Feeling Done: Bringing Closure to Your Work Day (Or Not!)

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi.

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Speaker 2: This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

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Speaker 3: And this is Sarah hart Unger. 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.

00:00:17
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds.

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Speaker 2: 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.

00:00:32
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.

00:00:35
Speaker 4: In this episode, we are going to be talking about feeling done. That's sometimes elusive feeling of whether we are done with a workday or not, if we're on top of our work or not. How we can create that feeling at the end of any given work day or just let it go, which is another concept we'll be talking about too. But before we get into that, we just thought we'd touch base on a couple of things.

00:00:58
Speaker 1: This is airing towards the end of summer.

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Speaker 4: Clo to the end of summer for you, Sarah, then for me, Right, you guys start school pretty.

00:01:04
Speaker 3: Early, Yes, we start school, I guess it'll be about less than two weeks from the airing of this episode, so it does go fast down in Florida in the South, I guess, but it starts earlier, so that's good too.

00:01:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, so why don't you give us an update on this Monday through Friday camp because this is sort of a different hybrid camp concept that you guys wind up doing this year.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a unique concept and I had actually never really heard about it until a couple of years or heard of anything like this. But there are some camps semi local to me, like think thirty to sixty minutes away, that do a Monday to Friday program where you drop your kids off at like eight am on Monday and you pick them up at three thirty pm on Friday. So it's like they have a four night sleepover times three. They're in three week sessions. I guess if you wanted to maximize your camp weeks, you could do all nine weeks. We only just did three weeks of this and then filled in the gaps with day camps and travel and other things. Last year, just to refresh any listener's memories or tell new listeners, we did the traditional four weeks sleep away camp for my older two kids, who at the time were eight and ten they're now nine and eleven, and they enjoyed it, but then at the end decided they wanted to do something different this year. And then when a neighbor mentioned this camp, one big selling point was that it was held on a college campus, which meant air conditioning and no rustic accommodations. So that won over at least one of my kids, and then the other one wanted to stay with the other one, and so everything ended up going in that direction, and they enjoyed it. Like I was skeptical because I felt like I was joking that it was worse of both worlds, because it was like, okay, like it's all the headache of like having to pack your kids up and like unpack them and do all the laundry, but like none of the bliss of like well not bliss, but like none of the really uninterrupted time to like travel or do anything like that. But by the end of the three weeks, I actually kind of I kind of liked it. Like the weekends had a little bit of a celebratory feel. We hadn't seen them all week It was just enough time to miss them, but not enough time to be stressful in any way for them. I think they enjoyed themselves. They don't allow screens at this camp, so I knew they weren't like having tons of video game or TV time, and it was kind of low key and much less expensive than a traditional like four week overnight camp. I don't know what they're going to do next year. I have offered all of the options. I said, you can go to day camp, you can go to specialty camps, you can go to this camp again, you can go to overnight camp. My only option I have not offering is you can stay home and do nothing, because I just don't think that would be good for any of us. And we'll see. They've kind of thrown out all kinds of different ideas as to what they might want to do next year. But I thought the Monday to Friday was pretty cool, and we'll see.

00:03:45
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I guess it's slightly more convenient, I mean getting them there and such than versus these like traditional sleeping way camps up up north. I mean, although part of the thing is that then they're away from the Florida heats, right.

00:03:56
Speaker 3: So they have Florida flights for the sleep away camp, So it was actually the easiest thing ever. I mean, the ping is getting your luggage and stuff up there, but they actually have shipping companies that come to your house and deliver the trunks, and we just drove them to the Fort Lauderdale Airport and picked them up from there last year, So it was actually incredibly convenient. Visiting day was a little bit more of a headache, but then it was a nice excuse to get out of the heat. So I actually think logistics wise, that was probably easier, believe it or not, But neither are that bad. This camp is not that far.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, well, good to know, so people might want to look into that option.

00:04:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:04:30
Speaker 4: I guess my update I can talk a little bit about my writing retreat.

00:04:34
Speaker 1: I had hinted at this in a previous episode.

00:04:37
Speaker 4: I wound up going to Littitz, Pennsylvania from July seven to ten. I checked myself into a hotel, the will bur it's the old chocolate factory, it's now it's part of the Tapestry collection I guess Hilton or whatever. Pretty nice hotel, and it's such a cute little downtown. It's one of these traditional Pennsylvania small towns, but slightly better capitalized than some of the small towns that are kind of falling apart. This one has a pretty thriving downtown with a lot of restaurants. I ate a a really cool Mexican place called Tide House. I went to the Appalachian Brewing Company one night to get a nice craft beer and a burger, and in between those meals, I sat at my desk for ten hours a day and worked at the novel and had a really good time, feeling just so into it. It's fun to be into a manuscript and knowing you are making it better and seeing the words transform. Time just flies by. It's really that state of flow that people sometimes talk about.

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Speaker 1: That's definitely when I get in that state.

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Speaker 4: And one of the reasons I wanted to do the retreat is so I could be in that state, because it's hard to achieve that when you're at home and being interrupted by various things, whether you wish to be or not.

00:05:58
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was.

00:05:59
Speaker 4: A really fun and it reminded me of my writing retreat six years ago that I recently found the logs for because you know, longtime listeners know that I track my time, and I have started looking at the old cycle of the same date. So my logs are always named after the Monday, and so this summer it was, you know, July ten, July seventeen, July twenty four. But it turns out those were also the dates in twenty seventeen based on how the things, so I have to now save them as twenty twenty.

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Speaker 1: Three, not just the date. But so I go back and look at the old one.

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Speaker 4: And so I looked at July seventeen from twenty seventeen, and I found that my retreat in Bear Creek, when I was working on off the clock, was there. And I then saw a entry on the Thursday when I was home ten am work and then it said shoe re podcast. So that was the conversation at which best of both worlds was hatched. So isn't that exciting?

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Speaker 3: I love it. I have a question about the retreat when you were spending these long days working, because those are pretty that's a lot of hours. Did it feel like it just went really fast because you think you were in such flow, Like did you feel tired at the end of those days, because I just feel like that's a lot of hours. To be spending on something intense and like mono mono tesca. I don't know.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it was intense, but it's I mean, it's literally when I'm happiest, so it's you know, I don't know what to say about that. I mean, yeah, I didn't have the energy to do other things afterwards. I mean, I watched HGTV at night after I was done with that. But it was really important to me to get through it and to use this time, and I would take breaks every three hours or something. Partly I had to eat right, like, so I had to get food, although I tried to avoid that.

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Speaker 1: I like buy a sandwich in the morning and bring it in so I could eat that.

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Speaker 4: But I walked around town things like that. So it wasn't ten uninterrupted hours. It would be like three hours, take a break, four hours, take a break, three hours crash.

00:08:03
Speaker 1: That's more or less how it.

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Speaker 3: Works, makes sense. Oh my gosh, it sounds awesome. I don't know that I've ever taken such a work heavy retreat. I mean, our retreats are work heavy, but not quite to that extent. But it's something I'd be interested in doing someday. I could see if you ever happily productive.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, a big project like that that requires that sort of intense editing kind of stuff. I think I don't do it for creating first drafts because I think that would be utterly exhausting that. I mean, you can't really crank out new words for ten hours. You can edit the words you have. I mean maybe somebody will write in and say that's how I write, but I don't know. It wouldn't work for me.

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Speaker 3: That kind of makes sense. I could see it as like if I've done the creative work and then spending the retreat like putting together the course from the stuff I've already generated, If that makes sense or something. But anyway, super cool, I like caring about that.

00:08:56
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:08:56
Speaker 4: Well, speaking of long work days and when they are over, that is the topic of this episode. So a couple weeks ago, Sarah posted on her blog about one of her observations of the difference between her clinical practice work and then her more entrepreneurially all creative work. So maybe you could just anyone who doesn't read the shoebox, you can give them a quick rundown of that.

00:09:20
Speaker 1: Sure.

00:09:21
Speaker 3: Yes, it was inspired by a day that I had had where I had gotten a lot done, but I like, I just had this nagging feeling of like when do I feel like that satisfied, Like and I've checked off all the boxes and I'm done, and like I know I've had a successful day, because when I have clinic days, I know that when I have seen all my patients, written all my notes, and I have a little check boxes for myself when I do all this, and when I've answered all the staff messages and my inboxes zero, like I can just like shut it off and feel like I mean, obviously stuff is going to accumulate in the background, but at that moment, I feel good. I feel done, and I can like kind of be at peace and just enjoy the rest of my evening knowing that like work is over, if that makes sense. Yet, when I'm working for myself, even when I'm getting a high volume of things done, and even it's not like I don't go in with the plan, I mean, come on, I'm me, I'm gonna make a plan. I have stuff to do, I've identified my priorities, I have my checkboxes or whatever. But at the same time, even when I've checked most of them off or all of them off. Sometimes I just still don't feel that delineation and I'm struggling with it, and I think it's just because it's new to me. I think also being at home makes it a little bit more challenging, because if I were in a workspace, there might be like a moment when I'm like, okay, I've checked off my boxes and now like that's enough, so I'm leaving, and therefore there's closure. So I think part of it could also be location related.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I really think it's both.

00:10:48
Speaker 4: My first job out of college was at a daily newspaper, and you know, at some point the paper goes to bed, like it's got to be printed for the next day. Obviously this has changed more in two decades because there's more of a more people read online now, so it's more of a continual thing. But most papers that print still at some point the printer has to print it, so it has to be done for those purposes, because no one's really running around yelling stop the presses less it's I.

00:11:18
Speaker 1: Don't know anyways.

00:11:19
Speaker 4: So and I also had pretty low levels of responsibility, so at any given night, once I had commuted home, I was done, and I didn't have to think about it until the next day, and it was you know, kind of a I kind of liked that experience. I liked, you know, being that sense that like, Okay, I don't have to do anything till I'm back. And then it immediately disappeared when I began working for myself for a couple of reasons, Like you said, working from home, because there's no obvious delineation between work and the rest of life, and also that there's always something else you could be doing. When you work for yourself, there's no ever like, oh, well should I do this or not do this?

00:12:01
Speaker 1: You just you could do anything.

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Speaker 4: It could fill all the available time or whatever, and you never know if it's the right thing to do or not.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you just have to choose.

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Speaker 4: But because of that, there's definitely not that same sense of being done. And you know, at first you're like, how we've got to get used to this. It's different, But eventually I kind of realize, well, I don't know, you don't have to be done, like you know, you don't have to be done in any psychological sense to decide that you are done for the day, even if it's just for a few hours to go do something else, and I did wind up joining you know, several choirs when I first lived in New York City and was self employed, because then it forced me to be done three evenings. I would go out and you know, I might check email when I came back at ten o'clock, but I probably wasn't really going to do that much. So you know, at least three days a week, I was done six or so, and that made a pretty good delineation between it. But yeah, I think I think a lot of jobs these have more of that malleable sense of whether you are done or not, and so it's a question people can sort of think, like I think it's also a personality thing. I I'm just sensing from our conversations over the past six years that you like a little bit more of a strict separation between work and the rest of life.

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Speaker 1: I do.

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Speaker 3: And it's it's not like I would say, oh, I like, don't ever want to do a script on a weekend or something like that, because you know very well that sometimes I do or sometimes like that's where it's going to fit in, and but I want to like have thought through that and have like planned for it. I guess like I don't want to feel like there are lingering assignments that don't have a home. I guess is what it is, and I do crave. I guess, well, you said something really interesting about the choir just then, because I think part of it is that, like if I'm home and I'm working and I have childcare and my kids are home, like there's this moment when like I have something else to do that's specific, Like maybe if I was like, I will be at a shut down place by at exactly six, and that's when we're gonna have dinner together, because we don't always have dinner together depending on like what everybody's plans, our schedules are, et cetera. And so maybe if there was like a more specific delineation of what I was going to that would help with the psychological But yes, I do think I have a more deep seated psychological need for that compartmentalization. And maybe some of that's protective because well, as we were recording this, I got paid from work and I actually just turned my phone off because I knew it was not something urgent, but I also knew they probably would keep paging, and it's very hard to podcast well if I'm thinking about clinical stuff, and so turning my phone off meant it wouldn't continue to buzz, and I had to compartmentalize that, just like I don't tend to like respond to like a bunch of podcasts emails while I'm in the middle of clinic because I can't do that. Well, So maybe the compartmental Maybe I'm just a bad multitasker, or maybe I just really prefer it that way because I have a lot of diverse sets of things that I need to do.

00:15:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think there's that. There's also the question, I mean, if you're working for somebody else and they have zero boundaries, that's more of a problem, right, And so none of this is to say that, you know, if you work for someone that your boss should be emailing you at eight o'clock at night and expecting you to answer quickly, like we are not talking about that. And this is more of a function of I think that entrepreneurial aspect of a job as well, like that it's you don't have to do anything, it's that you are.

00:15:39
Speaker 1: Choosing to do. And if you are choosing, then.

00:15:44
Speaker 4: You know, drawing those strict lines sort of starts to make a little bit less sense, and I can get at this personality sometimes when I have talked to people about the split shift, those who have read some of my work know that one of the strategies that a lot of women, in particular who have young kids and have jobs that require more than forty hours a week of work will do. And this was even more of a thing when the commute was an aspect of more people's jobs, but that you would end work at a relatively reasonable time, go home, spend the evening with your family, and then spend some more time working at home after the kids go to bed. And that was a way that a lot of people could get up to fifty hours a week versus forty, but still have that time with their young children who go to bed relatively early. And some people, when I suggest it'd be like, yeah, that sounds great, that's what I should do. That would allow me to feel more on top of things given everything that's going on, And other people would be like, that's the worst idea I have ever heard in the entire world. I mean, there was one person who reviewed I know how she does it for one British newspaper said that like the one time she'd done the split.

00:16:58
Speaker 1: Shift, she felt ill with so pity. I was like, well, Okay.

00:17:02
Speaker 4: That's somebody who really likes to have strict lines between work and the rest of life.

00:17:07
Speaker 1: And you know, I think it's a personality thing.

00:17:10
Speaker 4: I think it is, but you know, I mean, and we'll get into this more after our ad break. But even if you do have that sense that work should be work at home should be home, I think there are some upsides occasionally for people who do have really full personal lives and being a bit more malleable about when things happen. So we will get to that right after this break.

00:17:43
Speaker 3: Okay, we are back and I can share my personal feelings about split shift. I guess I think it's great for other people if they like to work that way. It's never really going to work with me, mostly just because of my like circadian rhythms, and I am useless after like seven pm, and so the idea of working at that time absolutely fills me with dread to even think about it. I'm much more likely to do a split shift segment like on the weekends.

00:18:15
Speaker 4: Or in the mornings, right, Like, I mean, I know you use your mornings for other things now, but if you were going to do it, that's when you would do it.

00:18:22
Speaker 3: Yes, back before I was like obsessively training for marathons, I did do some work in the mornings, and I've kind of displaced some of my I mean, I would write my blog post usually in the morning, which is now I guess truly could be considered part of my work. But now I've kind of moved that to the lunch hour, and that's been working really well for me. But I used to like walk at lunch. So yeah, everything just kind of gets like swapped around the way it works for each person. But I you're right, I'm inherently less horrified at the idea of a morning And I used to like, if I had a presentation, do that was important, I would rather set my alarm at some absolutely obscene hour because I knew I could just power through with my morning coffee in an hour or two versus stay up late. But that's just personal preference and kind of my own bodily rhythms.

00:19:10
Speaker 4: Well, so let's talk before we get a little bit more into the existential aspect of this. But if you are interested in having a sense of completion, and you are not in a job where it's like you get in your car at five pm and you leave. If you have that sort of job, there is an obvious demarcation between work and home because I mean, yes, obviously work can follow you home, but if you're not going to sleep at your office, there is a point where you are going to leave, and that creates an obvious line of.

00:19:41
Speaker 1: The day is done. Right.

00:19:44
Speaker 4: So if you don't have that, if you are working for yourself, if you are working at home, what are some things you can do?

00:19:52
Speaker 1: You've talked about a few things that you were thinking of trying.

00:19:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, And actually I have to give some of my readers credit and stuff, because people had some interesting sign congestions. And I have to say the academics are probably one of the loudest I don't know groups that are very interested in figuring out how to get that kind of done feeling, probably in part because again they're never going to be done. Their work is so nebulous. A lot of them have a lot of built in flexibility and yet there's always so much stuff to do, so it makes sense to me. But the first one was a lot of people referenced cal Newport's quitting time or shut down ritual, and I do think it is. I love his fixed schedule productivity concept, although I kind of laugh at it in a way I don't laugh at it, but Okay, his concept was you give yourself a schedule and you kind of fit your work around that. And I do think this is kind of a unique idea, like when applied to something like a college student, because college students are notorious for like I can do it whenever, and so I'll procrastinate all day long and do it at midnight, and you know, like it doesn't work out very well. So I think in that context it's an original and interesting idea. But then like most many women, if they choose to have children, end up in fixed scheduled productivity like absolutely by default, so we wouldn't even like think of otherwise. And like the ultimate exercise in fixed scheduled productivity is pumping, right, like because if you know that you like need to be there for, like or want to be there for like the last morning feeding and then the first post wark feeding, and then you have X amount of hours between each feeding, like, you know exactly what you have to get done in terms of very squeezed work hours and what your output needs to be and so I don't know, I've done that. You do feel done. It's not the most fun way to do it, but yeah, so that that concept I think is really interesting. But then also for many women just sort of like really a.

00:21:42
Speaker 4: Six pm daycare pickup you've got I know, your nanny's supposed to leave at five thirty or whatever. It is like, yeah, you have a certain amount of time if you are the one who is taking over from the childcare. I mean that's just yeah, the reality you have a fixed schedule then and so.

00:22:02
Speaker 3: You got it. So in general, obviously that could be either parent. But that's why I think that's kind of funny but interesting. There is the idea of just a shutdown ritual, like having something you check off or like maybe you make your plan for the next day, like something you do every day to make it feel like you're complete, And I think that's a nice idea. Some people love focus Mate, which is where it's an app where you're like paired with another person and you basically set your intentions. I think you're pared or you can do it in a group. I've never used this app, but people love it, especially I think academics and those who have like more nebulous kind of work objectives but still need to get a lot done. So you like set up your intention, you set up your amount of work, and then you're kind of like in a zoom room with other people working, and then when it's over, you're done, and Laura gives me a is give me a face. But people pay for this and people like this. So it's a thing.

00:22:53
Speaker 1: I think you could have friends. I mean, I guess you could tell you that think it's an a bliger.

00:22:56
Speaker 3: I think it's an obliger thing. Like I think obligers like love this. And so yeah, there's that, and then there's some more stuff.

00:23:06
Speaker 1: There's more stuff, the themes, the theme lead.

00:23:08
Speaker 3: That's what I wanted to mention. So someone mentioned that, like you could have Tuesday be writing day and then Thursday is recording day, and like you kind of know, like these are my tasks that I do on Tuesdays. These are my tasks that I do on Thursdays. I just made those up as things. It could also be like meeting day or admin day or whatever, and that would kind of be a way because then you know that like, oh, you know, maybe I have a lot of other meeting stuff to do. But since today's admin day and I've cleared out my admin, I'm done.

00:23:33
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I think these are all great ideas.

00:23:36
Speaker 4: I mean, I one of the things I do is towards the end of my day, which inevitably, I mean, there is something I have to do. I mean, it's eating dinner with my family, it's driving a kid somewhere, which might happen at a different time any given day.

00:23:50
Speaker 1: So around that.

00:23:51
Speaker 4: Time I often have created my to do list for the next day, and it's like past Laura has assigned it. When I get there in the morning, look at it, and those are the things I'm going to do for the day, and something could come up, but generally, if I've crossed all those things off, like I feel like it's been a good day because past Laura has decided that this is what would make a good day. And now I've done those things, and so we can move on and make the list for the next day. And I'm always pulling these off my weekly priority list, and again you end the week with everything crossed off.

00:24:21
Speaker 1: And when you have done that, then you can feel done.

00:24:25
Speaker 4: And it is not impossible to end the week with everything crossed off, Like, don't assign yourself something you are not going to do.

00:24:31
Speaker 1: It's it's just.

00:24:32
Speaker 3: Very straightforward impossible as long as your boss, who is yourself creating these lists for you, is doing them with a realistic eye as to what you have going on and what your energies are going to be, et cetera.

00:24:42
Speaker 1: Which I mean that's self knowledge, right, Like, yes, you know.

00:24:47
Speaker 4: One of the reasons to track your time to look back on each week and see what you have accomplished. And then you'd be like, oh, yes, I can do x amount in one week with the normal complement of emergencies. I cannot do why in a week with the normal complement of emergency. So I shouldn't set that as the baseline goal. I mean, if everything goes perfectly, yay, go figure out why get it done, But maybe not set that as the goal that has to get crossed off, because then then you lose confidence in the to do list. Like if you're putting stuff on the to do list that you're not actually going to do, then it's a useless document, right. It's not setting priorities, it's not structuring your time.

00:25:27
Speaker 1: It's just a wish list. So that doesn't.

00:25:30
Speaker 4: It to do means today basically, and if you're not going to do it today, don't put it on.

00:25:34
Speaker 1: The list for the day. That's I don't know, that's total productivity.

00:25:37
Speaker 3: Totally agree, and I think it's worth spending time getting better at that.

00:25:41
Speaker 1: Like all of this, it's a skill.

00:25:42
Speaker 3: It's yes, it's a practice. It's a skill. You learn from your mistakes. You pay attention to your time, You see what works and what didn't. You don't beat yourself up when it doesn't work, but you actually do learn from it. Then maybe next time your list needs to be pared down.

00:25:55
Speaker 4: And yeah, and a list was sort of like the ninety five percent confidence interval of what your life is going to look like. Like I'm not say like that if your house catches on fire, you're going to get through everything on your list, Like, no, you probably aren't, But like if you had to pick up a kid from daycare at one o'clock, you should still be able to get through this list.

00:26:14
Speaker 1: That's how you need to structure it.

00:26:15
Speaker 4: So anyway, I think the theme days is also a great idea for people who struggle with like feeling like, oh, well, I should be doing marketing now. And I'm not, and therefore I feel like I'm not done, and I, you know, should spend my entire day doing that. Or you know, it's if you know that every Wednesday afternoon is marketing afternoon, Like if you know that Friday morning is administration time, you know you're going to get to those with a backup slot built in, because you know, if Wednesday afternoon gets taken away from you, you do still need to do your marketing, so figure out when that could happen. But the theme day can also give you a sense that you are getting to everything, that the ferrist wheel keeps turning and the stuff keeps coming up, so you don't necessarily have this sense that you need to spin it and spin it and spin it and build a bigger Ferris wheel and anything else that we can.

00:27:04
Speaker 1: Put in that metaphor.

00:27:06
Speaker 4: How about email, because this is the thing that trips a lot of people up, Like, what were some of your suggestions for that?

00:27:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean, I am an inbox zero proponent, but I am not a fan of trying to keep it at zero all the time or every single day. I actually think it's great to ignore your email because how else are you going to get not ignore it, but like not make that your focus for a given work day, because how else are you going to focus on other things if you're always looking at what's coming in. And so I do think that like kind of as part of a theme choosing when is going to be your kind of email attack time. It can be really really helpful in having that off your plate the rest of the time. For me, it tends me a Friday afternoon activity. Sometimes it hangs over into Saturday mornings. See that's where I prefer weekends to that second shift because sometimes there are certain kid activities where I'm just sitting there and it's a great email processing time. And yeah, it does free me up from feeling like I have to deal with that all week. And so if you email me, you might notice that you'll hear from me on a Friday fun fat off it is.

00:28:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, I tend to put it as email triage, and I put it on my calendar maybe you know, Tuesday and Friday or Wednesday and Friday or something like that, and I've gotten to stuff that I needed an urgent response. It's this is for the other stuff that like I'm like, oh, I got to think about that or I don't feel like getting to that right now, or this isn't urgent. I'll deal with it in a few days, and then I go back through until.

00:28:30
Speaker 1: I get to current with that. You know, when I do my email triage. If you are going to.

00:28:37
Speaker 4: Do a bonus session though, right, because Sarah, you are then trying to get to yourself to inbox zero on Saturday morning. But it's not that you had a thousand emails in there or that you're getting to inbox zero, like you have a very specific amount that you're going.

00:28:49
Speaker 3: At that point. There's like twenty or something. Correct.

00:28:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I.

00:28:52
Speaker 4: Think that's helpful too, Like if you are going to do a bonus session at some point, it does help to know what you're gonna do, Like if you're doing the split shift. Don't be like I got to get through a thousand emails from eight thirty to ten, because it's not going to happen. But you could be like, Okay, well, because I left work at four o'clock, I need to finish the agenda notes for meeting tomorrow, I need to approve this project that somebody just sent me, and I need to give a more thoughtful response.

00:29:18
Speaker 1: You know, to that question of do we need to hire another person?

00:29:21
Speaker 4: You know, like those three things I'm going to do tonight, and when I'm done with those, then I'm done right and it doesn't keep stretching.

00:29:29
Speaker 1: For you forever.

00:29:30
Speaker 3: I think having this split shift be about accomplishing very specific objectives makes it far less painful, because it's not like, oh, I'm sitting down to work. It's I'm sitting down to finish XYZ, specifically to make next week run a lot more smoothly, or to finish what I couldn't do because I went to the soccer tournament or whatever.

00:29:49
Speaker 4: Well, and that thing about going to the soccer tournament, like, I think that is key to think about it.

00:29:53
Speaker 1: I mean, because one thing to think about.

00:29:57
Speaker 4: For a lot of women who do wind up doing things in their personal lives during traditional work hours, you already don't have strict separation of life. If you are willing to ever do things like take a kid to the doctor or go to a school event during the work day, then it's just a trade off to work at other points. And so if you have in your mind that working in the evening or working on the weekends is somehow tragic and like something has gone horribly wrong. Then you can't also be like, oh yeah, and I want to go to this program at my kid's school and oh yeah, I'm going to take my kid to the doctor at eight am and not be at work till nine thirty or whatever. You can't have those beliefs together. Like they just don't work unless you're willing to work a lot.

00:30:44
Speaker 3: Less, that's what they say, unless you're like truly part time, and that's working if you're part time.

00:30:48
Speaker 4: If you are not, you know, have the ambitions to do whatever, they're like, okay, fine, yeah, I mean, then.

00:30:53
Speaker 1: You're just working less.

00:30:54
Speaker 4: But you should understand that that's what you're doing, is you're setting yourself up to have fewer work hours than you might if you didn't hold yourself to it. And I don't believe that it is tragic to work at nights or on weekends, and certainly not that it's like you don't want your kids to see work, Like I think we live in a world where a lot of kids, you know, it's just it's not a terrible thing for kids to know that mothers work too, and that they might sometimes want to put in some extra hours because there's a big project that they're really hoping to get done, or that they were excited about or something like that. I think that, you know, we can get a little bit too worried about that. And I guess it just comes straight down to that thing that a lot of people are very, very uncomfortable with mothers working. Even very progressive people, even very you know, feel like enlightened on everything else, they are still incredibly uncomfortable with that. And so they're like, well, I don't want my kids to see that I have to do this at night or I you know, oh, the weekends are sacred, those are family time. It's like, but again, you brought your kids to the dentist at nine o'clock on Tuesday.

00:32:01
Speaker 1: How can weekends be sacred.

00:32:02
Speaker 4: If you're doing that and yet want to, you know, continue in this job that does require a certain number of hours. So anyway, that's just me, my little soapbox here.

00:32:11
Speaker 1: I will get off of it now.

00:32:14
Speaker 3: No, I support that soap I support that soap box. We should not be held to a different standard, and if we love our jobs and want to do more of them, then we should be allowed to do that.

00:32:26
Speaker 1: Obviously.

00:32:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, which is why I took the you know, the writing retreat. I mean, even you know, who knows what will ever come of that. But I do write for a living, and so writing books is part of that. And you know, if somebody else in a job that required occasionally to travel and do a big conference somewhere, you know, that's sort of my equivalent.

00:32:46
Speaker 1: And it was important to me to do. And I think it was fine that my family could see me do that.

00:32:51
Speaker 4: All right, So I think that's what we have to say on that. But let's go to the question for this week. So a listener writes, and when did you start swim.

00:33:02
Speaker 1: Lessons with your kids?

00:33:04
Speaker 4: I feel like swim lessons for my three to four year old was kind of a waste of money. I assume this person was doing like group lessons and know the YMCI kind of type thing. She says, do you recommend private lessons? So, Sarah, what do you say?

00:33:17
Speaker 3: I've never felt like any swim lesson was a waste of money, because either they're just getting more comfortable with the water or they're actually learning. In Florida, a lot of kids learn pretty early, and we had at least one out of three kids swimming by four like could swim across the pool, although with the same exposure, not all of my kids were doing that. So there's going to be some differences based on the kid. We've done both group and private. Some kids have learned a ton mostly in the group and only needed a little bit of help with the private at the end. Other kids have been way slower, and I've put more energy into the private. My personal philosophy is if you are not swimming by like close to five, you should doing private lessons. And I have found the private lessons that are many days of the week versus just a weekly exposure to be more effective because there's just something about that continuity. So there's a lot of teachers, actually, there's a lot of teachers who make it their side hustles during the summer to be swim teachers. We've hired a couple of them that way, and then they'll they'll just do like a week of boot camp and they'll come to your community pool or you go to them and your kid practices day after day for a week, so they really get that muscle memory and kind of get rid of any fear.

00:34:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I mean I would say so one of the things about even like the group classes for three to four year olds is they're trying to teach them some basic water safety, like here's how you climb out of the pool, which regardless of whether your kid is going to be a champion, you know, breaststroker, like if you have a pool, if your neighbors have a pool, if there's a pool, your child might conceivably wander past. That is just a basic safety issue that you need to teach them along like with don't touch matches, like you know everything else that you know, wear your seat belt. Having some basic water safety is really important. So I think, you know, even if they weren't like learning to swim, if they have a concept like stay away from the pool without an adult and if you get in, this is how you get out, Like that's how That's something that they need to learn pretty young. Yeah, we'd done group lessons starting at like two and a half, you know, the parent and child, you know, getting comfortable in the water, and then they transitioned to doing it without the parent when they're about three and a half or so at our local why and then yeah, we've we've done private lessons. If a kid gets to about five and really isn't quite there. With some pretty hilarious swim teachers over the years.

00:35:41
Speaker 1: I have to say Quid a mix of people.

00:35:45
Speaker 4: Who do it, and Alex had some really like gruff military guy who came to give him lessons. It was quite the battle to watch the two of them. I got to say, you know, my kid's a stubborn little kid. This was a stubborn guy, and two of them really had it out.

00:35:59
Speaker 3: And he can swim.

00:36:00
Speaker 1: Now, well he could swim. Yeah, he could swim, so it worked. We're still working on the stroke things.

00:36:04
Speaker 4: I mean, Michael would like him to do swim team, and I think swim team would be really awesome for him, but I'm not sure he's gonna agree to do it, in which case then we got to find something else, like Ninja team or climbing team or I don't know, but.

00:36:14
Speaker 3: I think zero out of three kids take me up on my suggestion to try swim team.

00:36:19
Speaker 4: So yeah, OK, energy, it's like burns a ton of energy, which has many upsides for certain personalities of children.

00:36:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, so love of the week Mine is related chlorine. So this is.

00:36:36
Speaker 4: If you have a backyard pool, you wind up with a you know, like a minor in chemistry by the time you're done with this of figuring out like how the chlorine like precipitates out and all the you know, the pH levels of your pool and such. But it really is amazing stuff that you know, you between changing all the chemistry of the pool. We had this episode that when we were away for a week and something happened without it being properly tended, it turned into a pond, Like it literally turned into a pond in one week, and like, okay, that's a problem.

00:37:13
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to swim in this pond.

00:37:15
Speaker 4: And then you know, with the right balancing of the chemistry and enough chlorine and such, it was a beautiful bluepool again. So it really, it really is magical.

00:37:25
Speaker 1: Love it.

00:37:25
Speaker 3: I will share my two favorite sources for kids swimwear, which are lands end kids, super affordable, really cute options. And then if you're wanting to splurge, I have to say the Bowden swim stuff last like forever, Like we're having stuff that was worn by multiple seasons of Annabelle and now go through Genevieve and it still like looks really good. So those are my two faves.

00:37:47
Speaker 4: That's really cool. If you can get that. I mean, especially with girls swimsuits that are all stretchy, because the stretch is like what goes first on swimsuits. We've had a little better luck with boys just because it's the canvassy type material and it's only the waistband, and so if you keep the waistband going, then you can wear it from boy to boy.

00:38:02
Speaker 3: But girls you have to have one boy, so I have well we basically I just have to.

00:38:07
Speaker 1: Throw it out. I can't even really donate them.

00:38:08
Speaker 4: They're not, you know, worth, I don't think anyone want to wear I'm so yeah, no good to keep in mind, I might start start shopping there for this.

00:38:17
Speaker 1: All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds.

00:38:19
Speaker 4: We've been talking about how to create a feeling of done at the end of the workday, or how to decide that you don't really need to be done, and you know, you could just decide to be actually done with your work even if you're not psychologically done with your work, and take it on again the next day. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:38:38
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com. Or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram and you can.

00:38:46
Speaker 5: 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.

00:39:00
Speaker 3: W