Designing 2019. Ep 74

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, 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 seventy four, which is airing for the first time on New Year's Day, twenty nineteen. So Happy New Year's everybody. We're recording it a little bit before that, as we always do, but we are speaking into the future and trusting that twenty nineteen is starting wonderfully. Let's hope I like New Year's Do you like New Year's? I love New Year's It's one of my favorite holidays. There's so many good reasons I love the New Year's Eve celebration. Even though I usually stay up to the ten, you don't make it to midnight and then I woke it up by the fireworks, because around here a lot of people set off fireworks. But that's okay. I love breaking in my new planner. I love the fresh start. I just I love New Year's that's the fresh start is always good. I mean, even if it's sort of silly and arbitrary and all that stuff, you know, still what isn't arbitrary? Really everything is arbitrary, so you may as well take advantage of any of these these new starts. But yeah, I think it's gonna be a great year. I'm excited about this year. I mean, you know, you know what I get to open up with the first week of the year, Mommy Days inspired by you. Hey, that sounds exciting. Yeah, so I'm gonna take Actually, I'm doing a variation, so I have one Annabel day, one Cameron day, and one me day. Ah. So the baby gets a lot of time anyway, so that gets plenty of time, but I don't, and neither does Cameron. So that day I'm gonna the Annabel day. We've already decided she wants a manicure and she wants to go to a cupcake store. Keeps changing his mind, and I am going to get a massage, So sounds a good day. It's good week. That sounds like a great week. Yeah, well, I'm trying to figure out we're gonna have to when we start the new year. We then have Alex turning four shortly thereafter. He is a January baby, and I assume he may want his own party. This year he started going to classmates birthday parties, and he will definitely want his own. People want his own party, So I have to plan that, which is you know, I guess I have a December birthday. So I've always felt sort of like, you know, it's like people don't care because it's in December and everyone all of you has, you know, parties to go to and things to do. Anyway, but that I think January might be even worse because it's people coming out of this. Everyone's over it, everyone's over and then all of a sudden it's like another gift giving occasion, like a big deal over this. But I guess people don't at least schedule as much. So maybe we'll Yeah, the calendars are usually much more empty, so you can have your pick of you know, founcy houses. Some bouncy house we will go to. I'm sure it'll be great. Yeah, So twenty nineteen, we've been doing our goals. Are designing goals, don't I didn't do all of mine for twenty eighteen. I didn't wind up actually hitting all of them. I'm saying this even though I probably have you know, a few days left in twenty eighteen as were recording this. But I'm just going to give up on that. But twenty nineteen, fresh Start. I like to do quarterly goals and set you know, one in each of the three areas of career, relationships and self. And if anyone reads my blogs or books, you know those are like the categories I like to use for life planning in general, Like you plan your weeks on Friday afternoons, set three categories for the next week, your priority, career, relationship, self. I just think it's a good root break for thinking about life in general. I kind of expanded on that, Oh you should, okay, Well, I just I well, as you know, I like quintiles instead of quarters because I just like how I don't know, it's like school to spring break. That's one and then that's like the rest of school, then summer, and then I don't feel like the rest of it can all be one. I feel like that's two, like one until about November first and then like an end of your quintile. So yeah, even though I started with the post maternity leave thing, I kind of liked it so like that. Yeah, and I agree. I didn't get to everything, but I got to a lot of things. I mean it helped for the framework. And instead of your three categories, I expanded that a little bit because what did I do? I did work, which is really more like podcast and blog like that, like my side hustle type of work, and then personal family and then Josh I separated those out, so a little more expanded, but same same deal. Yeah, now that makes sense. Did we want to talk through them? Sure? All right, why don't you start with why don't we do it by? Do it by quarters? Fun? Go back and forth? What's your Q one? My Q one? So I'm doing quarters, Sarah is doing quintiles. If you're hungover from New Years, maybe you just don't think about it too hard, all right, Q one career Well, Juliette School Possibilities launches on March twelfth, so you're out for that, and try and do my best to get it out there and get a you know, figure out who will read it, who will buy it, how can I bring it to as broad an audience as possible. A little bit more complicated because it is fiction yet still dealing with time management. So in the best of both worlds, I would get people who are interested in fiction and people are interested in time management, as opposed to the smaller Vinn diagram overlap of the people who are only interested in both of those topics. So we'll see how that plays out. Relationships. We're going to Disney in February with the six of us. There'll be a all four kids trip, and we've done a lot of trips with only the big kids, and this one will be with Alex as well, which I'm sure he'll love. But the thought of oh, he's the perfect age, it's going to it's perfect as long as, like, in the next two months he stopped running away from me in public places, so we'll say, what though, You're not going to get abducted at Disneyland disney World, and they're really good at finding kids and there's like people to help everywhere, so if he does run away, he'll be okay. Yeah, hopefully he ran away from me once at another park and he was so upset about it, like he was crying too. Like that, I hope, But I just feel like Disney is so well run that like some uniform person would find him like immediately and be like, you know, like I think. I think it's actually more safe you than most other situations, most of the parks. That's it. Yeah, And then my self goal is to get outside for twenty minutes a day through the winter. Oh beautiful, that sounds great. I may not read all these because some of these are like boring work things, or I may not go into detail. But I'm going to start a research collaboration that I've been procrastinating. And by the way, ours is from my Q one is January first until spring break, so that takes me to like the end of March. I would like to work more on my book proposal, hopefully complete my draft. It's kind of half a quarter done, I don't know, but it needs to be fleshed out big time. I'm going to get back into working out as a more of a habit in a structured way. I'm going to do my mommy days and we are I'm going to do one overnight with Josh like he called it our post baby moon. Ooh nice. So you're done pumping once I'm done, exactly, and that will definitely happen in that cointile. That's awesome, all right. Q two for me career, I'm going to revise my novel that I wrote during November, that that National Novel Writing Month, novel that I wrote, Relationships. I've decided I want to be a little bit more proactive about getting together with friends and persons when I'm setting for Q two. So I guess April through June get together with somebody in person every two weeks at least. That's six get togethers for that quarter. And then on the self front, I want to do some yard upgrades slash renovations. Last year we redid our kitchen and master bath or I'm really happy with most of how that turned out, but the yard. The yard is one of those things that we didn't do a whole lot with because the people who built this house did a lot of landscaping and had really thought it through a hired professional landscape or design whatever. Like it's well landscaped, it's just that it needs to be maintained and some things are kind of falling apart, and I think could use an update. So that's going to be my Q two goal for that. I feel like yard that'll pay off nicely. I mean it's like you're going to look at every single day and it's the kind of thing that like you don't want to go out every single time and be like, oh that thing I need to do. Like, I think you'll enjoy it. You know, that's a non boring renovation that I've been just broken. Why is it still broken or like I think it's a you know, green growth on these stones that needs to be gotten rid of. Yeah, I think it's It's definitely gonna look good when we're done, So I'm excited about that. Okay, Well my work one, I'm going to onboard a new class of residents. That's a big deal. I think I would like to make sure I have changed my blog ad network by this time, so I have that as a goal. I want to curate my wardrobe because that needs some serious help, so at least by the end of Q two i'd like to have that done. I want to figure out the kids camp, which is really tricky because I just don't know when our move is actually going to be And finally, I would like to celebrate our anniversary and my birthday together somewhere with josh Oh fun all right. Q three Career. I would like to get to a million downloads for this podcast. Hopefully we'll hit that before that, but we'll see. We totally, will we totally, but you know, at least by the two year mark. Relationships. I want to do mommy days with all four kids in the summer again. That's always fun to do. I think they enjoy it, at least they certainly seem to, so may as well do it again and self, I want to do a solo overnight retreat somewhere. Maybe does this mean like a survival retreat like not like I No, I meant more like rented condo somewhere, and that is beautiful that I can, you know, spend some time probably writing. I'll probably be writing, but maybe you know, doing career planning. Thinking it's like a luxury cabin kind of situation that could be fun by myself somewhere, maybe do some hiking and all that good stuff out my my Hiking solo has sometimes a tendency to go awry. In general, hiking solo is a high risk. I do. That's yeah, maybe just like putting yoga or I went on a writing retreat summer of twenty seventeen Bear Mountain Bear Creek Resort, which you may know by Pennsylvania one of the ski mountains around here. But in the summer they have hiking trails through the back. And I didn't bring the map because I thought, like, this is you know, it's small, like it's a small property. I'm not going to get lost. And I think five miles later, I was trying to figure out where I was. I was just like, I didn't have anything with me, no water, nothing. Eventually I found my way back to the hotel. But always bring your map, bring a flashlight, bring water, just public service announcement there and because your phone might lose signals, you won't have signal on your phone, which is the other reason. All right, Sarah, how about you? Where are we? Q through? Q three? Q three okay? Oh, I was looking at yours. That's why I was like, what what novel? Okay? Sorry? So I Q three. At work, I'm going to focus on improving our med student elective and our resident rotations for the blog, et cetera. I'm going to go back to focus more on that book proposal. I'm going to for the personal side, do a trip with my college girlfriends, probably just a weekend for the family, a family trip. I have to plan and enjoy that because this is the summer. And then finally with Josh, I think I thought we could host a gathering together in our new home, which hopefully we will have by that, Yes, have new home. That could be a have new home. I just don't Yeah, that's it's so hard. I didn't put that in any specific quintile because I just don't know when that's gonna happen. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing I actually try to mostly with these goals. I try to put stuff I know that I'm more in charge of. Yes, you want things you have control control over. I mean, so or you know, I would think it is highly likely to happen. I mean, I guess, I you know, people could completely stop listening to our podcasts and then we wouldn't hit a million. But I feel like that's something that the trajectory should hit it right, Like so so things that are not you know, crazy to which is a different school of goal setting thoughts. Some people think you should put like pie in the sky stuff. No, I don't think either, neither of us. They're all like nor very yeah. Yeah, and these things I actually want to execute on I'd like to do and good stuff will come and happen. That isn't on here, right, there's going to be completely incrementalism though too. It's like you know what you do a little bit, and you like build on that, and you build on that and you build on that, and like you get somewhere. Yeah. So these are things I want to do knowing that hopefully other opportunities will will come as well that I didn't even think to foresee, Like, I don't think that, know, goal setting and planning is in opposition to new opportunities coming. It's just that you want to do both. And so all right, Q four and then you can do both of your Q four and yeah, career, I want to come up with my next book idea, which you know, I could always just do another National Novel Writing Month novel, I guess during that time, but probably the next nonfiction book idea unless I'm going to turn completely into fable writing relationships. I want to do an overnight trip with Michael somewhere and you know at some point in there self, I think I finally want to get back doing voice lessons, and maybe that will be when I it's something I want to do in the near future, and I just haven't you know, I think by putting it in Q four of the year, that gives me sort of time to think about like what school or teacher I'm going to find, and then you know, gear myself up for it then, but you know, right now, don't have to do it immediately. Totally cool. I like that one, Okay. Q four is sort of the back to school to November first, so I was gonna have my work focus be like there's all these sort of loose sense things, and I'm like, I would like to just make this more efficient in this way, but that takes time, as I'll do later. So I'm gonna that's gonna be like my efficiency push for play. I guess this isn't really blog related, but I wanted to spend that doing photo albums, kind of archiving, getting my own you know, that's sort of my kun mari and getting our house together, that kind of a thing for personal get a massage, take a me day, for family, to get to know my kid's new friends and try to host three play dates, and then my Josh goal to go to a concert together. And then finally with Q five, I put question mark half marathon training committe. Yet my work this is like so meta, but I'm like plan for twenty twenty. It's the goal for I, like my play is to try Nano raimo for the first time, to take a person also like sort of retreat day to decide what I'm in for the next year and sort of formalize that process, to do another Philadelphia visit and for family, and then finally have like like a couple's massage slash slash year summit day with Josh usually time that around his birthday. That's like a thing, the year summit. I like that idea December. Yeah, I'm always dealing with the reality of my less into planning husband. I think the idea of a summit would calling it a summit might scare him. Maybe it sounds to work really related, and I think we'll call it a you know, conversation. We happen to be having just a casual, little casual, a little what are we doing with her without your planner? And he's like, wait, you tricked me. You just have to like give him a lot of cocktails and first and see what happens. Yes, exactly, Well, this is awesome, should be a good twenty nineteen. And a lot of this stuff is within our ability to do. It's so you know, it's a kind of always go for that for goals. But yeah, only as sixteen minutes. Wait, I have I have one more question before we go to our qure. Any how about your streaks? Are you going to continue your streak? I'm sort of planning on it. I mean, the time tracking, I see no reason not to write. That's just I mean, even if I forgot a day, I could then reconstruct the day, so that's not a big deal at all. The running would be more. The question, which I've sort of always said this is like, you know, if it stops, it's not the end of the world. Like I'm not you know, feeling like you don't want to like die on that not on that you know, die on that hill. But I mean, I've enjoyed it so far. I like the challenge and say, well when am I going to run today? And the honestly, I always feel better after the run than I do before, and I think it does wonderful things for my mood, which you know, life doesn't always do that for you. So in that sense, the daily dosing of the running endorphins is not a bad way to go about doing that. So I think that I will continue it for the foreseeable future. With that, then I'm very relaxed about any other running goals, like I basically have no other running goals. I've done, like the broad Street ten miler, but that doesn't know, you don't have to train for that if you're you know, a reasonable like if you run a reasonable amount, like running ten miles is actually just not that big a deal, especially if you don't have a time goal. You don't have time slower ten miles, especially since I have been doing longer runs of like six to eight miles like every couple of weeks or something. And then you know, I'm not going for any speed goals either. I've decided that that's just not you know, the streak is where I'm going with the running, and that I will just let it be at that. And you know, I'm two years into it now. It's been fine if it If it stops, it stopped. But I can always say like, hey, I've gotten two years into the running goal. Two years straight of running. That's that's pretty good in life. That is amazing. I think I just want to continue my flossing streaks. On October first, twenty eighteen, streaky. Yeah, yeah, it's a streak. It's a streak. Well, you have good floss now, right, Like you've discovered the secret. Yeah, the glide glide. It's all about the glide. It's about the glide and not being pregnant, because that's what stopped me before. Maybe I just failed to understand the connection between those two. But I was like, oh, it just makes me gag and like I just don't want to like throw what it is? It like when you're pregnant, you don't have to do anything. I don't know, I can't even like, can't even think about doing gotcha? Gotcha? Oddly enough? Okay, all right, let's do our question. Yes, all right? Do you want to read it? Sure? Because it's more Yeah, it's for you, okay. Question. So early in a different podcast, we addressed a question about a mother wondering if she should go back to work, Like at some point between three and six months, she was trying to choose. Basically, she had some flexibility from her firm where within the three to six months she would want to go back anyway. I'm wondering if anything has changed in your answer now that Sarah has transitioned back to work after her last maternity leave. This listener says, living in Canada, I cannot imagine going back at three months, but I realized it is a societal norm in the States. Having listened to Sarah's struggles going back to work, do you feel that another three months would have eased the transition or would you still go back at three months if you were looking at this again. I think it's been pretty obvious from the way I've spoken that if I had had the option, I would have taken more time, even if some of that had been unpaid. I mean, it's hard because if I were purely clinical and I knew that there would be absolutely nothing lost from like an opportunity perspective, then yeah, I would have taken six months or even like a year. I could have done like podcasts, other stuff, you know, nursed, not pumped, not have that stress of having to fit that in. And I know that's like a not a have to, but a want to. But that said, you know, it's sort of in most cases, it's not a real choice that you get to make. Most companies, you're either I guess, if you don't think it's going to have any impact on your career path and you want that time, I say, go for it. And then otherwise you just sort of have to weigh the pros and cons of what's offered, and for many of us in the United States, it's kind of a moot point anyway. So I guess it's hard for me to answer this. But if anybody was wondering if I had had the option to take more time, would I have Yes, I would have see now listening to you, I mean because I have a slightly different perspective it, because what you just described that you'd be doing if you took the year off is what I was, like, job, Yes, So it doesn't in my case, like you know, there's no external force Like I mean, obviously I want to, you know, keep earning money and keep having a career and all that, But it was more that, like what I'm doing did not really seem as hard as I think. If I had to have been in an office for eight hours a day, and had to deal with me heart pumping and all that. That would have been the hard. Hard parts for me were the pumping and then to some extent, the sleepless nights and then also taking overnight call when I was also being woken up by a baby. That was terrible. I mean it's like doubling your call, you know, and then people wondering like why am I finding this hard? It's like, well, you're only getting your phone calls. You're not getting like the baby calls and the phone calls, and then expected to go to work and like smile the next day, like it was. It was hard. Yeah, so I emergencies in the middle of the night, so exactly. So if I had had a more it wasn't like, oh I didn't want to do anything. I had the brain power, but I wanted to do things where I could like do it on my own time and the like nurse the baby on my brakes and like that. That's how I would have preferred to do things. But in my industry, that's just it's not a thing. So my industry comes with many other perks, so you know, it's wonderful for other reasons, but flexibility with having babies is not is not on that list. Yeah, I mean there's I would say that's an upside of downside of medicine. As we've been talking with lots of you know, people in that career and so and people may be listening to this where considering it as a career, I mean a downside at the moment. Yes, a lot of the maternity leave is not that great. On the other's hand, Sarah was able to go to eighty percent without it being a big deal and can scale right back up if you'd like, right, So that's exactly a big perk of medicine. It's all. Yeah, I don't know. I mean I think that it's so it's so individual, and I would certainly say if people want to get back to work before the absolute last minute, you are allowed to. Like that doesn't make you a bad mother, Like, let's not that out there right now, because I think that's what is playing into a lot of this as well. And it has nothing to do with that. I mean, you are some other project that Yeah, narrative, I would have I would have loved it. I mean, I mean even as soon as like a few weeks, I'm happy to do work from home types of things, and I enjoyed having breaks where I was, you know, doing something purposeful and giving Genevieve to ar nanny and for example, recording a podcast or something. And I agree there should not be shame in that that if you can do that and you enjoy it, like, you should go for it. And if if what you're doing is less flexible than that and you don't want to pump, you should enjoy that too. Yeah, but you don't actually have the pump with a yeah, right, Like you absolutely don't have to. It's a choice. And I didn't for I didn't for Cameron at all. I'd pumped for six months. I mean not even six months. I pump for three months, Like I went so back to work at three months and pump for three months and then stopped and that was fine and he's fine. It was just, you know, a choice I made that was different this time around. I don't know. I don't think one was right. It was like I wanted to have a different experience. So you just have to kind of think about what you want and go for it, and there's no shame in it. I don't feel like one way was better or more right than the other Yeah, and it's just what was right for me at that time, and sort of thinking about it within the sort of what you know companies can do. Obviously, you know, think there's some good evidence that if you offer slightly longer leaves you get more people returning, which is because it is hard at three months in a way that it's slightly less hard at say like five months. So if somebody is within you know, the hr field of a company is thinking about policies, it wouldn't be that much more expensive to add on the extra two months and you might totally get it back in terms of your your new moms not quitting on you, which you then have to replace them, which is, you know, hiring is just such a pain in the butt for anyone who's who's been through that process, and it's expensive and it's difficult, and people don't work out, and you know, you'd much rather keep people who are you know are good, and if that requires like paying a little bit extra and giving the person an extra month or so, very good return on that money going in, you know, sort of there might be ways of kind of phasing in people's returns too, even if you do have sort of this hard, Like we can only do three months letting people you know, if your work is amenable to this, and obviously thereahs really isn't, but like work from home for the next three months, right, so that the person could still like nurse their baby on breaks, for instance, without the pumping apparatus and all that. That might be a way to kind of work within that framework too. Or and then you know, maybe six to nine months, do half in the office and half home, and then you know, by nine months be more back into the office full time. That might be a way that you could still have some of that productivity if you can't get the longer leaves, but working with the person as well. So lots of ways to think about this, all right, Well, we're at twenty five minutes and we had vowed to make this one under thirty so that everyone can get back to enjoying their new years. But before we close, we need to give our first love of the week for twenty nineteen. What is your love of the week? Law? Oh gosh, I got to look at my list. Now, where did I put my list? We're probably watching tons of this right now. So one of the things I got from my kids for Christmas is Popular Mechanics for kids. The DVDs for season three and four. So we've long had the DVDs for season one and two. We got them before one of our epic Indiana drives in the minivan driving from Pennsylvania out to Indiana. It's it's something that all four of them are willing to watch. It's it's nuts. So popular mechanics for kids. That's hard because you have quite the Spanish ages and so the watch and see, like you know, they study how aquariums work, or how rockets work, or how you know, like stunt cars and movies work or something like that. So episodes that are different there and it's kind of funny and it's led by kids who are like, you know, eleven twelve years old, right are the hosts of it, so you know, relatable in that sense. And so yeah, we had season one and two and the DVDs were getting like scratched through stuff because you know, shockingly minivan where is hard on movies. But so I bought seasons three and four the kids got for Christmas and we're probably enjoying that now, so cool we own no DVDs were streaming from and then the cloud, and it's like we don't watch no, no, we just don't like the physical media. We just like to be able to pull it up, you know, from Amazon or like we have although we didn't we like have half of our movies on iTunes and half of them on Amazon, and like random ones are on Netflix. So it's not like maybe maybe do you know to watch in the car? Maybe we have an older car? Is that well? No, when we don't have a thing in the car, like if we're going on a long trip, we just give them my patch and then they don't do like we don't have a thing. Yeah, Josh was really against that for some unknown reason, but I mean we give them my path. I sometimes it's total misery, right, like if one headset isn't working and three are like, oh my goodness, Like that is not a scene you want to go through. I feel like you would need to have a stock pilot headset. But's a trip and they're all quiet and we could have like adult conversation on the front seat. But that's funny when you SAI DVDs because I was actually like in Target and I was like, who buys Okay boxes? So that's the answer. Someone please me, I vile. All right, what's your love of the week. My love of the week is my twenty nineteen planner, my hop Bunichi Techo cousin, not the event, but the one volume and the fact that I resurrected a cover from twenty sixteen because it's like this, like black leather, soft leather, super sleek and professional looking, and I'm just super excited to break that bad boy bad girl. I don't know, I think she's a girl girl in for the New year. Sounds good? All right? Well, this has been best of Both Worlds Episodes seventy four, celebrating New Year's and talking about what we're going to be doing in twenty nineteen. So tune in next week for 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.