Juliet's School of Possibilities. Ep 84

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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 eighty four. Today we'll be talking about a project that's very dear to me, a little book called Juliette's School of Possibilities, which is launching today March twelfth, if you're listening to this episode when it first airs. So yeah, this book has been in the works for quite a while, which you're just Sarah and I were talking about this earlier that I gave her an advanced copy, but the advanced copy came out long time ago, so it's been a while, right, it has been. And I also feel like you were talking about the concept of it for like forever, although I think it turned into something different from what you initially envisioned. Yeah, no, it was. I had actually, well it's a long story. I had written a story that was called something similar to Juliete School of Possibilities. Okay, it was like something school for domestic arts or something, and it was it was a National Novel Writing Month, novel many years ago that when you write fifty thousand words during November. And so the way this all happened is July twenty seventeen. There was a couple of days there that was actually a big momentous for many reasons. I mean, one is this this woman named Sarah hart Unger posted on her blog that she was looking to start a podcast and I read that and thought, hey, I wonder if she'd be willing to do one with me, And then here we are a year and a half. It was like just meant to be. I know that. I remember that email. I was like, oh really, yes, it was so yeah that that happened in that few days. And then I also I was on a little writing retreat. Actually I was up in the Poconos finishing the manuscript of Off the Clock, which was due. So that was a book that came out last year, and then I got an email from my editor on off the clock, who said, you know, we are looking to commission a fable that there's the genre of sort of business or personal productivity books that is stories instead of just you know, straightforward instruction, so novella's. There's a lot of them out there. Obviously, the most famous is probably Who Moved My Cheese? And I think what triggered this is that they knew they were going to publish Spencer Johnson's follow on with that, which is called Out of the Maze, which is the Who Moved My Cheese follow up that just came out. But anyway, they were looking to commission others, and so they asked if I was, you know interested. I had ideas and said, yeah, sure, I mean I like writing fiction. I've been doing that Nino Remo stuff for years. And so over the next few weeks I kind of realized, hey, I could actually create a time management fable out of the basic material that had been this national novel writing months piece. I had to, you know, really do a lot of extracting and rewriting, and you know, I basically just kept three characters in a setting, but everything else was different, but yeah, that's that's how it came together. Yeah. I mean, you do seem like the perfect person to write this because you have the time management, interest and the nonfiction experience. But you had been experimenting a lot with novel writing, and you had even written a novel previously, so it totally makes sense. Yeah. No, And I'd learned a lot from writing that novel, The Courtland Boys, that came out in twenty fourteen. And you know, I love fiction. I love reading it and have for years, and so it was fun to sort of try my hand aut in. It's a very short book. I mean it's it's queer's and it's so I got an advanced copy and I totally enjoyed reading it. It was one of those books where it was like, oh, I kind of wish it was a little lot like I could have I could have taken more of it, because I liked the characters, and for a book that had a lesson to it, it was it was it was like a page turner, like I wanted to know what was going to happen, and so it was actually really fun to read. So if you're looking for a book that does kind of address some sort of basic time management principles, and as we'll talk about, definitely delves into some more I don't know, generational dilemmas that a lot of people run into our challenges that we see working with people that have different types of mindsets about time, which is something I've definitely experienced. But written in a way that's just kind of like you feel like you're reading a novel. This is a great book. You could definitely read it on like short flight and feel like you've gotten something out of it. Yeah, so we would. I would love it if you would do that, So shout out if you have enjoyed listening to this podcast. You know, I would really appreciate if you would, yeah, pick up a copy. So just the brief synopsis of it is that it's called Juliet School of Possibilities and the main character is a young consultant named Riley who works at mb And Company, which is a major consulting firm. Who's I mean the name, it could be any of them, it's not any of them. It's maybe a mishmash of all the major consulting firms. But anyway, she works at a place called mb And Company and her life is falling apart on various dimensions. She's always been a high flyer, but she gets a terrible performance review and she can't figure out why because she always is responding to everything instantly. She prides herself on, you know, being available for her clients twenty four to seven. But of course, in the process of being available for her clients twenty four to seven, she's also done and some you know, pretty not nice things and personal relationships because of that, So her life is falling apart. She knows she needs to turn her career around in thirty days or she's out. And she's on her way to a leadership retreat at a place called Juliette School of Possibilities, which is this retreat run by a woman named Juliette. It's on the Jersey Shore, and Juliette is this lifestyle Maven. She's definitely got a little Martha's still little Martha Stewart, maybe a lot a lot, who knows no, but I liked it. It's like Martha's Stewart with an edge, Martha Stewart with an edge. But you know, Riley shows up and assumes that this woman will just drop by briefly and go off and her acolytes will do everything, but she's there and she gets to know her and finds that she's this incredibly calm, generous person despite all she has going on in her life. And so Riley's trying to learn her secrets. And they go take a walk on the beach in the middle of a storm, and Juliette shows Riley two potential visions of her future based on different choices she makes about how she spends her time, and so Riley has to choose which way she wants to make life go. And that's that's what goes down in the book. Yes, and it's a very Yeah, it's just a fun, kind of fantastical journey that you get to meet with Riley. Now, she's a very vivid character. Like I feel like I know her or many people like her. I wasn't always the biggest fan of her, like I wanted to yell at her through the pages, even though I knew her heart was in the right place. Do you when you were writing her, did you find she was more in line with a certain personality type or generation. Well, it's interesting because I mean we've talked a lot about the Gretchen Rubin four tendencies types, and as an upholder, I am willing to say no to things, like you know, that's just who I am. But I do definitely know people who are more obliger types, who can't say no to anything. And the more you know, you talk that they always have something else they've agreed to for someone, and you're like, in what way does that fit in with your larger life goals. It's like, well, it doesn't, but somebody asked, and so they just did it, and they did. You say that you think she's an obliger. I would say she's probably an obliger who's learning to have some more upholding tendencies by the by the end of because of course we think the upholders are right. But uh, you know, it's it's it's not about that. It's it's more that you have to recognize that your larger life goals and and in fact, the service you can do for the world isn't always achieved by saying yes to everything, because you know, as there's this, you know the phrase of that. Juliette explains to her that expectations are infinite, time is finite, You are always choosing choose well, and so what Riley is doing is she's choosing what is right in front of her, what is I was blinking and making the loudest noise, but that's not always the right thing to be focusing on. So you know, she's she's learning to do that. She she responds to all emails instantly. You know, she will you know, take a conference call while she meeting with someone else because the conference call was there, you know. And and her poor personal life, so she forgets to go meet up with her boyfriend, who is then very unhappy about that. She kind of cancels lunch with a friend of hers, but in the worst possible way. And so, yeah, life is falling apart on various did you mentions? She is disappointing everyone when she Do you think were you trying to write a bit of a millennial character because she comes off a little yeah, well she's young. I mean, so if you think about this as being written in say twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, and she's twenty nine, so yeah, she's definitely millennial. I mean, I feel like you captured that nicely, like it came through. But the thing is, she's I mean she's a really hard working millennial, so she's not at all the slacker thing. And you can the character she is. I mean, you want to hopefully, you want to root for her because you see that she's she's come into this white shoe consulting firm as like a hard scrabble Indiana girl. She hasn't. She didn't go to Harvard, she didn't go to Princeton, she didn't go those places that all her colleagues has gone to. She went on scholarship to Indiana University. She's just incredibly smart, incredibly ambitious, determined, hard worker, and that served her very well. You know, got her hired at this great consulting firm. It's moved her up the ranks quickly. But now she's in management, and it turns out you can't just work harder. You actually have to think about what you're doing and whether you know you know the stuff that you're doing. It could fill all twenty four hours a day on hundred sixty eight hours a week. You have to make choices, and she doesn't really know how to do that. I think part of it is also that, you know, the times of this age, there's just so much task fragmentation. If you're not able to make those choices, then you're kind of like that's part of the part of the key is making the choices to start with, what do you feel I mean, when she is able to put it all together, what do you feel like was the key advice that got her? Yeah, so I think that Juliette needs to impart sort of my time management advice to her. And so that's what I have this mentor figure of Juliet doing. And it's just so the phrase that is all over the Juliet School of Possibilities is as I said before, the expectations are infinite. Time is finite. You are always choosing choose well, And so it's really this question are you choosing well? Like a choice to do one thing is a choice not to do something else. A choice to answer the client's email immediately is a choice not to have open time to think. And when you ponder it, you realize, well, the reason the client is emailing you is they think you have good ideas, and if you don't have the space to think, you don't have those ideas, which is why they're emailing you in the first place. You need to hold yourself to this bigger vision of what your value is to the world and even to the people you are serving, versus what you think. The immediate obligation is right in front of you. And so Juliet tells her, you know, ask of every moment of everything you do, is this action, Is this decision bringing me closer to the vision of my life that I want? And so sort of practically how people might think about this, You could take a few minutes and think about yourself maybe ten, fifteen, twenty years in the future. I mean, Riley's a millennial, she's very young, so she's thinking like twenty five years in the future. But those of us who aren't there, you know it can maybe think like five, ten years in the future. You know, there's this vision of you professionally and personally successful, but also calm about it, you know, like very fulfilled, happy about your life, Like what are you doing? Like what does your life look like? And then as you really truly picture this in starting to say, well, what actions can I take in the present to bring me to that? What things am I doing that move me closer to that? What things am I doing that do not move me close to that? And it's hard. Juliette says this to Riley at one pot. She's like, you know, it was hard to make this decision as Juliette was building her business. It's even harder now that she's got this huge business with people come to her with great ideas all the time, right, but you can't take on all of them. So again you have to pause, evaluate and think, well, is this a good way to spend my time? Or maybe could somebody else take this on? And you know, so it's the email comes in there a lot, just because that tends to that was Riley's particular problem, but it could be anything if you were Riley's coach, and you can imagine herself, and she really did have I don't know, it seemed almost like she was committed to more things than it's humanly possible to get done. So it actually not only did she need to triaze, she actually probably needed to actively prune and get rid of some things. Do you find I don't know, what do you feel like is the best way to do that? If someone is working for a company. And this wasn't even the thought that I had while I was reading, but I'm thinking of it now, like if someone's putting themselves in this position and they're like, well, I am getting you know, twenty emails an hour, and I actually they want me to spend time thinking about each one and the math doesn't add up there. How do you deal with that? Yeah, the math doesn't add up at all. So because it doesn't add up that, I think that's kind of liberating, because you can't do everything so you have to which it's again a hard thing to get your mind around that you are always disappointing someone. So it's just the question of are you disappointing the right person on the right thing? Are you meeting a bigger expectation by disappointing the obvious one? So in Riley's case, I mean, she's not delegating at all, even though she's inn management, like she has this control issue about responding to anything. But you know, she has an assistant she doesn't use for that sort of thing. I think probably because again, she's been the star all her life and it's hard to think, oh, she's been in charge of all the details. Yeah, and to say, oh, well, I have to let go of that. Somebody else can work out some of the details while I focus on the thing that is most important for me to do, which is you know, difficult. I think she also was running herself ragged that there's a certain we have to pay attention to our energy levels, and this is so hard to do. Again when you've got a million things on your plate, it's so easy just to say, Okay, I'll just work harder. I just need to work longer. I just need to keep going. And I do this too, I mean, whenever I have open time, I work right like I mean. This is but you can't constantly do that without losing the sort of open space and the mind and the you know, letting your mind run a little bit that allows you to come up with the good ideas. So someone like Riley probably needs to think about building in a certain amount of time for sleep, building in time for exercise, building in time to have real conversations with people where you're not checking your devices or racing off to the next thing. And that was one thing her mentor did so well. You know, Juliet and her interactions with people are priceless. And I feel like I do know people like that, and you know what they typically do tend to be very successful. I can think to myself of a couple of you know, the pediatric ic is very intense place, and it's not always my favorite place, but there's, like back in my training, there's seem to be two flavors of physicians who worked there. It was like ones who were chronically flustered and panicky and ones who just had the exact same challenges but acted like Juliette, Oh, hi, you know, they're talking to this nurse, how is this patient doing? Like, you know, everything was calm and yet probably, if anything, even better outcomes and so much more pleasant to work with. So it is kind of magic in that way now, because I mean, it turns out, yes, we have lots of challenges and emergencies and things like that, but very few of those are solved by panicking and running yourself ragged and so maintaining that calm demeanor and sort of always saying I have the space to choose how I'm going to react to this, and focusing on people as well, because that was one of the things that Juliette had chosen as a good use of her time, saying, well, I could answer these ten emails from people who are sort of tangential to my life or I could focus on making sure that the assistant who is saving my life regularly is very happy. And what would be a better choice for me to do well, probably making sure that person is very happy and stays with you and keeps doing the miracles that she does on your behalf all the time, and all the people who work closely with her. She was very focused on the people who she knew she needed to make the wonderful things in her life happen, and less so on the things outside. And Riley had less ability to do that. She had to learn learn how to do that. She had to learn. I mean, Juliette was treating her staff like humans, and Riley I feel like, at least initially was treating them like checkboxes, you know, and she wasn't very happy doing so until she out. Yeah, so it was fun to write. I mean, it's it's been out for what I mean, I wrote it a long time ago. Now, it was like a year ago when I wrote the manuscript, and so it's just been in the hopper and since then because off the clock had to come out and then be enough space between that and now. But really interested to see how this will, you know, how life will my career may go you know, more in this direction, or it's always the question of how you can Yeah, it's a question of how you can have the sort of area that you write about and talk about stay fresh. And it's something I definitely keep trying to think about. How can I present my material in ways that people will want to continue reading? Because you know, I'm so how about Netflix series? Yes, exactly. Well, you know it's always an issue of like, actually, I'm not even kidding. This could be a good show, you know, cleaning up your calendars with Laura Vandercamp and it'd be like Marie Kondo, but with time. I think that'd be awesome. I would watch that one hundred percent. Maybe. Well, and the question is how do you make something that is this uh time? And oh easily easily because I can show like I can show you throwing something in a trash can I don't know if I can show you that part's less visual and you could show the planner, or you could show their calendar, you could show snippets. There would be ways of doing it. Yeah, wow, we are totally off back. That was just the idea that I had. Well, I think it'd be awesome. I mean I was listening and wants to reach out about that. Yeah, you never know. Well, and we forgot my question about technology and always on availability because I felt like the book actually had a great nod to that, the fact that it was her phone that was emailing and her phone was getting texted, and you know, this book probably couldn't have been it could have been written. I guess she could have been getting memos, but it would have been hard to write thirty years ago because on the weekends, how would she have gotten pained all day? Right? So I guess, did you Is there a subtle message in the book for bosses or leadership to kind of not expect that always on quality from their employees. Well, I think there definitely is. And Juliette is running her business, which is a very successful business, without demanding twenty four to seven availability from her employees or you know, making them unhappy in any way. The thing though, with Riley, I mean, so certainly there's something to be said for and Riley is in management and one of the things she's learning is that she's not you know, she needs to be more focused and how she deploys her team's time that her team's time is a very valuable resource, and she's just been saying do everything. But that's not what a real leader does. A real leader says, this is the important thing for you to spend your time at. This is where I want you to go. I've got great people who will execute on that. But I need to make that decision and be clear on that, and that's what people can then follow and do. But here's the thing. Work will take anything you give it. I mean, it's not really fair to We can say, yes, work needs to change and managers should be better about this, but it's the nature of the beast that work will be willing to take anything you give. It's up to us to say, I'm not going to give everything, because if I give everything, I will not be the person that you actually want to employ. I will not have the ability to solve these problems. I will not have the creative ideas. I will not be the sort of patient person who can mentor younger people if I don't have the space to renew my energy as well. So you know, there is a part in I know I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but for our listeners who've read Lean and Cheryl Sandberg's book, she worked at Mackenzie, which is a management consulting firm, which is not in being company where Riley works, but there are probably some similarities. And Cheryl Sandberg back when she worked for Mackenzie, had a manager who told her at one point, well, people leave because they're burned out all the time. But the thing I don't understand that everyone who leaves has untaken vacation days. And his point was that you know, McKenzie would take anything you'd give. It was up to you to say, I need some space, I need to recoup and then I can come back and do this project. And so maybe if these people had taken their vacations or said, actually, you know, I need to be out to you know, Friday at five pm, I'm going to be done, and you know that's it's just not going to happen. I will get back to you midday Saturday, but I need to at least decompress some You know, you can do that. You take a risk, but you can do that. And so his point was that you needed to push back, and I think that that's something that we all need to recognize as well. That's awesome, So is this other than your Netflix series, and I was kidding about that, But what do you do you think you're going to be writing more books like this? Maybe, I mean, we'll see how this does. If people are interested in this sort of thing, then I'm sure I could write more. I mean, I guess you know, the market tells you how people want their time management advice, and certainly we've found that people like thinking about productivity. Hearing about it is one of the reasons we do this product this podcast, that we focus on how people can live better lives through this. I definitely like the written word, but I think there's all sorts of ways one can do the written word fiction, nonfiction, so you know, I like to keep it fresh and hopefully this will you know, maybe it was fun to write, so maybe I'll just do more fiction just for fun as well. Awesome. Yeah, all right, Well, I hope everybody checks it out who's listening here, either on their device or the library or buying it one way or the other, and you can let us know what you think. Yeah, all right, thanks, and now we can go to our listener question. Yes it's long, but I will summarize because I like your answer. You let you go first. Okay, I have a career transition coming up, and I love your advice. I'm transitioning from part time self employment to a full time corporate job. I'm married and have two two daughters, eight and four. I left my work. I left my job as a workplace strategy consultant about two and a half years ago to open up a professional organizing business. I decided it self employment. It's too lonely and I want to go back to an office with coworkers. I've interviewed several places and think I'll be back at work within the next two to four weeks. But how do I decide which job to take? Option one? My previous job has offered me a job basically starting where I left off, same salary, giving me the twenty days of vacation I left with, and same title and same jobs and clients. I know what I'm getting. It was a great place and I was there for almost eleven years. They're pretty flexible around working hours, working from home one day a week, et cetera. I really love my boss, et cetera. The downsize is there was a little bit more sales than I liked. I was getting a little bored and I was topped out. As far as growth, she feels like there's many years and retirements before she could possibly move up on the ladder. She didn't feel like there's too much travel. It feels safe. Option two is a larger firm. She knows one person who used to work at her old firm very well well, but doesn't know the company as well. It's larger, there's more opportunity to grow and more opportunity to work on different types of projects. They have two things she's really interested in, and she feels like they're able to craft the job so she can do two sides of what she really loves. But our bosses will not be in the same city. She feels like there's similar flexibility in terms of working from home, and she doesn't have salary benefits info yet, but she feels like it's likely to be about even There may be a bit more travel, she says. It feels like less of a safe bet, but more opportunity to be challenged. I'm pretty risk averse, but I don't want to play it safe, so I'm leaning towards this option. Am I crazy? Well? Hopefully that wasn't too long, but I know it's a good question. Then I think, no, she is not crazy. And you know, first of all, if you have actually two job offers in hand, like life is good because you actually don't have to take either just as they are. The fact that two people really want you is a good position to be in because you can go back and forth between them to get one of them to be as much as possible of the good parts of both. Right, this is a negotiation situation. When you're coming into jump, people actually expect you to negotiate. That's not like a weird thing at all. So take this opportunity to say what both have on the table, and decide what you like of each of them, and then go back to each place and say, well, hey, you know, I'd love to work with you. I also have this other offer on the table, and this thing was really important to me that you had there. Could we maybe do this here? So, I mean, if she likes the option, you know, the risky one as she put it, she could go back to the safe place she has and ask for a lot more, you know, ask for more money than she left with, ask for more vacation days, maybe get a specific timeline for moving up the ladder. You know, if she thinks there's not opportunities for growth, does she know that for sure? I mean maybe they could create something new for her, or that she could craft something from that. So go back to option one and say, well, i'd like these things. You can also do that with option two as well. Say you know, I got twenty days of vacation at my old place, Like you're going to have to match that they might do. So you say, I got to work from home one day a week at my old place. I would like to have in writing that that's okay, all right, Maybe they'd be willing to do this, you know. To the point is, both of these offers are going to be negotiable. So rather than feelm is like do I choose one or two? Say how can I go back to both one and two and get the good parts of both and then I can decide which one is the best for me? Awesome? Yeah, I felt the same way that the answer to was she crazy? Is absolutely not. I also would like to point out that anybody who left their corporate job to start their own organizing business can't truly be that risk. That's not how I would classify this person based on that. Yeah, and when I read it like it sounds like there's a lot more excitement about option two, even though number one is the comfortable one. You know, the travel was the one thing that she felt like might be different, but you know, with her kids getting older, it may not be as much of a deal breaker. My tip is actually kind of what we mentioned earlier when we were talk about Juliette, is kind of picture yourself in five years and where would you want to be. My last thought was, you know, company number one still left you after you left them one time, so you might as well try too, because Company number one clearly likes you so much they might still want you again, so they'd still be available as a safe option should number two not work out as well as you thought it was going to. Yeah, that's true. She had also had a second part of this question about, you know, what should she do to prepare, But we didn't think like you had to do too much. I mean, you know, even though we are the sort of people who like to dot every I and cross every T, you know, it's not like she hasn't been working as this crazy new world. I mean, she's been in the corporate world before, like she she will go in again. I mean, it's probably not that different in term of what she needs to do to prepare childcare or anything like that. Yeah, and plus again her kids, I mean, they're only going to get older, they're going to be in school. She already has childcare and backup childcare, so anything else is kind of she'll figure that out. She'll figure it out as she goes, so I wouldn't overthink overthink that part. Yeah, all right, Sarah, I love of the week you go first. I might not have one yet. Yes, No, well, I mean we've been talking about Juliette School of Possibilities. I love that my publisher and I have this long relationship portfolio, which is part of Penguin Random House. I've done. This is our fifth book together, so that's kind of cool that we've been you know, we come up with ideas to gather at this point, which is really nice to have that relationship and that they they've stuck with me. So I've been happy about that. Oh well, I guess on that note, I don't have a publisher at this particular moment, but the woman Amanda who did my blog and you can find her credentials on my website the shoebox dot comments at the bottom, and she could be found at oh Amanda. She did the redo. She's been super responsive. It's almost done, so yeah, she deserves a Love of the Week. She did a great job, so wonderful. Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been mostly talking about Julia at School of Possibilities, which is my new time management fable. 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 Shoebox 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.