you're on the
road as well. But maybe you could talk through what
your morning routine looks like on those different days and
how you figured out what works for you.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
All right, yes, you are very correct, I will say,
the days they're on the road, I have no morning
routine except get up and just like start grinding for work.
But when home there are two kind of templates Mondays
and Fridays. I work from home and that gives a
lot of flexibility in terms of how the morning goes. Now,

(02:22):
one of the things I think is incredibly valuable to
my own values and like the life I want to
live is I want to take my kids to the
bus stop, and so even though I have a teen
who is over six feet tall and does not want
to be taken to the bus stop, we still walk
together in the morning and it's a nice few minutes
to just chat and very relaxed. So on work from

(02:46):
home mornings, I get up at six fifteen and we
are out the door by six thirty going to the
bus stop. But that gives a lot of flexibility between
about six thirty and nine o'clock. Now, I used to
feel like as soon as I was done with like
official parental duties, I should start working, So by six

(03:06):
forty five or seven am, I should be doing you know,
billable lawyery work. And with time I realized that that
does not build the kind of life I want. I'm
going to do all the work that needs to be done,
but it doesn't need to be done at that time.
So now on those mornings when I'm working from home,
between about six forty five and nine o'clock, I use

(03:29):
that time for things that I find valuable. That includes
things like at this point, drafting podcast scripts and reading
and spending time with my other kid, or going Sometimes
I just go for a walk and it's just lovely,
especially now that the fall weather is starting to arrive,

(03:51):
to just go for a walk, stretch your legs, clear
your thoughts, get sort of energized for the day. And
so that means two Mores, Mondays and Fridays, I have
about two and a half hours of flexible time to
do stuff that I find life affirming. I also throw
in a load of laundry, you know, unload the dishwasher,

(04:13):
do those sorts of things to keep you know, the
daily rhythms of family life going. But those don't actually
take all that much time. They take kind of a
mental load, but they don't take a lot of time. So,
you know, this morning, we're filming on a Friday, and
I took the kid to the bus stop, and then
I wrote out some interview questions for my own podcast.

(04:35):
I read for a while, I journaled for a while,
and I went for a walk. And so you do
that twice a week. That's five hours a week of
really like good kind of you could almost call it.
I kind of hate the term self care, but in
a way, it's like self care time. Now three days
a week I go into the office. That starts with
take the kid to the bus stop, and then go

(04:55):
straight to the office. But that means I'm getting there
really early, like in the seven of hour, which gives
a great jumpstart to the day to get through the
backlog of things that need to be done and before
the office fills up. And so I like that sort
of quiet, slightly contemplative time at the office three mornings
a week when it's just me and my caffeine source

(05:19):
and my inbox, and I try to very much like
match the work to the energy levels and you know,
the rhythms that are going on, so I can blast
through a whole ton of stuff before people arrive.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Awesome. Yeah, mornings really are a great time to get
things done. And I love that since Monday and Friday
are work from home days, you even start the week
with a big dose of this morning self care. Right,
it feels a little bit different than just diving straight
into to the office. It's probably a very different sort
of thing.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, I mean that really dramatically reduces those Sunday scaries
when you know, oh, tomorrow morning, I've got a little
bit of flexibility. There's a little bit of a a
like a mental bridge to get into you know, the
weak full speed.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
Absolutely, So your podcast is called minimal dish, So like minimalism,
but ends with minimal dish. So what do you mean
by minimalish and what is appealing to you about sort
of a lighter version of minimalism.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, that's a great question. I think the driving force
for me is that I want to remove distractions so
that I can focus on the very many, many cool
things that life presents, all of these opportunities. The issue is,
I think sometimes the term minimalism is it's hijacked a

(06:43):
little bit into people who talk about like I want
to do nothing, I want total emptiness of the schedule,
and it's its own little cult in a way that
does not appeal to me. I do not want emptiness.
I do want not want nothing. Thing that is totally unappealing.
And so that sort of brand of minimalism you see online,

(07:05):
I think that it's boring and it can come off
as sort of preachy or self righteous. And what I'm
looking for is figuring out how to focus on what
I figure in my own life to be the right stuff.
But when there's so much going on, that does mean
needing to kind of cut out the clutter. And so
there are four kinds of clutter you could say that

(07:26):
I've tried to cut out in life. One is visual clutter,
stuff management, just you know, you know, when you've got
kids and you've got a lot of balls in the air.
I think we both have dogs. There's a lot to
keep going, and having just less stuff around, particularly for
those of us who are sort of distracted by visual clutter,

(07:49):
is helpful, just having fewer things to manage. I also
try to cut out schedule clutter and keep the commitment
levels to the right level. And one example is my
kids are both pretty competitive athletes, and we want them
to be able to play at a competitive level. But
we don't want entire weekends every weekend to be taken

(08:10):
up with tournaments where you're driving six hours away, you're
spending all day, you're staying the night, you're doing a
tournament the next day too. That's not the right level
of commitment for us, So schedule clutter. We let them
play in a travel league that has two games a week,
not like an AAP basketball league where you're doing the

(08:32):
tournament every weekend. We don't want to be essentially taxi
drivers for our entire lives, so schedule clutter. We try
to keep things at a level that like lets them
compete but doesn't ruin the family dynamic. I also try
to cut out financial clutter. That includes being very reflective
on what spending actually gives value to our lives and

(08:57):
what doesn't, and really questioning some questioning the defaults that
we tend to fall into, particularly when life is busy
and you could start throwing money at everything. I want
to figure out where I really get value from throwing
money at the problem, And like, right now I have
some cleaning folks in my home because I get value

(09:19):
from having someone help with that. But there are other
things that we don't, you know, we don't throw money
at that. Also that removing financial clutter also involves eliminating debt.
We just paid off everything as quickly as possible, and
that is such a reduced mental load of just worry.
It reduces your worry when you don't have debt. And

(09:42):
then finally, I know I've gone on a long time here.
I try to remove mental clutter, and that the way
I put it is, uh I have Maybe this is
just part of being in your forties, but I've really
stopped caring about the judgments of others and what they're
going to say about my choices. I'm willing to be
a little bit unconventional. I'm willing to be a little

(10:04):
bit weird, and if someone thinks that it's strange, I
really don't care. We're going to live lives on our
own terms. So that's my take on Minimalish, cutting out
various forms of clutter so that we can live the
lives that make us sort of very individually, particularly most satisfied.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Sounds good. Well, we're going to take a quick ad
break and then we're going to come back and learn
about a very cool project that Kathleen did before turning forty. Well,
we are back for those just joining us. This is
the longer version of Before Breakfast. Once a week or so,

(10:46):
I am doing an interview with someone who is doing
cool things in their lives, taking their days from great
to awesome. We are talking with Kathleen Paley, who is
a lawyer, a mother, a volunteer, and the host of
the Minimalish podcast. Well, Kathleen, you did a really cool
project of forty acts of kindness before turning forty. I

(11:06):
believe I wonder if you could talk a little bit
about that project and maybe just highlight one or two
of the things you did as part of it.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, I wanted to memorialize turning forty in some kind
of way, but was not seeking a big birthday party
or anything that's actually turns out to be a good thing,
because I turned forty in the summer of twenty twenty,
so if there had been a desire for a big
birthday party, that was not going to happen with the
pandemic going on. But it's late twenty nineteen, and I

(11:39):
just wanted to memorialize this time and do something special.
And I thought, well, there are like bucket lists of
forty before forty things to do, adventures to have, and
that all sounded fun. But I thought, what about forty
small acts of kindness things that we could do within
our community, within our families, would just help brighten someone's day.

(12:02):
And so I put together list, took a few months
sort of iterating on it, and put together list with
a few categories of acts of kindness to do, and
over the course of the next you know, six months
or so, I knocked out almost all the list and

(12:22):
it was a lot of fun. The categories included things
like goods and money, you know, giving goods in money,
respect and encouragement, time and talent, earth and environment, and
then within the family, intra family acts of kindness, so
a few of my favorite ones. I was shocked to
learn that in the community that we live in in

(12:47):
northern Virginia, which seems quite economically comfortable, there's still a
remarkably high percentage of kids in schools who face food insecurity.
They may get free lunch school, but when they go home,
those cabinets are empty. And it turns out that within
our community, there is a program where you can drop

(13:08):
off shelf stable foods at elementary schools and they will
very sort of covertly, quietly so as not to embarrass
the kids, put food into kids' backpacks that they can
take home so that there is you know, there's an
actual dinner on the table. And so one of the
forty acts of kindness was I went and bought several

(13:29):
hundred pounds of rice and several hundred pounds of dried beans,
and like raid down the car it was kind of
sagging in the back, but took them to one of
the local elementary schools and dropped them off so that
they would have their pantry full, so that all of
these kids could go home and have meals, particularly over
the weekends. That was so much fun. And I think

(13:50):
that there's some value in really doing like physical acts yourself.
I think you feel more involved in the process of helping.
I also like to cut checks for things as well,
but there was something about the very physical nature of
that that I found inspiring.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
And then maybe you can talk about one that's a
bit more person to person that you did something encouraging somebody.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yes, I actually I've received some books over the years
from folks where they said I loved this and you
may really value it, and I thought, I want to
do that for someone too, So I decided to choose
five books that I have found to be sort of
life changing or transformative and to give them to friends
with a little note saying why I thought that they

(14:39):
may find it valuable. And in fact, one of those
books was one hundred and sixty eight Hours that You
Have More Time Than You Think, by a certain Laura Vandercamp.
I have found it really inspirational. Back in my sort
of earlier parenting lawyering journey, when I was just starting
off with thinking about like how to make this better
richer life, I actually gave it to I think two

(15:01):
or three friends.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Awesome. Well, I'm glad to hear that I did not
ask Kathleen to say that. I'm very excited to do.
That's wonderful. So if somebody else was going to undertake
a project like this doing you know a large number
of random acts of kindness, I wonder if there was
something you learned along the way or some advice you'd
give to them to make it a more effective project.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
I think setting out in advance the sort of general
categories that you want these acts to be in, or
general groups that you want to help can help structure
the thinking and can help sort of spur on creativity.
And then also just ask thoughtful people in your life.
You know, hey, how do you think I could help

(15:44):
with local animals or whatever it is your priority is.
And sometimes you can actually get pretty insightful, thoughtful ideas
from others, but you need to give them a prompt,
not just what can I do that's nice? You have
to say, I want to help the local poor, how
can I do that? What do you think? So? Yeah,

(16:08):
structure a little bit, and then just seek inspiration from
others who your respect.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Awesome We're going to take one more quick ad break
and then we'll be back to learn about Kathleen's current
time management challenges. Well, we are back. This is one
of the longer Before Breakfast episodes. I am interviewing Kathleen Paley,
who is a lawyer, mother, volunteer, podcaster, many different hats,

(16:38):
and she talked about a project she did of doing
forty acts of kindness before turning forty. So, Kathleen, I
wonder if you could talk about sort of your biggest
time management challenge right now.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, my biggest time management challenge is that I am
a sucker for adding projects to my life and I
did recently start doing a podcast. So it's how to
work work in more while not feeling harried. And one
of the ways I've I've been able to do this

(17:09):
is to just look for what are the low value
pockets of time that I'm not It's not wasting, but
maybe not using optimally. And you know, we started this
episode talking about those Mondays and Fridays from home where
there's a big chunk of time several hours in the morning.
I've started to leverage that time to do more work.

(17:33):
It's not necessarily the podcast work, but sort of shift
more more things into those timeframes that I might otherwise do.
At another point, I'm sort of using the tiles or
the pieces of time, moving them around the way you've
talked about so much in your work. So you know,
by adding more, I've I've made myself be creative about

(17:53):
looking at where the low value time is being spent
and seeing where I can you know, eliminate eliminate that waste.
And so you know, I'm using my Mondays and Fridays
better and using little pockets of time on the weekends
when I might have otherwise been kind of scrolling or

(18:16):
just puttering around the house, carving out half an hour
here an hour there to move the tiles around and
be able to do the volunteer work and the podcast
stuff and the mom's stuff and you know all those
billable hours. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
So what's one of your volunteer gigs right now? That
is a project you've taken on but is adding meaning
to your life.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah. So for the last oh, I think we're on
year five now, I've found a commissioner on our city's
Economic Development Authority, did a two year stint as the
chair and then timed out under our bylaws, so I'm
back to not charing meetings anymore. But we work on
helping small businesses, both retail and you know, sort of

(19:02):
more traditional accounting firms and such, but helping small businesses
in the city thrive through a variety of programs and
you know, support systems, and so doing that work is
really exciting because over time you do start to see
a change in your community. The five year mark, I'm
now seeing projects that we started years ago really bear fruit.

(19:26):
And it's incredibly exciting when you walk around your community
and you say we had a role in that we
helped with that this place is better because of something
that we did. And so it's all you know, we
have staff and we have a bunch of volunteers and
they work together beautifully to make the place that we
live more vibrant awesome.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
So, Kathleen, what is something you have done this week
to take a day from great to awesome?

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yes? So I have recently, so this week ish, I
have rediscovered my love of the library. I had thought, oh,
I like audiobooks, but somehow that childhood or young adulthood
love of like reading the written word on a page
had somehow faded. And I realized it wasn't that it faded,

(20:17):
I just didn't have anything I wanted to read. And
so recently I've been going to the library, so rediscovering
the library, but then taking it up a notch in
the last couple of weeks by using my Tuesday, Wednesday
Thursday commute time on the Metro to read a paper book.
So now I'm getting an hour each day, three days

(20:38):
a week reading a book in peace. You know, there's jump,
you know, clutter going on around you, there's movement going
on around you. But by just shifting that metro time
and not doing like an audiobook, but actually reading on paper,
I'm getting that great satisfaction of you know, reading something

(20:59):
on paper and the turn of the page again, that
physical act, the holding the book, There's something special about it.
And so the great to awesome is getting back into
reading and finding time to do it. That isn't taking
away from anything else.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yeah, and since you're leaving early enough on those days,
you're probably getting a seat. I would imagine it's slightly
harder to read if you're holding onto a pool, like
flipping back and forth between the pages.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Correct. Yes, yes, in the afternoon it is pretty crowded,
and I'm flipping the pages while like wrapping an arm
around the pole. But in the morning, it's it's a seat.
It's beautiful to see.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
It's beautiful. That's so funny. I have memories many, many
years ago. I had a year long internship that I
lived in the Greater Washington, DC area, and I had
a fairly long commute and I wound up reading I'm
going to say it around with Anna Karinina Tolstoi's novel
on the Metro twenty minutes a day. You know, you

(21:58):
get through it over the course of a month or two.
It was a good read, you know, past the time.
So I hope you're enjoying your reading in the morning
as well. Do you have a particular life hack or
strategy you want to share with our listeners. I always
love to ask people if there's something really cool that
you've been trying that's made life more efficient that you

(22:19):
could share with us.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Well, one thing we've been doing recently is whenever there's
a situation where someone's going to give us a gift,
like holidays, you know those are coming up, you know, anniversaries,
things like that, we've been saying, can you just give
us a gift card to a restaurant. It's because one,
I'm trying to just spend less money eating out and

(22:42):
be more efficient in that way. And two we want
to do that. We're also big foodies, so I don't
want clutter at home. I don't want physical stuff more
physical stuff at home, but I do want to go
explore new restaurants and try new foods. So just letting
the folks in your life no like restaurant gift cards, please,

(23:04):
that is a very welcome gift. Has been super in
terms of now we get more experiences that we like
and we don't have another vase sitting around that's just
going to gather dust exactly.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
With a little extra tip for our listeners that you
need to make sure you use the gift cards then,
so when it comes in, make sure you've got a
reservation and a date on the calendar, because otherwise those
become clutter in a different way.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
They do, you know, Laura, Actually my kids have accumulated
gift cards from birthday gifts over time, although I do
swear the thirteen year old boys just circulate the same
Amazon gift card back and forth, but they've accumulated a
bunch of gift cards, and I took a page from
your playbook and told my youngest we're having a gift

(23:53):
card day. We're going to use up all of your
gift cards. So we went to Dick's Sporting Goods, we
went to a local bookstore. We didn't Amazon on order,
and he was like, oh, that was actually a lot
of fun. Like, yes, buddy, and now you have stuff
you want and I don't have a drawer full of
your gift cards.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Exactly, exactly awesome. Well, Kathleen, this has been great. Can
you tell our listeners where they can find you?

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Yes, I like I mentioned a couple of times. They
now have a podcast. It's the Minimalish Mom podcast. If
you have any interest in listening, it's on Apple Podcasts
and Spotify. You can also reach out on Instagram It's
minimalish Mom. I mean, the podcast name came from the
fact that I've had that handle since like twenty fifteen

(24:39):
or something, so it was just the easiest way to
name things. But I would love to connect to folks
who share an interest in, you know, using our time
and resources better. I think it's a lot of fun,
so please reach out.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Well, we have a lot of people listening to this
podcast who want to use their time and resources better.
So Kathleen, thank you so much for joining us, and
thanks to everyone who has been listening. I would love
your feedback about this interview series, particularly if you decide
to adopt Kathleen's project of doing random acts of kindness.
I would love to hear about that. You can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com and in

(25:17):
the meantime.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
This is Laura.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Thanks for 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

(25:46):
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.