Elder Care Essentials with Expert Lauren Smith

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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 Hart Hunger. 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 sixty three, which is airing in mid August of twenty twenty two. Sarah is going to be interviewing elder care expert Lauren Smith. This is definitely a topic we have had requested a lot. I mean, probably because it is so universal, right Sarah. I mean, obviously we are all going to grow older at some point, but I know many of our listeners are more immediately dealing with this with parents and in laws who are getting older and may be requiring some decisions to be made, and how you navigate that process, right, Yeah, I mean I would say not everybody experiences this because unfortunately, some people might have been a stranger from their family or had family that passes early or something like that. But most of us have to kind of go through this and see our older loved ones go through different stages of independence or medical complexities, et cetera. And I definitely don't consider myself an expert yet, especially because I don't feel like I've hit the part where things really kind of heat up and become difficult. But I certainly think about it a lot and what that might look like in the future. Yeah, I mean, because your parents and laws are all still living independently. I mean, maybe with some minor assistance here and there, but mostly independently, right, Yeah, yes, very much so. My father in law is still working, actually still doing surgery, so super active there. And my parents are long retired but very much independent, still traveling, still enjoying life, et cetera. And both i'd say have been really vocal and thoughtful about what they want for their future. I'm not going to share, you know, their exact plans or anything like that, but one set has thought about doing like a kind of like a retirement community where you get you put your you kind of like pay in and then you are guaranteed different levels of care if you need them, and I think that's really interesting. And then another set is like, definitely doesn't want that, but I like that both have kind of again like done the thinking process. And I'm not sure that that's true of everyone, because when I've listened to other podcasts or heard people talk about it, one frustrating thing I've heard from some is that they people are in a sort of denial, or they like they don't want to talk about it, or they just assume that they'll be able to live in their three story house until they're, you know, ninety five and then die in their sleep one night, and unfortunately that that could happen. But I get not always feasible. It's not always feasible for everyone. Yeah, have you thought about what you were gonna want? I don't feel like I've totally gotten there yet. I definitely don't think I want to move anywhere communal until i'm like, really significantly old. If I choose to do that, I don't think my husband will ever want that. Actually, So as I was thinking about this, I was like, well, maybe if we like really needed assistance, then that would be a decision we would make then, But I don't necessarily see us buying into something where that's like part of the plan. I think I probably would prefer more to go and save and make sure we have funding to be able to afford like private aid if we needed it. And I also definitely think we would be the type of people to downsize eventually. Like I know, some people like to keep their big house so they can host family, but Josh and I have talked a lot about how we'd rather live in like a minimal, like really cool condo somewhere and then go and visit family or take trips with family and see them that way, rather than you know, having a giant dining room. But who knows, things could change. That's just you know where I am at this juncture. Yeah, it's it's I haven't really thought about it personally for me that much. I will say that our old house was just down the street from a retirement community that had a lot of you know, town homes and like you know, semi detached, smaller houses, but you know that a retired couple would live in and then a central facility so as people needed more assistance, they could move into there, and particularly when you're still in the sort of independent stages of it, it has a very camp like atmosphere to it. I mean, you know, you can eat you know, one meal a day or whatever in the dining hall if you want. So, if you want to just always have you know, a social dinner, that's an option for you, right or you know, two meals a day and go there for breakfast in the morning and all sorts of activities. Obviously this is a very different sort of thing during two years of COVID, but when you know, things have gotten more back to where they were and certainly were before that. You know, the have tons of activities and they have a you know, communal garden that people are working in and whatever else. So I'll just throw it out there that we talk about the senior living. You know, I think we're often think of like it's kind of depressing, but like, you know, I think it could be a fun few years too if you were you know, if you enjoyed summer camp as a kid. I think there are actually some really really serious similarities to that. My grandparents who have since passed lived in a community like that in Florida for many years. Actually not far from where I live now. I mean I'm in South Florida. Like this, there's like and yes, very much summer camp very much its own little universe like they had a they had like a I don't know. I feel like my grandfather always had like political positions on their little board and like my grandmother would like play her you know, tennis games or whatever, golf games. And no, you're right, there's some lovely things about those types of places. And it it didn't feel like you know, what we conceive of as like a nursing home, but it wasn't one. It didn't have that long. Well I don't think of like assisted living. Yeah, well you know, yeah, the ones that have the it's the gradations, right, so you can be there and then if like you need it earlier than your spouse, like your spouse can still be in their house and you're like in there. You know. It's just it's thinking through the process and you know, knowing that it ends for all of us eventually, like you know, how can you still you know, stretch out sort of the fun and the independent living before then. So I don't know, it's it's something to think about, but yeah, so we'll, you know, hear more about elder care here with with Lauren Smith. So let's go ahead and dive into that, all right. I am so excited to welcome gerontologist Lauren Smith's of the podcast. Lauren, go ahead and introduce yourself and tell everybody a little bit about your background. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. My name is Laurence Smith. As Sarah said, I am a gerontologist and a licensed nursing home administrator. I've operated facilities into Oregon and Colorado, and then one of my other passions and a place where I actually ended up pivoting in my career is emergency management. So about four years ago I ended up making a transition to being an emergency management consultant, and so I now work remotely for the best company in the world off their emergency management group. My CEO, Jenny Schwartzer, is an avid best of both worlds listeners, so she'll be happy to hear the shout out. But I, like I said, work remotely. I have some travel that's kind of interspersed, and I love it so much. And I guess a little about me personally is I have three kids, Helen who is eight, Will who's six, and Benny who's three. And my husband Caleb and I have been married for nine years this coming August. We've had lots of transitions, like pretty major transitions pretty much the entirety of our marriage. So we've had marriage, We've had deployments, we've had cross country moves on three different occasions, my youngest son was born with a pretty significant medical condition, and then we've had job transitions. So yeah, we sort of just have had a lot of different experiences over the last few years. So that's a little bit about me. Sounds like a very full career in life for those of us like me who are uneducated, What does gerontologist training look like? Like? What does that actually mean? Yeah, so I was sort of an odd duck when I was younger, and from like the fourth grade, I knew that I wanted to be a nursing home administrator, like very young and what that meant for me is I wanted to learn about older adults and then I wanted to be someone who was an advocate for them, and I saw the place that the biggest need was for that was in nursing home administration. So I ended up actually getting my gerontology degree, my master's degree, which is the study of older adults from Miami University of Ohio, So I went there, I got my master's and then ended up working towards getting my licensure for a nursing home administration through an AIT program that I did in Kentucky, and then there was there's a national exam that you have to take, and then each state has different exams that you have to do. So ger intelligist does not necessarily mean that they are all nursing home administrators, and in fact that's generally not necessarily the case, but it laid a really good foundation for me to understand. Yeah, a little bit more about how to advocate and care for and really support people as they move through that point in their life. So very cool. Yeah, Okay, Well, Laura and I opened this episode talking about, well, we talked a little bit about speculating about what we might want in our lives when we're older, and then a little bit about our parents. But one thing that I feel like is just so universal among listeners, maybe not universal, but very close to it, is that someone in their lives is getting older, whether that be a parent, or another family member, and you might have thoughts about what to do to talk to them about and how to help them, and you are an expert in this area, so I would love to know how to start that conversation and just guide us on kind of what best practices are when you're starting to realize somebody might need a little bit more help. Yeah, So for kind of that initial bucket, which is considerations for aging parents or grandparents or just loved ones in generals, right whomever that is in your world, there's kind of three big things that I would recommend to do right away if you can. The first one is to have a conversation early about what everyone's wishes are, and then to continue that conversation on a regular basis, and especially if health changes or there's like a big life transition and you know, all of a sudden, what they wanted maybe a year ago shifts dramatically. Having that conversation early and often, I think is important. And there's never a point where it's like, well, you know, you know, I'm in my mid twenties or I'm in my mid thirties, and I think that it's maybe not the most comfortable conversation to have. But the key thing that I said at the beginning was everyone's wishes, because it's not just the discussion with your parent or your love one about what it is that they would like. It's you having the opportunity to set some boundaries as well for yourself about what you think you might be able to handle and what you don't want to handle. And this kind of goes anywhere from financial management to healthcare management. Who's going to mow the lawn if all of a sudden someone isn't physically able to do that, and kind of all the way down the list. When you think about having that type of conversation about what people want and what their wishes are, what their life might look like as they're aging, you really have to kind of take a step back and think about what's everything that goes into making their life work right now and everything that goes into my life, and how can we balance and or what are the resources that we need to support that if you can't do it. And a big thing I like to really encourage is that aging parents does not and should not mean an indispensable child. And so like you as an adult child or as an adult grandchild or whatever, the role is right. Just because someone is getting older doesn't mean that you have to drop everything and be there for them. Similarly to with our kids, as they start to get older, you know, we're able to set a little bit better boundaries with them about what we can and can't do. And I think the same thing is for anybody who's maybe starting that kind of aging transition. And then the next thing is you have the conversation and then you need to document it. And that is more than just personally. I can speak to this. Like with my parents, We've had this conversation pretty frequently because I just really want to understand what their wishes are and I want to make sure that I'm being respectful and mindful of how they want to be kind of handled their assets them as individuals and their finances, and so documenting that sometimes we have these informal conversations. But they also have a will and durable powers of attorney and healthcare power of attorney, and I know kind of where all of those things live and whatnot. But making sure that they're documented is a safeguard not just for them, but for you as well, especially working and nursing homes. I've seen families as they transition into long term care and having to navigate this sometimes pretty significant shift from a healthcare need, and then money comes into the conversation, and family members who maybe didn't have big opinions all of a sudden really want to see it at the table. And if something's not documented, then there are next of kin issues and who is the appropriate person to be at the table? Maybe everybody, maybe no one. But if it's not documented, it can really stressful thing to navigate. It's already stressful kind of in and of itself, but if you've got it down ahead of time, then it does help to take a little bit off of your plate as well, because then you weren't trying to interpret or sort of. I don't want battle, you know, battle it out with like a family member or something, or some rando person that comes out of the woodworks. You have something you can rely on. But that's like the second one, And I have two questions related to all that's okay go. The first is I love your thought in the beginning when you were talking about like kind of going through life activities and talking how you are going to handle each of them, and there may not be an answer to this, But is there like a checklist somewhere, like is there a good reference where because I would not have thought of like lawn care, like that would not have crossed my mind. And I'm wondering if you know, if anybody's ever put together like, Okay, these are all things you should think about. Yeah, I'm not aware of a checklist right off the top of my head, but there are a couple of organizations that might be good places to look for that The Alzheimer's Association, and I know that has like some nuance around it, right Generally they provide a lot of support for people who are starting to experience memory loss at different stages. But they have great resources, and so I would recommend maybe kind of looking there because some of that information, while it might not be one hundred percent you know, accurate or applicable to your situation, it does give you a place to kind of bounce things off of, or a place to a jumping board, so to speak. I have personally just kind of thought through like if anybody has ever done the Fair play Book, you know, when you think about like all of the work that you do within your household and how you and your partner split stuff you can reference. I would recommend kind of looking at that book maybe to sort of help you think about do some of these things applied to my parent or to my loved one, and how can I figure out have a conversation with them about is this essential or not essential? I love it. Eve Orrotsky was on the podcast. I'm sure she would love this completely alternative use of her book. But that's a great idea because you're right, she goes into a lot of detail and granularity about what actually gets done in a household. That's fantastic. My other question was you talked about like creating a document. How often do you have to revise that every few years or is it like once it's there, it's done and you can just check it off the list and move on. Yeah. I think that there will be definitely different trains of like schools of thought with this. I know with my mom and dad when when they have they'll just come to a bit Lauren, we don't want that to happen anymore. Now, we would like to do this percentage of allocation. And so I make a mental note. I'm like, but I tell them, like, hey, if there's a really big change we probably need to actually document this, whether it's a formal document where we just like type it up in a word and we all sign it and that's enough for us that makes them feel better, or if it has larger ramifications like guardianship issues, if there are some changes like with how you want to be cared for medically, those are things that I would say, like, if that's in black and white and you have a shift, I would recommend to speak to an attorney or talk to someone in your community who might be able to help you kind of navigate that. I'm not an expert there, so I don't want to give any kind of like legal advice, but I would really recommend to consider getting legal documents updated if there is the chance that there could be something interpreted differently than how you are, than the current wish that you have, you know, so that might be a little nuanced for the individual. Got it, all right, We're going to take a very quick break and we'll be back with some practical tips and then some discussion about resiliency and care for oneself. All right, we are back, and there is some really concrete advice you have in terms of tracking documents and things like that I guess. I'm guessing you've seen this go awry. I'm not going to have you share any horror stories, but go ahead and tell us what to do to prevent those sorts of disaster scenarios. Yeah. I cannot more strongly recommend a password management system of any kind. It does not matter what you use. I personally use last pass My husband and I use it. We share all of our passwords. If I were to die, he has access to everything, so he can, you know, figure out the ways to get into mind. So Caleb and my husband and I even have some of these conversations, not just my parents and I. But yeah, password management, know where the lock boxes are, know what accounts they're on. This I did have recently, something happened, had a loved one that passed away, and we had some random thing come up where it was like it was a subscription of some kind that no one knew that they had. It wasn't a bad thing, but it was just one more item that because no one else's name was on it, there was a lot of rigormarole that had to be gone through, like providing the death certificate and then all of this stuff. Whereas had we maybe known that ahead of time or had a comprehensive list we could have either ahead of time tried to get like two people on the account so that we could have avoided this, or at least at the at the very least been a little bit more like, Okay, these are all of the accounts we have to take care of, as opposed to over a twelve to eighteen month period finding out about accounts or subscriptions that whether they're financially you know, correlated with a credit card or not, end up taking time, you know, an effort to have to kind of work around the logistics of that. And then this is like the next thing, I guess, so that's like password management. If anybody takes anyoneey away from their please know your loved ones accounts and if they are comfortable sharing it with you, the passwords. And then the second thing. And I talked to Sarah a little bit about We talked about this in an email where I had like responded to you about this call, and it was about resiliency, building resiliency in yourself as you navigate this switch, and specifically I talked about navigating the switch and roles of parent child because I think that that there's just so much there, right. I mean, for some people, it's like easy, breezy, no issue. You know, they've got a good relationship, they've talked about it ahead of time, and things go well. For others, I say, the majority of people, this is a pretty This is one of those really significant milestones in someone's life that they go through that generally has a lot of stress around it, and especially if they're if it's not municated or expectations aren't discussed ahead of time, then man, there's just the opportunity for a lot of hurt feelings and miscommunication. And yeah, it's just hard. So my first thing is that it's okay not to be all things for your loved one. I know that you and Laura talk a lot about how like we can't always be everything for our kids or for our spouse, and outsourcing is really important. Well, outsourcing is just as important with this transition too, And so you identify what I was talking to my husband about this because we were thinking about it, and I was like, you know, I would really recommend for people to consider what all of the things they think that they could be for their parent or for their loved one and to take that and cut it in half, and you might be able to do that much maybe, because the reality is is that depending on when this transition happens, you may have young kids, you might be making a transition in your career. There are all of these things that might be going on in your life that are going to affect your ability to be one hundred percent present with your loved one. And this is all under the guise of that you're in proximity to each other geographically. There's lots of other things to take into account if you are not geographically close to one another, and that's another expectation to discuss how frequently will you see each other or not and understanding. I think some things that can help you with not being all things is knowing what your loved one's network is, so they might have friends who want to help. They might already be involved with the YMCA, and maybe the Y has a bunch of stuff that they want to help you with or something, or the local JCC. I mean, there are all of these community networks that potentially could offer some help so that you don't have to be everything. And I would be remiss if I didn't recommend that in choosing to not be all things for your loved one sometimes that you need some help navigating that. And I really just recommend maybe finding a good therapist to accounts to kind of tak through this with I love therapy. I'm a huge fan of it. I go to see my doctor pay once a week and she's the best saying in the world. And yeah, I just you know, all of these things can be really I think that you'll need support, not just your loved one, but you will too, And because it's a huge transition, Yeah, I mean it's like you are almost going through some of the same stages almost in reverse as when you are having kids, and the change in your role and things about guilt and shame and digging up past feelings that might be present and then conflict with siblings. So yes, I can see how this would be, especially if things happen quickly or suddenly something that is mired in a lot of distress, and that support would be super helpful. I was also going to say, just like with the outsourcing conversation with our kids, sometimes it's important to be like what could anybody do? And like what am I uniquely suited to do, Like, maybe I don't need to do my parents' laundry or like clean for them, but I want to go to their doctor's appointments so I can help them understand their plan of care. I mean, that's just an example, but I think like the idea of being, like you said, being everything twenty four of them when you're also still a parent and you're also still a person and you often have a partner too, Like, it's so unrealistic. So I love your idea to cut the list in half and prioritize. Yes, one hundred percent agree. Yeah, it's just very stressful it can be. And then the last two things would be to build in some time for some rest for yourself. I hear people saying this all the time, right as like a parent, as a woman who's a full time worker and full time mom and full time for lots of other roles too. In my life, I hear people tell me, well, you just need to build in some rest time, and I'm like, really, well, where's that actually gonna fit? Can you help me identify that? But I have actually started building in like four or five hours of like self care time every month, and I would really recommend to do that for this too, especially if you end up choosing to take on more of a full time caregiver rule, you'll need some time to step away, even if it's to go do grocery shopping by yourself and not have to worry about someone needing help with like getting to the bathroom or making sure that they don't leave the house. And that's more specific to people who maybe are farther along in their aging process and have more higher acute needs. And then I would also say too that all of this stuff we're talking about from the understanding of like people have a pretty good relationship with their loved one right, like they want to do this, and there are a lot of circumstances where there are past traumas with family and family issues things that you know, just because people get older, it doesn't mean that all that stuff goes away, and in fact, I think that it actually becomes more exacerbated. And because you start to get towards the end of life and life reviews and all this stuff starts to come up. I would also encourage, like, if this isn't something that you want to do, you don't feel comfortable with it for any reason, then now is the time, especially if you do have kind of that like I guess, sort of stressed or strained relationship or no relationship. If you are the next of kin, if your mom or your father, whomever it is, has a sudden medical issue and you're an only child or you're the only child that they list, then you might come into a situation, And I've seen this happen quite a few times where a child is asked to step in to serve as the next of kin to make really difficult decisions as people agent to a long term care facility or are in a hospital and need decision making that medical professionals cannot make on behalf of that patient. So if you already know this is not something that you want to do, then maybe talking with an attorney or finding an advocacy group locally that you could maybe turnover guardianship to. This is the time to start figuring that out so that you aren't trying to navigate that and then all of the emotional issues that come up when you realize that man and I were here and I don't want to do this and I don't feel comfortable with it. I would really encourage yah to consider if this is even a role that you want to fulfill and if it's not, to find find some local resources to support you and who potentially would make those decisions on your behalf. That can be done through an executorship with an attorney. You can find guardianships perhaps to your county, depending on assets. You could even look to a Medicaid case management group and talk to people in the county that your loved one lives in to try and figure out what can we do ahead of time. But yeah, those are the things, and I would have like a totally different conversation if we were talking about just like how do you get ready to get someone into a long term care facility and what do you look for? That was like, we get to talk a lot about that, and I have helped people navigate that. I have checklists that I have made, things resources that I would recommend people to look at. The maybe that's a discussion for another day if people want to hear that, So yes, let us know we may have to do a part too. I wouldn't turn it down. That is awesome, well, because we are not going to make this a two hour long episode and we can leave the door open for the future. I would love you to share a little bit about what your day in the life is as you work for a company that loves best of both worlds. I mean, that's like the dream for every company, So I'm dying to hear how that plays out in real life. Oh man, Yeah, I really and truly cannot say how much I love All Clear Emergency Management Group and working for them has been one of, if not the most, the biggest blessing professionally for me. So my day in the life is that All Clear gives me all of the autonomy for how to structure my day. I would say that in any given week, I spend about fifty percent of my time with clients and the other fifty percent working on actual project work. And time with clients could be meetings or facilitating exercises or workshops or whatever, so that can look a little different, but essentially they have said, you do your work whenever it works best for you, and please be available for clients when they want to meet. So some days my day will start at four am, and other days my day will start at nine am, and it kind of depends on, you know, what's going on with my family. But I would say typically my day starts, I get my kids up, I take them to daycare, so the mornings are really focused on the three kids and just like surviving the morning and getting them to childcare or to school. And then I come back and I drink some tea and then I start my day. And I generally work, you know, anywhere from like six to eight hours a day or six to ten hours, depending on how I'm trying to kind of balance my work days. And during that time period, some of that is travel, right, so sometimes I'm just gone all together, and my husband kind of takes over one hundred percent. And then if I'm home, then yeah, it's just working and kind of fitting in some of my house stuff like in between the hours, which is super nice. And generally work stops for me around like four thirty or so. My husband gets home. We generally get to spend some time together Mike go for a bike ride, or might just like watch some TV together and talk about like how our days were. And then I normally start dinner and he goes and picks up the kids. They come home, We eat dinner. The kids generally don't like anything that we've made, just fine. I've started trying to mimic a little bit of what Laura does with the having like themes for each day. So last night was breakfast night. It was a Wednesday, and the kids actually made everything so that was great, yay. And then I normally clean up, my husband does bathtime, we do bedtime, and then we generally have maybe like an hour to two hours where we can hang out. We can exercise, watch a show or watch a movie, and that's that's pretty much our day, Like it doesn't differ too far from that. We intentionally don't do activities during the week because I just cannot handle it. We don't have animals, we don't do activities. We Yeah, I like look at your schedule, Sarah, and I'm like, I'm just in awe, like wow. One. Yeah, but I have like a third parent helping me basically because I know I'm serious. I mean, people don't realize that, Like I'm not usually driving them. I'm like at work and I come home and then the kid comes home and it's like I wouldn't have even known better. So, well, your kids are similar each to mine, I guess, right, nine and then what's the other two? Yeah, eight six and three, So like eight six and three. Okay, you may see it and multiply in the next couple of years. Well, yeah, no, for sure. They keep asking for stuff and I'm like, oh, I'm just you go to daycare. We pay a lot of money for daycare, so I feel like that's the activity. You know, Well, that is kind of an activity. I'm sure they do a lot while they're there, so that kind of counts. And then love of the week. I'm gonna let you go first so I can decide on what mine's going to be because I wasn't ready. You're good. Well, I thought about this, and I have two. So one is school related because school is just around the corner, and I am I'll just forever be grateful for this school toolbox. So our school does that. And I know you guys have talked about a little bit too. I'm actually going to Ireland next week, so I'm going. It's my first like really big trip like solo that's not work related. So I'll be gone for twelve days. And I was able to order all of my kids' school supplies like last may like may have like three months ago, so I don't have to worry about school supplies. I'm really grateful for that. And the second thing would be the one thing that I know I can rely on every day that I just like brings me joy, fills my cup is my husband makes me a cup of makes both of us a cup of tea in the morning, and we use it's called b Pollen Tea from Old Beryl Tea Company, and it smells like birthday cake. It doesn't taste like birthday cake, but it smells like it, and it's just so good. I cannot more strongly recommend if you are a tea drinker, beepol and tea is the Beasneys literally and figuratively. I love it. Okay, My love of the week sort of inspired by your travel. Love of the week is going back to somewhere you've been before. We're going back to Amelia Island. Actually I think I might be there on this aras. I'm not sure, but it's just really comforting to go somewhere where you already know the landscape, the restaurants, and it's like unfamiliar but familiar at the same time. So I'm super excited for that. That is my love of the week. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Lauren. This is incredibly useful, And I mean, I think this is one of those episodes people we're gonna have to like refer to anytime people ask this question and just like you know, provide it as a resource. So really, thank you so much for volunteering your time and for coming on today. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. So our question this week comes from a listener who is asking about how to motivate yourself to tackle unappealing non work tasks that are not urgent. So this listener has a handful of one time tasks on my to do list that I find boring, unpleasant, or time consuming. I see them on my calendar, which functions as my to do list, and then I conveniently run out of time for these tasks and reschedule them to an arbitrary future date because of course, they don't absolutely have to be done at any given moment. So she says, do you have a strategy for completing them? She listens to our podcasts, and she says she once heard me say that if you've gone that long without completing them, maybe they're not that important. But she says, I can't help but feel pressure to complete them on my days off, particularly since I am working a part time schedule. So Sarah, I mean I guess you were trying to think, what are these tasks? I mean it helps something out. What is that? What are you talking about? In order to think through this, I felt like I was like, what would be a non appealing, non urgent, non work test, And I came up with a few examples with different aspects because this helps me think through it. One might be to get the car wash. One might be to do some sort of somewhat fun but somewhat boring home improvement, like get new window shades. And one might be like estate planning, which you know, given our topic of this episode, yes, very topical, probably a little bit more important long term, but very unpleasant and boring, at least for me. Sorry for the estate planning lawyers out there who are insulted. We are so glad you love doing it, but from my perspective, not the most fun. And I guess I would attack this with a little bit like of a matrix, like what are the benefits of doing it? What are the consequences of not doing it? And then putting those two things together, is doing it worth the cost of the year time that you have to devote, and I do think most tasks, if you ask yourself those three questions are going to help you decide whether it belongs in your calendar at all. And I would argue that if it does belong in your calendar and you've scheduled it, that you should work on if you actually have time block and you don't have some reason that you're tired or something came up, amm like working on your integrity with yourself, that if you've decided it's important to try to do it now, breaking things up into smaller, less unappealing task might really help. So maybe it's the estate planning one, and every time you see it you're like, oh, oh my god, I don't even know where to start, Like this is so boring, this is so intimidating, and so maybe sitting there and being like, okay, what's just like the one next step might be like text the list serve in the neighborhood to see if anybody has a good estate planner, and that's like the whole task, and you block just that non intimidating task into your calendar, I think you'd be less likely to be like push it forward. Then if it just says figure out a state, which is incredibly intimidating and boring sounding to me. Yes, what do you think. Yeah, I'm a big fan of a bribery as well. Once you have put those things and you're like, once you take that step, being like, I deserve special things now as a way, But I've been kind of at different points when I'm feeling like there's a lot of things that i can do to get to would start creating what David Allen calls a someday maybe list, and it would be specifically focused on these sort of non urgent, non work tasks and then try to assign yourself like one a week. So going through that list, I'm not going to try to do all of it. I'm not holding myself to all of it. I'm not, you know, feeling bad that I'm not doing all of it. I'm going to choose one. So when you're doing your Friday planning, choose one. Put it on the calendar for the week at a certain time, and ideally it's something that you can in fact put at a specific time. So for a while I was behind on a great many different appointments that needed to happen, like getting my eyes checked and whatever. So those could become appointments right like I would they're up on Friday, call the eye doctor and make an appointment, and then it's on the calendar and then like you know, you presumably if you have an eye appointment on the calendar, you will go to it. I mean maybe you don't, Like I feel like most people can get their heads around doing something like that once it is on the calendar and is an appointment for a specific time, and you know, you could see if you could structure other things to be that way too. So you know, if it's if you're doing a lot of home projects, for instance, maybe you have a designer you're working with, and so making an appointment with her at the window place is going to increase the chances that you show up and do it right. And like you're going to feel bad if you don't just like make the decision and buy it, because you like then wasted the time that you're paying for hers. So I think there's ways you can kind of nudge that forward. But it helps to make a list of the tasks and then sort of stretch them out. And because I think one a week is doable, try to do like ten a week is just going to make you feel bad. Totally agree and making sure since you're trying to make the most of that part time schedule, that you have some time blocked out for something you want to do, because maybe that makes doing the one task feel a little bit better if you know that, Hey, from three to four, I'm going to go to meet with a friend and we're going to take a lovely hike, like versus just being like, oh, I'm supposed to get through this giant list. So I think we're kind of saying the same thing, like less is more, think about what really needs to be done, and then dole it out sparing. Yeah, you are far better doing ten things one at a time over ten weeks than like aiming for ten this week doing none of them, pushing them forward to the next week. Amy to do ten doing none of them, pushing them forward to the next Like one universe they get done and the other they don't. So better to have some patience and stretch it out. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking eldercare. Sarah has been interviewing Lauren Smith, an expert in that topic. We will be back next week with more on making work in 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.