Creative Solutions in Work and Life with Software Project Manager Anandi Raman Creath

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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 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 seven, which is airing in mid February of twenty twenty two. I'm going to be interviewing Anandi Rahman Kreith, who is a longtime listener of Best of Both Worlds. We always love to have our listeners on as guests. We know a lot of you are doing amazing things combining work and life. And she has had a great career in the tech industry for various pathways through various forms of flexible work over the years at a company that wasn't always into the idea of flexible work, but made it work for her because they wanted to keep her, and I think a lot of our listeners have had similar experiences. So she's going to talk about that and all about her great rest of her life with you know, raising adventurous children who do things like go to China on vacation, and you know, her scrap booking, which is also really cool too. So Sarah, speaking of combining work in life, how are you holding up? This has been a hard week. Readers of my blog will definitely know that I'm going to share something funny that happened, which is that I was like, So, the funny thing is, I think sometimes people think I am only talking about my stress on the blog, but like that I'm somehow quiet at work. But that's certainly not the case. And I was like, in the middle of ranting and raving about oh, I was struggling, and my manager said, I know I read your blog. Well, you aren't really very anonymous, I have to say, and I know that, and nothing in there is anything I wouldn't say to anyone, which is why I think it's funny that people think I show up and don't make my concerns known. No. I love my office, I love my job. I love the clinical aspects of my job. I get very stressed on call, so I am working on figuring out ways to hopefully make those weeks a little bit more bearable, even if it's just trying to minimize even if the work part doesn't even change much. But if I can try my best to truly minimize the demands from the rest of my life and be more at peace with that, I think that would be a really great start. Yeah. I mean, I've been reading your blog forever, as your manager has as well apparently, but you know, it's it's been something. I know you've been brainstorming strategies for a great many years on it, which I mean I wonder, So do you think it's that you're kind of you know, there's people who are like compartmentalizers. I mean, I think you like to have work, stay at work, and like have a time that you're definitely off and that you could do other things, and when you're on call you're not off ever, And I think you don't like that. I mean, not that anyone would like that, but I think you particularly don't like it for that aspect. No, you're absolutely right, And you know, compared to when my kids were younger. I actually think I could do more to wall off the personal side, specifically because my kids are in school all day. I do not really and actually during call it's easy for me to drop them off at school, well almost every day. That's not a bad time frame for me to start my day in the office. I can usually get my rounds done if I get there around eight thirty. So if I'm dropping the kids off most days, that means our nanny doesn't have to come in until like pick up time, which is three. And so I'm in a great phase where if I planned ahead and allowed myself to have Like I'm looking back and I'm like, why didn't I just say ten o'clock at night, like get you can get everything done, and then just like, oh I don't need ten I need I'm like even like seven or even just eight would be wonderful because our kids go to better around that. You know about that eight o'clock time. So I think, I I think I have you know, I can work on that. And then there's things we are working on from an office standpoint as well, to just help things run a little bit more smoothly and keeping working on it. Yeah, well, certainly minimizing the demands and the rest of your life sounds sounds smart. And I know blog readers had all sorts of people are always timing in with suggestions, but I like the one of having somebody send you with stacks. The snacks were great. And then the ultimate, the ultimate fantasy was the just check into a hotel for a week. I'm like, wow, I mean I could it could. I mean it would be like the you know, it could be a really cheap place. I mean, it doesn't have to be. I mean, it's the childcare is the expense. It's not the hotel that would but you know, could happen. Anyway, it's almost over. It's almost over. Yes, we're recording this at the very end. So if any pages or it's not pages these days, right, it's like it's on your phone. It does come through the phone, but it's still kind of like a paging system. Yeah, you know, beg, I remember back when that was a thing. They have to page the doctor in the auditorium. But send your pager with the usher and they'll come find you if they have to find you for your call. Anyway. All right, well, let's go with our interview portion with on Andy, so we'll be right there with that. Well, Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Anundy Ramen Kreith to the program. She is a Best of both Worlds listener, which is awesome. People who have listened to Best Laid Plans heard her as a guest a few months ago on that show that we were excited to have her on here as well to talk about her career how she's made various different forms of work work over the years. So very excited to have you. Welcome to the program. Thank you, I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, So why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners. Okay, Like laurisaid, I'm an Indie Rahmen Cree. I live in Phoenix with my two daughters who are nine and twelve, two dogs, and my husband. I work remotely for a large tech company in Seattle and I've worked for them basically for the better part of the last twenty years, which is a little bit scary to think about. And I think that's about it. And we've you know, kind of gone through some different things with our school choices for our kids as well as the way that I work. I've worked you know, full time in the office. I've worked part time, I've done contract work, so I've had a lot of different iterations in my career. Yeah, and you were actually fully remote prior to COVID. Correct, that's right. So I was hired in twenty nineteen in the most recent stint as a fully remote employee, kind of at a time where it was very unusual, and the first when I kind of went for my orientation trip, the first you know, one of the first meetings I had was with my you know, manager's manager, who said, you know, this arrangement is really unusual, but we'll try to make it work. So it wasn't a huge vote of confidence, but I felt like I could, you know, be successful because before that I had worked, you know, done contract work remotely, and so I was pretty used to working remotely. I just think that a lot of the my new team members were not. Yeah, so did they? I mean, so the position was not then advertised as a remote position, like you came in and made it remote then or how did that act? Yeah, so tell us about that. Yes, it was not posted as remote. I actually when I was looking for kind of to go back to my company as a full time employee. I'd been a contract employee before that. I actually looked around, kind of reached out to my network, you know, through Facebook and through LinkedIn, and a friend who I worked with for many years said, you know, my manager has an open position on the team and it was a job I used to do in two thousand and seven. So she said, if you're still interested in that kind of work, he's got an open position, maybe you want to talk to him. So I did, and in that conversation, I you know, I found out obviously they had planned to hire somebody you know, who would come into the office and you know, be work in Seattle. And I said, you know, I'm really interested, but I have to work remotely because at the time we lived in California. And he, you know, he thought about it, I think for a little bit and said, you know, he was willing to make that work. And you know, we set up the interview and you know, they didn't make any promises. They interviewed other people for this job as well. But I did get it, and you know, it did work out that it was you know, they were comfortable with making it remote. I think once they went through the interview and saw that you know, I was willing to do it, and that you know, they were happy to have me. They made it work, which was pretty great. I was not expecting that, to be honest. Yeah, Well, I'm curious, over the years of doing you know, work where a lot of the people were in the place and you are not in the place, how have you sort of made that work? I mean, what are kind of the keys to being integrated into a team in that situation? Right. So, a lot of the remote work I had done before this job was as a contract worker. So I was hired, you know, kind of to work on a specific project and had very sort of specific duties that I did mostly by myself, Like I'd have a few meetings a day, but not very many, And so that lends itself pretty easily to remote work. You know, I have my you know, all my tech setup and everything at home, and that was fairly easy to do that kind of work and just check in when I needed to with my team. But this was a little bit of a different situation because I'm part of a team that was almost entirely in the office in Seattle, and so one of the things I kind of set off doing a little differently was as soon as I started, I went to Seattle for orientation. That's just how the company works, and so I tried to make a point to meet everybody on my team in per even though I wasn't sure, you know, right at that first couple of days, who I would be working with directly, but I did. I think I managed to meet almost everybody except one person, you know, face to face, at least briefly. And then when I got back to California, I set up one on one meetings over Microsoft teams to just get to know the people on my team and you know, basically to introduce myself and what I was hired to do, and then you know, figure out what they were there and what their jobs were, but also just to talk about personal things because you don't really get a chance to do that like in a business meeting maybe a few minutes at the beginning. But I wanted to just find out more about my coworkers and it was easier to actually have a meeting where we were set up to have an informal chat where that you know, where it was kind of okay, it wasn't all business, and that really helped. And it turns out. It helped even more because those co workers I haven't seen since that first orientation trip because of COVID, I haven't been back. So I'm really glad I, you know, had the foresight to set that up up front, considering I haven't seen them in two years, So that was super helpful and just I mean, I think we do a lot of email and a lot of meetings, so it's almost like, you know, a lot of the people I work with are not in my immediate team anyway, so I would be sending email to them from the office if I work there, or they'd be in another country. So some of that it's you're kind of working remotely anyway because your coworkers are in different locations. But yeah, I do make more of an effort to show up. I do. We're not a team that likes to use our cameras very much on our video calls, so I do try to turn on my camera every now and then so people kind of see me. It does give a different feel, so I do consciously try to speak up more so that they remember that I'm there and that that helps, especially when they're all in a conference room and I'm you know, the only one who's dialing in. I think that makes a big difference. Yeah, I mean, any any tips you have for that, Like, I mean, you know, just sit there and going, hey, I'm here, I'm still here. So what's an authentic way? Again, if you are the only one who is not there and people are in a room, like, how do you integrate into that meeting? Right? So, I'm an introvert and generally if I have questions, I'll make notes and ask later, I'll send emails and that sort of thing. But I've sort of trained myself a little bit out of that to actually speak up and ask the question in the moment. And that's part of the reason, right, to remind them that I'm still there. And so I'm like, you know, asking for clarification, I mean, not making it up a situation where I, you know, pretend like I need clarification. But you know, there are oftentimes where I do have a question. And just like I think you had mentioned in one of your before Breakfast episodes, just like participating in the chat that happens before the meeting starts. It's really easy to just put yourself on mute and keep checking your email or whatever. But I kind of make a point to talk to people and ask them, you know, how their weekend was, and do that just so they remember that I'm still there. Obviously, with the switch to remote work for COVID, it's been you know, so much easier because now everybody is you know, still remote my team, so that definitely makes it easier. But I think just really, I mean really it's about speaking up, so especially when we don't have video so y yeah, And you know, it's funny, I was thinking about that, like, you know that your manager was like, well, we'll try to make it work, and of course then he had to make it work for everybody right with then within a year. So it's good that you had pioneered that. Well, we'll be right back with more on Anandi's career and family life. So we're just going to take a quick ad break. So I am back with Anandi Rahman Kreed, who has been working for a tech company for twenty years in a variety of different positions, being fully remote, being part time. I mean, you've always had these different iterations, right in many cases negotiating to get different working situations than what's the norm. I wonder if you could talk through a little bit about the different things you've tried and what has been successful for you in terms of making the case for these alternative work arrangements. Right, the best example I have, I've done it a lot of you know, many times, But the best example I have is when I had my daughter in two thousand and nine, A few weeks before I was scheduled to come back from maternity to leave, I decided to go and talk to my manager about working part time. I had been working full time in the office up until then, so this was kind of a big switch. I was proposing going down to twenty five hours a week and working two days in the office and then doing the you know, two long days and then doing maybe another five hours from home at various times during the week. And I knew that was going to be a hard sell. It was not something anybody else had done on our team. But we also knew, you know, for our family, that I could either work part time or I was going to quit at that point, at least for a little while. And so I went in and asked for it, and he, you know, was really not enthusiastic it, and I think he was pretty disappointed, but he said, let me think about it and let me you know, he wanted to talk to his manager about it, and I said, okay. And you know, there is a little bit of I don't want to say negotiating power, but I knew that it was either going to be part time or I was going to step back from working for a little while, and so I didn't feel nervous about it. I just you know, it was going to he was either going to say yes or no, and I had to leave it at that. I think one of the good things I did was before we met, I sent him an email with the outline of what I wanted to do, because I wanted him to have a little bit of time to take it in. And I don't know if everybody needs that, but I am a person who needs that. If I'm going to have a kind of a difficult conversation, I'd like to know the details of what it's about first, and so I think that definitely helped because he was prepared for it. It was still, you know, awkward when we talked about it, but it wasn't as awkward because it wasn't a complete surprise to him. So he came back after a couple of days and said, you know, I think we can make this work. And they kept the contractor who was filling in for me while I was out. They kept her as well, and she, I think she was working pretty close to full time, so she retained her hours and we basically split the job so she would cover for me on the days that I wasn't there, and then we split up the responsibilities together and that worked out great, and I think it was also kind of a eye opening for my team to see that out of this, they got kind of you know, they were going to not keep her after my maternity leave, and then they ended up keeping this contractor around as well, and so they got the benefit of having you know, kind of an extra person still even though I was working less hours. And that worked out, and she ended up staying for like ten or twelve years after that, and she turned into a full time employee and basically kept that job when I left the team. So it worked out really well, you know, both for us and for the team in that sense. Yeah, although I'm curious how you managed to hold the line on your your twenty five hours. I mean, obviously when you are so one of the always the considerations with going part time. First, that if your man had the idea that a work week was like eighty hours or something, that the twenty five is like what is this? Yeah? Or say like you know two long days is like ten hours is not a normal day, it's a long day for instance, right, Or that the five hours at home wouldn't turn into fifty hours at home. So I'm very curious how you had managed to structure the boundaries to maintain this twenty five hour work week, and not that not just you, but in terms of the expectations of your team. Right, So this is I mean, this is something I had to learn over time, because you're right, the work will always come in. No one will tell you, oh, are you passed your twenty five hours? No one said that. The things that I found to work great was the fact that I had two days that I was in the office and the other days I was definitely not in the office. And the way we had our childcare setup. And I can talk about that in a minute, because that is not something I recommend. I couldn't come in on those other three days even if I wanted to, because I had no other childcare that day. So having that hardline in the stand about when I was in really helped with meetings and things because I could just decline meetings that were on days that I wasn't in the office. But the other thing is I had to manage that time right if it was starting to creep up, I either had to reach out to my coworker for some help if it was something urgent that needed to be handled that week, or just you know, let the people I'm working with know, you know, hey, I'm part time. We can postpone this, you know, discussion until next week and I'll I'll pick it up with you on Monday. And it was weird because I think a lot of the people that I worked with didn't realize that when you worked part time, you actually got paid less. So they kind of assumed that I was just working fewer hours and still getting paid and I think it made them a little bit resentful. And so I took that opportunity to, even though I didn't really have to, to kind of educate people on you know, this is how part time works at our company. If you go below twenty hours, you don't get benefits anymore, you know, just so they knew that I was not, you know, collecting a full salary and only working, you know, in twenty five hours, and so I think a lot of it was, you know, me having to drive. This is my time that I'm working, and this is not. But back to the childcare thing. So we had set up this arrangement, my husband and I where I would you know, work Monday Tuesday, and he had set up a separate, compressed schedule arrangement with his manager where he was still working full time, but he would work Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday ten hours. And so we basically would you know, we were never working on overlapping days, so we would do childcare on the days that we weren't working. And we thought, you know, we were so proud of this arrangement, and we thought it was great and you know, we were got to both be very hands on with our daughter. But it was grueling and I would never do that again. So we were basically either full time work or full time childcare for six days a week, and Sunday was the only day that we all had together to do nothing, so and we still had a baby to take care. So that was really rough and I'm not sure I would have chosen that again. But it was you know, it was a good thing for us to try and see his work. His manager thought it was incredibly weird and was sending him all these calculations on how a nanny would be more cost effective and also easier, and I'm sure he met well, but it was it was interesting. But you know, I'm glad we tried it and we definitely found it for us that didn't really work. Yeah. No, It's funny because I you know, over the years, I've had a lot of people tell me similar things, right, and you know, families have come up with its very elaborate arrangements whereby they don't have to have any extra childcare. And I'm like, like, where did you get the idea that outside childcare was a sign of failure as a parent thus such that you had to you know, work at like three am or something in order to make sure that like nobody had any paid child care going on. And so, you know, I don't know, I don't know where people get that. But as you said, it's a it was a rough schedule, you tried it, moved on to other things later, which brings me to the chummy. I mean, you guys have done a lot of interesting different iterations in terms of with your girls, you know, different schooling. I knew you were homeschooling for a while too, right, that was an iteration in there is talking about that. Yes. So we had moved to California to kind of a more rural area, and so basically your neighborhood school was the school you went to. There weren't a lot of choices. There weren't a lot of private schools in the area or anything like that. So we were super excited because it was a neighborhood school you could walk to, and we thought everything was all set and we were going to live there forever and it was all done. But we quickly found that our older daughter, it just was not a good fit for her school wise. She wasn't challenged enough. She was starting to check out. And so they school had offered her a grade skip over the summer, and I'm like, Okay, I guess we can try that. It was kind of something I was hoping to avoid, but we figured we would try that, and it was, you know, it was helpful, but not entirely helpful for her. And so halfway through her fourth grade year, and this was the beginning of twenty nineteen, we decided to pull her out to homeschool. And so California has an interesting sort of hybrid homeschool approach where you can sign up with a charter school, and this one happened to be through our neighboring school district, and they provide you with a teacher that you meet with either once a week or once every two weeks, and they make sure that you're going through all the stuff that you need to, you know, all the subject areas, and we kept logs of what we did, and so that was like kind of a good way. It was like homeschooling with training meals, so you know, we knew we had to cover these areas. They would give us, you know, whatever materials we needed, they would order things for us. It was fabulous and I was able to do that. At the time, I was working as a contract employee part time, so I think I was working thirty hours and so that worked pretty well. But I'll say that it worked well because our daughter is very motivated and focused, so I could do my work. She would go down her list for the day and take care of it, and she was motivated because once she finished her list, she could do whatever she wanted. So, you know, from nine to twelve, she would focus on her work and then she would be done. And then one day a week she had like a full day of school where she would go to this school and have activities and you know, art class and science lab and all these things. And so it was you know, kind of four days a week of homeschooling and one day a week of actual school. And it worked really well for us, you know, and we continue to do that, of course, until COVID ruined everything. So yeah, and it worked, but we continued. Then obviously, once COVID hit, we had both kids at home and then we you know, we had to do remote school for the younger one. We continued with the same homeschooling for the older one, and then the following year, the younger one signed up at a virtual school for the year of you know where I think before the vaccine was available for COVID, and that was more structured. It was, you know, she gets assignments from the school. They were set up to run automatically as a virtual school, so they only had classes for maybe two hours a day with plenty of breaks, and then she would get a list of things she had to complete, and that was much more hands on. She had to sit my younger one had to sit in my office because otherwise she would get distracted and she needed somebody to chat with while she was doing her work. That was hard for sure, And so you know, I think it really depended on the kid. If I needed to homeschool her, it would have been hard to put in kind of a full day of work at the same time. But at this point we were in COVID times and so you know, everybody was struggling with the same thing. Yeah, exactly. Well, similarly, it seems that you know, adults with remote work and kids with you know, homeschooling, it can be some people it's a better fit than others, and you just have to match the person out of that. I have to say, your your daughters to me, sounds just incredibly sophisticated, and I know that you've done a lot of international travel with them. One thing that you know, Sarah and I both thought was so cool is you've taken each daughter on an international trip solo. Why don't tell our listeners a little bit about that. Sure, it kind of happened by accident, So I had this dream when they were babies that I would, you know, we would go on this massive international trip every year, and so we started when my older one was two and I was pregnant. We went to Ireland for three weeks and it was great, it was lovely, except that I had huge morning sickness the whole time I was there, and a really bad sinus infection, and so my husband kind of got stuck with most of the childcare things, and I saw a lot of the inside of our airbnb because I was too sick to go anywhere. So that was a little disappointing. And then on the flight back, I think my husband was traumatized because two hours into a nine hour flight, our two year old decided she was just done, and so he had to walk her up and down the plane for the better part of seven hours. And so he was like, I'm not going anywhere until these kids are older, and so, you know, I was like, Okay, that's fine, because that was really hard. But around the time, I think the year my daughter was about to turn seven, I kind of got the itch to go somewhere again, and I was like, I think we can try it now, you know, they're a little older. They were seven and four, and my husband's like, our four year old is not ready for this. So he's like, why don't you take the older one somewhere and I'll take the young to see my parents in Arizona. I was like, okay, this is great, we can do this. So I let her pick. I narrowed the choices just like you do with Toddler's and you pick, you know, two things you're happy with. I let her pick between Scandinavia and Japan, and she decided that she liked Scandinavia because of the idea that in the summer the sun was out for longer and she could stay up late. So I was like, okay, that sounds great. So we had some friends that lived in Denmark, and so we kind of made plans to stay with them over a weekend. And then I hired a travel agent to kind of help us plan the itinerary to see, you know, places in Norway as well as go to Stockholm. So she kind of planned an itinerary just as far as like how many days we'd be in each place and the transport between the places, but everything else was kind of up to us, and I did a lot of it on the fly, like we would just wake up that day and say, hey, what do we want to see here? And it was amazing. Like I did not realize. I was a little apprehensive about traveling alone internationally, but it really it was super fun. You know. I realized pretty quickly that you have to travel at kid pace, like I can't see three different things in one day. Like we needed to come back and rest in the afternoon, even though she wasn't napping, like just all that walking was unusual for both of us, so it was good to have a break and we just you know, I would check in with her. You know, we had one whole day where we just laid around in the hotel room and watch reruns of Project Runway. And she still talks about that, so you know, like we were in Stockholm and we're watching this show. But she thought it was great, So yeah, it was. I mean, it was a really great experience, and so I didn't really deliberately plan to do it again. But then when my younger one was six, my parents told me that they were going to visit my cousin who was working in China, and asked if we wanted to come, and my husband did not really want to come. He said, you know, we already had a trip planned later in the year, and so he didn't think all of us should go. He's like, but if you want to take our younger daughter, then I should do that. Cause she was learning Chinese at the time at her elementary school. So I was like, huh, that sounds a little bit scary, but okay, Like this is the kid that is not as good at flexibility and traveling, and you know, she kind of has a little more need for routine and things like that. But I was like, all right, let's give it a try. And it was again, like an amazing experience, Like I don't get that much one on one time with either of them, so it was, you know, to really be on our own in another country where we didn't know very many people, was really cool. And just to find out, you know, what are the things she finds interesting. I'd hand her my camera and she would take cool pictures of stuff I would never think to take pictures of. So it was a really I mean, it was a very cool experience again to kind of experience that through you know, the eyes of a six year old. So yeah, sounds amazing. I mean, not knowing Chinese does seem like it would be our Vanderin would would be a challenging way to travel, entirely surprising how many signs were in English. I think because they had had really a couple of years before, so everything in the subway was also in English. At the airport and that sort of thing. But yeah, I mean we actually relied on my six year old to do things like ask for a fork or get napkins and things like that. So her teacher had actually spent a little bit of time teaching her some basic things like where's the bathroom and so yes exactly. So I was like, hey, can you ask that guy where the bathroom is? She would do servis yes. Yeah, that's wonderful. Wow, that is impressive. And it's interesting you said, like taking good photos of something photos you wouldn't have thought to take. You people like, what what photos do you think to take? But Anundy has a pretty amazing scrap booking thing going on. Her scrap booking game very strong, if anyone follows her on Instagram. You've been doing scrap booking in sort of high level for a great many years. So tell us a little bit about that. That you know, where you make the time for this and what you've done with it over the years. Yeah. So I started in twenty twelve, just before my younger daughter was born, and it I mean I had before I would to say, before two thousand and seven, I had no hobbies at all. My hobby was work. I would just work more. And somewhere around there, I got a little burnt out on work and I was like, I need to find something else that I like to do. And so I actually started making jewelry and taking classes to learn how to do that. And it was really fun and I really enjoyed it. But there's only so much jewelry, I mean, like I can make it, but then it starts to pile up, Like I could give it to people as gifts, but you only have so many ears, right, And so I'm like, okay, I kind of you know, and I kind of learned about scrap booking, and you know, it took a while, maybe four or five years. Around twenty twelve, I started scrap booking and I just fell in love with it. It's I did mostly you know, kind of paper scrap booking, and it was a kind of a good relief to get away from the computer. I spend all day in front of a computer for work, so it was nice have something that was very tactile and hands on. You know, I got stickers and glue and paper and things. You know, I loved it like and when you love something like that, you just make time for it, right, every opportunity I would get, I would, you know, spend some time I had you know, I had an office that was also my craft space, and so you know, every opportunity I could find, I would be in there. And you know, if you do something a lot, you get pretty good at it. And so at some point I decided when there was a period where I wasn't working, and so I decided I would try to scrap book for other people. And so I started a little business making small scrap books for other people, usually baby books, but I did a couple of wedding albums as well, and it was really fun. You know, people just give me a dump of all their pictures from the event or from you know, their kids first five years, and I would kind of sip through them and figure it out and talk to them about what was important and what they wanted to capture. And that was really fun, but it was also a lot of very time consuming and it basically kept me from doing my own scrap booking, and so I miss that, and so once I went back to work, it wasn't really feasible to spend that kind of time on other people's scrap books, and so I kind of decided to stop doing that, But I still continued my own scrap booking, and I've kind of branched out as well into digital scrap booking. I don't have as much of an version to the computer anymore. I can scrap book on my iPad. There are even apps on your phone to be able to do it, and it's just, I mean, it's just so nice to have a hobby that is not work related. I do now read more than I used to, for sure, But there's something different about scrap booking, Like it really feels like it's something that I'm consciously making time for. And I can tell when I haven't been doing it for a while, like I feel kind of unhappy, like something's missing. So I don't consciously like set aside time. But now that my girls are older and can entertain themselves and they can be in another part of the house without me worrying about what they're doing there. You know, I feel like my time has opened up dramatically, and so you know, I could probably scrapbook for four hours straight on a weekend and not you know, have to worry about what else is happening in the house, which is pretty amazing. Heaven't. We'll get there eventually, you will. So, I mean a lot of our listeners do listen to Sarah's other podcast, Best Life Plans, and heard you on there talking about your digital organization systems. But for for you know, the listeners who who don't yet listen to Sarah's podcast but should, or you know, maybe people who missed that episode, could you just give us a quick rundown of how you keep the Creath empire going between the you know, all of you guys and all the stuff you have going on. Yes, we are, as you might imagine, very technology dependent on this. So I talked a little bit or a lot about my system in Trello with Sarah, and that's sort of more personal for me. So it's all the things that I need to do pretty much in my life except for work, and so that's one place where I keep you know, things like I need to call for a pediatrician appointment. That kind of stuff just stays in trello until I get it done. It's my to do item. But my husband and I have a shared Google calendar, which we are now sharing with our older daughter, you know, on her various devices, and that's where we put down things that will affect the family, like, so he doesn't have my whole work calendar, but if I have a meeting during the time that I'm supposed to pick somebody up, you know, I'll put that on there so that he knows he needs to do pickup. We still talk about it, I mean day to day on who's picking up who and what time. But the calendar really helps cause he's right now actually interviewing for jobs, and so he'll put those on the calendar and I'll see, oh, on Thursday, he's got an interview, so I need to do school pickup. And that shared Google calendar we've had probably for ten years now, and it's worked really, really well. We put school events on there and all those kind of shared family things. The other thing that we do, and I think I picked it up from your podcast, is that we have one shared email that we use with all the schools and any activities, so that both of us see whatever's coming through, Like there's still somebody one of us that's kind of the point person for whatever that activity is. Like he takes I mean, it's very gendered. He takes the sports and I take the language classes or whatever. But like, at least we can see it. I can say, hey, like the coach said, we need to bring snacks or you on it, and that kind of thing. It's been really helpful to have that because there will be times where he'll miss something and I'll say, hey, did you see that, And He'll be like, oh no, let me go look for that, and vice versa. So that shared email is really great. Then the other person who we like to affectionately refer to as a member of our family is Alexa, our Amazon Echo dot. We have a whole network of them in our house, and when the girls were doing virtual schooling during COVID, we would set up that Echo Dot with all the reminders of what time they needed to log into class. We still do that for school, like there's a you know, obviously there's an alarm when everybody needs to get up to get ready for school. It's pretty at six am here, and then there's another one that goes off at six fifty five am to tell them to put shoes on when it's time to walk out the door. I kind of got tired of reminding them the same things every single day and being the timekeeper, so we let Alexa be the bad guy now and it works really well. They've started to ignore the reminders a little bit, which is making me a little sad, but we're working on that. But mostly they do listen. So so it turns out that they can. They can ignore Alexa just as they can ignore Mom. They can, yes, so humorously when we don't have an Alexa, but we were at somebody else's house once who did. And this was when my now seven year old was probably about three, and he kept calling it Charlotte. He could not remember that its name was Alexa's awesome Charlotte. Charlotte. It wouldn't do anything right, that's excellent. So, out of curiosity, if your husband's interview is he mostly looking for remote stuff? Do you think this is gonna, you know, continue being like a too remote family, or you know you're open to doing other stuff. He is strongly preferring remote work. And I think he's a software engineer, so that should be pretty easy to come by. I think he basically he's been working remotely since twenty fourteen, I think, and he's basically decided he never wants to go back into an office every day again. So and for him it works really well because he needs a lot of long focused time to write code, and so it's a lot easier to get that at home, I think than in an office full of cubes with other people. So yeah, totally agree. I can't imagine going into an office every day. No, it would just it's like Gail, totally kill me. But you know, I know people do it and some people love it, so you know what would tear away for this? Like different people? Yeah, different people like different things. We are not those people. This is been awesome. I love hearing about you know, the strategies. You guys see what I sent everything. So we always end with a love of the week. I can go first, although I know you can listen to the show, so you knew this was coming. Yes, So my love of the week is a very non Phoenix related thing is ice skating. So here in the East Coast where it is cold during winter, we can do outdoor ice skating on certain in certain places, and so there's a rink that we like to go to and it's so fun to just be out and you know, moving around. And I really like it. And I got to say, I thought my children liked it more than possibly they do. But it's like, oh, I'm doing this for the kids. No, I'm not doing it for the kids. It's me. So now that I know that, I'm like, wow, you know, I could just like take an afternoon off and go do it. And I could just go ice skating, yes, and not have to worry about, you know, lacing up children's ice skates. I was a bit surprised how old of my children I needed to help with that. But you know, Socaz, I love ice skating. It's a lot of fun. How about you? All right? I have a very fluffy recommendation. I have a recommendation for the style book Up And this is an app where you basically create an inventory of your wardrobe and then you can record each day what you're wearing. You can use it to make outfits. But the part that I like the best is this data. So they have data on like you could see what haven't I worn in the last year? What have I never worn? You know, what is the cost per weare of this item? So you put in how much you paid originally, and then it divides up by the number of times you've worn it. I'm like such a nerd that I think that's really fun. So I've been using it and as of today, I think I've been logging my outfits for five hundred and sixty one days. Wow. Wow, I don't do anything again since since I follow you on Instagram, there was like a challenge right where you were trying to put together outfits that were like vaguely Disney inspired but weren't like costumes. Right, there's okay, it's a whole thing, right, So it's called Disney bounding. And I didn't totally realize the extent of this, but there are people who this like almost every day, I think, and there's hashtags and everything you can follow. But yeah, the idea is that you take a character, figure out what colors they wear, and then figure out how to make an outfit that's inspired by those colors. And so I'm in a Facebook group that does these outfit challenges and this was one of them, and I'd never tried it, and it turns out I have a lot of different colors and I could make lots of outfits. And my girls thought it was super fun. So I would make them guess every morning who I was supposed to be and they were pretty good at it, So, yeah, it's fun. I don't know if I could really handle that every day. That was a lot of planning and preparation and sometimes wearing things I wouldn't wear together, but it was fun to do for a week. Yeah, well, you need to look like Elsa. I guess that's right. You gotta find that blue. You gotta find that blue somewhere. Yeah, and I work remotely, right, so nobody really sees me, so it's fine. Yeah, it's fine. You can look like whatever any of jasmine exactly. Anandy, this has been awesome. I mean, is there someplace that our listeners who did want to connect with you could could find you? Sure? The only real social media I uses Instagram. I'm on A D R C A N A N D I RC wonderful. Well please check that out and thanks so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. Thank you. This was really fun. All right, Well, that was amazing. I love talking with her and Sarah, I actually got to talk with Anandy about her planning system for Best Laid Plans. And so if you have not listened to that episode, I do think I plug it in the interview if I'm remembering correctly, But if I didn't or you missed that part of the interview, please go check that out. So Best Laid Plans from a few months ago. So our question for today dealing with professional issues as we've been talking about with this episode, Sarah, do you have a good rubric for deciding if a professional opportunity is good as an worth it or not. I think I say yes to too much at this point, and I think I finally reached a point where I am starting to say no more. I actually said flat no to two things. It happened to me during my call weeks. I don't know if that was part of it. One was my hobby related It was like a podcast guest appearance that might have been fun but would have taken some work to prepare and I just didn't have the bandwidth right now. And another was a professional speaking invitation that again, like I wasn't that excited about it, and I was sort of like, I don't really get that much out of this, so I'm gonna just say no this time. And I'm not used to saying no. And both times I found myself like editing my email like, wait, I don't have to apologize. No, I think I still did. I mean, I said something like I'm sorry, this doesn't I'm not able to fit this in right now. Thank you so much for thinking of me. That was like my mind. No, that's good, that's good. Yeah, I mean it's you know, certainly when you know people are deciding should I go to this conference? Like, you know, with this me be worth going to? Would you know this all sorts of learning opportunities? Is it worth you know, showing my face and X Y or Z. I think there's a couple of questions you can ask. A good one is always like would I do this tomorrow? So, especially the further something is in the future, the more it feels like you are assigning it to somebody completely different who will have far more than twenty four hours in the day and won't be like you at all, so she'll be happy to do it, unlike you, who will not. But if you find yourself you know, thinking that way, Just ask yourself, would I do this tomorrow? And if the answer is no, no, I would not do this tomorrow, then that should be your answer for basically any point. You know, because you know how you will feel tomorrow in a way that it's just hard to identify how you'll feel six months down the road. I think another thing, if you find yourself talking yourself into it, that's also probably a bad idea. You know, there are a great many things in life that we are truly excited about, and we tend not to have to talk ourselves into those things that we are truly excited about. But if you're sitting there saying, well, oh, maybe it would be good on my resume to do hex, like when if you last used your resume for something, I mean, it's just like you, it's okay, it's okay, just let it go. More things that you'll be more excited will come into your life. But I mean the flip side of that is true, like if you find yourself like really excited about it, but you're just a little bit anxious because maybe it's outside your comfort zone, it's not something you've done before. You know, maybe like it's it's a little bit of a stretch for you like this, that's probably a good yes, that's a good yeah. So if you find yourself excited about it, but you're just a little bit nervous or anxious, like, don't let the nervousness and anxiousness keep you from taking the risk and trying it, because you'll probably be happy you did. So you know, you can also like picture yourself on the other side of it, like, am I going to be happy to have done this? You know, even if it was tomorrow, would I be happy to have done this? And if the answer is yes, then then it might be worth giving it a shot. And I think where you are in your career might matter as well. I definitely feel like when I was first starting out, I think it was really good to say yes to things because then you get to meet more people, people understand where your competencies and strengths are, and you're just sort of getting your name out there and being seen as a person who, hey, like, she does things. But then as you've done a lot of things and now you have a lot of things in her plate because you've become that person, I am that person. I think then you have to start saying no because you literally run out of self and hours in the day, only so many as we keep learning. All right, well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking to Annandi. Sorry Anundi Rahman kraith I butchered it in the thing too and she was very gracious about it. But long time best of both worlds listener. Wonderfully organized person, so many facets with the tech career and the scrap booking which I'm just personally obsessed with. I love looking at her pictures on Instagram, but please go check that out. We'll be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.