When Things Don't Go As Planned (and Why You Should Plan Anyway!)

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and eighty eight, airing in early February of twenty twenty three. Our topic is when things don't go as planned, because, as we all know, life does not always go as planned. And we say this as people who love to plan. However, I don't think there's nearly as much tension between those two concepts as it is often made out to be. That you know, we plan even though life doesn't go as planned, and there's really still some upsides too planning when life doesn't go as planned, which we will talk about. But speaking of things not going as planned, Sarah recently recovered from a rather lovely illness, which, of course, illnesses are never really planned and they never really come at perfect moments. Right, How did you deal with that? Yeah, I like tested positive for everything. I mean it was more I wanted to see if I had flu because my daughter I thought had flu in her class had flu, and I was like, maybe I should do tama flu or just know if I have flu in case other members of my family get sick, so that they could do tama flu. I went to Walgreens. I got a swab. It was very easy, and then they called it. They're like, you have flu A, you also have COVID, like, oh, flu na and then rona. Stay on NPR up first, which is like, as you know, or you may know, it's like the only news source that I watch or listen to. The like leading story was people are getting multiple viruses at once, and I was like, yes, I'm on the pulse of what is happening. I am cently, I am trendy, I've been trying exactly. That was definitely a reminder that life didn't go as planned. And you know, this was like mid January. I was so excited, all these goals, all these fresh dreams for the month. My best Ly Plans Academy was about to launch, and I was kind of like, oh my god, will I'd be too sick to run that after I've you know, worked so hard to put it together and have all these excited participants, and it ended up working out. It was a rough week. I'm not going to lie an about was also sick. Nobody else got COVID. She had flu, I think, and I'll never know, but her COVID was negative and she was quite sick, and her whole class had flu, so I think she had flu. But she was able to stay home with me, and you know, she's now going to be eleven in April, so having a kid that big stay home with you is not the same as having like a four year old stay home with you. And she was just able to like read on the couch and hang out. And I was lucky enough to get sick over a three day weekend and then was able to convert my in person patients to telehealth and thankfully was well enough to do that tell health by the time my first patient day rolled around, so I didn't actually end up missing any work. I phoned in a very short best Laid Plans episode. I'll say if there was anything that got compromised, it was that it was a very rough day. I think it's a ten minute episode on being sick and best Laid Plans. Academy ended up going really well because I had done a lot of the preparation already in advance. They had taken a lot of planning and putting materials together, so thankfully, I just needed to be well enough to give my presentation and I was. So that's kind of how it worked. And I'm really like, I need to knock on some hard surfaces or something. But nobody else got sick in the family, so it turned out to be somewhat of a best case scenario. But of course none of us ever planned to get sick. It's never fun and it always disrupts something. Yeah, and this is airing in February, which is of course illness central the whole winter months, fair, I mean our northern hemisphere listeners. Obviously with g brillion, people will get this in a couple months in their winter, but the seasonal illness thing is just crazy. And you know, people who have not had young children don't really understand how frequently they can get sick. I was finding some links about this. The Chop Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Their literature very cheerfully announces with like exclamation points that young children can get sick with respiratory or you know, gastro intestinal viruses six to eight times a year, like you know, exclamation point, like you know, you may be surprised to find out that it was, like, well, this is nice little like literature they give out to parents, but it's true, and we often then need to deal with it as the parents of these kids. We can get sick ourselves, and you know, as a parent, you're sick caring for sick kids. It's all kinds of fun. Something that is probably relevant for our listeners. There is pretty good evidence that in mom dad families where both parents work, women are far more likely to be the ones missing work in order to care for sick children. I was looking up some statistics on this for an article I was writing. There was a Kaiser Family Foundation survey from several years ago. The good news is a plurality of families. You know, maybe it was like forty percent of working fathers in like thirty five percent of working mother said it was a shared responsibility in their family that caring for sick children. But if there was a situation where one parent was more likely to miss work to care for a sick child than the proportion of women who said my partner does that was only three percent. The proportion of men who said my partner does that was thirty nine percent. So we're talking you a thirteen to one ratio in terms of you know, who winds up missing work for caring for sick kids. So, you know, not saying that's right or wrong. People might have different things, you know. I'm sure some might be preferenced some as gendered assumption. It's all over the map. There can be multiple explanations for any given scenario. But the reality is that as a mother who has a career, often you do need to think about how life will not go as planned. And even if you you know, even if your partner is staying home with your kids, even if you know you have I don't know, twenty four to seven nanny coverage, there's things that can still go wrong in life. So you want to always be thinking through this to decide how you can keep moving forward on your goals and make life feel livable. So We're going to go ahead and dive right into you know, how we should plan given that life doesn't go as planned. Which first, Sarah, you're going to make an argument for we still plan, right, Yes, I definitely think we should still plan. I mean, just what you just said with children getting six to eight illnesses a year, pretending that that doesn't have and not thinking through what is you know, what are the moving parts going to have to look like when it does, is like kind of booling yourself because we all know that, like, it's much much more likely that there's going to be multiple rounds of things like this than not. It's actually other than back in like immediately post pandemic day when everybody you know, but then other things could disrupt stuff. So I guess you know, obviously not a shock coming from someone who has a podcast called Best Laid Plans, but I think planning for things is really really important, particularly looking to see like what could go wrong and how could I deal with that? Looking a few weeks ahead into your calendar, into your husband partner's calendar, and like figuring out like if a kid is sick, if you lose childcare, what would happen. I'm not going to say that, like we have a detailed conversation every single week about like what if, what if, what if? But we definitely do take the time, especially at the start of each week to think about, like especially if there's any signs that a kid could be getting sick, exactly who could miss which day, who's more flexible on which particular days. I would say I probably bear the brunt of a heavier load, but there are times when my husband's more flexible and he is able to you know, maybe start his case is late so that I could do a morning clinic and then we would swap and like really really thinking through those things in addition to thinking about things like you know, where would you go for care, Like do you have an urgent care close by that you've identified? Do you keep your medicines at home? And like stocked with kind of like the basics, maybe just even just children's IB your prof intel and all like whatever you tend to use. Like thinking about the different scenarios and having those conversations and thoughts before they are happening rather than when you're stressed in the moment is always beneficial. I've never regretted taking that time or having an extra bottle of producer in my cupboard. Yes, you're not going to regret having a infant tile and all in your house, So just go get some more if it. You know, if there is as an infant person under six whatever in your house, you want to have that around. But even just backing up from this, you know, I've seen sometimes people make the argument of like, well, what is the point of planning given that life doesn't go as planned? And I mean I think that is such a false choice. I mean, for starters, yes, life doesn't go as planned, but a lot of plans do in fact happen. And there's also certain things that are never going to happen if you don't plan. I mean, like if you wanted to go back to school and get a degree, like that does not just randomly sneak up on you, Like you know, it's not going to be like whoa next thing? I knew I had my master's. You know, who would have seen that coming? Like, you know, there are certain things that if you want to do, are going to require planning, even if life doesn't happen as planned. I mean, maybe somebody will call you and say, like we're about to give you and your family and all expenses paid trip to New Zealand. Like we've arranged all the logistics, you know, and we called your boss and got the days off, you know, but probably not, probably not. So things going to require planning. Most things in the next week can to a degree be anticipated, So we can always use the phrase plan tightly and then plan lightly, So you know, the next week or two can be fairly tightly scheduled, with some exceptions. We'll talk about this in a minute, but then further in the future, it can be thought of more as intentions rather than discrete plans. Sarah talked about asking about what could go wrong. Yeah, I mean you do this though you're when you look at your calendar, you you ask what could go wrong one hundred percent. I look for where people kids have overlapping activities and who has to drive basic things. I mean, even this week, I anticipated that we would not be finished recording in time for me to take Genevieve to her dentist appointment, and I arranged to meet our nanny there so that I wouldn't have to worry about a tight turnaround like things like that always and the closer I get to a given you know, day than the more detail that I'm going to get with that kind of thing. But I never regret looking ahead. It's always better to have thought through a few extra things than to be surprised by something that really should not have been a surprise. Or like if you're you know, my car, there's a light that goes on when it needs maintenance, but there's also a light that goes on before it needs maintenance. That's like, your car is going to need maintenance. I love that light. I love that light that lay helps me plan. I mean I could choose to ignore it and be like, maybe it won't ever, you know, say I need it, but in reality it's always going to So this is my chance to go ahead and book my service appointment. Nice. Nice planning ahead. Yeah, part of my Friday planning I looking forward to the next week or two and seeing what could go wrong and maybe scanning a little forward for that. I will caution people, you probably don't want to be thinking too many, too detailed on logistics more than a couple of weeks ahead of time, just because so much is unknown. That's the tension between you know, life doesn't go as planned, and I've talked on this podcast before about the amount of effort I put into thinking about a certain weekend in May and twenty twenty. You know, I was thinking about this in like late January, early February, before everything went down, and I was like, Oh, that's going to be a really rough week when we've got all this stuff, like you know, we're gonna need multiple trade you know. And then, of course none of the things I was worried about actually came to fruition in May of twenty twenty because they were all canceled right because of the pandemic. I mean, there are other things we had to worry about that weekend, but not that. So that doesn't mean that if you could see that you're going to have to stay late at work next Thursday and that is when your partner has arranged to meet his old college buddy who's in town for the night, that you probably shouldn't think that through like how you two are going to solve that. That's something you should think about three months, four months from now. Maybe maybe a little less so for random one off things like that. But yeah, even I'm always thinking about what could go wrong, and maybe this like a pessimistic way to view through life. But recently we hosted Alex's birthday party at this like climbing gem, and it's not easy to get a time for a birthday like they're you know, they do a lot of parties, and Friday and Saturday and Sundays book up very quickly. I mean, if you want to have a party on like Wednesday afternoon, fine, but you can't do that with eight year olds. They have stuff going on. So I had booked a party for Saturday early evening because I thought that'd be a good time. And then, of course the Eagles wind up in the playoffs, and I knew that there were four games that weekend. Three of the slots would have been fine. One of the slots would have like decimated the attendance at the party, right probably, I mean some people not you know, but even like my husband was not gonna be happening because he had bought tickets. But you buy tickets not knowing when the game is going to be for the playoffs anyway, So I was definitely thinking that through, like what are we going to do if it turns out that it is the time that he isn't It wound up not being it wound up being that his party was five to seven pm and the Eagles game was at eight fifteen pm that night, so it was all good. My husband and Sam left from the party like fifteen minutes early to get down to you know, the Eagle Stadium, and it worked. But you know, that is an advanced level thinking through based on the I see that one might not have crossed my radar because like, I don't follow pro football, So then I would have been really sad and at my party with no guests. Yeah, no, I was. You were like, why don't it why I don't even understand why? Why is nobody here? Well, so I was like figuring this out. Like once I saw what the schedule is going to be like, but we didn't know when the teams weren't playing, I was like, okay, when are they going to decide it? I was like, is it either going to be on the Tuesday or Monday? But it turned out to be the Monday when as soon as they were done with the other games, or even after one of the games were done, they declared that the Eagles were going to be playing the Giants and at that time, and so then I was like, okay, now I can send out the email to everyone, you know, saying confirm if you're coming. Looks like we'll be done well before the Eagles are playing, you know whatever. So you know it's only a few people who not even the guests. Is like, people will be like, oh, well, my husband's going to the game, I'm switching who's picking up or whatever. But you know, wound up being fun. Anyway. On that note, let's take a quick ad break and then we would be back with more on things not going as planned. Well, we are back talking about life not going as planned, particularly thinking about this in winter with kids getting all sorts of seasonal illnesses six to eight a year. As we learned, however, that is not the only thing that can go wrong in life. You know. We can have professional sports games that people are going to watch to watch happening at the same time as your kids' birthday party, or perhaps not as it turns out, but in general. So we've talked about two things. First, you still need to plan. Second, ask what couldn't go wrong? Three make backup plans. So I hadn't really thought of it. I guess we were just going to have fewer people at the party. I wasn't going to be able to move it at that point because we had to book at like six weeks ahead of time forgetting the spot. But you know, in general, we think of this with some stuff already, like if you were planning on going to the beach with friends who are in town, and then you know, what are you going to do if it rains, Like a lot of people do at least somewhat think through that kind of thing, coming up with an option B, or like call schedule, sometimes you have somebody on backup call in case sometimes something happens to the initial person on call. Yeah, no, it's always good to think about what option B would be, not only just so things don't go terribly awry, but often if you come up with a really cool option B, then you're not even disappointed necessarily when option A doesn't happen. Right. Yes, although I'm thinking about twenty twenty and I'm like, there was like no option, there's no such I'm thinking about all those canceled trips. I mean, sometimes you can't, but most of the time you can, or I guess even in those times, people did scrape together some decent like family staycations or you know, zoom alternatives to in person gatherings and stuff. So I guess people had to be creative and Option BE in those contacts may not have been quite as appealing as Option A, but better than nothing, I guess better than nothing. Again, I've started, you know, some of my contracts. It's like if you you know, if there's like flight cancelations, right, you know, you can in fact give it virtually, and sometimes that would be Option B. You know it would be a suitable Option BE, but sometimes you know it's not. You have to move the speech around if you're flight is canceled or something like that. But I was remember in October of twenty twenty, you know, we've figured out that probably trick or treating wasn't going to happen, even though now we know that probably would have been fine, you know, just like you're outside. I mean, people didn't really know all this stuff the earlier in the in the pandemic, but we wound up going to so many, like other community events that were outdoors or that were socially distanced with throwing candy at the kids or whatever it was, or you go through a parade in your car, through different things, and we went through so many of those that I'm not sure the kids even noticed that they didn't go trick or treating. Like the sheer volume of candy that had come up in our house and the number of occasions on which they wore their costume was such that it was like a full Halloween schedule, and that was on purpose, Like that was the option B. I was like, you know, this so stinks that if we're not going to be able to do option A trick or treating, like, let's come up with everything else we could do. And it was actually, you know, pretty fun. So yeah, always be thinking of Option B. Leave open space in general. So this is tranquility by two. Yeah. Yeah. Rule number five is to create a backup slot. And I think of this as like a rain date. So if you get invited to, say a summer outdoor event, there's often a rain date for it. And this is just an incredibly brilliant concept because the organizers are acknowledging that much can go predictably wrong outside I mean the rain date name, and yet there's no question of whether the event will be rescheduled or for when it will be on the rain date, and so that vastly increases the chances of the original event happening, even if not at the original time, And so in life we want to think of creating a lot more rain dates for things in general, and sometimes it actually has been specifically a rain date for things I want to do. I remember a couple summers ago, I was trying to work in everyone's mommy days. You know, Sarah and I have both done this. They take each of your kids somewhere for a day for something fun that the kid wants to do. And one kid wanted to go to an amusement park, which, of course, again many things that can go predictably wrong with attempting to get to an amusement park, And it turned out that the day that we planned to go there was like a tornado warning for that area, so it was like not going to happen, even if like the safety issue, and there would have been miserable with like pouring down rain and everything. So I had intentionally left a weekend day pretty open, and I had asked ahead of time, like, Michael, well, don't you put anything either, like you're going to be with the rest of the kids on that day. If this day gets taken away from us, during the week, and indeed it was with the tornado. So we went on I don't know if a Saturday or Sunday, but that had been set up as in fact a rain date, so we still got to do it. And it's the kind of thing like, you know, you can envision like lots of disappointment happening if we hadn't done that right, because we had said we were going to do this and there's a tornado, Like the kid be really really disappointed if they can't go, and then your schedule is blocked up for days and there's it's probably two with camps or whatever else. But we had both left this open in order to have it. Yeah, go, yeah, I just love the concept. I love your wording resilient schedule, like you are you should trademark that or something. I think I should trademark that. But okay, I had never heard that phrase, and I think it's just a great descriptor because I think some people's impulses to create a very non you know, a resilience schedule that like every you know, it's packed into every moment, and sometimes I myself been tempted to that, but I think I've gotten better or the years to really leave some blank space. For example, you and I never record like two seconds before you know our episodes are due. We always leave a little bit of leeway. In general, I feel like there are certain days of the week, like Friday afternoons and Thursdays where I try to just leave some like blankness to just clean up messes that probably got started. Or like if I do have someone off somebody who wants to meet with me that I actually have some time available in the near future, I don't have to give them a date like you know, four weeks in advance, and then clinically. I've talked about this, but I figured out that I need to just request random vacation days throughout the year, like in addition to like the days I know I want to be off sometimes to have if there's like a long stretch and I haven't booked anything in terms of paid time off days, I have to actually reserve them. Because the thing is the way we schedule so far out with patients. If I don't have somewhere that's like open to move patients too, then if something did come up, it's like, oh well, sorry, Sarah, I know that's four months in advance, but like, you know, if we move those patients, where were going to move them, because you're boked until eight months in advance. And it's like, oh my god. So I figured out that I just have to like leave some of these random one offs and worst case scenario if I decide, oh, I don't actually need to use that day. I mean, first of all, I can usually always talk myself into using a day, but if I can't, then the nature of what I do is that usually there's many patients we could put in as like, hey, we have an opening, would you like to come sooner? And we could fill that day without a problem. So definitely love the concept of a resilient schedule. And I think part of that is just don't pack it like sardines with one thing right next to each other. Don't pack your zoom meetings, you know, eleven to twelve and twelve to one, Like it should be like eleven to eleven forty and twelve to twelve twenty five or you know, whatever it is. Yeah, I feel like this is when people get really into scheduling. At the beginning. It's often with like young people, and so there's some kids and you know, teens who start getting into scheduling right and then they create these every five minute schedules for their evening or it's like no, no, life doesn't go like that. That's but you have to discover that often on your but you allocate five minutes to X and then five minutes to why, you won't stick with any of it. You won't remember it. But you know, sometimes people are still doing that as adults of like thinking they will get through all these things. But the more open space you have, the better you will be able to accommodate stuff that goes wrong. You know. I attempt to leave Fridays more open because then if something takes longer than expected, there's a place to put the spill over. I can still get to it on Friday without having to bump it to the next week, which will probably have crises of its own. You know, if an emergency happens and something gets bumped from earlier in the week, it can go on Friday. Or if something really cool comes up right like that I didn't know about at the beginning of the week and as some brand new opportunity, then I've got space on Friday to schedule anything that needs to happen with that to bring that to fruition. So definitely something I'm trying to do. I know not everyone can do that. I'm well aware of that. That's the first thing people say, well, I can't leave all of Friday. I'm not saying you have to. I'm saying put some open space in your life. So maybe it's you know, an open hour a day. Maybe it is two afternoons a week are mostly open with just a little bit here and there. But but whatever you can do to get in the habit of leaving a little bit more open space. It sounds like, well, how could I am so busy? You'll be less busy if you do this, because then you won't keep bumping stuff to the next week. And that's what makes us feel all tightly packed, is when we're still catching up from the previous stuff as we're trying to deal with this stuff that's you know, immediately in front of us. So I just realized it's like, it's like a time emergency fund. It is a time emergency fund. That's a that's a good way to refer to it because and in fact, in one of the people who was in the tranquility by Tuesday Project who learned the strategy of building a more open space. She says, I felt almost too relaxed. Isn't that quite a line? But she said she did everything she was supposed to do that week right, Like everything got done. So clearly she had just been living in this state of panic in her previous life without the space to put the spill over, and you know that creates its own problems. She had been living the equivalent of paycheck to paycheck as far as time was concerned. And having open space is like having that emergency fund. So when your roof springs a leak, you are not going into debt. You were just paying it, Move it on with your life, love it. And then finally I think we wanted to talk about the idea that like sometimes we had to like shift our perspective on plans changing. And this is partly for me because I loved a plan and I don't like when plans change. But sometimes I have to recognize, like what is an actual emergency and what is more crafted or artificial. So for example, moving a podcast recording or even gasp, releasing an episode one daily like not actually an emergency. Nobody's bleeding like it's okay, or you know, moving a day of patience to a different day, or like having to not even go on that trip with my husband that I was so looking forward to and then we both got COVID and drove home and it like sucked. Like as frustrating as those things are, like perspective, We're healthy, we made it through. We can take more trips in the future. That wasn't our last chance. And sometimes to just you know, remember that things that seem very rigid and very well, this is what I had planned, Like, you know, the worst case scenario is not actually that bad. Obviously, there are things in life where the worst case scenario, you know, is that bad. Getting your kid a refill of a medication that keeps them alive, for example, that's like an actual emergency, but like moving your family trip not. And then part of that is celebrate when things do go right. And sometimes we don't pause to acknowledge this that like, oh that went well, things did go as planned. You know, I should note that, especially if we're prone to think of, oh, you know, why even plan, Like I can't stick with the plan, so why even bother me? And there's many things that do go right. I mean, you know, after a couple of years of you guys having a COVID Christmas issues, Yeah, you had a great trip and nobody was sick on that trip and nobody got hurt exactly so. And honestly, if I had had to choose whether my July trip got messed up or that trip got messed up, I would have picked the July trip getting messed up. So there you go. You win some, you lose them, but you win some. You win some, you win some, and in fact sometimes we win some when things like go. I mean, you're talking about things don't go as planned. I mean that sounds like, you know, we've been mostly talking about it in a kind of negative context of things coming up that are not planned, that are taking us away from what we had hoped to do in a somewhat negative way. Although I mentioned earlier it's sometimes a good opportunity would come and you want to have space for that too. So maybe have that mindset as well, that sometimes things go unexpectedly right, like you're not planning for them, like blind luck can happen. You know, we've been pondering that. This February, I was mentioning this Sarah that on February fifteen of two thousand and three, so exactly twenty years ago of this month, I walked into a bar in New York City that was my second bar of the night because I was young and did things like that then, you know, and I was a friend was bored and texting base. I was like, okay, fine, I'll leave this party I'm at and go hang out with her, and then started talking to a gentleman at the bar, and you know, here we are twenty years later, so with a lot of kids, with a lot of kids. You know, it's a good thing you didn't mention that at the bar. I probably would have been fleeing out the door unexpected working out. I worked out. Yeah, yeah, blind luck, you know, blind luck that this podcast existed, ready to start a podcast when I was writing about starting a podcast. So like, hey, you just never know. Here we are five and a half years later, right, you know, So all these things that wind up being a big part of our lives that we don't necessarily see coming, So leave ourselves open to opportunity as well when things don't go as planned. So we're gonna do a real quick check in on our goals and habits. We've been hearing from a lot of folks about our Goals episode. People who listen to this podcast just love goals, you know, it's the we're into that. I love it. I love that they love it. And yes, I've gotten like comments from people I know in real life that listened to that episode, and I was like, wow, awesome exactly. So we thought we'd do like a rapid fire like update, like a very checking in. Okay, so one month in, Sarah, what have you done? I tracked time for two weeks. I have appreciated some art. I went to a movie in the theaters. I saw a man called Auto and I cried. I have been listening to more music yesterday this like, oh, I don't remember the name of the band, but it was like this Welsh band and I'm like, who knew? I liked Welsh Welsh music like it sounded like Irish dancing. It was awesome. Anyway, I'll put in the show notes or something. I have been watching more TV. You remember. That was my goal, although it was mostly when I was sick, but still are library routine is like on point, loving it, and my house is not any more organized than it was at the end of twenty twenty two. But I have high hopes and I am not giving good. Well, my house is slightly more organized, Like I'll go ahead and you know, do my little like shout out for myself here, because I have been assigning myself like one small spot per weekend, which I think is a good pace. Like you're not gonna you can tell your something like, well, I'm gonna get through all the boxes this week You're not, because like you still have everything else that you have to do, you know, you grocery shopping or laundry, you know, deal with the kids' activities and all that, and then you want to relax. Like the amount of time you have for discretionary projects on any given weekend is incredibly limited, so you want to make sure that it is focused. And so I said, Okay, I'm gonna do like these four boxes in the living room this weekend, and then I'm gonna do the boxes in the other corner the next weekend, and then I'm gonna do this stuff in the laundry room the next weekend. And each weekend I have and I have gotten through that, and so now we have far fewer boxes in the living room. It is almost ready for the lamps, which we learned in the previous episode. It needs we are getting stuff out the door, so I'm hoping to, you know, assign myself a few more spots over the next time. But a goal was to get the boxes unpacked, and I would say that there are significantly fewer boxes now than there were when we recorded that episode. So yay strength training. I am meeting with the trainer as discussed in the previous episode, so yay on that. I am also reading ten pages a day of my Jane Jane Austen. I'm in her Juvenilia, although I'm finding out that some of her half finished work has been put in the Juvenile even though she might have written it later. So I've still going to have to organize how I read the stuff that is not in the sixth novel canon that people know of. Stay tuned. I'm sure those of you who are Jane Austin scholars were hanging on every We're just waiting to hear how I would deal with that issue on the reading, and maybe you have ideas and so our Jane Austen scholars can write me about that. I've been writing two lines a day and my sonne every day completed. You know. We're recording this in sort of late January. I've completed three, halfway through four. It is very doable. I'm excited about it. I will have written fifty two sonnets probably at the end of the year singing. So I'm doing a little bit more of vocal exercises, probably not as much as I thought I would. But here's the funny part. So I'd talked about signing up for voice lessons. I wound up signing my son up for voice lessons. Somehow he wanted to do it. I got my act to gather to get him signed up, like inside a week with the particular teacher that his high school choir director had recommended. We've got in touch with her, got him on her schedule and all this stuff. I've been talking about doing this for six years, have not signed myself up. So maybe that's my sign. Maybe I don't they've been not doing it, but I don't know. My chamber choir is going to start singing and soon, so I'm excited about that. And in terms of couple connection, like having more time with my husband without care kids. We are still eating lunch together many days that we were both home at noon. We've started going to the gym together some weekends. That's fun. You know, if we have a sitter, we might use that time to drive there together and you work out and then drive home together. We've had some date nights, although humorously we took Sam along for one recently. It wasn't supposed to be. So I had this idea as like a fun family adventure, like I would take the kids who are open to different foods out for Chinese food to celebrate the looterar New Year. That seemed like, you know, kind of a little adventure. Yeah. Yeah, And then the number of children kind of dwindled who wanted to do it, and finally it was just Sam, and so I was like, well, you know, I guess my husban and I could just go out, but since he wants to go, I guess we'll take him. And so the three of us went out to eat and we went to a Pan Asian place and they actually got sushi, but oh well, I got Sashwan chicken and Wanton soup, and I think it was probably special for Sam. I mean, obviously kids his age aren't going to like say that out loud, but like that's super cool. Yeah, yeah, it was fine. It means if we were going to take one child, he was probably the right one to take for that because he actually ate ate the sushi. But yes, that was our event there. So there's a little quick update on our goals. Hope everyone is sticking with theirs. So moving to the question section. This is from a listener who is listening to our Goals episode. Like I said, we got a ton of mail about this one. Anyway. She had a question about advice for transitions. She has toddlers, so that term is always on top of our mind because those of us who have toddlers, you know, you can't just suddenly spring on people necessarily that they have to get out the door right now, or start telling them like okay, and a little bit after this song is done, we are going to go put our shoes on. Anyway, she says, I'd love to start fitting in little bits of reading during downtimes in the day, in a few minutes in the car as I'm early for pickup or something, and also get into a reading habit at night. But I find that when those few free minutes present themselves right at the end of the day. I feel kind of brain dead, and the idea of opening a book or the kindle app and remembering what was going on last time I read and reading just a few more pages doesn't sound appealing, and I end up mindlessly scrolling instead. Admittedly, I've always been much better at a deep or focused flow style of work, and I really crave that kind of time to read again, but I recognize I'm not in that season of life. I realized that I tend to do the same thing after workouts in a little before where I just kind of sit absent mindedly in silence and end up adding ten minutes to whatever I was doing. Should I just accept these wasted minutes as part of the activity time or is there a way to be more efficient in transitions? So, Sarah, you had some thoughts about using these transition times for reading and her you know, doing that. Yes, I was curious where she came up with the idea of using them for reading specifically, and whether it's because she really wants to read more or finds it enjoyable to read in small chunks, or if she's trying to achieve some sort of moralistic ideal or keep up with the number of books at some instagrammer reads for or she's been saying a tranquility by Tuesday rule number nine, effort full before effortless. Yes, yes, and I mean I get that, But at the same time, she's kind of describing the situation where she does not enjoy reading in small chunks and she's like finding it really hard to concentrate, and she's like not getting into it. And I guess I'm just wondering if maybe, like maybe she needs to read other times and then in the small chunks of time there's something else she could be doing. Now, I do understand when the default activity is scrolling. I totally understand why that might make you feel icky and not be what you want to be doing. But you know, like maybe there's something else. Maybe it's like a short walk, Maybe it's just closing your eyes and taking a micro nap. Maybe it is sending a text to a friend, like maybe there's something else that you would enjoy in those transitions, rather than forcing yourself to do something just because you've heard that other people enjoy that. I mean, the other thing is that I didn't really you know, mention this, but like, are you choosing books that you actually like or that you feel like you should be choosing, And maybe there is some lighter fluffy or fod or that you'd be more excited to pick up in these really brief moments, Like maybe you have a memoir, celebrity memoir and your kindle app that like is your go to for these really tiny bits of time, and maybe that would be more fun than kind of delving back into a complicated novel. So I don't know, I guess I would just question whether this goal is necessarily worth having, or like, is it to like, what are you actually trying to achieve here? Yeah, or maybe even read something like essays or poems or whatever that's designed to be read in very short periods of time. She was also asking, though, of course that time before you go about that that can be prime reading time. But if you're feeling really brain dead at that point, I would suggest aiming down in your genre of literature as well, and just if you want to be reading, maybe this is not the time for I don't know, late stage Virginia Wolf, like just something else, and maybe if it's a little bit lighter or easier, even magazines, because it's still reading, you know, but it feels a little bit less like it's demanding necessarily, and if you do want to read and want to use those longer chunks of time as you're mentioning, which usually before bed, it can be a longer chunk of time. I would imagine that she's probably getting at least, you know, twenty minutes, which I when you have young kids, twenty minutes is a long chunk of time. Let's not talk about like having three hours or something, because yes, you're right, not really in this stage of life most likely, but you could do that. But she had made a point about transitions, which you know, I'm going to throw this out to our listeners as well, because I think this may be actually one of those personality framework things I have discovered as I talk to people about how they spend their time, that some people seem to I'm not gonna say need, or they just sort of want or feel it is harder to transition quickly from one thing to another. And I know that many of the people who were trying working from home for the first time during the pandemic experience a lot of sort of tension around that because it's like you're in your personal life and the boom, you're in your work life and there's no transition between the two, Whereas a commute, even if people generally hate commuting, provides that transition and it gets you in a different mental space. And so there are ways around that. Like you can obviously create transitions. I mean people would go, like walk around their block and then come in and like you create a fake commute, or like go run an errand at the end of your work day, like you pick up milk and then come back and like, oh, now I'm in a different space. Or you know, even just listening to certain music or like you know, when you write your intentions, that creates a transition. Or you light a candle. I don't know, a certain scented candle makes you think like now I am in work mode or now I'm in home mode, or whatever you can do to create a transition. But I tend to think that there are some people who move slower from one thing to the other. And if you have no this about yourself, or you've noticed that you are particularly quicker at transitions than maybe some other people you know or other people in your family, I'd love to hear about it. So write into us about it and maybe we'll see, like what that demarcation is in there. I've always moved pretty quickly from one thing to another. I don't know if that's just having work from home forever and having lots of kids and thus needing to transition quickly. But I don't help you too, though, Sarah, Right, you do transitions pretty fast. I do, and I have very little patience for those who don't. So I probably need to work on this and think about that a little bit, because some of my children might enjoy longer transitions, especially like in the morning or at bedtime or and stuff like that. So that's Yeah, it's a really interesting one. We could do a whole transitions episode. I think this might have to happen. Yeah, well, sometimes at this stage of life, you have to make quick transitions, I think with young kids, And maybe that's one of the things that makes people feel kind of agitated during the young kids stage, as if they do need more transition time and they're not getting it because of the circumstances of life. So something to think about. We'll explore that more, all right, Love of the week, Sarah, What do you have? So I wrote a blog post like a month ago or so asking for reader's suggestions for their favorite underwear because we just did our upgrade episode last last week. But or you know, I was I wanted to upgrade my underwear, so I Boughtnory for a number of years and it's great, but I just like wanted to see what else was out there, and a lot of people suggested Lululemon, which is not like I didn't think of them for that, but I ordered a couple of their styles, both the under Ease and in visiware, and I think they're great. They're like very minimal in design, super comfortable, and yeah, I like it underwear. Maybe I needed to go for that. I've just been buying random packages on Amazon. So although speaking of which I mean, this is the issue, I gotta say Amazon Prime they have of I mean, I know there's issues, but people have figured out. They have figured out how to make life easier for busy families with anything. I mean just the party favors for Alex's party came seemingly instantly. The trainer I was working out with, you know, we talked on a Thursday and he sent me links of some things to buy and we met for the first time on Monday, and they were all there, like everything was there before our first session. It's just it, you know, makes not having to go to the start your mind. And they knew you wanted that before you ordered. They may, well I don't. It's true, they could have. I mean they heard me talking about it. I don't know. I don't have the lexap or anything like that, but yeah, who knows. But they figured it out. So I had my equipment. It was all ready to go on Monday when we had our session. And that is pretty pretty darn fast because otherwise I would have had to go to the store over the weekend or something and I did not have to. All right, well, this has agreed. They've gotten me out of a lot of parenting last minute school issue. Yeah you poster board exactly. This has been thinking of things not going as planned, like what what do you mean? You have a science fair project too. Sometimes things don't go as planned because other people don't plan. Oh imagine that. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.