Of course, in years of being cold, I have a few tricks up my sleeve. One of my favorite is to wash my face (and hands) with hot water. At one point I identified that the reason I never wanted to wash my face at night in the winter is that I didn’t like splashing cold water on my face. But the sink gets hot water too! Same with washing my hands. No need to just tap the cold faucet (the default) if the hot one is available.

It was 38 degrees outside this morning. Sadly, this means I probably won’t be able to wear my summer flats and jeans much longer. My daughter and I were discussing this when I drove her to the bus stop the other morning. She had been eager for fall weather, but she clarified that she liked just a little coolness, not being cold. But I guess it was inevitable!

I’m not sure if I’ll get to a content round-up post later this week or not, so a few highlights: Over at Before Breakfast, I interviewed Cal Newport! I’ve been running a longer episode every Wednesday where I interview someone about their time management strategies. He really embraces October and has quite the display going on his lawn…Please give that episode a listen.

Over at Vanderhacks, the post behind the paywall this week is about “Planning fatigue is real” — but here are 7 ways to take a beat and get back on track. I also reminded people that “If others can, you can.” Other, normal people tend not to have access to some secret font of knowledge that isn’t accessible to everyone else. You can probably figure it out!

I also listened to the Christmas Oratorio this week. I wound up listening more than once because the first video I’d chosen wasn’t really my favorite. It’s a frequently performed work so not everyone does it as well as it could be done. I wound up settling on the JS Bach Foundation version. I’m a big fan of the opening chorus to the 5th part. So catchy. That powered me through a strength training session the other day. I should be going to a Bach concert this weekend put on by an early music group, so I’m looking forward to that.

Meanwhile….I took my 14-year-old (almost 15-year-old!) to a running store last night to get fitted for better running shoes. He’s been running on the high school cross-country team for the last few weeks and his coach pointed out that he was over-pronating so we went to get some more stabilizing shoes. It was quite the involved experience (he tried on like 8 pairs!) but we left with one he liked. And several pairs of running socks because, hey, we were there.

It’s been fun to watch him do this sport, which I’m now realizing would have been a fairly accessible high school or middle school sport to do. Like on an average day they do some warm-ups then go for a 45-minute run. That sounds like a very pleasant way to end a school day! Not that dissimilar to what I do now.

Although I’ve actually been running in the morning more lately. Now that no one usually needs to be up before 7 a.m. if I pop up early enough, I will go run 2 miles on the treadmill. I’ve been aiming to do some speed work during these sessions. I’m really, really slow (my “speed” is like 7 mph) but hopefully it will help. I do another long run this weekend, but probably not quite as long because I’m planning to do a hike with an area trails association too. Hopefully tonight will be fairly chill (such as it ever is) because it’s been a long week. I went to two back-to-school nights this week, but those are now over. We hit all four! I also feel like I’ve been doing a lot of paperwork. The two high school kids will go to NYC with their school music program this spring and I need to register for that and I was somewhat blindsided by the paperwork volume for an activity for the 9-year-old. I signed him up for an after-school robotics activity, but since it’s run by the official aftercare provider, I had to do everything to register for that as a childcare agency – like the various agreements, vaccination record, getting the app from the childcare provider with a pin to check him out (as did everyone else who might check him out), etc. Whoa.

In the meantime, here’s this week’s content… Over at the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community page, I just posted the recording of our book club discussion on Jodi Wellman’s You Only Die Once. Membership is $9/month and we have multiple discussion threads going each week on issues related to work and life. Please check it out!

The Before Breakfast podcast featured my longer episode where I interview Sarah Hart-Unger about mornings and routines. I also have an episode advising to “Check if you’ll need to reschedule” and one on the idea to “Start a goal club.”

At Vanderhacks I wrote that “Complaining is boring.” I suggested that one might “Map out a busy season.” And behind the paywall I noted that “Procrastination happens” — but here are my tips for getting things done anyway. Next week I’ll be starting my video posts (I believe usually on Tuesdays but we shall see).

Thanks for reading!

Lately, however, some changes in the podcast industry have nudged me to try to shake things up. So I’m excited to announce that, starting today, Before Breakfast will feature one longer episode per week. These episodes will likely run on Wednesdays, and will usually feature an interview with a fascinating person sharing advice on how they take their days from great to awesome and how we can too.

I’m launching the series with none other than Sarah Hart-Unger! Not only is she very productive, she has lots of great tips. And, I’m pretty used to talking with her, which I figured would make me less nervous for producing this thing.

So if you’d like to hear her morning routine and life hacks, go check out today’s episode. And please consider subscribing to Before Breakfast. Each week features four new short episodes, plus the interview, and then on the weekend I rerun “classic” episodes from the past 5.5 years. We call those “Second Cup.” You know, morning coffee themed…

While I’m shaking things up…I also decided to add a video component to the Vanderhacks newsletter. Starting next Tuesday, I’ll do one video post a week, sharing a quick tip. You can go here to subscribe.

Thanks for reading, listening to, and watching my work! I really appreciate it.

And while you’re here, how about a September-themed sonnet, called “Remembering”…?

September blue is different, brighter, thin,
the sky a hue that August can’t quite match,
the trees aglow as light begins to bend.
A wisp of wind blows stronger, tries to catch

a twirling leaf, the first of many — scouts
the landscape, finds a spot on cooling ground.
I find myself nostalgic, hereabouts,
recall Septembers past, those days first bound

by early night, by waning heat, by gold
on sidewalks — I once walked these pathways, new.
I watched the city brace itself for cold,
I pondered dreams that only I then knew.

What can I catch? A leaf, a hope, I may —
but others, just like autumn, drift away.

Photo: Believe it or not, this was one of the promotional images I snapped for Before Breakfast back when it launched in 2019…

I was booked to give a speech in Tampa at 8:50 a.m. on Thursday. I planned to fly from PHL to Tampa on the last direct flight on Wednesday (4:15 p.m.). The plane boarded on time, but then there was some issue with an armrest that had to be repaired. Then maintenance took a little longer and we were slightly delayed. Then we needed to be rerouted around storms that had moved in (possibly during our delay? It was unclear.). The route that air traffic control gave us required more fuel than we had. The pilots and air traffic control went back and forth on this several times. No route was agreed upon, so after almost two hours on the tarmac, we went back to the gate to get more fuel. Alas, at that point, one of our pilots timed out. We all had to deplane as theoretically the airline was finding a reserve, but that did not happen. About 30 minutes later they canceled the flight.

So, what to do? I wound up rebooking on the 7 a.m. flight that got in to Tampa at 9:30. This was, of course, after the original speech was to start, but the hosts agreed to move things around. My speech would now start at 10:15. Fortunately, the venue was only a short distance from the Tampa airport. I’d talk, get back in the car, and with any luck make my original flight home (12:05 p.m.!)

It did seem like much could go wrong in this scenario, what with being on the ground in Tampa for only 2.5 hours, but after the Wednesday disaster, Thursday was fairly charmed. I left my house in Pennsylvania at 5:30 a.m., and was back home in my house by 4 p.m. In between, I went all the way to Florida and back! And gave a speech. We finished at 11:05 a.m., I got in the car and made my flight with plenty of time to spare. Hurrah.

I’m doing Mommy Day #3 this weekend, which will be a bit more elaborate, so more to come on that…

My Medium column this week looked at How to Stop Wishing Time Away.

The Before Breakfast podcast covered several topics, including “Don’t be minute wise and hour foolish,” that “Your friends are my friends,” and why you should “Track time while off the clock.”

Photo: I have no actual photos of Tampa, so this early morning picture of the parking lot at PHL will have to do. I always snap a photo of my car’s location and what deck of the parking garage I’m on. I think I’ll remember but…I don’t. 

In any case, the scripts are all 500-1000 words, with most of them hovering toward the lower end of that range. I wrote the first handful separately, but I’ve kept one word file of Before Breakfast episodes for all the fully edited scripts from then on. The running word count on that file recently crossed 600,000 words.

This is an interesting number. It is roughly the number of words in War and Peace. It is not quite as long as the King James Bible (which clocks in at a bit under 800,000 words) but it is a lot of words nonetheless.

One of the items on my current List of 100 Dreams is to write an epic novel. On some level this is a daunting goal. But I have apparently recorded something equivalent in length over the last three years. It’s just that instead of a sweeping multi-generational character saga, it comes in the form of bite-sized productivity advice.

There are lots of ways to view this realization, but one positive approach is to realize that if I do want to write that epic novel, I could use a similar method. Just write 500-600 words every weekday for three years. Or for two years (I don’t need to actually hit 600,000 words!). Producing scripts has not been onerous. I can often write or edit 2-3 during my 12-year-old’s 1-hour fencing class. Fiction is harder, for sure. The organizational work will be a lot more intense. But the process is still all habit, execution, and patience. Just like anything else. Time passes. Words add up. The question is what they add up to.

(In case anyone is wondering, blog posts also add up. WordPress says I’ve published 2750 posts over the years. If each clocked in at 300 words on average, and my guess is the average is higher, that’s over 800,000 words right there…)