Season 2, Episode 12

Host: Matt Hall

Guest: Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam (00:08): I do try to set out at the beginning of the week and say, "Well, what are the most important things to accomplish both professionally and personally?" I tend to make my priority lists in three categories, career relationships, and self.

Matt Hall (00:23): Welcome to Take The Long View with Matt Hall. This is a podcast to reframe the way you think about your money, emotion, and time. The goal, helping you put the odds of long-term success on your side Today, I'm excited to talk with writer, speaker, and podcaster, Laura Vanderkam. Laura's goal is simple and powerful, to help us spend time on things that matter and less on things that don't. Laura Vanderkam has written a number of successful books on time management and productivity, including Juliet's School of Possibilities, Off the Clock, I Know How She Does It, what the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, 168 Hours, and All the Money in the World, among others.

Laura's work has appeared in publications, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fortune, and Fast Company, and she's appeared on numerous television programs, including The Today Dhow, and CBS This Morning, hundreds of radio segments, and has spoken about time and productivity to audiences of all sizes. Listen to this, her TED talk, How to Gain Control of Your Free Time, has been viewed nearly 11 million times.

And Laura has two podcasts. She's the co-host of the podcast, The Best of Both Worlds, and the every weekday morning podcast called Before Breakfast, featuring productivity tips designed to take listeners days from great to awesome. I listen to that one frequently. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and five children. Wow. Laura, one of my favorite proclamations that you have goes something like this, "Whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, a self-starter or someone who prefers detailed directions, you can do your clearest thinking and deepest work at home, and have more energy leftover to achieve personal goals or fuel bigger professional ambitions. In fact, soon you might find it hard to imagine working any other way."

And I can't wait to talk to you about this. Welcome to Take the Long View.

Laura Vanderkam (02:31): Thank you so much for having me.

Matt Hall (02:33): Okay. So I think we should probably start, there's a lot for us to unpack in there. You've written so much and talked so much about so many different things, I feel like that my challenge in preparation here was to zoom in on what matters most. And I thought one of the things where I really am curious, I want to start with you on is how did you get to this place where you were studying time for a living? How did this become your focus?

Laura Vanderkam (02:58): Yeah. Well, I didn't grow up saying, "I want to be a time management expert." And I can't claim that I am always on time everywhere either, but I find time fascinating, because we all have the same amount of it. And so while there are people who have more money, or who are smarter, or better looking than the rest of us, they don't have more time. And so all of us are just trying to make the most of the 24 hours we have each day, the 168 hours we have each week. And so I began studying it and writing about it, writing articles. And then once you write one book on a topic, that is what you become known for. Unfortunately, I find it fascinating enough that I keep finding new angles and trying to put those out into the world.

Matt Hall (03:42): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, you are doing it. This is kind of a weird segue, but it's what's in my head, I remember my dad listening to a country song when I was a kid, and I think it was called, "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool." And I think this relates to you and that you were into remote work, or work from home before it was cool, before it was a thing.

Laura Vanderkam (03:42): Before it was cool.

Matt Hall (04:07): How do you feel now with everyone joining you in the place you've been for some time?

Laura Vanderkam (04:13): Well, I feel vindicated that it is not just a work-life balance perk that is for people who wish to take their foot off the gas in terms of their careers. And that is what working from home has been seen for so long. It's like, "Okay, well, maybe this person has been with our organization for 10 years now. So I guess we can trust them to work from home one day a week, but only Friday, because everyone knows that Friday is the least productive day of the week. So we want to minimize the opportunity cost here." Right? And I'd had business leaders tell me for years, things like, "I'm looking at the future trends, the future of work, remote work, that's something we should know about, but it will never work for us." Right? That was basically the line, "It would never work for us."

I don't know, because the way these people were emailing and calling people was somehow so special that it couldn't be done anywhere else than the office. And then the pandemic happened, and it's like, "Oh wait, that meeting could in fact have been a Zoom call. That phone call could have been an email." There are ways to stay connected, there are ways to do our jobs, there's ways to brainstorm new ideas, all these things, without seeing each other in the office 40 hours a week. Now I'm not saying that we don't have to see each other in person sometimes. I think many people have been missing that during the pandemic, but I think we're going to come to a different place of where that balance is, that it doesn't just have to be one day a week for people who've been with the organization for 10 years. Maybe everyone can try working from home two to three days per week, and in the office two to three days per week, so we can get the upsides of both locations.

Matt Hall (05:46): Yeah. I have to admit when I absorbed the audio version of your book, The New Corner Office: How the Most Successful People Work from Home, I was one of those leaders who believed that work from home was a perk or a concession. And if you were lucky enough to get it, you probably got it on Fridays. And I would say this experience, meaning the pandemic, has definitely changed that perspective along with reading and listening to your work, and really you flip it on its head, this whole idea, and talk about how you can actually turn being cooped up into an advantage. What are some of the things that you think the public misunderstands or that people you speak to or write to misunderstand like me, about how working remotely really can be an advantage, that it's not a concession?

Laura Vanderkam (06:38): Well, there are a couple of things. I mean, one is that people tend to work best under certain conditions, and those may or may not exist in your office environment. Even something as simple as the temperature. I know a lot of people in the summers have frozen in an over air conditioned office. It is very hard to be productive if your fingers are turning blue. There aren't distractions in the office. I mean, yes, it's great to be able to talk to your colleagues about exciting new ideas, sometimes your colleagues are not talking with you about exciting new ideas, they're talking about what happened to the cheese in the salad bar in the cafeteria. And you're like, "I'm trying to do my work here. All right? Please, let me finish this, and then we can talk about the cheese." But it's very distracting in that way.

So again, there are upsides to seeing each other in person, but I think 40 hours per week in the same place, is probably overkill. But then there's also certain things. When you're in an office environment, there become very, very strong group norms. There are norms about what time you show up, there are norms about what time you leave, there are norms about needing to have certain things on your screen if people walk past you. There are norms about leaving in the middle of the day. Now, if it's a progressive office, you're not going to get fired for leaving in the middle of the day, but it makes you feel a little weird. It's like, "Oh, I'm going to go have coffee with this person outside our organization, who could be useful longterm, but why aren't I having coffee with my colleagues? I should be having coffee with my colleagues. They're going to look at me. Why am I leaving?"

It's just there are these very strong group norms in any situation like that. And those disappear when you are working at home, and sometimes it's good to have these norms. Maybe some people find it hard to focus if they don't have them, but a lot of people, they don't pursue certain opportunities because of the group time norms, and so those are worth reconsidering.

Matt Hall (08:23): Yeah. Well, how do we do great work while we're sitting in the same spot where we normally watch Netflix? I like that you've posed this question in your book and you have answers.

Laura Vanderkam (08:33): Well, I mean, I had to put that in the description, partly because that's what my editor made me. When people were first working from home in March, there was this whole like Netflix thing, like "Oh my gosh, how are we going to know people aren't watching Netflix all day?" I've seen hundreds of work from home schedules over the years. I have never seen somebody spend a whole day watching Netflix. I mean, I've seen maybe a 30 minute show over lunch, but that's a break, right? That's that's not the same thing at all. Most dedicated, driven professionals are not going to sit there watching Netflix all day. In fact, the problem is the opposite, that people don't know when to quit. They will keep going all night, because they can still see their laptop.

And so it becomes very hard for them to shut it down, and go do whatever they need to do in their personal lives. I would say if you do find yourself distracted by household things, which is far more likely to be laundry, and other such productive seeming things than Netflix, try to find yourself a space that is separate. A lot of people first set up their work from home place at the kitchen table, because it was a flat surface with a chair. And if you didn't have a home office, that was the flat surface with the chair. Longer-term into this, you need to find someplace that's a little bit more out of the way, a little bit more private, a little bit more removed from the rest of your life. If you don't have a separate spot, a corner of your bedroom might work, because it's probably got a window, and it's probably got a door.

You just maybe direct yourself so you're not looking at your bed all day, if you don't want to do that. But maybe it's somewhere else, maybe it's that you can convert part of your garage, or part of your basement, or a kid's room during the day if they're off at school or something, or you could move, but the truth is, find someplace that allows you to have at least some separation, because many people do like to be able to close the door and say, "Okay, now I'm in work mode. I have my little ritual, sit down with my coffee. I'm in work mode. Now I take my breaks. When I'm done, shut it, close the door, I'm done for the day." Have your shutdown ritual as well.

Matt Hall (10:24): Shutdown ritual, going back to when you work from home, you may not turn it off. You may be working during waking hours, not working hours. What are your suggestions around creating those boundaries?

Laura Vanderkam (10:36): Yeah. Well, it's funny because at the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of people were doing required 9:00 AM check-ins on Slack, or Zoom, or something. I guess again, thinking that people were going to be watching Netflix all day if they didn't have this required 9:00 AM check-in. But I liked your idea of having a goodbye as well. If you're going to have people check in at nine o'clock, you check them out at five o'clock, because that way you're book-ending the day, and letting people know that it is time to go. There would be a time in an office where everyone would start drifting out the door, this recreates the same thing. Now, you don't have to do this, of course. I find in many cases, people can shift their hours and work slightly different hours and that might work better for them personally, and that's great.

In which case, come up with another way to indicate to yourself that the day is done. I personally like just focusing more on task rather than what time it is. I make myself a to-do list for the day, and when I have checked the list off, the day is done, whatever time that happens to be. I mean, it's almost always a normal quitting time, because I figured out what fits in eight hours, but that is when the day is done. You can also come up with other things like writing in a journal, writing tomorrow's to do list, calling a colleague to say, "Goodbye." If you have a dog, for instance, you could go walk the dog at a certain time. And then when you come back, you are no longer in work mode.

You have children you need to pick up somewhere, sending a sitter home, these are all ways that you can create some sort of end of day ritual and say, "Once I've done that, now I am back in personal mode. Even if I can see my computer from where I am, and the rest of the house."

Matt Hall (12:00): You have five children.

Laura Vanderkam (12:03): I do.

Matt Hall (12:04): You have multiple podcasts. You've written how many total books?

Laura Vanderkam (12:08): A lot.

Matt Hall (12:08): A lot. Yeah.

Laura Vanderkam (12:09): I lose track, yes.

Matt Hall (12:11): And my guess, before the pandemic, you were probably traveling to give speeches. How do you do it all?

Laura Vanderkam (12:21): I don't know. I mean, I think about how I want to allocate my time, and I probably fail on multiple fronts, multiple times per day, but I do try to set out at the beginning of the week and say, "Well, what are the most important things to accomplish both professionally and personally." I tend to make my priority lists in three categories, career, relationships, and self. And so every Friday, sit down, make that priority list for the next week.

Matt Hall (12:46): Wait, pause, because this is an important point that you hit on in your book, you do this on Fridays.

Laura Vanderkam (12:51): Yes. I do this on Fridays.

Matt Hall (12:53): You plan the next week on Fridays.

Laura Vanderkam (12:55): I do, because I want to hit Monday knowing what I need to do for the week. So, I mean, that has a couple of sides, one is I don't have to think about it over the weekend, because I've already got a plan for Monday. If there's things I need to do that require talking to other people to set them up. Most people are at their desks still on Friday, whereas if I try to plan on Sunday, I might not reach them. And we also, we have the most energy at the start of anything, so you want to really seize that Monday morning energy for execution, as opposed to deciding. The other upside of Friday is that Friday afternoon no one's doing anything anyway. This is total wasted time. So you may as well use it for thinking about what future you should be doing, and if you haven't thought about what you're doing over the weekend, this gives you a chance to come up with some stuff. So it's really got great, all sorts of things going for it.

Matt Hall (13:42): Yeah. The number one thing that keeps hitting me is, it gets rid of that Sunday night anxiety of having to... I don't know if you've ever felt this, but Sunday night you start thinking about if everything's set up just right for the next week to run smoothly. And I love the Friday plan ahead idea. I'm going to have to execute that myself.

Laura Vanderkam (14:01): Yeah. If you think about work and personal stuff, I mean then you know it all has a place, and you know that you're not dropping too many balls, because you've put it into the schedule and then you check in next Friday and see if you've done it. If you have, great, if you haven't, go from there,

Matt Hall (14:15): This is kind of a selfish question, but what do you think leaders could do to better support their teams in remote work?

Laura Vanderkam (14:24): Well, I think there's a couple of things. One is being really good at communication, being clear what are the expectations for your performance, and then when people meet those expectations, awesome. It doesn't have to be about spending eight hours in a seat. It can be like, "These are the things I want you to accomplish this week." Or that we've come up with together for the day, or the week, or the month or whatever. And then when they're done, great, we celebrate that. If we're getting off, then we come back in and see what the issue is, and what we can do.

In this time in particular, I think there is a lot of people are juggling more caregiving responsibilities than they normally would, because of virtual schooling and in many districts, or other childcare arrangements are not available for whatever reason. And so I think being understanding of that is going to go a long way. I mean, we won't be in this pandemic forever. And if you've got an A+ employee, who's kind of operating in the sort of B range at the moment because of their intense, personal responsibilities, being like, "That B is great. We love that B, let's stick with that B. Don't walk out the door." Right? We'll get back to A+ eventually, we love you for the B right now, and that can go a long way in buying people's loyalty.

Matt Hall (15:43): Yeah. I hear this or feel this sometimes, I just got off a call with someone who's in sort of business development or sales, and I don't know that people articulate this often, but how can you maintain or grow your network or nurture relationships when you're spending less face-to-face time with people?

Laura Vanderkam (16:03): Well, the interesting thing is that video conferencing is actually pretty good. Those of us who had Zoom pro accounts before March, 2020, we're kind of aware of this. We started working from home in 2000. No, the video conferencing was terrible, but now it is good, and everyone has Zoom fatigue, but seeing each other's faces on a screen I'd say is about 75% as good as seeing each other in person. Our brains do not recognize the difference between seeing someone on a screen, and seeing them in person. This is why people who have worked in television, people are coming up to them in the grocery store for years afterwards, being like, "I know you from somewhere." No, you don't. You saw that person give the weather report for 10 years, and you think you know them. Right?

Because our brains have not evolved to understand screens. And so, because of that, as long as you are seeing people's faces relatively frequently, you feel like you do know them. So that's fine for the people that you are seeing relatively frequently that you already knew. I think establishing sort of new relationships is a little bit more challenging for people, because most of us aren't like, "Okay, let's just have a random Zoom call with somebody I've never met before." You want a little bit more of a casual first get together that you know you met at a conference, and then now you start exchanging emails and all that. So it depends, I mean, one is to just say, "Okay, well the pandemic won't go on forever. Eventually we will be back at conferences, and we will be meeting new people."

But you can also just start reaching out to people virtually, there's all kinds of ways to create more of a digital water cooler, certainly following people on social media, leaving comments on the articles they've posted on LinkedIn, leaving anything that is thoughtful responses gets noticed a lot. I feel like I know people who comment on my blog frequently, even though I don't, but if I met them in person, I'd feel like we were old friends, just because they've been contributing thoughtful ideas for years. And there's so many ways to do that with people now. And I think those things will grow more as we come out of this, but you can certainly lay a very strong foundation now.

Matt Hall (18:08): I really like in your TED talk, you mention a professional you interviewed, and she talks about how she doesn't say that she's too busy, she had a different response.

Laura Vanderkam (18:20): Yes. Yeah. She said she would never say that, "I don't have time to do X, Y or Z." Instead, she would say, "I don't do X, Y or Z because it's not a priority." And her point was that this is more accurate language. I tell you, I don't have time to iron my sheets. I do, if somebody was going to pay me a $100,000 to iron my sheets, I would totally do it. Right? But that is not going to happen. There's certain things that just don't rise up the priority list, because they don't, they're not big enough priorities for us right now.

And sometimes that can be hard to acknowledge, because there are things that we feel should be priorities, or the world at large wants to be priorities, and they aren't for us right now, and that's okay. I think we can acknowledge that, but having this mindset puts us back in charge of our time, as opposed to being at the mercy of some larger force that don't have time for X, Y, or Z. Well, you do. It's just you're not doing it right now. You have time to write that novel in quarantine, you just don't want to.

Matt Hall (19:17): You've studied so many successful people and written so much. At one point, I remember you told me this, that one of your most popular books you didn't think was your best book, but it had the best title. It was What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, because high achievers want to get out there and get some advantage before everybody else. But in studying all the people you've studied, and studying time logs, and in all of your writing, and work, what do you think is sort of the common denominator you see in the people you view as truly successful or truly high achievers?

Laura Vanderkam (19:52): I think that achieving good things with our time requires being mindful of our time, because time keeps passing, whether you think about where it's going or not. And so it is very easy to spend time on whatever is right in front of you, whatever is clamoring for your attention right now, or whatever seems easiest. And so in work, we're always putting out fires. At home, we do effortless stuff like watch TV or surf the web. So actually thinking through our time before we're in it, allows us to make different choices and say, "Well, instead of just putting out these fires, what are the important things I need to tackle in my professional life? And where can I make time for this? And in my personal life, what would be the high quality things I would enjoy doing that would be meaningful and enjoyable for myself, and the people I care about. And then where can those go in my schedule?"

And people have different styles. I mean, there's some people who like to wake up early, they could do great things before breakfast, and there are some high achievers who are night owls, and there's some people who like to plan every minute, and some people who just have sort of more blocked ideas of when things will happen. There are some people who are total type A, and then some who are maybe more creatively oriented, stuff comes from anywhere. But thinking about our time is really the key to using it well, and so I find that tends to be the common denominator among people who are using time well.

Matt Hall (21:17): In your Before Breakfast podcasts, they're almost all three to six minutes, five minutes, something like that. How did you make that choice, and what's the reaction compared to say, longer form stuff you do?

Laura Vanderkam (21:31): Well, it's just different. This was a decision made jointly with iHeart Media, who's the producer of that podcast, that they had this sense that people might like short tips, but that they needed to be frequent then, in order to keep people coming back for more of them. And there's economic things too. I mean, a short podcast that you run two ads on is you can do a lot of them. Right? But I like it. I mean, it's like blog posts, only it's the audio form of them. And so I found it fairly easy to transition into writing those from what I'd been blogging about for years, or advice columns I'd been writing for years.

I really enjoy doing a conversational podcast. I have one, Best of Both Worlds, with Sarah Hart-Unger, the two of us talk work and family issues every week. And that's a lot of fun, but it's just different. If you want to listen to something that gives you a little shot of adrenaline in the morning to get going, then Before Breakfast, listen to it while you're drinking your coffee, and you'll take your day from great to awesome. But if you want to hear people chatting about something, having a conversation, then you're listening to a different sort of podcast.

Matt Hall (22:39): Why do you think 11 million people watched your eight minute TED talk? What magic did you capture?

Laura Vanderkam (22:46): TED has a great reach. So, I mean, I don't think if I just posted it on YouTube myself, it would have that many million views, but I think we are all looking for ways to spend our time better. We would all like to maximize our free time, and that was hinted at, in the title, and there's some good stories in there too. I talk about a lady who was tracking her time for me, and in the course of the week she was tracking her water heater broke, and so there's water all over her basement, and this emergency requires seven hours of her time, which if we try to find seven hours before the week started, we probably wouldn't have been able to find seven hours, but when we have to find seven hours, we do. And I think a lot of people can relate to that, and the idea of, we want to treat our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater, choosing to find time for them first, treating them with that urgency, and then we get great things done.

Matt Hall (23:37): Yeah. I really like that story and recommend anyone listening to this, take eight minutes and watch Laura's TED talk, it's awesome. Can you think of an example in your life where you've taken a long view, or where patience and discipline has really paid off in your own life or career? Part of reason I'm asking this is because I really like the style of how you present productivity and time management, because it doesn't have this sort of restlessness about it like, "You have to extract every ounce of value out of every second of your time." It feels like it has an ease about it. There's a patience about it. And so I'm wondering if you have an example where you've taken a longer view, and where patience and discipline has really paid off.

Laura Vanderkam (24:20): Well, I think whether I'm patient or not, a lot of my career has required me to sort of take the long view, because nothing has been overnight success on anything. I mean, my first time management book, 168 Hours, got some great coverage. The sales weren't particularly swift at the beginning, but the good news is, it sells often as many copies now per week as it sold when it first came out, and that's 10 years ago. So that's great to have something that is taking the long view in that the book will still be around, and still be selling 10 years after it comes out. Building my speaking career has also required patients in the long view. Right now, a particular amount of patients in long view, because I'm not doing really much of anything in terms of going places and giving speeches, but I'd been giving time management talks here and there for years.

It started coming a little bit more frequently, more frequently, and then I got to give that TED talk, and that really helped boost it up another notch, and kept going from there. I do trust it will come back eventually, but I'm imagining there's going to be at least an 18 to 24 months hiatus here before people want to go stand in a crowded conference hall with 3000 of their closest friends. So we'll get there eventually, but it's going to be awhile.

Matt Hall (25:33): Did that part of your career come naturally, the being onstage part? The writers I know in my life aren't necessarily keen to being on stage, but you seem to do it very well. Did that come naturally?

Laura Vanderkam (25:46): No. I mean, nothing comes naturally. Public speaking is a skill like anything else, and so the first time you do it, you are utterly terrible at it, but you get better the more you do it. You think about what audiences react to, and by the time the pandemic hit, I was doing enough speaking gigs that it wasn't like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to get up on stage in front of a thousand people." It's like, "Yes, because that's called Tuesday." And so if there's any sort of stage fright associated with it, it's gone by that point. Which is good, because it's a great way to reach a lot of people.

Matt Hall (26:20): Let's quickly jump back to a couple of quick hitting things from the new corner office, what do you mean when you say, "Manage by task, not time"?

Laura Vanderkam (26:30): I mean that we should think what we're intending to do for the day. What are the three to five tasks that are most important for me to get done today? List those out, assign a time to them if you want, but when those tasks are done, then you've had a good day, and it doesn't necessarily matter what time it is. I mean, generally it's going to be about 5:00, because most people get pretty good at figuring out what fits in eight hours, but the point is not that it was exactly eight hours, because you're not commuting somewhere and commuting home. It doesn't exactly matter when it happens. It's more that these are the things that make a good day, I'm going to do them, I'm going to relax, I'm going to do it again tomorrow.

Matt Hall (27:07): Yeah. I like how you say, "Results matter more than how long you're sitting in your chair." Because I think in the old framework, how long you sit in your chair is really the answer.

Laura Vanderkam (27:15): Yes, exactly.

Matt Hall (27:16): What do you mean when you say, "Get the rhythm right"?

Laura Vanderkam (27:18): We want to think about how a day starts. And as we talked about earlier, how the day ends, because otherwise people will just work into the night. So figure out when you're going to take breaks, how you can manage your energy, and you will get a lot more done.

Matt Hall (27:32): What does it mean when you say, "Build your team"?

Laura Vanderkam (27:35): Well, working at home doesn't mean necessarily, always working by yourself. You want to make sure that you are nurturing those relationships you have with colleagues, with people outside your office too. And making sure that that is still a part of your day, even if you're not seeing each other in person.

Matt Hall (27:50): Think big.

Laura Vanderkam (27:52): Well, there's nothing small about working from home. In the past, we were thinking about it as taking your feet off the gas, that this is a work-life balance accommodation. But in fact, when you work from home, you can still think big and think strategically about your career, like how to become a thought leader, for instance, how you might become known for something, and then be able to leverage that into more opportunities.

Matt Hall (28:14): And last but not least, you say, "Optimize for well-being."

Laura Vanderkam (28:18): Yeah. Well, the good news about working from home is that you can make some healthier choices if you wish to. A lot of people trade off commuting time for exercising time, because that's when they would be working out, you have the opportunity often to eat more healthfully, just because you have access to your fridge, and your leftovers, and your stove, and all that stuff for lunch that you might not add an office.

You can just work how you work best, and there are lots of mental health upsides in being able to go outside at the time that's best for you without worrying about those group time norms, or working in jeans, or having a great view out your office window, because you control it, as opposed to being in a cubicle somewhere. So you want to take advantage of those strategic opportunities that working from home presents.

Matt Hall (29:01): I love it. And you've changed the frame or the way I look at working from home, or working remotely, or working from anywhere, and I appreciate that. I'm sure the listeners will too. If people want to learn more about you, where should they check you out?

Laura Vanderkam (29:14): You can come visit my website, which is lauravanderkam.com, or check out the Before Breakfast podcast as well, that'd be a great way to get into something with just a few minutes.

Matt Hall (29:23): Yes. And you have a very soothing voice in that podcast. I like it.

Laura Vanderkam (29:27): Thanks so much.

Matt Hall (29:29): All right, Laura, thanks for doing this, and thanks for your contribution to helping us manage and make the most of our time. I love it.

Laura Vanderkam (29:36): Thanks for having me.

Matt Hall (29:37): All right. See you later.

Laura Vanderkam (29:38): Bye.

Buddy Reisinger (29:41): Wow. Amazing stories. I'm Buddy Reisinger, a longtime member of the Hill Investment Group Team that helps translate Matt's thinking into action for our clients. If you want to learn more about evidence-based investing or gaining back weeks of your life, head on over to our website hillinvestmentgroup.com, and order a complimentary copy of Matt's book, Odds On, or even better, set up a complimentary call or meeting, and we look forward to hearing your story.

Matt Hall (30:21): Please note, the information shared in this podcast is not intended as advice. The intent is to share meaningful experiences. I am likely not your advisor nor wealth manager, nor financial planner, and my opinions are my own, and not necessarily shared by Hill Investment Group. Investing involves risk, consult a professional before implementing an investment strategy, thank you.