Time Tracking. Ep 39

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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 position 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. Today we are going to be talking about time tracking, and we have not a guest, but definitely an expert on the topic. Laura Vandercam. Yay introduction, Sarah. It's also a very timely episode as Laura has a book coming out soon. So my first question for this interviewee is where is my book? I'm sorry we're taking this on April twenty seven, which is the date I'm supposed to have advanced copies, but it apparently takes a little bit of time for it to come from the warehouse or some such I don't know. I'm expecting a shipman to come very soon and then I will get my finished copy out to Sarah immediately. And I also, I am going to put in a pre order just in support, because I know that pre orders help you very much, so I'll do that so I can, you know, give one to somebody else. But i want my advance because I feel like I've earned that at this point. You have, you really earned that at this point. But thank you for mentioning the whole advanced copy thing. No, we yeah, well see, so like it's very mysterious to me in the book world, Like I didn't really know that much about advance. I started to learn a little bit through like modern missus Darcy, Like she talks about getting all these books through you, and I know sometimes you do. How does this work? The promotion of books? Well, so when you print them up, when they hit the bookstores is obviously not the first day that copies have come off the press. So most of the time, the first copies are printed in a limited run about a month six weeks to a month before the actual launch, so off the clock. My next book is coming out on May twenty nine, so that's how we're having the first copies. April twenty seven. There is an extremely limited run of galleys that is printed, you know, about three months prior to launch, and those go only to like places that have really long lead times for stuff like magazines or you know, and Bogel got one because they were doing the Summer Reading Guide. Basically, yeah, that makes sense cooking for she plans that several months ahead of time, so you know, a book blogger who has a legitimate reason for needing it three months out of time might also get a gaalley. Those galleys also go to people who are you're asking to blurb the book. The problem is that the galleys are often like ridden with errors because those are printed off the like manuscript that has gone through copy editing. So you try and not have those out in the world all that much. It's just for people who want to know what the book is about if they're considering coverage of it. So then the final copies are the ones that actual look I mean, these first copies are the ones that look like books, and they go out to the broader world, and those are the ones that go to like the reviewers and go to the bloggers and go to more media outlets and things like that. So those those will be hitting the world in the next few days, and I'm really excited about it. I mean, I've had I've read a couple of books now, but it's still when you first open that package and the box of books and you see books with your name books, it's got to be totally thrilling. It's like maybe it's the closest thing. And so, yeah, it's been it's been very exciting to have this book come to fruition. This has actually taken me quite a while. If we have any listeners who've read previous books of mine, I Know How She does It came out in June twenty fifteen, so that's three years ago. Now, it's actually taken me three years to get this next book out into the world. Said about your usual pacing, I mean, what was one sixty eight hours was what like two thousand and so one hundred sixty eight hours came out in twenty ten. I had wrote a book called All the Money in the World that came out in early twenty twelve, What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. The e book was in twenty twelve, and then the actual book itself was in twenty thirteen, and then I Know How She Does It was in twenty fifteen, so it was really more like a you know, eighteen month to two years ago. So the fact that this is three years is really you know, it's been quite a journey. And I knew I wanted to write another book, but getting a topic that you know, worked for me and that my publisher was also interested in was was kind of tough. But I think I think this one came out well. I'm pretty excited about it, and we're going to dedicate a future episode to kind of going into detail about it. Once I've gotten my copy, once you've gotten your copy, once stir, I have actually been able to prepare exactly exactly have you ever gotten any Like I've heard some writer's package like really gimmicky, funny things with their books, like I've been I've been listening to the am Writing podcast with kJ del Antonio and Jess Leahy, and they they love talking about this, like, oh, I got this book in a box and it had like a live pigeon. Well, no, I'm not getting a live pigeon, Casey, I've made that up. Well, I hadn't really thought about that. Maybe I'm just not a good gimmicky marketing kind of girl. You just don't need it. You don't need it. I was just going to put like notes, personal notes in my copies that personal notes or thank you for rating it. If you would like to share it with you know, your audience, friends, family, whatever, I would be most appreciative. I guess that would be. Have you ever received any ridiculous promotion items? Well, let's see what did I get? So the guy who owns sam Adams Brewery came out with a book a couple of years ago, and his pr people sent around these like whole packet of like Sam Adams related gifts but not beer that you can't. Yeah, there's there's laws. Well, Pennsylvania and other places you can send stuff willing only, but Pennsylvania has been really we're still run by Quakers in case you're wondering, but we So I got beer glasses like an ice bucket does all this stuff that's hilarious. I never wrote about the book. I guess I'm mentioning it now. It worked it with like a three four year time to I sure, Uh so some people do do stuff like that. I guess if there's places that are you know, product oriented business books, like the person who wrote the book also has a business that does some sort of product. They often we'll see could see that, like if it's the head of a skincare line and they would put like a little sample of cream or something that they would often do stuff like that. I think most people write a novel or whatever would would not be that much of a baby. I mean, they might stand out a little bit more. I guess it's something to think about. I don't really know what i'd attention economy right now you got to do to get those eyeballs. I mean, yeah, there's like a million books published per year, and even if those most of those are like you know, self published by people who have very limited target markets. But even so, there's like you know, into the six figures of numbers of titles that come out per year, and so trying to stand out in that is not easy. So I'm all yours. People listening to this podcast episode want to email me with their promotion strategies, Please please do. I'm happy to hear about it. Awesome. So this book is all about time, but your last book also used time tracking as part of its kind of premise, and a lot of the lessons you learn from that, but at that point you were pretty new at it. Now you've been time tracking for how long? Three years? We are? I said, we're recording this in late April, and I just passed the three year mark of tracking my time continuously. Let's even though I'm sure some people have read about it on your blog and we might have some new listeners, tell us about how you do that, how you've stuck with it, and the logistics of what you actually do to track your time. Yeah. So I use these spreadsheets, which anyone wants to go to my website you can get on yourself, but it's basically just Excel. If you want to make your own like you could, you could. This is a DIY job if you want to. The one I use has the half hour blocks of the day along the left side. It starts five am, goes to four point thirty, so you know those those half hour blocks, and then I have the days of the week along the top of the spreadsheet, going you know, Monday through Sunday, and so there are three hundred and thirty six cells. That's one hundred and sixty eight times too. So if you think a half hour block, so there's three hundred and thirty six cells on a timelog for the week, and I just type in. I keep this on my laptop because my laptop does tend to travel with me most places, and on you know, the occasions when it doesn't, I sort of just keep track of roughly what I've done during the day, either sending myself notes on my phone or I write down on a piece of paper or something so I can reconstruct it later. But anyway, Yeah, I just write down entries on here. I probably check in three to four times per day to write down what I've done since the last time I wrote it in, and I take pretty high level. It's it's not nitty gritty details too much. A lot of entries will just say stuff like work, or if I want to talk specifically, I might say work, record podcast or work, write article, work, you know, work on this book, whatever it is that I'm doing, or you know, choir practice is on here. Or a stories a being Alex the little guy. There's a lot of stories with a listed on he does not like to get about, you know, or work, reading or read Putter Boys to bed, boys watching TV. I have a note that they were watching TV at nine thirty at night I found them and I was not happy because they were not supposed to be watching TV. So putter is an entry. It is an entry, Like is that a common entry? Not to comment, I've gotten better about that, but you know, you're sort of wandering around the house like there's maybe something you need to do later, but it's not that time yet, or you know, you're trying to get the kids to bed and they're supposed to be up in the rooms. You're kind of like waiting for them to brush teeth or something and just wandering around all I'm like sorting the mail, or I'm like picking stuff up randomly but there's no real rhyme or reason to what I'm picking up. Or you know, it's those hours when you look back that you're like, I didn't really do anything that could be just putter. That's actually good. You need some sort of big catch off big or yeah, just like kids, Like it's actually an entry. Sometimes I'll put like I see at nine o'clock last night, I have my entry is trash out out Comma kids, And you know I know what that is. Like I spent fifteen minutes getting the trash and recycling up to the top of the driveway and being annoyed that the kids were up but they were not helping me. I thought they were coming out to helping and then they didn't. So then kids being the discussion I didn't had with the kids about like either you need to be in bed or you need to be helping me with the trash, neither of which apparently was happening at the moment. So labeled kids, labeled kids, or an entry like run, you know, and then I generally put the mileage on there, So run outside Comma three or run treadmill two. You know that sort of things. Yes, yeah, for example, so you do track mileage? Do you track when you're tracking books? Will you put this specific book you're reading or like book number thirty seven for the year, Like do you couch other data? I'm very fascinated about the sort of nitty gritty, Yeah, what data winds up on the timelog. So I put read as an entry, but I'm generally not putting what I am actually reading on the timelog, which would have been a useful thing to put on the timelog. I just sort of didn't develop that habit. And you know, once you're kind of into a groove. It's for three years. For three years, you're you're in a group. But I tracked my reading separately. I have a list in a notebook of books read, and then I generally post short reviews on my blog, and because I know some people are also looking for things to read, and so you know, I can tell people what I what I think about it, and I'm you know, not uh that my blog economy does not depend upon positive reviews. So I like to try to be a little bit more open about what I think of of some some books. So you know that winds up on there. I'll only put sometimes on the timelog if I've finished a book that had been taking me a long time. So I put when I finished Ulysses, for instance, or put when I finished kristin Labyrinth that or finished War. And it's like a celebratory thing that is Excel sheet. Damn it, like I did this is this? Look at is this? Okay? And you I understand the number of cells in the sheet. But do you have all of these open as different tabs in one giant three year sheet or do you have like a sheet for each you know what I mean, like a file? I have a different file for each week. So it is so so it's a brand new file. Interesting, So not just a separate tab. Is there a tab for each there's not a tab for each day. You're just doing like one plane on one one tab for a week. Yeah. And I so it's slightly annoying when I then go to tally stuff up at the end of the year because I need to separately open fifty two or fifty three. Actually it's so annoying. There are fifty two points something weeks in a year, and so and and and even works time. I could take getting very a very large and unwieldy and slow file if you had fifty two yeah, on separate tabs on a single one. And even worse is that I was I was never trained like in Excel and all the wonderful things that I'm quite aware that Excel can do, And so I haven't actually coded things to calculate on their own. So I actually have to go in on my logs to add up like how much it seems like a good like intern job. It might have been a good intern job, like for one of your kids. All I talk about outsourcing my work, outsourcing is definitely not up to what it should be. I had a funny email from somebody the other day. They're like, I'm so surprised you responded to me personally. I'm like, there is no one else who wouldever this is this is this is just me. Well that's so funny. Yeah, I wonder. I wonder if there would be some enterprising stats person who might be interested in finding, you know, trends that you might not even thought of by many year data. I know that there are people who did that because I hired one to do off the Clock, because so when I when I did this survey, so well we'll talk about this more on our episode on the book Off the Clock, But I did a time dire study looking at nine hundred people's days a day in March of twenty seventeen and had everyone record there are days. So I couldn't have gone in and done nine hundred separate entries of people's time, especially trying to make actual statistical correlations between let's say, how much time you spent with family and friends and how you felt about your time. And so I hired a person with a PhD in this sort of thing, and she helped me actually build out the survey, so before it even went to anyone, and so when it was done, she was doing keywords and being able to come up with these correlations that I do not have a PhD in statistics, I undertistics on it. I just think three years of data is pretty amazing, Like there's got to be some really cool secrets in there. And before we get to the cool things that you have found in there, do you know anybody else who's kept one for anywhere near that long? I know there are people who have, I mean in the simplified that like, there are lawyers who've obviously tracked their work for decades, right like that they have that's different, that's yeah, yeah, and accountants as well. I mean I certainly know for I know how she does it. I had a couple of women who are accountants who I sort of asked, like, how does this week compare to other weeks? And some people could just send me their files of like their hours for the past two years, if I could actually see exactly how it looked like compared to other weeks of their normal life. But I don't know how many people would do this for all their time, because it's a little bit it's I find it easy now, but then again, I've been doing it for three years, so it's like, you know, it gets easier to practice the piano after three years because you've been doing it. I know that Dorri Clark, who is a lot of a woman that a lot of people who listen to this podcast have probably read her books or you know, familiar with her, and if not, you should definitely check out her books. She writes about out thought leadership and building a career where you become a thought leader and things like that. Great stuff. Anyway, she also writes for Harvard Business Review, and she just did an article for them on what she learned from tracking her time for thirty days. So she tracked all her time for a month, and she came up with some fascinating findings as well, I mean in terms of email actually taking less time than she thought it did, even though it kills more mental energy than she would like to admit. So she's like, it's fascinating that something that I'm really only devoting maybe an hour and a half too on any given work day seems to consume like twenty four hours a day because I'm thinking about it, like I'm thinking about oh that person is expecting me to respond or something. But it only actually took an hour and a half. And this is a woman whose business is, you know, a lot email based, like dealing with people. So I thought that was that was passing. But one thing she did say is that she assigned kind of this mastermind group she was running to have everyone track their time along with her. And she said like half the only half the people could stick with it. And I think there's something to that. A lot of people start and really have trouble staying with well, I find it very hard, and I'm an upholder, so I'm good at tracking other things. I don't know why. I don't know what I mean. I maybe I am successful because I've done it for like a week at a time, but I've never I will often abandon it like two days in. I don't know. I just I think I have a little too perfectionistic about it. I think that's my main problem, because that's it. I feel like, oh, I'm not capturing everything, so forget it. I'll just like do it another time in a few weeks. Yeah, I continue to do that. Then I'm like rarely ever doing it. I have found it really interesting when I've done it. I also find that, unfortunately, I think I alter my behavior too much. Like whenever I start time tracking, I get a little bit like moralistic about how I spend my time and I shouldn't do that. So then that makes me not want to track it because maybe like part of me really does want to waste time on Instagram, but I don't want to write it down. So there's too much of a conflict there. Yeah. So yeah, Like, so that's a question for you, is like, do you find that at this point you probably do not really alter your behavior as a result of the tracking. Well, I mean I do something. I mean everyone guys. There's the whole physics principle, right, the act of observing changes the thing being observed, and there's certainly an element of that with time tracking. Sometimes that's good in the sense of people do it for the first time, like they don't actually want to write down that they went on a two hour Instagram vendor, and so they stop because they're aware of the fact that they were doing it and decide that looking at you know, little Olympia o'hannian, cute as she might be, Serena William's baby like is not what they wish to be doing with their lives. So there is an element of that. The mindfulness is what I putting. I don't think it's about playing like gotcha though, And you know, because I'm I'm I'm not trying to say like, ooh, look, you know I waste a time. I know I waste time, like I waste tons of time, and so I'm okay with that. I guess sometimes I try to do better. Sometimes I was just say like, well, you know whatever. I can also see from my log that I've accomplished a lot this week, you know, in various spheres of life, and so it's okay if I if I waste sometimes, So I guess having a more relaxed attitude about that kind of thing, and then also not being terribly perfectionistic about it, like I think it's fine to get broad strokes vision of life because that's what enables me to stick with it. Yeah. I mean, if I was trying to record every like bathroom break, I would I would never be able to. It'd be over. It'd be over because then time tracking would take over your whole life. And then, I guess is the thing with like I've always wondered with lawyers having to actually record in these six minute increments. I mean, I know they have software that makes some of it automatic, but it still seems like that tracking at that granular level of detail with Yeah, because even if you're spending thirty seconds every six minutes, that's a really high proportion, high proportion. I assume it must be automatic, and also that they train themselves to stick with one project for at least, like, you know, thirty six minutes or something, so that the transaction costs are less. But yeah, so if maybe your days look similar from day to day to that probably so you're like, am I always working on this client, you know, from nine to eleven or whatever and then I take a break or whatever it is. So I assume that they're the I'm sure our lawyers listening to this can can respond. I would love to hear from people about how you sort of make that work on a more granular detail level. Maybe they're using I saw this bizarre like toy like thing. I don't know, so Instagram must know that. I think time is interesting because I got some ad of this little like look like a dice, and you like put it on each side show what you're doing, and I'm like, what are you supposed to carry that around with you all day? I think it was more supposed to be like for work desk and then so that would be kind of cool, like if for lawyers you flip it to one thing, flip it to the other. Yeah, so if you have yeah, sixty clients, your dice has six side you just like quick exactly exactly. So that was interesting, but wouldn't work for the sort of lifetime tracking what changes have you made? What like after seeing this big picture and like having this beautiful kind of objective view of what your life look fairly objective because you're putting it in so maybe not perfectly objective of what your life looks like, like what changes have you made? Well, some changes have happened, not necessarily of me choosing. I mean, obviously I choose my time, but my work hours have been trending down over the last three years, which is interesting to me because and I've sort of sorted out, you know, what is going on. It wasn't like I decided I needed more work life balance and hence hence scaled it down. I think it's a couple of things one is that as my kids have gotten older, I have been doing more of the shuttling to activities as they have been in more activities, and because there's a lot of them, and so even though I have a full time nanny who is responsible for some of the shuttling, like we need two drivers, and so until I get around to hiring a second part time fitter, like like this is, this is here, and and when I'm my husband at home he can do some of it and she makes it work when I'm traveling or you know, my nanny does or else. I have hired a second center for the days sometimes when I'm traveling. But you know, if I'm in the car from like five to six thirty, that that's time I'm not working, Like that's work day time that you know, if I'm trying to work, let's say, forty five hours a week would need to be work time, whereas if I'm working thirty five hours a week, isn't going to be work time, you know. So that's sort of it's been trending down with that. It's also a question of what I count as work, and I think that that is also playing into it. So in the past three years, I have definitely started traveling more for work, and I yeah, because you're doing a lot more speaking, doing a lot more speaking, and a day where you're going to a speech might only involve a couple hours of work, but it could take the whole day. So this, I mean, I think people might quibble with what I'm counting as work. Then So if I say I work thirty three hours a week, but I'm like traveling two nights a week, you know, then people be like that doesn't even compute. You know, that's that's a fifty sixty hour work week, and it depends how you count it. But I don't like if I'm reading, you know, a novel on the plane. In my mind, I'm reading a novel, like that's my primary activity, and so that's what I'd count it as well. In a way, I actually kind of I think maybe the tracking would help with that a little bit, because it's like you're away, like you might otherwise be caught in the trap of believing the year at work. But the truth is, if you look on a granular level and you're like having a glass of wine at the bar and putting a novel and talking to your friend, you're like hmm, yeah, actually, I'm enjoying this time, and then it's not necessarily in the work sphere, not that that can't be any No, that's fascinating. I don't define work as something you don't like, which is I think the only four hour work week is is god. Yeah. So I mean the day that I slept the least, for instance, in the last you know, year, was a day that I may have been the day our podcast launch actually, but that had nothing to do with my sleep. But I slept only like three point seventy five hours that day, but that was because I was up early with the three year old. He was too thin, and then I got on an early flight to Chicago. I flew to Chicago, I had a speech in the middle of the day. I flew home on a very late flight that evening. I only recorded eight hours of work for that day, but I was gone from like six thirty to one thirty, you know. So it's it's not all not work time is completely in the clear obviously, I mean, you know, not all it's fun and not all of it's you know, there are different facets to everything, I guess. Yeah, So so that's a function of it too, So yeah, I do. I don't know what I what I how I feel about that. I do know that I'm earning more working fewer hours than I was in the first Well that's useful information, I think because if if you know, that tells you that the direction that you're taking your work in right now is I mean from a from a positive one. Yeah, as long as you're enjoying it, that's great. At your hourly rate is going up. Yeah, so that's but that's partly just that. Yeah, giving speeches is a more efficient way to earn a living than writing articles, and there's been sort of a switchover in terms of my my business over the past few years with with that. So so, yeah, the work has been trending down. You know, I spend more time in the car than I thought I did. I'm reading more, which is good. Yes, I was going to say, I think you made a change to your reading life in part based on timelog data. Right. Yeah, So the first year I tracked, I read three hundred and twenty seven hours, which sounds like really good. You know, that's that's maybe what like fifty minutes a day. It's it's pretty you know, it's almost an over day. It's not bad at all, but it was I was seeing, like, I can't really think of that many books I've read in that time that I really truly enjoyed, that I felt good about reading, and all of a sudden, I mean, I'm sorry, it's like people are listening to this or like my book came out during that time and you read it. I know I loved all of your books, but I'm what I'm saying is I didn't read a whole lot of like Meati novels or anything like that. And I know that I spent a lot of time reading like what felt like the exact same magazine article over and over again. And I love magazines, but it's kind of my form of mindless entertainment and that's not always the best way to be spending time. So well, it seems like you've gotten more enjoyment out of turning those hours into more directed book reading, Like that's become a facet of your life. That yeah, And so what I thgot is that I did have time to read, So it's not like I don't have time to read. So if I was telling myself some story like, oh, I don't have time to read books. That is so not true. I have time to read, and I showed that to myself in this you know, first year Timeloge when my youngest child was at the start of it three months and at the end of the year he was fifteen months. So I've had a nursing baby this whole time I was launched a book, was traveling, I still had time to read. I had time to read three hundred and twenty seven hours. It was just a lot of crap that I was reading. So once I saw that, I was like, well, you know, let me try to repurpose some of this three hundred and twenty seven hours. And so I did. And then once I started doing that, I got enough into reading good books, like I remembered, you know, I actually really do like to read. Then I started turning more of my potential leisure time into reading time. So I know, on some like some of the work time going down is because I'm reading more, and that is good. You know, work is an elastic sort of thing, and so you can be on top of every email or you cannot. And sometimes I'm just not because I'm reading a good book. And that doesn't mean that's necessarily you know that's a choice so well, and you happen to have a career where even though reading books doesn't work, it definitely can add to your work performance because your good ideas in things that you read that may end up and I mean, well, I blog about the books, but but also yeah, I haven't really counted much of the reading as work, except for stuff like if I'm interviewing somebody and I am trying to get through their book before I interview them, I would probably count that as work. But or if I'm reviewing something for like the Wall Street Journal, I'll count the times been reading it as work. But I think that, you know, I have definitely seen it. So I've finished the draft of another book that will come out in March of twenty nineteen. That is a fable and so it is in fact fiction, and I found that my sense of structure and pacing for that was so much better, you know, because range so much, and so I'm experiencing all the different writing styles. Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. No, that's so cool. So that's a concrete change you've made based on the data create change. Yeah, it's also interesting to see what does not change, like sleepest yeah, that one is I but you didn't start when your son was an infant, did you? No? I mean, well I started when he was he was one. No, I started, well the first the first when I started tracking, my fourth child was three months old. Oh, he was an infant. I can't believe he didn't get less sleep that year. That's a little because I I, well, I'm not time tracking, so maybe I don't know, but I am getting less sleep right now. Well, so I would make it up. I mean, you have less of an ability to make it up, although you might be doing things like crashing early or yeah, I do crash pretty early, that's true. And like last night because I'm not working today, I was actually in bed from like nine to seven even though I was feeding her. So you're right, maybe I am making it up, yeah, very fast, because it might be possible to be in bed for ten hours and only sleeping seven, right, and sleep eight hours? That is your number like that. You know these words to have it be chopped up, And definitely it was chopped up. I mean I can look at my logs and I was like, you know, one hundred and forty six nights that first year up before four thirty am for something. Oh yeah, wow, so that's so cool. I love that you can like graph that out. Yeah you should, you should, you should make I want some visuals. I did it, Like, all right, there needs to be graphed, like nights of interrupted sleep, how that's gone down over the years. I think you should graph like I don't know, there's so many interesting things that you could graph. I mean the number of days that Alex woke me up at five am despite Like that would be a great creas too, Like I don't know if I'm going to show it to him later in life. Is like, you know, why why needs to take care of me when I'm old? You can make a cool scatterplot of like night weakenings over time that. Yeah, you could do a lot of things with this. This is see, I think you need an intern. I really do. I'm on it. I'm on it. So then yeah, but I seven point four hours the first two years, seven point three hours the last year. So clearly you know this is what I'm aiming for. Uh wow, that's biology right there. Biology. Uh you know, biology for someone who doesn't have chronic insomnia. I don't want to. I don't want to minimize people's you know, I know people have sleep issues and their bodies don't have that same catch up impulse, and that's, you know, a medical issue that you should you know, yes, yes, yes, no. I feel really bad for people with insomnia. I can't imagine. I really can't. Well. I guess when I was pregnant, I had it. So that's like a little taste, but that, yeah, that's as off a life you are glad you do not have, I know, serius. Okay, one last nosey question. Have you ever tracked your husband's time or have you ever found that tracking leads you to more of a scorekeeping place, Like you look at your week and you're like, oh my god, I've been with the kids every single night by myself. Like I don't think i'd want to see that on paper, because if I saw, I mean not that that typically happens these days, but like if we did have a bad week, I think I'd almost rather not be so aware of it. I don't know how does that does that? I think it's actually helpful because it keeps having the data often keeps us from catastrophizing, if that's the word. I'm not sure quite how we say that, but yes, yes, yes, catastrophizing that that mind's often not as much as I want becomes zero, you know, so, or more than i'd like, becomes all the time all the time. Yes, yes, So one might be like, I'm with the kids all the time and you're never with them. I was like, well, that's not true. I can see on my time loog that you know, he made them breakfast twice this week and maybe that was all he saw them this week or something. But it's not nothing. So you know, let's not have it be nothing. It's not as much as you might want to have happened, but it's not nothing. And and so I think that's a key breakthrough with the time tracking. I do see that there are a lot of nights that you know, I was on with the kids. I mean, certainly life has changed and we got more evening childcare. You know that I decided I didn't actually want to be the only person on in the evening many times during the week, putting four kids to bed in a row, you know, decided that's although now they often go to bed later than our nan neumarks. Anyway, so I'm back and better than ever or same thing. But I guess, you know, at least I get a little bit of downtime earlier in the evening if I do want to get caught up with work. My husband has tracked a time, not not three years, not not recently, but he did do it at least once. And you know it's for how long? It's a week? Yeah, I've been trying to get Hey, Josh, who is a wonderfully dedicated podcast listener, Hi, you should try it. He doesn't want to. I don't know. I think it might be interesting. It is interesting to see and you know, sometimes to see that there is time available sometimes for for other things. And I think, you know, I've I've actually, you know, wanted my husband sometimes to share his log with other people at his company to see that. I think he does build in some other stuff in a way that sometimes people don't believe that you can, Oh cool, that could be the next book. I don't know if my husband's time management is really a or writing a book about you know, as as people will who who might read off the Clock will find out. I I have tracked other things involving my husband just because they uh, you know, oh is that in the books? And it makes sense I was going to ask, but I wasn't sure I was allowed. Okay, we'll leave that for the book readers or maybe the book. Now, anything that you spend time on will wind up on a time log and be in a book if you're married, if you're marrying to me. So we'll say people are reading that, how they how they feel about that one? Awesome? Awesome, awesome. Okay, well, now I'm even more excited to get my book listeners. We welcome your time tracking experiences. Maybe someone will come out of the woodwork and be like, I've been doing it for two years too, and I just I find it fascinating. Maybe I'll maybe I'll do another. I thought one idea would be to like do a week quarterly because that might be like enough to like give me because I actually think that would be a really cool thing to look back on, like a little bit of time capsule. So that is actually the coolest part about it this. I mean, the numbers are what they are, but what's more interesting to me is looking back on these timelines. I get I have this picture of my past weeks, and so you can sort of see like, oh yeah, I remember that, and I remember that and we often have sort of memories of peak experiences or particularly low moments, moments or something, but you don't even see the con you don't remember the contact all around it. You'd be like, oh, yeah, that's what else I did on that particular day. So it's it's more holistic and social media and the blog is more of like a highlight reel, and it still helps and it does give you a little bit of that day to day, but a timelog is going to give you like the real like the stuff that happens in between. You know. That's cool. Yeah, you know, like, oh I got this, you know, awesome professional thing, and then I drove to karate like this is my life. But I recommend it. It's a very easy way of keeping a journal in a way, and a very holistic journal as opposed to just like how I felt about X, Y or Z that happened this week. So I'm really glad I did it. I think I'll remember a lot of this very sort of full season of life in a way. I think you should go for a decade. I think that's minimum minimum at this point. All right, So that was great. If you have tracked your time, we would love to hear from you. If there are things that you're curious about with time tracking, please give us a shout out about that. And yeah, there's more about this in Off the Clock my various discoveries from from time tracking. So you know, if you're listening to this in early May, which is when it comes out, Off the Clock will be out May twenty nine. If you like the podcast, so's there's still time to pre order Mary and it does help laur her out, So you should do it. If you're going to do it, just do it now. Yes, thank you for your support with that. I really appreciate you. Welcome. So okay our Q and A, this is timely? Uh do you you you want to be the question? Do you have a question from a listener about getting sick? And we've we've talked about kids getting sick and how you handle sick days. I think that was part of our childcare episode. You know, although we may need to revisit childcare because I think about half our questions we get about childcare. Yes that's true, but about getting sick yourself. And so this woman wrote that as the mom of two young kids who also you know, teaches college students, but you know, teaches you get sick, And she says she really can't easily take sick days from work because she'd have to reschedule her classes, get a sub. You know, that's just a real pain for you know, any teacher knows that nothing happens quite as you want it when the sub is there, and the kids don't make as much progress as you want. So, you know, anyway, like it's it's just she doesn't like to take sick days. But on the other hand, you don't take your sick dase You're trying to power through and it's hard. So she says, how do you deal with being sick? Any tips for staying healthy, recovering quickly, resting as you can, communicating with people who are expecting things from you. You know, what what do you do, Sarah? Like you have you get sick, You've got you know, a dozen patients waiting for you. What what's going on? Yeah, I'm I'm with this person, and I tend to power through a lot of the time. I think you have to look at sickness as like, well, how sick are you? Right? I mean, there is like a really bad call, but as if you don't have shaking chills and a fever, or even if maybe you did the night before but now you're on meds, which I'll get to in a second, you can you can do a lot, I mean a lot of work. Is not that physically taxing these days. For me, the biggest concern is like, if I'm really like snotting all over the place, I don't want to contaminate people, especially my patients. So you know, on occasion, I'll wear a mask if I really think I might be very contagious. If I'm working from home, it wouldn't bother me that much. There's a little bit of a mythology around like, oh, if you don't like lie in bed for the entire day, you're going to like get some secondary infection. I don't know that there's really data to back that up, especially if you're dealing with Again, we're not talking about like a horrible case of the flu. I'm talking about like a cold, which is the most common thing, you know, something that's not systemically horrible for you, but just unpleasant. I think powering through is realistic, especially if you're home, because then you're not contaminating anyone. Because again, that I think is where I worry the most, you know, bringing stick in to the workplace is, yeah, it's more about the other people than it is about you. I would not want my physicians snotting on me. I just know I totally get it. But would you want them to like like, oh, sorry, I don't have anywhere to move you. You You will see you in a month. I mean, you probably wouldn't want that either, So you got to kind of like figure out what can make things work. I do think building some wiggle room into your schedule, which is something even before and again before I went part time, sometimes i'd like put one random day off every couple months for this exact reason. More I was to give it more if my kids got sick. But that way, like if I had to take off Tuesday the seventh unexpectedly, I'd have a hole so that on the twentieth I could be like, you're all going to come on the twentieth, because otherwise for me, it really is a disaster, like where do I put everyone? And then someone in the corporate world it might be like where do I put these meetings? But if you have a little bit of wiggle room, I think that helps. And I mean realistically people are going to get sick every other month. That is something that I tend to track, actually have that in the planner because I get into this mode where I feel like we're sick all the time. So I like to be able to look and be like, no, actually, it's been like an illness in our family over other month, which, as annoying as it is, is completely normal. But really you should expect that it's going to happen. It should not be a surprise and kind of building that in the other thing is that man over the counter medicines are are great. Highlight all an ibuprofen. I mean, make sure you follow the directions on the package. Don't go crazy because you're not medicines to be taken on a chronic basis, but to get you through a day at work. I mean, they can be really, really helpful. So as long as you don't have contra indications and you know, I have to the disclaimers. Is not medical advice, take that to your physician, but in my own personal experience, they have made some working days bearable that otherwise would have been very unpleasant. Yeah, no, that's I think sickness is one of those known unknowns right, you don't know exactly when it will happen, but you can be pretty sure though, but it will totally. So build in space, like you know, put your don't fill every minute of a week, like if you are you know, if you have every single minute scheduled with meetings, then when inevitably something comes up, there's nowhere to put it. Whereas if you have slack in your schedule, then all the stuff can go into that time you built as open so that it can happen. I mean, one thing I've seen peopeople do is trying not to schedule anything on Friday, for instance. It tends to be a lighter day anyway. But that way, when something comes up earlier in the week and you had to cut out early, or you know, somebody you were trying to meet with they were sick, you can reschedule that for Friday because you know you have open space there. So yes, as well, also don't have kids because they get you. Yes, this is one of these things that people I think have not necessarily built into their mental model of children. It's just how, yes, build it in. They're going to be sick, They're going to get you sick. You're all going to be sick. It is a fact of life. I think, you know, it was funny that someday maybe they'll be a like as an adult. I don't believe I had vomited for like years and then you know the first winter that after Jasper was born, I had the stomach like twice. Yep. Yeah, it's true. Young adults can go through a period where they don't get like those viral like even like my parents in their sixties, like they rarely get sick. And then every time they visit they come, they're saying because they're a little they're little vectors. It's what they do. It's not their fault. Wash your hands. But that was my love of the week a couple of weeks ago. Or yeah, that's true, but it's purell is always a good thing to love. Well, speaking of love of the week, Oh, I haven't done one. I'm gonna have to think of one while you say, so you go first? Well, uh my my love of the week. Oh, I'm not sure. I really think that the time tracking is pretty awesome. I I do love having these records now of my life that I can look back over, and even just like Benny Hannah trip in July, Like I'm looking at this, I'm like, oh, now I remember that, I remember what happened during the trip, just from those few lines. Because the funny thing about memory is something triggers it, and it's all there. It's just you're not actively thinking about it that you need a trigger to sort of pull it back to the front of your mind. And what triggers it, Like if you ever think about catching a whiff of a certain scent, maybe it's a perfume new war during a certain time of your life, Oh so powerful, bring everything back so quickly, or a song you haven't heard since like high school, and they'll be like, oh, you know, it brings back these memories. It's the same thing with lines on a timeline, and and so it triggers all these memories. And I think it's really cool to have it so accessible like that. Cool. My love of the week I just thought of it is room service. Really I love rooms. So we're going this will air after so I don't mind sharing. We're going to Disney this weekend. My husband's finishing up a work trip and we're going to go meet him there, and we've already decided he got he's at a nice hotel because it's part of a work trip, and we're like, oh yeah, because we're driving up tonight Friday night, and on Saturday morning, we're gonna get room service. And I'm already like, oh, that sounds so nice, Like I'll just be in bed with Genevieve with the kids, will be watching cartoons, and some nice lady's gonna bring me breakfast in coffee, and I'm already excited about that room service. So I don't know, maybe you don't like it. I like it theory. I just know that the practice is often it takes like some ridiculous amount of time and then they've like had you got to put that thing on your doing so yeah the breakfast, Yeah, breakfast, I mean room service breakfast. I don't do other meals. Yeah, no. I Sometimes I've been like late and I'm like, oh, I don't want to go find the restaurant, and then it's like, you know, it's like forty five minutes whereas it would have been twenty minutes. Yeah, and then it probably had it cold because it's just been sitting there. It's food, like they can do breakfast food, like I want some like room service OpenAL like I don't even care what it is. I just like the idea that, like I can open my eyes and I'll hear that little clinking. Oh. Like so I always I always just go to the restaurant now like not, I mean at night, you pull myself down there and it's faster off under than being up there. But I can totally see, yes, breakfast would be good. So all right, here's to especially when you're stuck in the room with three kids. All right, well, this is awesome and best of those worlds. We've been talking time tracking, so if you've been tracking your time, please let us know. We'd love to hear about it what you discovered. You can always shoot me an email elevandercamat yahoo dot com and tune in next week for 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.