Focus your leisure time
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Offer ends March 31st. See if your company qualifies for this special offer at oracle.com slash strategic. That's oracle.com slash strategic. Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is to focus your leisure time. If you have something you like to do for fun, you will find life more satisfying if you go deep.

committing enough time and resources to make your fun as meaningful as possible. Today's tip, like some others this week, comes from my book, 168 Hours. That book was first published in late May of 2010, which means that it is 15 years old this month. A lot has changed in the world since then, but we do, in fact, still have 168 hours in a week.

And so I am revisiting some of the tips in that book that I think can still be helpful. One of these is to focus your leisure time. In 168 hours, I tell the tale of a man with a corporate job who got into writing country music. He enjoyed it, but rather than just dabbling in it a bit here and there, he decided to commit the time to really get into it. He took voice lessons.

He hired a music producer to help him hone his ideas into more singable songs. And then he recorded them and sold his album online, with some tracks getting a bit of local airplay. Now, he was not exactly going to quit his job to attempt to become the next George Strait, but having a real project of creating a not-terrible country music album gave his leisure time more direction and therefore made it more meaningful.

This is certainly something I have tried to do over the last few years. I love to sing, but I know that if I just tell myself I'm going to sing when I can, it probably won't happen. So instead, I now sing in two choirs. The weekly rehearsals and performances mean I learn a lot of new works, and I improve more swiftly than I would otherwise. Plus, it's really fun to be part of a musical community. Two musical communities.

It gives my leisure time more focus. As my kids get a little older and I start to have more space in my life and in my schedule, I am taking that approach to other hobbies too. I love miniatures. So now I am creating miniature scenes in my office. I signed up for a webinar on the Thorn Rooms. And I have a date on my calendar to attend the Philadelphia Miniature Show in the fall. I've also talked to some people in the field to get the names of artisans to follow.

and some of the good places to shop. I want to get really into this. What about you? How could you focus your leisure time, going all in to make this time more meaningful? You could decide to just play an instrument here and there, but my guess is that you will have more fun joining or starting a string quartet with some other musicians, or playing in the pit for a local musical theater troupe. You could decide to do some watercolor work at night when you can.

Or you could sign up for classes at a local art studio, plus go to the open studio hours every weekend and commit to exhibiting a few works at a student show in a few months. My guess is you will do more painting in the latter case, and you'll probably have more fun too. If you have listened to Before Breakfast for a while, you have heard me say over and over again that leisure time is too precious to

to be totally leisurely about leisure. This time deserves to be taken seriously. But beyond that, when you go all in and commit enough time and resources to make a hobby meaningful, you change your story. We often tell ourselves that we have no time,

But if you are going to a quilting bee twice a week, traveling around to quilting shows, and exhibiting your own work at a local community center too, well, you can't be starved for time because you are doing all these things. And that can motivate you to take a more expansive attitude toward time in general. You have time to do big and important things. When we are intentional, that is the message we send ourselves.

In the meantime, this is Laura. 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 lauravandercam.com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.

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