BOBW Hodge Podge (mini-updates, time tracking + Q&A)

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. 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 thirty six, which is going to be a hodge Podge episode, a few mini life updates, a discussion of time tracking, and some listener questions because we keep getting awesome ones and want to get to as many as possible. So, Sarah, why don't you update us a little bit on life right now? Which we are recording this in late January of twenty twenty two. Yes, okay, so I've recently created an elaborate screen time rationing I don't know, allocation system for the kids. I think this happened after one of my husband's call weekends when everyone was basically just stretched out on the floor on their devices for like a million hours. I'm not gonna say I felt guilty, but I just I had the sense that when I forced them to go off, that they were losing the ability to be able to entertain themselves in any other way, and I just it was too much for me. So I decided to just create a little bit more structure around it. And this is not like a minimalist screen time system, but more just so they know what they can do, and also to tie certain behaviors to screen time. And so for the nuts and bolts of the system on week days, we're sticking to just like TV shows, only because once they start playing video games it's just too addictive. They get sucked down, they get more hyper like I can't on weekdays. But on weekdays, once they've done their homework and had dinner, taken a bath or shower, I think that's pretty much it they watch. That usually means that because they have activities a lot of days, that doesn't happen until six forty five anyway, so it's perfect they get and then they can watch until seven thirty and that's like the cutoff time on the weekdays. On the weekends, they and I type this all out with Annabel's help, by the way, so that the kids had like buy in and that I can refer to it and like I put it up on the wall. On the weekends, they get ninety minutes as a baseline, but they can earn up to ninety minutes more for a total of three hours, so they can get from one thirty to four thirty on screens if they've like done various things throughout the week, which they seem pretty motivated to do, and that screen time can be spent doing anything, playing video games, doing whatever. And this is our first weekend on this new system, so I will have to report back. They're pretty good actually about knowing that they're not going to get it before a certain time, like we always had one or one thirty as our cut off time, and like I guess I've just been firm enough that they're not going to ask me at ten. The hard part is getting them off, So it's the four thirty that's going to be like a hard sell. But I just I've gotta make sure they can do something else that's self directed other than that. That's just my feeling on it, so we'll see how it goes. I wonder if having something that's gonna happen around four thirty, like right like you're gonna go out for a bike ride or we're you know, we're gonna go find a friend might help with the incentive part there. Absolutely, I think. So I think we're gonna have to If they don't want to do that thing, then fine, then you can do your other quiet indoor activity like whatever else nonscreen. But like having an option, we're gonna and I think maybe making it social so that they're if they're meeting up with a friend or like going to the playground to see somebody, that might be more enticing. So definitely. And I was just going through your life updates. You've listened here my life updates lists. Okay, yeah, my second life update is really boring. I've been going to bed really early. I think it's the winter, like winter is just and it's not even cold like here, it's not even cold, although my phone keeps giving me these like alerts. There's like freeze warning is coming, like it's going down to thirty five, and I don't know, probably it's like a plant thing, like maybe people's plants might die down here. I don't know, but it's kind of exciting. That's really coold. Yeah we don't get that, but yes, so cold. But having the kids on a better schedule, like making sure their devices are off by seven thirty and going upstairs means that they go to bed, and then I go to bed, like I don't have any energy after that, so whatever, it's been great. And then my third update is that I remain off of all social media, which I actually might be a lifetime I don't know. I'm just now that it's gone. I'm like, I don't miss it at all, and I feel like there were some negative feelings that I had when I would scroll Instagram that were not worth the positives that got out of I got out of it. I still read blogs. I like to comment on the other people's blogs. That doesn't seem to bother me at all. I subscribe to podcasts. I am on a couple of Patriots. It's not that I don't want to interact with people online. I just don't want to do it via an like Instagram. So I'm off of that. And then finally I'm really enjoying wordle now by the time this airs. Probably the entire country will be doing wordle because it seems to have taken off like wildfire except for Laura. Yes, I'm not doing wordle. I don't know. I'm not really tempted right now. I don't need you know, it takes five minutes, right, and that's all you get. Sure, it's a great thing, Like I totally support it for other people, Like I think it's a great thing to do in a small bit of time. And you know, there's only one a day, right, like I get so it's you know, you can't spend that much time on it. It's like a little treat every single day. But nope, not doing it yet. Yeah, my life updates. You know, we just did the whole episode on moving, so people don't need to hear about that, but we are. You know. I've been turning in the next round of edits on Tranquility by Tuesday, choosing covers. So that's what's going on workwise right now. So pretty excited about that. I got a tiny cover sneak. Yeah, well we're doing different ones. Sorry, Oh that's okay. Yeah, I don't even remember my feedback. Yeah, I decided I didn't like the one that we were going with, so you did new ones. Well, we'll see how it goes, but it's been complicated. Another life update. We recently did the time Tracking challenge, so had about four thousand people tracking their time as part of the twenty twenty two Time Tracking Challenge. It was great, and I'm getting logs people have been sending in logs. It's hard to get through all of them because there's a lot of them, and I'm trying to respond thoughtfully to all of them. So, you know, still going kind of do a couple every single day, much like the boxes, unpack a few boxes, send a few emails about the time logs. I will get through all of them. It just takes a bit of time. But you did the time tracking for a while, right, like you're a day or two couple days. I did it for like most of a week, but then I had a really bad day and I was like, I'm not I just I don't know. It's emotionally unable to timetrack, which is a bad excuse because you've done it for six years, and I'm sure you've had a few or eight year I don't even know. I'm sure there's been a few bad days in there. Well, I'm so I'm curious, like what was the making you feel like you didn't want to? Like it seems to me that that's sort of separate. I had some it is totally separate, but like you know how you have like such a bad I had a very work stress related day and I was just so upset about some things. I just like I didn't want to do anything. Yeah, didn't, And so you wouldn't. Just see when I get like stuff like that, I often just don't put any notes and just be work, work, work, work on the thirty minute thing. And I'm not saying anything about it. I'm just saying like this, I was at work, I was working whatever. I mean, you could say, yeah, you were just at work, and like I could have. There's no reason that I didn't. I think I just like I didn't fill out my planner that day either, Like I was just sort of like, yeah, I hate like everything. I don't know, yeah exactly. Sometimes sometimes that happens. I think I do a lot of time tracking, like halfway organically, because I often set up my planner with like a little timeline and I write in my kind of hardly landscape stuff and then I tend to like write in as things are happening, like what else is happening, so like to some extent, I do time tracking. I don't feel like there's a lot of surprises in how I spend my time, especially that I'm like off of social media and that definitely helps. And I'm kind of boring, like a lot of my days are very similar. I like my morning routine, I like my like nighttime routine where most nights I'm just like putting the kids to bed and reading and I'm fine with that. So I don't know, I think it's a great exercise, though, I do think it's especially if you're kind of like not sure which routines are serving you or how long things really take, Like I feel like I have a handle on that right now, but maybe like after the move or when the big kids go to camp, like when things change, I'll want to do that again to just be like, Okay, are there new opportunities now, perhaps to take advantage of pockets of time that weren't there before. Yeah, I no, that's definitely a good idea. It's been interesting seeing people's logs, like what comes in if I'm County everyone who sends it in like, well, not everyone, but a lot of people like this was not a typical week. I was like, well, that never is, you know, that's the sort of life. We have a picture of what our life should look like, and life never quite looks like that because life happens. And then we're like, oh, that wasn't a typical week. It's like, well, yeah, probably whatever it was, it was more typical than atypical. It's since the you know, life never does go completely as planned. You know. These are people who subs for most of part. These are people who subscribe to my newsletters, so there's a lot of like great stuff going on there in time. Like these are people who are into productivity, like you know, so there's a lot of people with these impressive morning routines or they're you know, doing two workouts a week during their lunch break and then the two on the weekend so they've got their four you know, and like there's just it's fun to see how much awesome stuff people have going on in life. But I would say that one thing that's coming up a lot and might be surprising to people is that I really do I wind up suggesting a lot that people come up with some sort of outside of work and family commitment or hobby, because what winds up happening is it looks on the timelog like the person could theoretically have the time right, like there's you know, an evening is you know, they have older kids, for instance, the evening is mostly just like screen time for instance, or on the weekends, you know, there's some stuff, but then there's also a lot of period of time or they're doing chores or they're doing you know, screen time because there's not something else there, right, And I think what happens is people have you know, been so busy through their lives, like they've you know, been dealing with work and you know, with young kids and all this stuff, and then there comes a point where some amount of time opens up. But if you're still operating with the story that I have no time, like you don't think about what you're going to do with it, and that the time keeps passing, and so you do something. And so I wind up suggesting to a fair number of people like, think about it, well, what what would you like to do? Like if you said I'm going to find you know, I'm going to devote two to three hours a week to something that I think would be really fun for me. What is that thing? And you know we'll see people wind up doing it, but I just I my mission tell everyone they need a hobby something else. So you're you know, at least one night a week looks different or one chunk of weekend time looks looks a little different, and to challenge people to think that they might have space for it in their life. All right, So let's uh, let's get to our questions because we have a lot of really good ones. We can go ahead and way, let's take a break first. Okay, Okay, we'll do the break east and we'll be right there. All right, Well we are back with our Hodgepodge episode. Now we're going into the question chunk of it where we're gonna have a couple of questions because we've got a lot of great ones we can we could do like all mile bag all the time, but we try to mix it up a little bit, all right. So this one is particularly for Sarah. So she is a junior physician who is applying for a leadership position in a local organization. She's already on the board, so it makes sense However, it's going to be competitive, and so she is struggling to figure out how to tailor her application and her pitch of this. The organization values equity, diversity, inclusion, so she's hoping that she's you know, not necessarily a traditional physician, meaning not a white man, but so but so, she says, she's not going to be automatically out of the running. You know that this organization is open to this sort of thing. However, she's concerned about how she can be confident and sell herself for it. So what advice do we have for her? So I am no expert because I don't think I've ever done a hiring for something like this high up, but I definitely do a lot of interviewing for other types of positions, whether that's you know, other physicians on our faculty and about nine million residency interviews. So I got to say, enthusiasm and energy often sells itself, like just bringing your all to the table, and you may actually benefit from having a unique energy compared to maybe some of the older white male physicians that might be applying for the same job. And you can discuss in kind of an excited positive way, how your unique perspective is likely to bring in fresh ideas to this role that others may not be able to bring it to the table. I think having a lot of you know, well that's more Lara's tips, but preparing yourself really well, like you know, being able to ask really knowledgeable questions so that they understand that you're really passionate about what the role entails can help. And yeah, I mean I think the fact that you are thinking about it enough to write this email bodes really really well because you're thinking about what are they looking for, Like how do I make this feel like a great deal for them? That wow, this person falls into our lap and they get like points for including someone who isn't the traditional applicant as well, So best of luck. I think you have a lot going for you here. Yeah, and especially since you're already on the board, you know the people who are making the decisions, which means that you can talk to them like, I mean, you can talk about like what they're thinking about the direction the organization wants to go, and then you of course speak to how you will lead the organization in that direction, right, Like that's what you're trying to solve their problem? They have a problem and you are coming in as the solution to that problem. And just to invoke one of our previous guests, we had Kinder Hall on a few weeks ago. But the idea that storytelling really does help. And I know that stories are often very packaged and you know whatever, but if you could come up with a good narrative and a good authentic narrative about why, you know, the story of this organization, the logical next step is to have you lead it right that that makes total sense with the story that they've got this you know problem that's been building and now you can come in to solve it, or this direction that they've been going that you have also been going and now to gather you will go there. But something that is very a specific that has the narrative format can be incredibly powerful. So practice that definitely quite a bit as you are talking about this and you know, just explain why you want it. But I think it helps to remember ultimately you cannot control what others do, so you may or may not get the job, but at least you can be clear to yourself and in making your case why you think you are the right person, Like clearly you do think you're the right person there, you wouldn't be applying it. So say that, say why you think you are the right person and whatever comes out of it. I mean, it's it's not going to be bad that you did this, Like, there's no downside to doing this, because you will elevate your career a lot. You will put yourself in front of a lot of decision makers, you know, put your name out there as somebody who will be who you should look to for the future for various things. So I'm really glad you're doing this. Yes, Oh, well, you'll have to update us. Best of luck and you know we'll see. But you're right, that's it's going to put your you as an eye, as a leader, in the eyes of these people. So if it doesn't work out this time, it'll probably work out next time. Yeah, exactly, all right. Next listener question. This listener is going out on sixteen weeks of maternity leave. This person's husband will also be off work, has a long paternity leave in his industry, which is great. Their first child is in full time pre kindergarten and they moved six months ago, so there's not a ton to declutter or organize. Neither of them can work while on leave without jeopardizing their benefits. They're prioritizing savings for some house projects. They don't want to spend money. We don't sit still, well, she says, with our first we both actually got bored enough that we went back to work a few weeks early. So help us be more interesting this time around. All right, Sarah, what should they do to be more interesting? You know, once they've sort of settled in with the new baby a couple of weeks in and they can start having a bit more capacity to do stuff, what should they do? Yeah, this is such a fun question. I like doing the thought experiment myself. I mean the first thing that came to mind for me was some kind of class, some kind of kind of course that like normally you wouldn't really have time for, that might be incremental and you could dedicate a certain number of hours to it every day. I mean, it could be in anything I was thinking about, like yoga, teacher training, guitar learning to code, calligraphy art. I don't know anything. So whatever is in your passion that you always thought you'd sue when you have more time, well you probably will have a little bit more time at least for some of those weeks. Again, especially with your partner home as well. That is such a fantastic setup. I also like the idea of a reading challenge. I like the idea of reading challenges anyway. But you could decide to read all the works of one author. You could decide to like explore different genres that you don't normally follow. I read about a reading challenge recently that someone did. This one's a little much for sixteen weeks, but she read one book from each year from the years of like nineteen nineteen to twenty eighteen or something like that. Oh my goodness, Like what an ambitious project, and like you would learn so much history and how the different thought anyway, So I thought that was super cool. So something like that, maybe a mini version, and then finally making a list of little adventures in your area and like, you know, just kind of like a bucket list of things to do either with your kid or shorter trips to do while your kid is in school. I mean my first thought was like a longer haul travel experience, like yes, of course traveling, you know, being in a hotel with a new war and that might not be fun but if you kind of decide to go somewhere for an entire month, and you're renting a house, so that's just like new surroundings, like that could be a really fun time to do it. Yeah, no, that could work. I mean it's pre k. It's not you know, school where you can't miss it, so they could pull themselves out. But yeah, I love the idea of a mini challenge, like you could read War and Peace or start a blog, or you know, just generally set a pace for one big adventure and one little adventure each week. And an adventure I mean big adventure, I mean like four hours, so could totally do while your big kid was in school. The newborn's pretty portable, so go hike, go to a museum, but you know, try to do at least one per week so you are feeling interesting, all right. So the next question, this person was writing specifically to Sarah because their four year olds are a few weeks apart in age, so she loves her Genevieve stories. She said, okay, well, as happens with this age, we are losing the afternoon nap with our daughter. You know, she's excited for what's to come. However, she does need afternoon time to decompress. She'd get rejuvenated by a nap, but I'm hoping to find a non screen activity to do the same for quiet time. So this listener had heard in the past about doing things like podcasts and audiobooks for young children who obviously can't read yet but aren't going to nap. And if you're trying to come up with something that's not you know, video games for the two hours or hour in the afternoon that you hope in their decompress. So that's maybe an option, but she wonders if there's anything else, like what what has Sarah been doing for Genevieve in this post nap but not yet reading stage. Yes, so we haven't had a nap in our house for more than a year now because my kids usually ride around three. If they are napping, they are not going to sleep anywhere at an acceptable time, like they'll want to be up at ten or eleven, and I refuse. So we tend to be an early We encourage the loss of the nap early, even though that sort of seems backwards. I gotta admit, like right now and this is don't really it's not really for her to decompress necessarily, although to some extent just sitting around and watching a more peaceful show can be a little bit of a break and a decompression. It's more to give myself a break and my husband a break, and for all of us to have some downtime usually because we've had an active morning. And so, yeah, screen time is our normal answer, I mean our normal weekend template. During the week, it's not really an issue. She goes to school until three pm, so when she gets home, I don't know. We're busy, and then she goes to bid by seven thirty, so it's fine. I don't notice like that need for downtime necessarily. Maybe she gets it in the car. I think sometimes she takes like a five minute nap literally in the car. But on the weekend, usually we're like active in the morning, and then we have lunch, usually at home or out if we're somewhere, and then my kids all know, like around one thirty they're allowed to start screen time, and she's included in that. She doesn't always want the screen time from the entire block with the other two because you know, she'll wander around and start playing with other toys and things, which is but that does give everybody a break. It seems to be calming enough. I think some shows can be more calming than others, so you can think about what kind of content they're consuming. And I love the idea of like an audiobook. I think that might be another good option, especially if you know the other kids are watching something that she's not interested in, and then I could just like put something audio or podcast on while she plays with, like Calico Critters or whatever. That could totally work as well. But I don't have a series in mind right now, so if listeners do, let us know. Yes, sorry, I'm managing a crisis. Somebody missed the bus for the half day. I'm hopefully that's gonna hofe somebody else can deal with it. We need to leave that in. Yeah, this is real life everyone. Yeah, I don't have a We've just done screen time too. I mean, you know, it's not the end of the world. Everyone needs a brain big eventually. That is kind of life, all right. So then the last questions from multiple people is where do you put the lego projects after you are done? So just a little background it here. We you know, I've written a lot about doing legos with my big kids. That there's you know, it's a fun thing to do with a preteen child. That's something you can both get into. It takes a little bit of time every night, so you don't have to do too much, but there's you know, very straightforward thing to do. So we've done a lot of these. Of course they add up, like there's a lot of legos around the house, so it depends my daughter tends to like play with hers more after they've been built. But then of course they fall apart because they're being played with, So a lot of those tend to wind up in a lego bin, just extra pieces that they could be repurposed for something eventually. The boys, we've we've tended to make more of those sort of display type things, like it's actually really meant to be done as like an artwork that you display, so it's a you know, an option just put it up on their dresser. If you haven't done a million of them, then you know, you could do a couple that you could display. The seasonal ones we put away as Christmas decorations. We pull out our lego gingerbread houses and put them up as Christmas decorations. So yeah, I mean you don't have to get rid of all of them. I mean, certainly you don't have to keep all of them either, But I don't think there has to be a universal answers kind of like do you like looking at it? If so, treated as you would like a vase, you know, a framed photo or whatever, put it up somewhere in the house, and if you're not that excited about it, then you know, have a Lego bin somewhere. I think a lot of families wind up with a Lego bin somewhere where all the pieces go. This could be great for like a neighborhood swap or like buy nothing, like if your kid has like a ton of them, and they have some they're ready to let go of, like especially if you could find the manual somewhere, like throw it all in one plastic bag, and I'm sure somebody in the neighborhood would like take the whole thing off your hands happily, yes, exactly, or they could treat yeah, even duplos, I mean, like doupos kids will plothe for a long time in there. There's always young families who could use them. So all right, Love of the Week, Sarah what do you What do you have this week? My love of the week is charging cords specifically, and this is a non spawn. The Anchor brand is just such a workhorse brand. You can get it on Amazon, super inexpensive. I never had enough charging cords, and I was like, I'm buying fifteen charging cords, and Mike and we decided that we'd each have a color. So I have red cords and I have like one silver cord form my computer, and I'm just corded up. And I love it because, like after a while, though Stoll, you know the app the even the original ones will fray sometimes. So it's one of those things you should not put up with a non working charging cord or like halfway working charging cord. For years, I've done it. It's a very easy to remedy buy some new chord nice, yes, solve that problem. Since we were talking Legos, I would say that we are recording this on Thursday, you know, January twenty seventh. Apparently Friday, January twenty eighth, there's actually Lego Day, like National Lego Day or something, so we can we can celebrate that. You know, they're fun. I actually really like the Lego friends We've gotten a fair number of the Lego Friends sets for Ruth. You know, I don't like the idea of they're being separate girl and boy toys. And certainly, obviously girls can play with any Lego sets they wish, and boys can, you know, have Lego Friends as well. But I think Lego thought about it, like they didn't just make it pink like it's they thought about their characters. I'm like, there's Olivia and you know Emma, and they repeat from set to set, and so you you know, have them as characters that you can play with, and you know, she kind of like has them do stuff in there and you know, whereas I think the boys have been more focused on like let's get it done, like get through this set, you know, and so it's just you know, kind of you know, obviously children are all over a range and bell curves and whatever. But I don't think Lego, you know, when they wanted to get more girls playing with their sets, they didn't just say, like make them pink and it'll be great, like they actually I think watched girls play and thought about it, and I think that's apparent. And a lot of the Lego Friends designs so you know, I'm a fan of that. I love it. I'm just going to add one thing, which is that my kids had a very interesting debate about what was better Legos versus Minecraft in terms of like, well this is more flexible, but this is textile and you can hear it and feel it, and you know, they ultimately decided on Minecraft, with one of the arguments being that it was better for the environment. Well there we go, all right, Well, this has been Best of Both Worlds a Hodgepodge episode. 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.