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864: How to Design a Career Portfolio that Beats Burnout, Navigates Disruption, and Future-Proofs Your Career with Christina Wallace

How to Be Awesome at Your Job

CHAPTER

How to Have a Creative Morning Productive Groove

With three young kiddos, I find I'm spending most of my morning hanging out with them. Some things happen in terms of travel where I had the opportunity to just wake up and start doing some work at seven AM. And it's like, wow, I didn't even know. It worked really well for me. The question is: Is there an opportunity to either create a version of this that gives you that creative morning?

00:00
Speaker 2
That's good. And I'm thinking right now, just about experience I had recently. So nowadays with three young kiddos, I find I'm spending most of my morning hanging out with them, watching them, taking care of things. How old are they? And they are five, four, and
Speaker 1
six months. Ah, I've got a three and a
Speaker 2
one year old. Yeah. And what's funny, I don't think, and then some things happen in terms of travel where I had the opportunity to just wake up and start doing some work at seven AM. And it felt absolutely amazing. It's
Speaker 1
like,
Speaker 2
wow, I didn't even know. I thought, oh, I guess I used to do this a lot. I don't think I even remembered that that was a thing I did. It worked really well for me. And I have been not doing that. And I missed it. And so in a way, that's kind of trick is like, well, what's to be done? I mean, there's probably some clever things to happen there. But I guess Christina, where you're nudging me here is one response to that internally is, oh, hey, man, that's just the stage of life we're in. You know, we got to take care of kids in the morning. That's where it's at. But I'm thinking with your puzzle piece analogy, perhaps you might advocate it's worth putting some serious thought and effort into thinking, is there an arrangement by which this creative morning productive, energized groove can be deployed in that direction because it's worthwhile to do so? Yeah.
Speaker 1
I mean, I think your example is perfect on two dimensions. One is you get to see sort of the difference between what is it like to have that friction versus just to hit your flow? And I think from like a metaphorical standpoint, that's exactly the difference between being in a room that wants you and being in a room that doesn't. Or wants, you know, a version of you, if you would like soften these things and change that thing and like don't use too many exclamation points in your emails. But in the same way, I think that's a perfect example of like you are at a stage of life where your mornings, for the most part, look a certain way. And so the question is, is there an opportunity to either create a version of this that gives you that creative morning, maybe some sort of an arrangement with your partner or figuring out how you can set your morning up differently? And if you were working at a company or somewhere else where you had a manager, a boss, there might be a situation where you say like, Hey, can I adjust my hours? Can I think about maybe working from home in the morning so I can get the kids out and then I can have a couple of hours before I have to like sit in traffic or a couple of days from home, right? Like there's a way to be thoughtful about how can I construct the context of how I do my work to maybe lower some of that friction and give me that opportunity to hit slow better. So I am now a professor for this stage of my life with young children. This is what fit me better than running a startup. And as part of what I need, I have the same morning experience getting my kids out the door off to daycare, all these things. I can't teach before nine 30, like it just doesn't work. And I'm in the position to say that and to proactively design my day to fit the needs that I have for this stage.

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