Family Meetings + Mailbag Part 2: Home & Family

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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 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. 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 seventy three, airing in late October of twenty twenty two. Today's episode is going to be covering family meetings and we will also be doing a home and family mail bag. Last week we covered our career mail bag, lots of great questions related to the workplace and people's careers. We separated it out. We got a lot related to people's home and personal lives and they're managing of themselves. So we are going to start with a little discussion of family meetings, which is a topic that we've heard from a lot of people about, and then dive into the Q and A. But first, real quick, we are a full fledged fall haha. Lots of fs in Pennsylvania, Hair Sarah, not so much. However, you are about to start quintile five. Yes, Quintile five my favorite quintile so in my quintile system trademark, not really maybe someday. Someday. Quintile five is November first to December thirty first, and I mean part of me feels like I should start it on Halloween because that's when all like the fall festivities begin, So I may have to alter that in the future, but right now it's November first to December thirty first, and I call it holiday and celebration season. Time for lots of reflecting and fun with family, and I just really enjoy quintile five. I often dedicate a fair chunk of Quintile five to thinking about the whole upcoming year ahead, because I think I think it's worth it. Personally, It's always paid off for me to really have very thought through goals and plans and try and all that kind of stuff, And this is kind of the time I designate to do that, and I get to decide on my planner lineup for twenty twenty three, so that is always a highlight as well. Yeah, we can't wait to see what the full planner stack will look like, although I know it does shift in the course of the year as you, oh, yes, decide one or another is not working for you at one particular time. Real quick, we're we're throwing up bonus question here that we got off Instagram. A couple of weeks ago. I posted a picture of my at a Glance twenty twenty three calendar, which is a little weak, you know, very small sized, pocket sized calendar, and that's where I put my appointments on. Anything time specific goes on that calendar because I don't want to use electronic Outlook calendar, so I'm I'm going hardcore with the paper products. However, a listener posted a question saying, wait, did you just go back to like your target brand planners for the next year because I was a guest on Sarah's Best Liked Plans a year or so ago, or she chose a nice Whitney English model for me using the academic year. No, I did not. I re upped with Whitney English for another year, so I have my July to July twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three Whitney English Planner, but I use a calendar separately from the planner. I could use the planner as a calendar, obviously, but I like something little that I can carry around with me, and so I tend to put time specific stuff on the calendar and then it makes its way into the planner more or less because I'm writing down that I'm doing it in a given day. But I just like to have the two places to write this. You know what that means. It means you have a planner stack. I have a planner stack too. Well, not just that, because I have a notebook too, because much as I love the Whitney English, it does not serve all my note keeping needs. It turns out that I make lots of lists that don't actually fit in there because it's weekly plages and I can't have daily pages or it just doesn't work for me. So I have a notebook that I am using as well, which isn't from Target. Somebody sent me it as like swag, I guess after something. It's got my initials embossed on. It's kind of a nice one, so yeah, yay, I love it all right, well, family meetings. So, as you all know, we do have a Patreon, so shout out to that group and the ladies who join us there. Everyone is invited. It's a lot of fun. We try to do a topic every month that just feels relevant to everyone. We try to keep things a little bit seasonal as well. And last month we talked all about family logistics and a big part of that discussion was centered around family meetings and I got some great new ideas from that meeting as well as a wonderful Best Laid Plans listener who shared her entire very detailed family meetings process with me the other day. And actually there's a BLP that goes into drastic detail about what she does as well, but I'm going to share a little bit of it with you here. So the big takeaways were the biggest barrier or the biggest like bang fru buck about family meetings is simply having them, Like any kind of a family meeting is probably going to be beneficial compared to no family meeting anytall because it is a planned, routinized, forced form of conversation about family activities and if we don't do them during a meeting, they're going to happen in a disorganized ad hoc fashion, and you know, it's like call Newport's hyperactive HiveMind. It doesn't work for work, and it doesn't work for family logistics either, So I think family meetings are very helpful for most families. Now, there were so many great ideas about how to do them, and some hadn't thought of. You could do it as a lunch date perhaps during the week. Some people actually put it in as a zoom meeting on their work calendar and give it some acronym name and nobody ever questions them. And you know, one person actually said that her boss's boss did it and that's where she got her idea. So I loved it. In their company's culture, it was okay to block off an hour with your partner to make sure everything was smoothly at home, so that the rest of the time you could be focused on your work. One person called it I think business of us and then abbreviated it BOU on the or work calendar. Other people suggesting using the strategy of pairing to make it fun, so having a fun dessert or drink available so that it wasn't just you know, feeling like a slog, but something they could look forward to. Maybe an alcoholic drink, maybe not, depending on the vibe of the meeting and the family, but just an idea to spice things. I have a question here, Sarah, given if there are alcoholic drinks involved, is this only an adult meeting, like when we're talking family meeting? Okay, so we're talking you and your partner, or possibly if you have like a caregiver who's involved a lot, would they be involved in it. I'm yeah, that's great. And also, by the way, the drinks would not be for the meetings that are done on zoom during work hours. Just to be clear here, I think for most people said that they did it just with their partner, perhaps with a segment at the end that involved their kids, so their kids could then give buy in to different plans and things like that. But I could I at least where the ages of my kids are. I would need at least part of this meeting to be like sterile cockpit, like without my kids all around distracting, because you know they're not going to be able to follow an agenda in a linear fashion. That might help make a meeting like this run more smoothly. So most people do most of the meeting without kids and then bring in kids potentially at the end. Okay, got it. So that brings us to our next item, which is to have an agenda. And this can be you know that you collect items over the course of the week and you add it, or you have a stereotyped agenda that you use every single time, or a template of things that you cover, and maybe a combination of both. So your template might include at the end, you know, ad hoc items for everyone to keep track of and collect on their phone or notes, app or and their planner over the course of the week, like oh, my aunt wants us to visit her and should we talk about that? And then you put that as an item on the meeting as like an on the you know, list of things to bring up. Some people suggest it actually keeping those things in a shared list, like to doist so that you like a parking lot, like just like you would park things for a work meeting. And then this one best way Plans listener who I was super amazed with, she actually has special agendas. So she has her regular weekly family meeting agenda and then a mid month version and an end of month versions, so they basically become like monthly reviews and like a mid month check in. I was like, that is next level. I am definitely not there. I am super impressed. So all amazing ideas. I'm super interested to hear if you do family meetings, because the confessional part of this is that we don't actually do family meetings right now. We do a version of it in that I do a whiteboard and then I kind of autocratically send it to everyone and they can reply back to me with comments and questions. But I would like to carve out time to kind of democratize the process a bit, make sure I get all input from invested players, and move forward in a more systematic fashion. So I think I'm going to put this on my goal list for quintile five. Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, we do occasionally have sort of scheduling meetings. When you said family meeting, I'm visioned all seven of us sitting around the table, and that's chaos. You want to talk about some of your colleagues are ill behaved. Let's talk about what a what a two year old brings the energy a two year old brings to the family meeting in terms of you know, Michael and I will sit down and have discussions of what we're doing, although I will say a lot of the time our family scheduling runs as more of a benevolent dictatorship, which is that guess who is driving that bus, which is fine, but you know, I do want more input from the children, and they are starting to do that. Like Ruth definitely was making like Christmas lists of things she wants to do over the holidays. She's already thinking about that, Or people have things related to their birthdays or whatever. I've started asking that if people have weekend plans they would like to do that they maybe suggest those by Wednesday or Thursday. Partly it's just I mean, you know, especially like Jasper will make plans with his friends, which is great, Like I want him to do that, but if it involves getting a ride somewhere, then I can kind of need to know that to build it into the schedule. And you know, even if it hasn't where, He's been very good about getting rides from other families and all that. So it's not that it's it doesn't have to happen, but it would be just more you know, orderly, probably if it did, but you can't. I mean, the thing with teenagers is you can't expect too much of that, Like they're not going to know what they want to do on Saturday by Wednesday. Like it's not did you ever read that book The Rules, Like you you're supposed to go, oh god, it Sean says something you would not like. No, well that it was the self help book for like dating. I read it at one point because it was so hilarious. But yeah, you were never supposed to accept a Saturday night date after Wednesday. But I'm like, most people don't make their plans for you know, Saturday by Wednesday anyway. So I am trying to figure out how this would work with a handful of preteens and teens because I feel like they should be part of some of the scheduling. So maybe, yeah, it would be that, you know, we discuss some stuff the two of us and then we bring them in, or maybe we have a group discussion and then you know, I sort through at the end and send out a proposal for everyone to look at her. So I don't know how that would work, but maybe you could bring your big three kids in first to lessen the chaos factor. So like you and Michael talk and then you come up with like, you know, your items, and then the ones involve the kids. Then you bring the three in together and then they like go through what they want to do and whatever. And then at the very end you bring in the youngest two because you know chaos is going to although what are maybe what are they doing during the other the rest? Well, maybe just Alex because he's gonna, you know, want to weigh in to some extent, but probably isn't going to have the level of well maybe he will. He's a very special kid. So I was going to say, planning that a ten, twelve, and sixteen, I don't know. I can't even keep track anymore. Your kids are growing up too fast. They are, they're growing up. They're growing up. But yeah, that was a great idea. We encourage people to give it a try. Let us know how it works for you. So are the second part of this should we Well let's go ahead and take our ad break and then we'll start with our home and family mail bag. All right, Well, we are back with the second part of our mail bag setup. We did last week our career side of the mail bag. So here we go. The first question, Sarah, how do you stay close to relatives in different cities. Well, my family is in Philadelphia, my sister is in North Carolina, and the group of us text every single day, multiple times a day. So I actually feel like technology has brought us closer. I think it all started when wordle came out, but like somehow that text threat has evolved to just like contain multitudes, and so I feel like I have I'm very on the pulse of what is going on in both of those places. We also FaceTime frequently and then do periodic visits as well. I am actually planning on bringing Annabel to see my sister and my niece. Oh my gosh, I'm super excited for that. And I've brought Genevieve solo to visit my parents, and Cameron went with Josh to visit my parents when they went snowboarding. So we've actually done a lot of these little piecemeal vacations because it's it's a distance that's not so far, but it you know, it feels like a real trip for them. And then you know, in terms of well that was the second part of the question. Never mind, we're going to save that part for round two. The rest of my family does live in South Florida, and so I just I don't have a lot to add there. A lot of the major you know, gatherings and holidays we automatically spend with them, which might not be fair. But as long as everyone's happy, it doesn't have to be fair. That's always a yes. Happiness and fairness are entirely different conversations. I'm probably not the world's best example of close stuff with relatives, And partly it's just I don't like to talk on the phone, so that's probably the best way to keep in touch with people in general. My husband is on the phone constantly with his relatives, like he talks to his mom those days. I think it's probably this introversion extraversion divide, like it's you know, I like silence and I should be better about texting and emailing. Then he likes to be chatting while doing anything else like walking the dog or taking out the trash. So I would also say, though you can travel short distances pretty easily, Sarah was saying, like, especially if both of you live near a major airport, Like the distances are not that profound. I mean, you could definitely. Do you know two trips a year, three trips a year, and just even think of it for a weekend. You know we're going to go when this airs. We should have hopefully fingers crossed this work. Visited my little brother in upstate New York, and yeah, it's three hour drive, but you know, you drive three hours on Saturday and then you drive three hours home on Sunday. It's not the end of the world. You're not going to do it every weekend, but you don't need a special weekend in order to make it happen. But even flying, like if you need to fly somewhere, especially, I just continually amazed how many places are within a two hour flight of Philadelphia, and if it's a direct flight and you're not checking bags, how quick it can go. Like a couple weeks ago, I flew to Portland, Maine for something for work. I left my house at six forty five pm and at ten fifteen pm I was in my hotel room in Portland, Maine, right like, so you could totally do that as a weekend trip. I think of, you know, Pennsylvania and Maine are not close to each other, but like that radius would take you out to like Indiana, like takes you down to like Georgia from you know, when flying works, it really works. And so you could definitely do that two to three times a year to see somebody and not even have to think of like a long weekend for doing it. Just leave Friday, you know, if you get off work an hour or two early. But I'll be on the plane, you know, fly back Sunday afternoon, and we'll have seen each other. Love it. And don't forget central meeting places as well. If you're like a bicoastal family, you could both get to Chicago pretty quickly. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So how do you manage sharing holidays between sides of the family. So you were starting to talk about this, Yes, so we don't worry about this too much. My family is is I would categorize them in Gretchen Rubens for tendencies as questioners, and therefore everything is an quote unquote arbitrary date. And so they don't care if I visit on actual Thanksgiving or a week after, as long as they see us. And even though I don't necessarily feel the same way about calendar and holidays and occasion, it works out. Really well in terms of not really feeling guilty that we miss particular holidays. One thing that we've done is, you know, take advantage of weather patterns and when it's winter, it's a great time for them to come here and join us in a holiday, either at my in law's house or with us. So we have also done that in the past. So kind of combining everybody, but I think that you got to read the room and see who cares about what. Like I have one side that is a little bit more particular about wanting our family included in certain holiday celebrations, and then the other side is like, doesn't matter. We do want to see you, doesn't have to be on a specific date, and so if that's you, then great. Yeah. I would say it's quite possible to split sort of any longer periods of time. I mean, you know, even if your families aren't that far from each other, if you have the four days off for Thanksgiving, you could drive to one families on Wednesday night, spend Thursday with them, leave Friday morning, go have second Thanksgiving with the other over Friday through Sunday Christmas. Likewise, if you have the week off, like you can, you know, go to one set for you know, the twenty second to the twenty fifth, the other for the twenty fifth to the twenty eighth or whatever. I mean. Flying on Christmas is actually pretty good because there's fewer people want to do it, so it might be slightly less crazy or driving in the middle just to break things up. But you know, you can split the holidays. And I heard a great tip and I'm wondering if maybe it was from Gretchen Rubin. Now you just mentioned her, I'm wondering if it was maybe this is a tip they shared. I'm I'm not entirely sure, but the idea of one side of the family could elect to create sort of a different holiday. So, you know, if you think about the whole Christmas season, like if one side of the family decided to always do their celebration on let's say December twenty first, right, they have a Winter Solstice celebration, you could go to that, and that would leave Christmas open to go to the other side of the family or to stay home. You know, you could do Thanksgiving with the other side of the family and stay home for Christmas itself. It like leaves it as an option for you to both see your in laws and you know, have some home time while still creating an occasion that everyone will then come see you for that probably isn't booked up by the other side of the family, So I really like that idea. Or it could be a twelfth night sort of thing, so January sixth, right, you have everyone come see you for that, or you know, anything that's not the exact holiday itself but is close and won't be in competition with the others. You can sort of just see the day itself while still creating an event. So I thought that was a really cool idea. Love it all right. Question number three Tips for managing sports, dinner and bedtimes with elementary aged kids. Yeah, so I assume what this listener was getting at is that if you have later practices and yet kids still need to get to bed relatively early to get enough sleep, it can feel very crunched at the end of the day. This is not an issue for me. I guess this wimes like my elementary kid doesn't have to be up until eight am, and so he's in his room with a book at nine and lights out at ten. But like we don't have elementary age activities that go to nine pm, like, there just generally aren't that many that would go that late. I mean there is one like perk core class at his gymnastics at ages five to eight went from something like seven twenty to eight twenty, but we try not to sign him up for that one if there is any option. So what we do is we often eat. You know, our activities tend to go till six or so, and then we eat maybe six thirty to seven, and so then there's still plenty of time. But I would say if that is not if your activities are done at like seven thirty and you have a you know eight thirty bedtime, either you know, feed the kids and shifts like give them a very hearty snack before they go to the activity or a quick light a dinner and then just give them a snack afterwards. Right, So, and dinner doesn't have to be this elaborate thing, like it does not have to take that much time, as we've said many times on this podcast. You know, kids will eat very simple things like a grilled cheese sandwich and fruit is totally dinner and that can be done in less than ten minutes. You know, a hot dog and some fruit or scrambled eggs. I mean, those are all acceptable in filling dinner options. And you know, it doesn't have to be a sit down event for everyone, So either feed them before or feed them right afterwards, and then you know, sort of ease them into bed at that point. The one thing I will say is that if you or your partner tends to work late and it's a solo parenting dinner, bedtime situation, but then there's another kid that needs pick up, this is one where we have, I like, our nanny often doesn't come in till late. So on the days that Annabel has gymnastics that goes to like seven, I'll make sure she stays till then, so I can just go pick her up while she's continuing to give the other kids dinner, kind of one him down, et cetera. If I were managing this by myself, it would be definitely more stressful because I'd have to pile everybody in the car, including a four year old who's like ready for bed, and like, I don't know, it would be a lot. Obviously, if my husband's home, great, but if he's not, then it's really helpful to have that extra hand dinner hasn't been as much of an issue for us either, because we just make what we were planning anyway and then just reheat a plate. Like there's no special anything done. It's just the timing might be a little different, and we try to make it so not always, but if possible, Like I'll wait to eat later with the one kid that's eating by themselves so they don't have to have a lonely dinner. Yeah, as long as you're sitting with them or somebody is sitting with them or whatever. Maybe the work maybe they were like, ooh, this night, I get to break the rules and actually watch, you know, eat in front of the TV or something like, it's a special treat to get it done. I don't know. If you have an extra driver, obviously that's helpful. Or if you can work out a carpool with another family, maybe that's great that you can drive them and the other family brings them home. If they don't have younger kids that much, might be a really good switch to have with that. This is where I gotta say, my life is getting easier because I have older kids who can stay home with younger ones if need be, and so it's not a big deal to like if I needed to go pick up Sam to leave Henry with Jasper and would not be an issue. So yeah, that's awesome. I can't wait to get to that point. So how to handle kids who don't handle changes to routine very well? Oh man, I think I don't want to give away you're part of the answer, because I think it's excellent, just the main part. But I will say that showing a kid very specifically and maybe writing out what the change is, possibly with visuals if they are somebody who hasn't gotten to the reading stage, so that they don't feel like they are flying blind just because the routine changed. Like, Okay, I know you said we were gonna, you know, go to Grandma's and then go to the grocery store, but unfortunately we have to we can't go to Grandma's. She's saying about, Okay, here's what it was before, here's what we're gonna do now, and then take them through first we're gonna do this, then we're gonna do this, then we're gonna do this, so they really really understand it, rather than it being like, Okay, the world has been yanked out from under them and now they don't have any idea of what's going on. And then the other thing I just wanted to mention is that, like there are extreme manifestations of this where nothing is really going or very few things help, and autism spectrum disorders certainly come to mind. I have patients, you know, with these where the parents say, like it's so so important to make sure things are stable because there aren't that many coping mechanisms when they don't, and so if things seem severe, I'm not diagnosing anybody's child, but there may be experts that have tips that work for kids with specific diagnoses, and they may be able to help your kid through it. So if this is just something that is like always a pain point, then it might be time to turn to an expert. Yeah, I think that probably wasn't the case for this listener, But I mean, I think this is more run of the mill, Like normal kid doesn't like changeable. I don't like change what it's for me either, right, So I think you know, reacting to this with empathy, which is that kids don't have nearly as much control over their lives as we do, and they may have gotten comfortable with something and now here you are coming in and changing it, So I would be very annoyed with you as well, So like, let's just try to keep that in mind. So I think if you can give the kid any advance notice, like sometimes we don't want to just because we know they're going to whine about it, and so we just don't want to have the whining. But I think that's not necessarily all that respectful if like you know, it's coming up and being open about the reason, right, like that you owe them the explanation like I got a new job and that's why our after school routine has to change, and this is what it's going to be, and you know, or if you can ask them for input, right, if there's aspects of it that you can give them a choice over it, Like I need you to be, you know, in a different situation from the hours of three thirty to five thirty. Now, what do you think would be better? Would you like to do this or the you know, I'm not saying that they ultimately get a choice, but you know, if I can make it happen, would you prefer to stay at your school and after care? Would you prefer to you know, come home and have somebody here with you, like what do you think you would like? And I'm not saying that you can automatically make that happen, but it's just helpful to know what they think would be better. You know. Obviously, being transparent means hopefully their routine isn't being yanked around for no good reason, right, Like I think Dan, that's a that's something that we should be respectful with kids too, to accommodate any reasonable requests that they might have. My hope is that if you know that the kids get a struggle and that that's going to cause everyone pain, you're probably not going to make changes unless you feel compelled to do so for some reason. Yes, so I guess one never knows. One never knows all right. Question five, how does one find the time and energy for self care with an infant twenty four to seven? Yeah, so this is with Instagram questions, you never really get quite the same follow up as we do want to get them emailed to us because usually there's a little bit of background there too. But I guess the question here is what do you mean by self care? Like do we mean taking a shower? Because if that's what I'm saying, like if you've got a really little baby, like they can't move, so even if they're fussing, you can, you know, put them in their crib like someplace safe, right and then you know, go take your shower and you know it's okay for them to be in there for a handful of minutes. If we're talking like passive leisure activities, we're talking like watching TV or reading. I mean definitely if you're nursing, giving a bottle, if you can use that time for reading or for watching whatever you like. But actually choosing something I think that really helps too, Soue, that you notice you're doing it, as opposed to just like random Twitter scrolling, Like you know, there's like wow, I just spent you know, forty minutes nursing and all I've done is read arguments on Twitter. Like it might help to be like no, no, I you know, I have a ton of books I really like, and you know, ooh, I got to read that for forty minutes while while I was nursing this baby, or I got to watch, you know, an episode of mad Men or whatever it is that you want to do, But that you've made a conscious choice of what you're doing with that with it all possible, trying to get outside and get some physical activity each day. I mean, obviously that can mean pushing the stroller, but do not feel bad at all about like not wanting to be that person out pushing the stroller to get your exercise, Like if you want this as your solo time, I think this is absolutely fine to have help from your village, like if you are co parenting with someone, I mean, especially if you are home with the baby, as you said twenty four seven, like you're the one who's doing the primary care of the baby. I think when your partner gets home from work, like that first thirty minutes could totally be your time, right like hand the baby over and then you know, go do your thing for a bit, you know, or if without a partner available, you obviously know the drill for this already, that you swap with family and friends and neighbors or hire a sitter for a smart small amount of time. But I think you know, having the mindset that you should have a little bit of time, like you don't have to have twenty four to seven baby on you. Yes, it's funny because you called out the self care part of this question, and I was like, what twenty four to seven? I mean there are rare circumstance It is where someone is a solo parent and they may not have any options for help, like maybe they had that baby in the middle of a pandemic and no one could go near them. Like my sister there was a lot of twenty four to seven in her early days of child rearing, and I it was really tough. But most of the time it could be twenty two two even, which would be you know, twenty two like six, I don't know, Oh yeah, serious, Yes, you're right, I mean twenty two to seven, Okay, that would be like better, right, And if there's a partner, if there's a caregiver, if there's someone who can give you a break, and most of the time, even with nursing, there's some strategic break happening that can happen, then that would be the obvious time to do quote unquote self care. I think setting the bar and ice in low for that self care, Like, this is not the time to start marathon training. You can do that later, I promise, Like you don't have to have an elaborate planner. Like we talked about the person who wrote in a couple episodes ago. It's okay if you're just you know, doing a little freehand journal entry once a week. If it brings you joy for ten minutes, that could be self care. So just making sure you kind of lower the bar of what self care needs to be. And if you need help, make sure you're getting help. Excellent good advice. All right, Oh, this next one's good too, Okay, any advice for an over committed adult volunteer positions, boards, et cetera. And kind of a related question, how do I prioritize when there are so many social opportunities and things to do? So I actually combine these two questions that we had. This is where from two different people, but I thought they're related, so, you know, there's the same sort of thing. I would say, first, let's start with a little mindset shift here, which we use over committed as the word. But I would note that it is not a bad thing, per se to have lots of stuff you like to do, like to have lots of interests, and if you have lots of social opportunities, like how amazing is that you have lots of friends? Right? Like? Right? There are a lot of lonely people in this world, and there's also plenty of folks who have absolutely no idea what they would want to put their time into. So I think we could start from that perspective that having interests and having friends both are blessings. But then if you're feeling over committed, it's usually because something feels draining, whether that is a person or whether it is an activity. So figure out which particular commitment is most draining and see if you can wind down over the next six to twelve months. Now, obviously, with a nonprofit board, especially if it's like a major board, you can't immediately end it usually, but most of the time you could say, like after my term is up, I would want I want to roll off after this. You know, I'm not going to reup after this year of it, or I'm not going to you know, after the school year is over, I'm going to be giving up this position or whatever it is. And I think knowing that the end is in sight will make you feel a little bit more, a bit less drained about the next six months, like Okay, I'm only getting through this school year, or you know, I will be able to pass this off in you know, mid twenty twenty three, when the FIS school year starts. For my nonprofit, I will be able to pass this off to someone else, and so that will make you feel a little bit less drained about it. As for social opportunities, you know, I always say like people are a good use of time. Obviously, if somebody feels draining to you, then that's not necessarily a good use of time. And we're talking to people that you really enjoy hanging out with. And one way to answer this question, you know, it's always just when you are thinking about various social engagements, ask yourself, if you do this tomorrow, Like, would you be motivated to try to fit this into your life tomorrow? And if you are busy, you would still try to figure out a way to meet an old friend who is in town for coffee or you know, talk with a really good friend on the phone. Like, you'd still try to find a way to make it work. But you probably wouldn't go to like a random fundraiser just because you might possibly meet and trusting people right Like, you probably wouldn't say yes to that tomorrow if you're really busy right now, so you might want to put it through that rubric. I love it I mean personally, my answer has been to quit things when I felt like there are too many things on my plate, and I've almost never regretted letting something go. I think we instinctually know what we want to keep and what we want to give up. And once you've done some reflection and you've decided that something just doesn't fit in your life anymore, then it might be time to let it go. I will quote a wise author that I know who wrote, expectations are infinite, time is finite. You are always choosing choose. Well, yes, that is Laura from Juliet's School of Possibilities. And it's true. You can't do everything. You could do a lot, but you do have to pick and choose. That is true. That is true. And the choice to say yes to one thing is a choice to say no to something else, whatever that something else might be. So you want to just make sure that you are making that choice mindfully. All right, Well, this has been a lot of questions. We always do one each week, but we did a lot the past two weeks. Sarah our love of the week. Yes, this is a fun one. So you know you look at your phone a lot, and if you subscribe to a lot of various product email lists. You will notice that some of them will be like, you can download your October wallpaper. It tends to like planner companies and design companies that offer this. But pretty much every month I have my pick of several and I don't always do it, but I did it for October, and every time I raise my phone, I get this beautiful, curated professional leaf photo that just makes me super happy. And I think I'm gonna try to make sure I do it every month because it's just nice to have a reminder of what the seasons are. I think, especially because I live somewhere that we don't actually see it outside. At least I can see it on my phone background. Yeah, I mean obviously, you know, maybe people don't know that you could put your own photos there as well. I didn't really know that until, you know, like two years ago, and I finally put one of a beautiful photo of plum trees in full spring blossom, and now it has been on my phone for two years. I haven't switched out seasonally because I don't know. I like looking at it. Probably I should switch it up at some point. But my love of the week is mail Chimp, and maybe some people listening to this wish I was not so into mailchimp. I may have been spamming you with emails over the past like two months with the book related stuff, but it's been easy to sort of keep lists organized. So you know, my team and I have a full email list, which is that you know, everyone who's sign up for Laura Vanderkamp stuff in general. But then from that, you know, when people signed in that they had pre ordered the book, we could create a list of the people who pre ordered my book, and then you know, have another list of something else, and so it's just the segmentation. That's actually how we did the Tranquility by Tuesday project too, is that you know, we would send an email to people who had signed up for the project with the survey monkey link. So you know, I don't know, we've relied on it a lot. I definitely think anyone who's in some sort of personal you brand business definitely needs your own newsletter type thing, like a way to email people who are interested in you and your business and kind of stay in their minds at least occasionally. So you know, there's several companies that do it. I use I use Mailchimp, but there obviously are several others, but it's it's something to start considering if you are looking to build your personal brand. I also use Mailchimps, So there you go. Not a sponsor. Maybe someday. I don't feel like I know any of the tools you're talking about. I just kind of like draft an email and there's like one giant list, so maybe I need to delve into some of the more fancy features. But it is a pretty user friendly program exactly. All right, Well, this has been Best of Both Worlds. We've been talking family meetings and we had some great tips from our Patreon community. Sarah led a discussion on family logistics including family meetings last month. We would love to have people join us there. We have a active discussion forum, we have monthly meetups. Love doing that. So Best of Both Worlds podcast over on Patreon and we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together. An out and mea