Goals Update. Ep 87

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. 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 seven. We're going to be talking today about our first quarter or quintile as the case may be, goals and how they've gone, because we are already starting the second quarter or quintile for one of our podcast hosts, Tiara, who prefers her quintile system, and so how are we doing so? Tell hous through the quintiles again, Sarah. In case other people have not provided their year into five parts, I will remind you all because I know I did review it at least in one of the Planner episodes previously, but you know most people do. January to March April to June, July to September, October to December. My argument is this if you have children, argument if you don't. I'm not sure that it makes sense to divide summer up into two different quarters. Because summer tends to be a very different time with its own unique motivations, and maybe you have travel. It just doesn't really feel right to split it up, and that traditional quarters do split it up. I also feel like the more fresh starts the better. I mean, within reason, if you had, like, you know, fifteen quarters, it would probably get a little bit out of hand. But my answer to this was to instead of dividing the year into four, you divide it into five. So the first is January to spring break. In our case, that's the end of March. The second is spring break to the end of the school year. The third is summer, which therefore gets doesn't get split up and chunked up into different quarters. The one would be the start of school too. I would say November first, because November and December are sort of like this special holiday winter. I think they deserve their own chunk because they are so separate from that beginning of school year energy. They usually include winter break and Thanksgiving, and so it's a lot of holiday stuff, and it tends to be the time that everyone does a lot of their regrouping and thinking about how the year went. So I think that giving it its own quintile adds to that. So there you go. That's my argument for quintiles. Yeah, as I think about it, when I do my sort of seasonal fund list, it winds up it could be a quintile system, except I just don't do one of the quintiles. I guess it just gets none of the one. Well, that's the late spring. So because I do the summer fund list, so I have my list of sort of seasonal summer fun activities. I had my Fall list this year, you know, so taking advantage of the colors and such in the Northeast in the fall, the holiday fund list, so the Christmas related stuff, and then I had my winter, my post holiday winter stuff, because that's trying to get through the season of dark and cold and snow and such, and so then that takes you through kind of mid March, and I guess mid March to June is just I didn't do a spring spring fun list, but it would suggest a quintile system for me as well. So I think I think that does make sense. You go, And I mean, you could do three month chunks that are more positioned around the season, but then you wouldn't get to start a new one on January first, and that just seems wrong to me. Yeah. No, and I feel like the holidays is very separate from the post Holidays winter. Yes, it just feels entirely different in terms of what you're doing. But you've got quite a demarcation between your first and second quintiles and this year is this is airing Apparently you're coming back from your first cruise. Yeah, so as you record this, I will admit we have we will have not gone on such the cruise yet. It also means that we have not reached the end of Quintile one, which is good because I can end every statement with but I might finish that the next two weeks. But yeah, we are capping off Quintela one with our very first cruise during spring break, and we are going on a family Disney cruise, So maybe we'll have to have an episode dedicated to that perhaps if there is interest. Yeah, I'm very curious about it, because we're thinking of doing a Disney cruise at some point or not. I mean by we thinking about it, I would be like strong lobbying from one of my children would be more the case. Oh maybe we could all go down there together. Disney Car so awesome that you're like, I need to do another immediately after this. Oh not immediately. I was thinking like in twenty twenty or or something. No, because we actually are going with friends on this cruise, because I thought I think I mentioned that on our travel episode. I think I think that will make it even more fun because it'll it'll feel more like an extended playdate. And I think our kids will be less reluctant to go into the kids club if they're with friends. So no, that's true. Yeah, and we'll see how the sea sickness aspect of it goes to. I'm excited to hear. I am a little nervous, like your your what is it drama or whatever? I need to get the little yeah bring. I'm sure they sell drama, and I'm sure and I'm sure they sell those of it, and they sell like Minni and Mickey Sea bands or whatever those risk things are. So and you know, stiff cocktail or two might might help as well. Or at least you just don't care at that point, right, like you it's so true. Do you have any exciting demarcation of your quarters coming up or is it just going to be one of No? I mean, I'm I this will air right before us, so our spring break is late because Passover and Easter are late this year in terms of when they cycle through. This is at the end of the so we will not have actually gotten there when this airrs interested mid April, And at the moment, I have no plans for it. I am in planner fatigue mode again, and I would like somebody else to plan it. So we usual report back on whether that has happened or whether we're all just here and I'm working, which would also be fine. So because we have so many other things, like I mean, we talked about on a prior episode, we were a little traveled out, so maybe yeah. So, I mean, there's there's stuff coming up in the summer, and there's you know the kids. Well that was actually a Q one goal is the Disney, So I guess we could go ahead and plunge in. Yeah, So how are yours going? Well? Okay, all right, Well I can start if you want things have been falling apart about around here, which is related to one of my Q one goals. I am launched or launched at this point. We're doing this after the fact. Juliette School of Possibilities my time management fable came out on March twelfth, So a lot of work associated with book launches, and even though I've been through a number of them, it's always this sort of stressful experience, and I try to think differently about trying to savor it and like, look, this is awesome. I wanted to be a writer, and I am like I can walk into bookstores and buy my books, like I see my books in the airport when I'm running around, Like I, you know, this is just so amazing and wonderful, and I should go back in time and tell ten year old Laura because she would be thrilled, right yes. On the other hand, I'm also like running to the post office and like, you know, calling people at random times and trying to sort of rely on the network you've built up over the years of people who you know enjoy your work and would be willing to then share it with other people. And because it's so hard to get people interested in books. I mean, the honest truth is there's not that many people who buy books, the average book reader. So this is people who read books, which is a chunk of the population. It's not everybody. It's only going to buy like four books a year. Now, that is not going to be you, or maybe it will be you, Sarah, but it isn't me, right, Like, that's it they buy They bought the Michelle Obama book, like they bought a John Grisham book. You know, that's it, right, And so you're then aiming at a much smaller chunk of the population, which is in the kind of people who buy like twelve to twenty four books a year, and that is a chunk, a very small chunk. But then you could be in that one. And so then trying to let those people know that you exist and why they might want to read your books. And you know, I'm so grateful for the people who've come into my community over the years and do buy books and pre orders. But it's always this stressful thing of trying to do it. And I imagine like the more books you write, in some ways you want to you want to have like an upward trend. So in some ways that would make things more stressful, versus if your first effort and you sell like ten copies, You're like, wow, that's ten more than I sold a lot of time. Oh yeah, we're getting started, but you're I could see that it would get a little bit more stressful. Yeah, that will have happened by by this point. But I've been working a lot on that, and you know, at this point, we also know that there's another project I wasn't talking about for the first part of the year, but we launched the Before Breakfast podcast with iHeartMedia, which is one of the major media companies that's in the podcast space. So I'm doing a daily show on productivity. If if people are listening to this podcast want to want to check that out. You've been listening to Best of Both Worlds and you were thinking, hey, what could be better than having more of Laura and want to listen to that. Sarah did not actually feel like quitting her job in medicine to do this with me, But I'm here morning every morning now, so you can listen to that as well. But launching two things in three months, and in fact, in that dace of one week is you know, professionally been a little bit stressful. So anyway, other things falling apart in the course of that hoppening, but that's okay. But it's exciting and it is very exciting. I'm excited to hear your new your new thing, which will have been in full swing. There'll be like a million episodes out by the time. By the time, it should be like fifteen sixteen episodes at least, because it's daily and I selfishly, I selfishly hope that some of those listeners will have found this episode by now thinking yeah, oh, I want to hear more of the personal side of Laura and you know, more than five minutes at a time. So if you are listening because you've found us on her new podcast, welcome, Yes, thank you for joining us here. We really appreciate that. And tell your friends this podcast is, you know, all about the intersection of work and family and from the perspective of people who love both, and so I know there's going to be some overlap between the audiences and it'll be exciting to see how these things play into each other on the relationship front. Should I just go through mine and then you do yours, or do you want to talk about your professional ones. Now, yeah, yeah, let's alternate. It'll be more interesting. Let's do that. Okay, So my work ones are well, I'll do my work in blog ones because that's sort of like, you know, the main part of my work and then the lesser part. So I did well with my like actual job stuff. I have started a research collaboration that was long stagnant. I have completed some sort of transition career logistics stuff. And there's something that has to do with the residency where I have to kind of create their didactic schedule and that is almost done to the entire end of the academic year, which is a huge milestone. It's been our first year with residents and it's been awesome. So I give myself, you know, and I think a lot of this is like I'm not pumping anymore. This is my first my first que where I'm you know, not unsaved to that thing. So I'm like, I'm in a nice work renaissance, Like I feel very productive at work. And then on the blog side, I did transition my site to WordPress. That was something that I If anyone hasn't checked it out, please go check out the new shoe Box. The shoebox dot com s hu box dot com. So I didn't change the name, but yeah, the site looks very different. The only thing I didn't do at all was anything with my book proposal their book, because I know I'm probably waiting till that like mythical time when everything settles down, which is never going to happen, and I recognize that. But in my defense, when I look at on the stuff that happened in the last three months, including a move, there may be a little bit of actual truth to that tired excuse currently, So we'll see where that goes. All Right, you can slow your role on that, although I mean I want to read it. I mean I want to read it. So that's why I'm sort of hoping it happens. That's me too, me too, all right, stay tuned for Q two. All right, Family and Relationships, you go. Well, So we were taking the family to Disney World, which happened in mid February. I posted a couple of things about on my blog if people are looking for Disney World tips and tricks, and one of one of my favorite posts of it was Jasper did Ride reviews of so you'd have to link to that I love that post. It was just adorable and just cool. Yeah, so he's I've been I've been encouraging him to do some guest post for me. He wants to. It's just he you know, he's also writing stuff for school, so trying to get him to do the extra stuff. But he'd likes it when he gets the feedback. So that was really cute. It was. It was a good trip. We had a lot of good memories for it. We did a lot of you know, the stuff you can do when you plan ahead, so we had like Cinderella's table, we ate there. We did Avatar Flight of Passage, which you know, we got the fast passes to that, and really cool experience that the kids actually got to do it twice in a row because it turned out so we had fast passes for everybody. But it turned out Alex was too short that it's like forty four or forty eight inches or something instead of forty so he couldn't do it, but so we had to swap out, Like so I went with the kids while my husband stayed with Alex, and then we were like, okay, well then he'll just go and the rest of us are going to head over to lunch. But then while he was sitting like in the by the gift shop, another dad who was in the same position told him, Hey, by the way, you can take your other kids back with you. Yeah, you can call the the baby swap or something, which I thought the baby swap was only for people who waited in the sandby line. Like the point was that you didn't have to wait in line twice, right, so that if your spouse went through the line with your kids like you, your spouse could then go without waiting, right if you know you had an under forty. No, it does work for the past, but it worked for remember, because you know, I'm slightly like ride foot not ride phobick, but certain ones. So I didn't go on test track, which I kind of regret where they offered it. We'd they could, they'd use fast passes, and I had Genevie who was like a baby at the time, and I didn't do it. So, yes, they let you do that. Oh you should have done test track. It it's great. I mean, like, if you've been in a car that goes sixty five miles per hour, it's not any never, it's not any scarier than that. It's like being in a convertible that's going sixty five miles next time. Next time, we lived close. Yeah, you can do it again. So that was a success your trip. And then what else was on the family Is your family and relationships in the same bucket? I can't remember? Yeah, yeah, no, I put I just put that all in one one bucket. So so Disney was our accomplishment and we did it, and the kids had a good enough time that they are nudging for that Disney cruise and going back to Disney and all that. And you know, Disney is probably not my favorite place to go as a vacation, but you know, this was not about me. And other people had a good time and I didn't have a horrible time. It did fine, So that's good. Here you go, all right, success, how about you? So in my family category, I was okay. So I had even scheduled on my calendar, like the week after New Year's I had nanny coverage and I wasn't working, so I had one day marked as Anna of All Day and one Mark daymarked as Cameron Day and we ended up moving that week. Yeah, so that didn't happen. Those days completely didn't happen. I mean, that's understandable, but I'm a little sad because it's really hard to find a day where you have full childcare coverage. But I'm not working and they're not in school. It's actually a kind of a unicorn and we're not traveling. So I think my next chance is going to be summer because again, spring break we're going to be traveling, and there were two days where we weren't, but I had to put other stuff. So I think I'm gonna have to table this to Q three, but I'm still determined to do it. My other goals were to plan the weekend trip that we just took, check and spring break trip check. And to join the local library, which I just did last weekend. So that's exciting. And I have to start building my reserve list. I don't have a separate Yeah, I don't have a separate like relationship one either, so I kind of lump everything in there. Yeah, it's just the day, the triple thing that works for a career relationship self and I do a goal for each quarter in each category. Yeah, the mommy days with each of the kids can be tough. I do that during the summer and because again, yeah, getting them when they're off school, and also you know I can arrange to not be and have childcare and not be doing something else, it winds up being logistically complex. And now they're sort of nudging for more elaborate stuff for mommy days. I think they're there pushins and then, which I mean, it could be fun, but if like, once the bar goes up too far, I mean, what are you supposed to the nine year old he literally said, he's like, I want to go to Rome. I'm like, but I'm not sure. This is like going to fit in the cabin, not a mommy day that is maybe like a big gift to Christmas or birthday maybe, Because then while kids ask for a trip to like Rome individually, we do have a lot of freaking fly It's true. It's true I have I wouldn't have to pay for it, but I would actually take the time to Yes, yeah, like twelve hours in Rome doesn't really no, No, I mean it's more like it would be like a mommy three days. That's then it gives, so we'll see. I have to feel you may have to actually create some specific constraints, like mommy days must be in this radius this maybe give him a budget, like then it could become kind of like a cool planning exercise for them. Yeah no, because I've said, like, I mean, from where we are in Philadelphia, New York and Washington, DC are both in the range I will do for a day trip, right, But yeah, past that, I'm not sure that easy to get do. But there's a lot of things if you include from Washington to New York, I mean that's yeah, No, it's a big range. I mean there are many activities that can be done with there are actually very few that cannot be done within that. So I feel like that's a good leash. Yeah. Yeah, all right, so yeah you're doing that. Okay. So then for myself category, I had this one that was inspired by Amy Bouchots, who runs this blog called Humans Outside, and she lives in Alaska, and so she had said, you know, for three hundred and sixty five days a year, she wants to be outside for at least twenty minutes a day. And I think she has additional guidlines on it. She wants to be outside doing something active for twenty minutes a day and it's hard. I've seen the photos on Instagram of her with like ices icicles all over her face, because it turns out Alaska gets pretty cold. But I have not had icicles all over my face. But I have done pretty I said, I wanted to get outside for twenty minutes a day through quarter one, which is the quarter that is cold and sleety and rainy and unpleasant in my part of the world, and I have done pretty good. I say, there's probably I would say I can count on one hand the number of days I haven't done it, and usually those days is because it's been a travel intensive day and it's very hard to coordate getting outside when I'm back and forth with the airports and stuff like that and coming home late. And I probably could have gone and sat outside in the cold for twenty minutes late at night, but it just seemed like that wasn't the point, right. That was the point was to be enjoying like daylight when there was daylight in limited hours, to not use bad weather as a reason not to go outside. And so I've you know, got my Eddie Bauer coat that's long, I've got these muck boots that are up to my knees and quite warm, and so I can pretty much shut out a lot of the weather, and I naturally am not good with cold. I I get cold very easily. My hands actually freeze up. I've I've broken out in highs occasionally when I'm too cold, but I've got good gear, and I am also happier when I've gone outside and gotten some fresh air. So I'm trying to sort of work through like my own physical limitations on this and see if i can get around it. So that's awesome. It's very Norwegian of you, Yeah, to the enjoying winter exactly. That's awesome. I cannot speak to having the same challenges. So sorry, Yeah, it's like very nice here right now? Is that it for personal? So going outside? And okay, your turn. Mine were to make my various doctor's appointment, which I did. I like you, you were like rocked out on this, didn't you have like five one day? I was like, and I haven't gone to most of them yet, but I was just about them, making them correct, and like obviously none of them were urgent, because if you can put off something for two years, you can put off something for like two four years. A few months. Yeah, and actually, like I haven't been in the dermatologists maybe ever, and I need to so yeah so and a lot of those in this area. Everything gets booked up, so I didn't care when the appointments were. I just wanted to make them and I did, so that was awesome. I did not, however, solidify my poor little parents in book club is kind of I really miss it, and we're having trouble finding a date. But that'll be a goal for for next time. I don't think this was actually these were not on my formal list, but I had always said I wanted to try Orange Theory or similar and I finally did that. So how did that go? That was? That was a good one, right, like you yeah? Like group fitness? Yeah, well I kind of knew that because I remember. I don't if you remember. I used to go to fly Bar, which is like the bar part of Flywheel. I'm not into spinning, but I like the other part. That was my Miami Beach version. But they never had good class times, like it was targeted towards I think flexible twenty somethings and maybe stay at home moms who would drop their kids off so they'd have all these classes at like nine am and nothing super early. So we moved and this county, I think, tends to have more people with traditional schedules, so there are numerous places with five am and five thirty classes, and I picked one. It's actually not a chain. It's called Ellen's Ultimate because people have talked about it and it's awesome. It's similar to Orange Theory, but like kind of maybe like if Orange Theory and CrossFit had a child, it would be this. It really fun and I like it, so that was good. And then I started reading a little bit more again, which was not really on my list, but I'm still happy about it because I went through a big rut in January, which I'm not going to blame Mirracami for. Really, if there's a book you're just it can just all right your momentum for it. Not even that I wasn't into it. I actually still enjoy his writing style and I enjoy I enjoy It wasn't a bad book, and I want to go back to it. It just wasn't the book for me right now. I need something. I needed something more propulsive because I was just getting stuck and I was falling asleep. And now that I found some good books, I'm just sort of like back to my like just wanting to read all the time, which is great. Yeah, that's good, that's good. Yeah. Sometimes just you got to stop what you're doing and put in another one and yeah, it'll work, it'll work. Yeah, and you started it wasn't on your list either, but you started a new workout thing. I did. Yeah, no, I mean I was just thinking, like what can I give myself credit for that? I didn't put on my pall list and I went to I went to the Obiju Iyan at some point in Q one because I realized I hadn't gone in four years and had to uh actually do all the paperwork again as a new patient because it had been so long. Oh amazing. Yeah, oh well, I felt like I had had adequate care in that regard for the many years that I was having babies constantly. So I was, ah, you made I was done with that. Go to the dermatologists, but bit more for you know, cosmetic reasons, so that that that is fun. I guess, so like self care right there right there, stop looking like I'm forty years old. Well, the dorm I'm going to is like medical and they have other opportunities as well. I don't know if I'm going to be exploring at this Yeah, well you don't need to, but I may at some point. Yeah, I was feeling like I needed to explore those opportunities. So here we are, and yeah, I know, I I started a new workout habit of actually doing some strength training. I've I've said, you know, time and time again, like oh I need to lift weights or you know, do some sort of strength training type stuff, and never did. And upon why because I clearly can stick with other workout goals, and I generally believe it's like I don't do what I don't want to do right, and if I don't really want to do it, then I don't want to do it. But I realized I could build in a queue into my life. And so I had this chunk of time, you know, between eight ten and eight twenty five in the morning that I was not ever using well, and so I've I've started just using my that time for lifting weights. I have resistance bands and a kettlebell in my office and so I generally do at least five to ten minutes of that. I have a few work you know, lifts, I go through a few moves, I go through and try and that's awesome. So are you using a video or yeah, I've looked at a few articles or things online of like kettlebell moves or resistance band moves, things you can do Hotel me workout, I guess is often what it's listed on as or things like that. The thing that made the biggest difference for me in strength is embracing either a live person or a video telling me what to do. Like, I have no interest in creating my own workout. It's like so boring. I can't. I don't even know how people do that. I mean, I watch people at the gym, and I know they get into it and maybe you get to a certain level of proficiency where you feel like you can craft your own workout. But I don't feel like I ever need to get there. I want someone to tell me what to do, which is why I was loving the Beach Body and I still do. I really love those workouts and now I'm enjoying some some kind of the similar stuff but live. But yeah, it's for me. It was all about like I needed an instructor. Yeah, I'm only doing like five to ten minutes though, I mean, so it's hard to I think that'll make a difference. It's hard to get that bored in five to ten minutes. And I probably managed to do it three or four days a week because there are some days where the routine doesn't happen right because I'm gone or whatever. But so far, so good. I feel like it's a cue. It's a queue that I can stick with, like I know that this is my time to do it. Yeah, I don't like people telling me what to do. Just that's true. You don't like training planning. We're actually very opposite in that exercise regard. I like, yeah, like the the idea of a streak seems like like I could never And I really like being ordered around by someone it comes to exercise. I'm the person who hated Jim Blass. I'm like, get me out of here. I do not want anyone ever telling me what form of exercise I need to do again in my life. So it's so funny, dear, All right, Well, do we have any other that our goals? Or is that our goals? Those are our main ones. Oh, I did achieve my blog monthly visitors. That was actually kind of cool because there was an ad network I was interested in switching to and to be honest, I'm not sure if I actually got more visitors or I just got a more accurate analytics app installed, because before I was using my ad Networks one and I think it might have been missing something. So anyway, I was just very happy to find that I exceeded the number that I needed to. And well, you've also been blogging more frequently, and I think I have to come back more often. And that's true. And I noticed, like the weekend that I shared stuff on Instagram Stories, like normally I have this big drop on the weekend, and that weekend I didn't, so I guess people must have clip clicked through from my stories. It's like anything else. I mean, the more time I put it into it, the more you do it, then the more people come. But that's great that you got yourself to a better AD. Yeah, that was cool. That's really cool. So yeah, that's pretty much. That was Q one. I would consider it overwhelmingly pretty good quarter considering how much was going on. And yeah, now we're onto Q two, onto Q two, where I would say I wanted to have my backyard redone in Q two, and I think that is not going to happen, given that I haven't done any estimates or calling anyone or thought about it at all, so oh, well, maybe that will not happen in Q two. You can already see that Q two will not be that well. My off air suggestion to Laura is that she downgrade her her item to contact someone and get proposals rather than actually getting it done, because also that's more of a process goal than like an outcome goal, which you have more control over, and at least then at the very I mean bonus if you actually have it done. But if you've set things in motion, then you know you're set for Q three. Yeah, exactly. And just one thing in my defense is that my backyard is covered in snow right now, so I feel like putting estimates on it might be uncomfortable for all involved and inaccurate. I need to be possible. They don't know under the snow. So given that, yes, much of Q one has been well, my point was like I wanted to get in motion in Q one so it could happen in Q two when it wasn't under snow. That makes sense. And I also worry that calling once the snow is gone, that's when everyone's going to call and then they won't want to come, but well, somebody will come. Somebody wants to do my backyard. Cause that is purposeful segue. That was a purposeful segue into our Q and A. By the way, by the time this airs, hopefully there won't be snow. But I will recall that last year there still was in April, so don't consider yourself off the hook at this point. So I'll be the question here in Michigan this winter, we have already had eight snow and cold days with school cancelations. A cold day, oh yeah, because it got down to morrow cold days last year. That's so sad, okay, And it's only you know, midwinter when this was written. And I would love to hear Laura and Sarah talk about adjustments that are required when our kids have unexpected days at home, and I would include sick days in that to some degree as well. Now I acknowledge this is not me talking. This is still the questioner. There's the necessarily scheduled adjustments, of course, but what I'd really like to hear you talk about is the attitude adjustment that's required and how did do that well? I have no problem when the planned days are off. I just know those are not going to be days I get most focused work done. But when you're faced with week after week of incomplete weeks of school and everybody's out of routine, is it just survival or are their mindsets and practical strategies to help you through these times. Would love to hear you too talk about this. I'm guessing you have a little more experience with it, Laura than Sarah. Well, our kids both get sick, though, so it's not nice. So our kids both get sick, and we had more than a week off for a hurricane a couple of years ago, so you know, we have our own challenges. Yeah, ours is more winter focused generally because of this, you know. So there's some ways you can obviously plan your life to try to deal with it, and it is. I agree, it's hard to have a good attitude about it. One day after unplanned day stacks up one reason we switched to nanny care from daycare back when Jasper was little. We you know, there were all these sick days, the snow days and stuff of the daycare, and I wound up covering the vast majority of it. I mean I remember our first winter, there were some you know arguments. At one point, I got like my husband to like work at home for two days so I could go work in a bookstore. And it was just like this huge thing because I mean, I guess the adjustments to parenthood hid in his mind, Well, you're already working at home, whereas I have to go to my office, and so therefore it's a bigger deal for me to take the day off. And there were many fights about this that well, clearly this thing, you clearly feel like your career is more important than mine if that's the way you're doing it, and so feeding into all sorts of fun with that. But one thing we did wind up doing then is hiring a nanny. And our first nanny in New York actually lived four blocks away, so there was like almost no situation where she couldn't make it to work. I mean, obviously, you know, if we had like ten feet of snow, it was a bit, but if you know, six inches, like you can still walk in your boots to the apartment. So it was there was very limited days then that I wouldn't have coverage, and that helped a lot, like it made me feel like I could plan my life better. And actually, you know, get stuff done, which which was huge, So I would certainly look into stuff like that. In fact, our current nanny is just very you know, gung ho, which I so appreciate. She'll actually look at the weather forecast and if it looks like we're gonna get a foot of snow, she'll volunteer to stay overnight the day before. That's awesome, and it makes sense because if the weather is in that kind of questionable zone and it's very stressful for everyone to figure out, you know, if they're going to make it back and forth. So in her standpoint, it's probably like, you know what, I won't miss a day of work. I don't have to worry about the drive, probably have some agreement where after some point she can go to her room and be left alone. So I mean I'll pay overtime too, Yeah, and there you go. So it's like an opportunity. It's an opportunity. So that's also been great and cut down on that. But yeah, the attitude a part about it. I don't know. I wish I had a good answer for that, because I can't say that I have entirely ever reached a happy place about it. And I know I didn't in those first winters, and I feel like we did change the things structurally that would at least cut down on the issues related to it. I would try also to look and see if there were days coming up with weather and get as much ahead of time as possible. So, for instance, say it looks like we're going to get a snowstorm this week. Therefore Sunday is my workday, So starting at like eleven thirty in the morning, my husband would be on with the kids for six seven hours and I would work and I would get a whole work day in. And then if I lost Wednesday and Thursday to snow, at least I had done a whole work day before. The problem, of course, is that you can't call anyone on Sunday, you can't set up a meeting on Sunday, so it only works for certain kinds of work. And I think that's the part that is more challenging, is if you have a lot of work that involves meeting other people. Obviously you can convert stuff to calls, and many of them are probably dealing with the same thing. It's probably not just you. If there's enough snow that it's difficult for people to get around. You're not going to be the only person calling in, so you can be okay with that and put the kids in front of the TV or in front of an iPad or something and feel zero guilt about it. Do you ever like leave you know, three days, two days in January and two days in February like blank, to be like this is where all the you know, crap is gonna get moved that has to get moved. I try to do this, Yeah, actually, and I do it even more frequently. I as much as possible, will attempt not to schedule stuff on Fridays. And that's because then I can put stuff on front your buffer. Yeah it's a buffer, so then I'm not falling behind. So if you could work that out too, then anything that got canceled Wednesday Thursday could possibly be rescheduled to Friday, and then if you lost Friday as the day, then it would be okay. Because I think the buffer makes a huge difference for me because you know, before I had a buffer, if a kid got sick, it was like it felt like a catastrophe because if I had to cancel my clinic, then where was I gonna put all those patients? And there literally wouldn't have been any day and then it's like, okay, well then I'm going to be like overbooking myself days and days and my entire next week. It's gonna be miserable versus, oh, well I can't work today, but therefore this day off is going to turn into a work day. I'm just having my day off now. Is that ideal? No? But it's less out as traffic, so I think that. But there's very few like sick days that you would have to be home then, right, I mean you, oh for me, yeah, very few. I'm talking more about like weather emergency or something like if I had to take a kid to the hospital, or that doesn't happen very frequent. Yeah. Logistics of the other thing again, we have we have a really reliable nanny who you know, she herself almost never thankfully gets sick. I should knock on something, and I feel comfortable, you know, if my kids have a cold or a fever, she's fine with them. So that doesn't tend to impact my work so much. And we obviously have less of the weather stuff. But I will also say that I don't have a good attitude about things that change last minute either not in my favor, Like, so just giving you some support there, because it kind of sucks if you have something planned and you're the kind of person that plans a lot or maybe like put a lot of work into making sure the logistics were right and then something like a sickness comes along and just kind of slashes everything. That sucks. It's hard ye have a magic And going back to you know, the arguments I was having early in my parenting journey, I will say that this is both parents' responsibility. If you are parenting with someone, it is not fair to have this one hundred percent on one parent, even if there is you know, more flexibility, at least in theory, because flexibility is never infinite. And so you know, I said, my husband wound up having all the kids on a lot of weekends in order to do that, and I still wouldn't think that's ideal. But you know, if you're both in an office, maybe you can sort of have an agreement of like which parent is on call for the stuff on any given week, and then so you know there are weeks that you're not the parent on call, and then you can maybe put more stuff into those weeks understanding that the weeks that you are on call are the ones that might be interrupted. Yeah. I mean, I don't think that anybody needs to strive for some arbitrary fifty to fifty, you know, in either direction. I maybe the male partner is going to shoulder more than you know, who knows. I think it's whatever works for everyone. But I just think it needs to be thought out and should not be disproportionately on one side versus the other. Yeah. So yeah, all right, let's go to Love of the Week. Oh, I have to think about this. I had TVD because apparently I was well, I will put a shout out. So we did talk about goals. So I'm gonna name my two favorite books that I have read so far. One of them I already mentioned, so actually we'll skip that one. But I just finished Delia Owens Where the Crawdads Sing, and it's been very popular this year. I know, it's like kind of everywhere, but that's probably because it's like a really good vere. But it is one of those propulsive reads. The characters are interesting, they're multi dimensional, the setting is just gorgeous, and I happened to be reading it when I was in Nashville, so a little bit southern, and the book is very southern. I think at one point I was like, I need biscuits because they just had biscuits and I was actually in a place to get them. So that was really cool. So yeah, since I'm back into reading, that is my my love. I wonder if I'd like that. I'll have to check. I would say that's my favorite Q one read this far super accessible. I think, I don't know, like, would you like I'm trying to think of I mean a little ann patch it okay, maybe yeah, I'll check it out. Yeah, yeah, I would say if I I just finished reading Jane Jacob's Great Death in Life of Great American Cities. It was it was interesting. I you know, it was a little hard to get in first and not it's kind of slow moving at times, but you look at city sidewalks in different ways and I really enjoyed kind of that. Any book that can recast how you are looking at something that fundamentally what makes a street safe is having eyes on the street, which means having people there and people at different times of day, and a lot of streets there's only people on them, you know, at like eight thirty when they're going to work and like the lunch rush and after work. If it's a you know, commercial street or in the residential there's only certain times they're on it too, if people are gone all day, and you can't have that and have a good street. So you have to have multiple uses. It's of different buildings on a street that different people will be going to at different times, and then you have a lively safe street. So it was kind of fun to think about and what mix of commercial and residential and all that makes for a good city block. So that is very interesting. Yeah. The worst is when you're at a conference and you feel like you're in this weird area where where everything completely shuts down on weekends because you're sort of in the business district, but you're there for conference that's on the weekend, and yeah, it's like an eerie it doesn't work. Yeah, exactly, think they're actually going on here clothes, it's Saturday at noon. Yeah, that's a fascinating topic. Yeah cool, So I enjoyed that and that could be my love of the week. All right, Well this has been best of both worlds. This has been episode eighty seven where we're talking about our Q one, which could be quarter or quintile, So we'll 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.