Listener Question Deep Dive: "I just want time to stop for a week so I can catch up and start fresh!"

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and thirty one, which is first airing February fourth, although we are taping it a bit ahead of time, as we are wont to do this week, we are going to be discussing getting caught up. When you want the world to sort of stop spinning for a week so you can get back on top of things, have a clean slate, which of course may not ever happen, but we can all daydream. So, Sarah, when do you feel most overwhelmed? I was just thinking as you were saying that, like, maybe it will happen, Maybe maybe we can stop time. I don't know that sounds great talk about it. I mean, I've gotten fairly clean when I'm in the right, when all the stars aligned, I suppose, But no, I will say the times that I definitely have not been able to have a clean slate and have had to just accept it are during the newborn and pumping season, which we're gonna get to a listener question where the listener is in that season, because I feel like that lack of sleep plus the hormones, plus something about those hormones for me, tend to lead to a lot of unreasonable expectations, like you're just supposed to be back in all cylinders, so it's like a perfect storm for me. Yeah. I used to really struggle when I was fully clinical and had literally zero built in flexibility when I would take a week off and then come or two weeks even or a week and a half for whatever, and come back, and our managers didn't allow us to build any catch up time into our schedule, so we'd be faced with like, you know, a full patient load that day, but then also an inbox with like thirty messages. I mean, because colleagues covering, I mean, they'll cover for urgent things, but many of my lab result type stuff are important but not urgent, so the family could wait a week and a half safely, but they still need, like me to call with a cognizant conversation and have to look back and see what we were doing. And that was very overwhelming. So that was hard. And then I would say that I'm not immune to procrastinating, and it was some upholders love to, you know, do things very incrementally. I will. I'm good at knowing kind of what I can and cannot procrastinate on. So for example, when I was studying for my medical boards, I was very good about making a study schedule and sticking to it and you know, doing X number of questions on each day with each topic. But when I know that I can get away with pushing it forward, I often do, so that that can be overwhelming. Yeah, now I gotta say I've been relative good of late, which some of it I think is just a combination of having older children, which although when with this errors, that probably will not be the case anymore, and you know, having adequate childcare, which is also a big part of it and something we will get into in the body of this episode. The times I think I felt most overwhelmed in the past is when I've lost a lot of time during the week due to say sick days, whether kid events, you know, the various things that can go wrong with four children or go right. I mean, it should be that they just have a lot of stuff at school. I have to attend and then you know, the time has to get made up somewhere, you know. But there are ways to kind of cope with all this. One of the strategies we came up with is that if I had been covering a lot of stuff during the week, then weekends become work time for me, basically the full time, and Michael will take the kids we're out and I will work in my home office and it's just another work day. And the truth is, if you're working from say ten to four or five on a Saturday, you can get a ton done. So big fan of that strategy. And of course the kids have then had some interesting adventures. I was remembering one back when we were living in New York where Michael took our two older boys, because that's who we had at the time, to the Coney Island Mermaid Parade. And this is quite the campy experience of various New Yorkers who have decided to dress up as mermaids, some in more clothing than others, which I think the little boys were probably too young to really appreciate that. I'm probably sure my husband may have appreciated it, but I was like, I hope they got video of that. I told later he'd taken them to this, and they're like, oh my gosh, so I kind of want to go to them. They were exposed to the fun of New York and mermaids, So there we go. No. I like that, though, like the weekend pop off valve, I think can be very helpful. Sometimes I used to use like call days to do call wasn't very heavy. That's a great time to disappear into your office and get a lot of stuff done. Unlike you. A lot of times my husband or sometimes my husband will be working on a weekend when I'm desperately needing to catch up, especially if it was a week that he was working a lot, so instead of having him take the kids, the answer is usually childcare, which, as we talked about, that's kind of a theme. The theme it's often the answer. But so getting into our listener question on which this episode is based. This was one that it was posted on your blog, wasn't it, Sarah, I think this is where this came from. Nope, it was an email. It was an email. Okay, I think yeah, there was a comment similar to this. It was inspired by the blog, and I think that we put those two things together and we're like, this needs its own episode. Yes, definitely, definitely so. Our listener writes in that she is a mother of two ages three and a half and six months. Soga has a new baby and went back to work after her second child at eighty percent, so that was four days a week. However, she says, my job responsibilities did not drop by twenty percent. It was only the time in which to do them that dropped. I use my day off every week to run around like a crazy person and take care of appointments, laundry, general house cleanup, meal prep, errands, etc. Both boys are in daycare full time, which is located right next door to our house. She says she works in healthcare. She's a genetic counselor does research. All of this means that there are a few hard deadlines in her field, and thus far her boss has been content with things just taking longer. She had floated the idea of extra help when a colleague left a few years ago, but that did not happen. So while she says her boss is fine with her level of productivity, she finds that she is increasingly behind on everything work due to the lack of time home life due to bringing work home to make up for the lack of time. At her job, she has a two hour commute, meaning an hour each way and try it's still pumping, so she's trying to fit in two to three pump sessions per day while at work. She says she also runs at least three to four days a week very early in the morning in order to save her sanity, but sometimes questions if the lack of sleep is worth it. She says, I can think of some changes to put in place to streamline things moving forward, but no, a number of small tweaks will help me dig out of my current hole. What I really want is for the world to stand still for a week so that I can get a whole bunch of stuff done and then start fresh. Given that this is unlikely to happen, do you guys have suggestions for how to play catch up? I love how She puts that because I feel like I've had that exact exact I want everything else to several occasions. I mean, it's just it's actually a fun concept to dream about. I think you can probably the subject of many a novel. In fact, I think that, yeah that's true. Well, yeah, that's like a big miracle. He's all about the clean slate where no one has anything to do and find yourself in a cabin in a beautiful woodland setting in northern Japan. But yeah, no, it's true. I mean it's such a nice idea. Yeah, and yet, so you know, we had a couple thoughts for our listener. I'm sure lots of people listening to this have thoughts as well, and we welcome you writing in with your ideas. I hope you'll post them on my blog and on our Instagram account when this episode runs, because I think this is a situation a lot of us have found ourselves in, and I think people will have a lot of great ideas for her. My first, you know, I'll get on my soapbox here, which you know, people probably know what's coming. The hazard of going to eighty percent, you know, I totally see the appeal in her case of the four day week because she has such a long commute, Like this is one of the situations where it slightly makes more sense than others where people are like, oh, your workload will be reduced somehow magically, but you still need to come in every day. In her case, she is actually going to a four day weeks, so it's more like it's an eighty percent schedule. But as she said, you know, if there's no corresponding drop in workload, she's just working full time and not getting paid for it. And it's possible that she's doing it in thirty two hours a week. It's also possible that she is getting most of this time on her day off on the weekends, so that she's working closer to forty anyway. And if that's the case, that that's a little bit more troublesome. The fact that she says she's using her day off to run errands and things like that. You know, this is this is also one of these things that bothers me because clearly she's doing genetic research. She has a lot of specialized training. I'm not sure what the economic efficiency is here of having somebody who has that specialized you know, high end role in the labor market doing this stuff that is, you know, unpaid labor with her day off. I'm not sure that that was a great trade off. So you know, what can she do? One option is to try and convince her boss that she's working full time, so let's pay her for a full time. She could keep a time log to show this of the hours she's working at night's, weekends and her day off. Or she could just go in and ask to sub a work from home day for her day off, so that she is in fact working five days. It's just one day is from home. I mean, heck, why not go in and say two days off. I don't know if she has you know, equipment she has to be using, but if some of it is more you know, spreadsheets or computer based or whatever, maybe she can do that at home. So this person may actually be doing patient care, oh you face on, Yeah, because well she's doing research, you know, she said, she says she's taking work home, so clearly you're right. You're right. Even if she has some clinical roles, she probably doesn't need to have FaceTime with patients every day. Yeah, probably it needs one day per week, probably more. When that's not the case. Yeah, correct, So so it sounds like it might be possible to do the the email and the you know, research component of it, running models or whatever on that day at home or something, so, you know, and that doesn't change her workload. Again, like she still has the workload, but I think she'd feel a lot better about it if she's getting paid one hundred percent versus eighty percent. Right, I mean that does make tense. I'm sure it probably would allow her to not be so behind, and then she would be less stressed. Yes, exactly, that's true. The other thing I will bring up, which some people may argue with me on this, is that she doesn't have to pump. She wants to pump, she wants to think, or she wouldn't be doing it. I mean, okay, my devil's advocate there is that I tortured myself, and I have no regrets. I'm glad I did it. It was fine. It was really annoying, but I really enjoyed having kind of a prolonged nursing relationship with John Vievee. I don't know if that could or would have happened had I stopped pumping at six months. Maybe it would have maybe it wouldn't have. I did stop abruptly before I hit the twelve month mark, and it was wonderful. But I mean, maybe this person has a goal in and six months isn't that long. I mean, like, if she's pumping for a two year old, yeah, we can start having a conversation, but really, like that's twenty six more weeks of her life. It's like half a planner. It's like, yes, it's going to suck for a short time, but then she's done. But then, I think that's the mindset you have to have about it, right, It's that, yes, this is an activity that takes time, and we can't pretend that it doesn't take no time. It absolutely takes time. Well that's where my tip comes from, just being like, this may be the time you have to just like get a little essential about what you care about. And maybe pumping is and maybe it's not. So I mean, it's absolutely valid not to pump to It's a Laura's point is well taken. I just have a gut feeling from the way this person wrote that they're like not terribly negotiable on that. Yeah, but you know, even if it wasn't a year, I mean, if she decided I'm going to pump to eight or nine months, right, that could be an option, or say that I'm trying to get to a year, but I'm only going to pump once a day, right, Like, Yeah, there are various ways that this does not have to be all or nothing. And again, given that this is an activity that does take time, you can embrace that inside. That's and she's doing like a four am pump like some of her pumping is a little So you could decide this is something I want to do and that's great. Or you could decide like, I don't have to do this, and then that will free up some more time. And it could be gradations of that, like I pump once a day and then I've freed up you know, another hour that I'm not pumping three times day or something along those lines. So that's that one. The other question is is does she have a partner. I would presume with a six month old baby that she probably has one. If that's the case, use this person for the weekends, like we suggested, you know, take Saturday or Sunday to get caught up on work while this other person has the kids for a chunk of time and finally just you know, questioning this overwhelmed narrative because no one ever really has a clean slate. I think, you know, you can torture yourself with like, oh, I need to get to the clean slate. Well, you know, we all just have stuff. There's always going to be projects, there's always stuff. I wonder if what she means by clean slate is like that feeling when you have so many to do items that you like, don't know where any of them are, Like you don't know where to start, Like I think, I mean, one of my things was to take a day where you're just kind of cleaning up, not meaning to get everything done because that's not going to happen in a day, but like making sure all of your to do is are written, you know, kept somewhere where they make sense to you, where you've prioritized to certain ones, and kind of laid out a plan for what's short term and what's emergent and what's long term, and maybe even like as part of that, set up that strategic childcare so that if there's something that's urgent and bothering you on on a moment's a moment basis, you then have like a realistic plan to get it done. Yeah, I don't know if some of this is more like she can't see all of her cards on the table, so it's just freaking her out. 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That's bombas dot com slash best Of for twenty percent off Bombas dot com slash Best Of. All. Right, well we are back with episode one point thirty one, talking about the hope that the world will stop spinning for a week or so so people can get caught up when they're feeling behind, and we've been discussing various ways to deal without failing based on a listener question along th line. So, Sarah, what are you suggesting for our listener? I mean, similarly to what you mentioned about the partner. It could be a partner, but as I mentioned, sometimes this might be a season where you need more childcare help, and it might be a season where instead of thinking of it as a super long term solution, maybe it's a short term solution. Maybe if you are dedicated to pumping, then this is a time that you need to spend some time on the weekends making up work that you're falling behind on in the week Like, admit to yourself that this may be a temporary period where you need more because I get the temptation of like, oh, I can't afford that. Well, maybe you can't afford that for the next five years, but maybe you can afford it for the next six months and it will help get you out of that baby stage. Yeah, yeah, my other things are well I kind of mentioned this, but yeah, trust see, if you can schedule a catch up day, like just try to pick a day where you don't have meetings or other obligations and literally right on the top of your you know, whatever your outlook calendar, you're busy because you're going to spend that day clearing the decks, you know, organizing your to do is figuring out what's really dire. Maybe this would be a time to put a proposal together about that day that you could work from home and get paid for it. You know, just kind of like you can't stop time and do everything, but you can't stap time a little bit to some extent and kind of take stock. I also think that maybe scheduling like a little personal retreat day a couple months out might be nice, because then you have something to look forward to and the harder period is over. One question I really like. I don't know if it was from you, lare or some other source, but someone's like, well this matter in five years. I find that that helps. It was during the holiday season and I had about fifteen thousand invites, and I was very stressed and not in the mood to go to any of them. I was like, well, anyone care in five years if I like didn't go to the twenty nineteen holiday parties, no one will care, Like, there's no way that that will come back to haunt me. So I'm gonna do what I want right now now. If it's like a pattern forever that I never go to a party again and never socialize, of course that's an issue. But like on a when things are tough, when you're in that dire stage, you have to figure out what works and sometimes that long term question I think is helpful, And then I just I love my to do lists, and this is sort of like the taking stock, but make sure you're not. It does sound like you have a lot of expectations of things that you're trying to fit in each day with your four am pump and your five am group run and then a lot of things at work, and I think that maybe making sure that you're really being realistic about what can actually happen so that you can achieve those things and then not feel bad that things are piling up might be helpful. Yeah, Sarah's got on this here says make a daily to do list and do not allow yourself to put everything on there. I'm sort of laughing at the idea of the to do list that just says everything. Maybe I'll like take a photo of that and put it on Instagram. I'm going say, to do list everything, number one, everything because everything understand all the things. Yes. One of my favorite sayings is just there's no point putting something on a to do list and then not doing it, like it's just is not done, as if you'd never put it on the list in the first place. Only now you feel bad, So you've really gotten the worst of all outcomes. You are so much better off setting very limited goals for a day and then you get through those let's say three things, five things, and you're on top of the world because you did everything you said you were going to And of course there's other things in the world you could be doing. But again, if you're not going to do them like it doesn't help to set yourself up for failure. So be very strategic, like what three things if the power went out in your office, like, would you have had to get through in the course of the day, and do those? Celebrate You can always go find other stuff to do if you have more time. But if you're doing three things a day, that's fifteen things per work week, or twelve in her case if she's got the four day week, but twelve things a week. You know, in fifty weeks a year, that's six hundred important things. So it's a fair amount of stuff. We just make small, steady progress. And Sarah also suggested we should savor the little moments of peace. What do you mean by that? Yeah, just you know, even when things are hard, you have this nice one hour commute, So do the best that you can to shut off that narrative in your head of all the things you have to do and realize that once you're stuck in the car or stuck on a run or whatever, you might as well just be in that moment. So a little mindfulness exercise, I guess. But really like, you're not gaining anything from ruminating, so let yourself enjoy that audiobook or that podcast or that music or whatever whatever you're doing. And I know that's so much easier said than done. I don't know that I can ever place get to a place at zen while pumping caample No, but it sounds like at least some other moments in the day when maybe there's hope. So yeah, I think changing that narrative is so important that we can go through these crunch times. And in her case, I mean, things will probably look different in six months, definitely in twelve months as she comes out of that pumping stage, you know, in two years when the baby is two and a half. I mean, it's just everything will start to look different as the kids get older, and so recognizing that can sometimes help us say that, Okay, well, yes this is tough now, but if I feel behind now, I will not always feel behind, and there will be a time when I am sleeping through the night, and there will be a time when I am not hooked up to a milking machine, and the five am run group will will happily accept you back if you take it, if you take a break or no. I mean, I think if we do it like twice a week instead of four times a week or something. I think it's amazing what this person is doing. And this person really is like in the thick of it, it sounds really hard, like it's this is not one where we're just saying buck up, everything's fine. You should be sailing through this like we get it. Yeah, this actually is. This is a tough time, but it's not going to last for ever. No, exactly. Well, on that note, I think this is going to be a short episode. Should we we go to our our love of the way, Yes, all right, let's do it, all right. So yeah, I'm in like in a wardrobe upgrade mode, I guess, because all of a sudden I just like looked around and was like, oh, all my stuff I bought in like twenty seventeen or something. I don't know. I was looking at my shoes, and I was realizing I have three pairs of Colhon shoes that have been just workhorses the last three years, and I feel like that's pretty good for like heels. They're still really comfortable. They're starting to look a little bit older. I'm wondering if I should maybe see if I could get them like professionally cleaned or something. Oh, that's you know, that's a good idea. And you can get stuff resold too. Yeah, the soles are actually like shockingly not even doing that badly like they're they're they're making it. So Yeah, I wanted to give them a shout out. And also super comfortable for heels. Okay, I might have to pick up a pair that sounds I'm always looking for comfortable shoes I have. I have aerosols sort of nude colored pumps and different some are a little higher than others, but they're all very comfortable, and so I can wear them on stage and look like I'm wearing serious heels but still feel like I can walk, which I enjoy as a as a thing. Walking as a thing as a thing. No, walking is important. Walking walking is definitely important. Yeah, I've had I've had this sort of shoe issue right now, in that it's cold. We're recording this pretty baby. None of my boots like fit. They my legs are swollen. I can't get them up around my cat. It's really bad. Did you have that every time? No? No, no no, no, why it seems worse. It's an over forty symptoms. If it's over forty sometimes, I mean others. My blood pressure is normal. It's not like I've got, you know, any issues with that. But whatever reason, I am swollen lower extremities. It's such annoying. I remember that feeling. I don't like it. I don't. Yeah, well, so I'm also ring on pull I'm wearing pull on shoes and it's winter like, so I'm in my like, oh yeah, you can't just throw on some like birkenstocks. Yeah, bit my flats with no socks, and then it's my feet are cold. So we'll just maybe you need some like really cheap ankle boots, cheap some big shoes for a different dump afterwards. But my love of the week is going to be a newborn clothes. I had stored a bunch of them in my closet, like in a drawer in my closet. Post alex and worn are unworn. Well, I mean they'd been washed like they were okay, they were Alexes. Yeah, they're Alex's and many of them had then been Sam's and Jaspers prior to that. But I pulled them out and you know, we're washing them in the in the newborn wash stuff right now, so they're ready to go. And they're just so cute. Right there's these little tiny things that the little feet seas and they are tiny there, worns are so small you whatever to three months. It's just I mean it's adorable and I you know, I say this stuff, but partly they get so little use because the kids, yeah, they stay in really good sheep and the newborn sized ones those last two weeks, yeah, three to six months, like you get used out of that, Like the kid will wear that from what six weeks on, but the new board you really only have a handful of weeks before they're too big for it, almost like days days. But yeah, it's like a little doll clothes and you know, so I've been enjoying seeing them, reminiscing about seeing the other boys wearing those those clothes, and it's so if everyone's tired of us being like in the past. By the way, I think this is the last episode where you will be hearing blasts from the previous from maybe past. Actually, if all goes as planned, you may have already heard an update. Yeah that's true. Our recording last future episodes after this will be recorded later. So yeah, so all good. Get excited about that, all right? Well, this has been Best of Both Worlds. Episode one thirty one airing in early February, talking about getting caught up when you want to stop time. And since we were recording at nine pm and Sarah has informed me we were never doing this again, you would think I was the one who was like thirty million weeks pregnant, but nope. We will sign off on this and we'll record at more normal times in the future. So anyway, this has been best of Both Worlds. We'll be back next week with more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of Both Worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.