New Years Resolutions with guest Gretchen Rubin. Ep 21

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of two and soon to be three, and a practicing physician. 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, and this is episode twenty one. We're mostly talking New Year's resolutions today with our guest for the main segment, Gretchen Rubin. We're very excited to have her ons. We'll get to that in a minute, but first, Sarah and I are both really into New Year's resolutions. As we'll learn later talking with Gretchen, that is a clearer sign of upholders, which we both are. Did you set New Year's resolutions for twenty seventeen, Sarah, you're about to tell me that you didn't. Well, Actually, I tend to do monthly goals and habits, so I think it's almost. It's not like I don't do yearly. It's like, no, that's not even enough. That's for amateurs. So I've got to do it twelve times a year. No, seriously. I used to set like anywhere between ten and fifteen resolutions per year, but I found myself losing track or then sort of being sad in June if I had left some behind. So I've found it actually works better for me to select fewer but do sort of a reevaluation on a monthly basis. And I also do separate my goal resolutions, so maybe that would be like read three books and my habit resolutions, which would be like spend twenty minutes reading a day. So it's broken down. But I love I love resolutions, and I love reading and hearing about other people's resolutions. Tell me about yours. Yeah, so of course I make them, right. It would be like sacrilege to write about productivity and not set resolutions, although I make him in sort of a different way like you. I guess I felt like yearly wasn't enough or wasn't as granular as wanted to be, so I a couple of years ago I started setting quarterly resolutions. I got this great idea from a woman named Angela Gia Kim, who some of our readers may have followed the very savor of the success sort of stuff. She owns a business called Savior the Success. But anyway, she shared this idea of doing quarterly resolutions. I was like, well, I really like that idea because ninety days is short enough that you feel like you've done something at the end of it. But it's also you know, you can stretch your goals out through the year instead of saying, oh, I'm going to tackle all of them at New Year's It's like, well, I can do you know, four different quarters, like each one I have something to focus on. And then, because I'm me, I decided to do three for each quarter. One career goal, one relationship goal, one personal goal. And so it's, uh, you know, it's twelve, just like you with the monthly of resolutions, but just broken up in a slightly different way. No, that's awesome. Oh I don't just have twelve, I have like multiple per month. But I like you. I like your system, and I actually I agree with sort of like separating them, like I'll have work ones which are very separate from my life ones. And they're both really important to me. Best of both worlds. Hello, but they definitely they don't overlap at all. Yeah, And so, of your monthly habits and goals in twenty seventeen, do you think you've hit most of them? I would say I've hit maybe like sixty or seventy percent of them. There are definitely some that have been elusive for me, and some that I'll revisit each time. Like, you know, we've talked about it in technology, but spending more time than i'd like on my phone is like it keeps kind of like it's perennial, Like I stamp it down and it springs up again. And I will say, like almost every year, I really focus on flossing, but then I got pregnant, and I like could not floss while pregnant, like those two things. Just so, the pregnancy did make me a little bit less apt to keep some of the resolutions I might have kept otherwise. But I think I did pretty well. What about you? I did pretty good this year. I've I've shifted a few of the goals, so I feel like it's okay. You know, it doesn't have to be exact in the sense of I'm flexible about am I achieving sort of the same aims by different means. And so, for instance, one of my goals for Q one was to do speed work, and I set a certain goal of doing a kind of speed work in my running, and then I decided to set this different goal of running every day and I kept that and I feel like many of the same good things happened by doing that that I would have done through speed work. So I think that was okay, and some I just went a little bit crazier on Like I had a goal for Q three career to read a book a week, just you know, as a writer, it's good to read lots of other stuff, and I was not reading as many books as I wanted to be reading, and so I was like, oh, because that the goal to read a book a week, and I kind of blew through that. It's been a bit of a crazy year on the on the reading front. Yeah, I did amazing on that front. So I guess pretty good. And now I'm thinking about what I'm going to do for twenty eighteen. Haven't I need to know? Is the running streak going to stay a lot? You know? It's it's funny because we're talking to mentioned we're talking to Gretchen Rubin later in this episode, and she one of the things she talks about with upholders is that we're subject to this sort of tightening impulse. And I said, I wanted to run every day for a year, and I'm pretty sure at this point, I mean, you knock on wood, I could get injured or something, but not on what I probably will at this point because it you know, we're nearing the end of the year. Well, but then I'm like, well, I could just keep going, like, well, I'm going to run every day for the rest of my life. I don't know. Maybe I will. I probably won't. I mean, the streak will end at some point, but yeah, we'll see. So stay tuned. We'll report back in twenty eighteen on how the running streak is going. So we are so excited to welcome Gretchen Ruben to the program. Gretchen is the host of the Happier Podcast, the author of several best selling books, including The Happiness Project and most recently, The Four Tendencies. She is also the mom of two girls, including one who is now off at college. I believe right now, So that's the other end of the parenting spectrum. I'm Sarah and I right now Sarah is expecting her third child in early December, so we are we've got cradle to college here. But so we're going to be talking mostly New Year's resolutions and the Four Tendencies. We have a somewhat uncommon situation here in that we have three upholders chatting. So so for the half dozen listeners of ours who perhaps have not read your books, can you tell everyone what an upholder is, and you know, tell us briefly about the four attendancy. Yes, yes, it's really unusual to have three upholders together. So this is our heads are going to explode. So this this has to do with this personality framework that I came up with called the Four Tendencies, that divides the world into four categories of people upholders, questioners, obligers, and rebels according to how you meet an expectation. And we all face two kinds of expectations, outer expectations like a work deadline or a request from a friend, and we have inner expectations our own desire to keep a New Year's resolution, or our own desire to write a novel in our free time. So upholders, which is what the three of us are readily meet outer and inner expectations. We meet the work deadline, we keep the New year's resolution without that much of us. We want to know what others expect from us, but expectations for ourselves are just as important. Next questioners, Questioners question all expectations. They'll do something if they think it makes sense, so in a way, they make everything an inner expectation. If it meets their inner standard, they will do it. If it fails their inner standard, they will resist it. And typically they don't like anything arbitrary, inefficient, irrational. Then there are obligers. Obligers readily meet out our expectations, but they struggle to meet inter expect So this is a friend of mine who told me, I don't understand it. When I was in high school, I was on the track team and I never missed track practice, So why can't I go running now? Well, when she had a team and a coach waiting for her, she had no trouble going. But when she's just trying to go running on her own, it's a struggle. And then finally, rebels. Rebels resist all expectations. Out are and inner like they want to do what they want to do in their own way, in their own time. If you ask her tell them to do something, they're very likely to resist. And typically they don't even like to tell themselves what to do. So and brief, those are the four. So are upholder is actually rare? Yes, Well, the rest tendency is the rebel tendency. It's a very conspicuous tendency, but it's small, and upholders only slightly larger. So these are the two kind of extreme personality types and they're small. The biggest tendency for both men and women, the one that the largest number of people belong to, is obliger and after that questioner, So yeah, it's unusual that you would have a group of three people where they'd all be upholders. So interesting. I wonder if we're just more inclined to make podcasts. I think beholders often are attracted. They are good at achieving things and like and coming up with processes and forming good habits, and they think, well, this works for me, So if everybody will just do what I do, it would work for me. And the fact is they think it's because they have a good system, but The thing is, any system works for an upholder, and this is something they keep in mind. If you're developing a curriculum, or you're managing a team, or you're designing a device. Basically, anything is going to work with an upholder, because they're good at that kind of thing. The question is, how do you get the other three tendencies to come on board? Yeah, and there's some downsides for the upholding tendency too. I thought, since we have three upholders on the phone, they might all share one of the craziest upholder things we ever did, which I'll go first here because alert readers of the four tendencies may have noticed an anonymous analyt. I actually saw that in the book, and I didn't know it was you until you tell this is crazy. Yeah, yeah, tell your story. So it says an upholder friend told me. This is Gretchen writing here, but it says on my way to the hospital to give birth, I told my husband not to speed, and I insisted that he park in the correct lot, even though I wound up giving birth less than twenty minutes after we pulled in, which is true. That did happen, just as just as that Sarah You're you're kind of a militant about your running schedule, aren't you. Yeah, I'm real, I'm militant about my schedule in general, I would say, but I would say my running. And I'm not a streaker like you. But like that analogy that Gretchen used is like the total opposite for me, Like I am going to put it in no matter what, and it annoys my friends and family around me, I'm sure, but whatever just is what? And how about you, Gretcha lack of hospit. I am one of these crazy low car beaters and I really just won't eat things that have sugar, flour, pasta, starchy vegetables, and you know, you could bake me a birthday cake and hand deliver it to me and I'm like, yeah, I don't eat that, And to me, I get a lot of fun out of just like sticking to it. Absolutely. But I think our three anecdotes show something that's another aspect that it can be a downside of being an a polter is that we can sometimes seem cold to other people because it's like, well, we've got company this weekend, what do you mean you have to go for your run and you're like, yeah, I got to go for my run whether we have company or not. Or it's like, well, I don't care that you handmade this banana bread. I'm not going to eat it, you know. And it's like to us that seems appropriate and like fulfilling our inner expectations, but to other tendencies that can sometimes read as cold, yes, ort crazy, yes, some flack about the fact that I run every day, which means every day, yeah, not five, it means every day. But anyway, that's so we're talking New Year's resolutions today, and New Year's resolutions are one of those classic upholder things because Gretchen and you're four ten and see quiz, you actually ask about New Year's resolutions. And that's one of the signs of an upholder, right, And it's really a sign of all the tendencies, because the question isn't do you keep them? It's how do you feel about them? Because upholders typically will say like, I like near's resolutions, and I make them, or I might make them during the year, like they like them, they're good at them. Questioners are will often like talk about the arbitrariness of January. First, they're like, well, I would keep a resolution when it made sense to me, I wouldn't wait for January first, because January first is an arbitrary date, Like why would you wait? Well, that's that is an inefficient thing, and it's an arbitrary date. Obligers will often say, you know what, I don't make Newyor's resolutions anymore because I've let myself down so many times. I've made and made them and failed to keep them so long. I don't even do it anymore. And rebels they might do it if they thought it was fun. A lot of times, rebels will like a challenge, so they might do it as a challenge. But they also might be like, well, why would I bind myself? I don't know what I'm going to want to do. I might not feel like running tomorrow, so I'm not gonna I'm not going to resolve that I'm gonna run because who knows what I'll feel like to me? So, Gretchen, since New Year's resolutions are something that upholders tend to do, I mean, do you make them? Did you make any for twenty seventeen you've been working on this year? Yeah? The thing is for the last like eight or nine years, I'm basically making resolutions all the time, NonStop. So I don't really make New Year's resolutions in the traditional way. But what I often do, and I did it for twenty seventeen, is I'll pick like a one word theme for the year that then I try to live up too, or I try to have its shape, because I'm basically making resolutions and trying resolutions as part of my writing and as part of my research and as part of my podcasting all the time. So I'm just like a rolling stone of gathering resolutions, I guess gathering resolutions. So that's how you're thinking about it for next year? Then too? Are you coming up with a year theme for next year or something? Right, I might have the same theme for last year as I did for this year, which is repurposing. I need to repurpose stuffs because I've done some repurposing, but I have more purposing that I can do, so that's gonna be my theme. The thing, if you've been blogging for years, you keep repurposing that content. Yes, yes, exactly. So should people who aren't upholders, though, should they even try to make New Year's resolutions? Or is that going to be just a cause of unhappiness. Well, I think the thing is make it in your resolution if it's something that appeals to you and feels like it's going to work for you. So if you're a questioner and you're like, why would I make a Newyear's resolution, there's no magic to new year's resolution if it doesn't have magic to you. I think for a lot of people, there's something very auspicious about starting the first day of the year with something, and it's a catalyst for self reflection, you know, just like your birthday is or you know, an important anniversary in your life. So I think they can be useful to you if you find it useful. But if you kind of think, oh gosh, just the idea of news resolution seems stupid to me, don't force yourself to do it because there is there's nothing magical about it. If you are an obliger who wants to make a new Year's resolution, but you're afraid you're gonna let yourself down again, here is the secret. This is the magic answer to obligers who are frustrated because they can't meet their inner expectations. They have to create outer accountability. So if you want to read more, join a book group. If you're my friend who could go running with a track team. It's like join a class and work out with a teacher, or work out with a trainer, or work out with a friend who's going to be annoyed if you don't show up or figure out some other kind of outer accountability, because that's what allows obligers to follow through. If you don't have that autter accountability, if it's just an inner expectation, then typically obligers will not succeed. So if you're going to do it, do it in a way that set yourself up for success. You know, I think a lot of times people set themselves up the way that works for someone else, and then they're frustrated when it doesn't work for them. And same thing with a rebel. You might say to yourself, you know what, I'm gonna go this whole year and not have one drink of alcohol and it's going to be amazing and nobody thinks I can and I'm going to blow them away and just watch me. That could be exciting and fun for a rebel, But if it's not, don't assume that there's something wrong with you or that you should do something because everybody says you should. It's like, well, these things work for some people some of the time, they don't work for everybody all the time. So it sounds like rebels need to have a foil to sort of throw themselves against hissen, Like, oh, my my friend says I'll never succeed, so I'll show him, Well that can work. That often can work with rebels, and you know, and and there's sort of a question that people ask me, like is it manipulative to say things like that to rebel if you're trying to like ignite their spirit of resistance in a positive way. But also rebels can do kind of the opposite for themselves. They can set themselves a challenge like that or kind of tap into that all show them energy. But they can also tap into their identity, because putting your identity forth into the world is very important for rebels. So it's sort of like, well, you know, I'm an athlete. I've always been an athlete, you know, and what do athletes do. Athletes exercise comes snow or come rain. You know, I'm an athlete, an athlete exercises or I'm a perform and what do performers do performers practice. I need, you know. I choose to practice regularly because I'm a performer. I want to put my stuff out into the world, and this is how I'm going to do the kind of work that i want to do, and I want to show what I'm capable of. So it's sort of either identity or yeah, kind of like, yeah, you can't tell me what to do, I'll show you. So, speaking as an upholder here with you as well, somebody wrote on my blog I was writing about one of my crazy upholder habits, you know it running daily or reading or whatever it was, and the commenter said something with long lines as well, it's easy for you to do that because you're an upholder, And I actually kind of bristled a bit at that because I'm like, well, I'm still the one who set my alarm for four point thirty to get up and run on the day when I was traveling all day. I didn't think that was easy. I just did it. So do you think it's easy or do you think it's just something? I think it comes more easily. I think it does come more easily. I think other tendency these would would have different issues with that, and you know, and merely the fact that you're doing it kind of shows that. But whatever it is, that, whatever it is that a person needs, that is what you have. And most people don't experience that. And I think, as the Polders were, like, well, if other people would just like make it to do list, set their alarm, go to bed on time, they can do it too. It's like yo, they don't, right, Like, what is the common experience of mankind? The common experience of mankind is that that's not enough for most people. So what so what's missing? You know? And I also think the problem one of the issues that people have with upholders is that we're not saying this, but they may think to themselves, the obliged to the question of the rebel, they might think like, well, if she can do it, what's wrong with me? I must there must be something wrong with me. I must lack will power, I must lack self control. I must not be able to make time for myself. I must not be able to set my priorities correctly. I must be late easy. And so to those folks, I say, it's totally expected that something would come easily for Laura, and that wouldn't come easily for you, or that something would come easily for your coworker that wouldn't come easily for you, or something came easily to you in college that isn't coming easily to you now. For reasons that we can understand, there's something wrong with you. You don't need to change, you know, you know you're not lazy. It's just that you need to have circumstances set up in a way that are going to allow you to achieve your aims. So you might need a different kind of infrastructure or explanation than someone like Laura or Sarah or Gretchen would need to achieve the same aim And you know, actually listening to your podcast and reading your books has made me think about that in others and to maybe be a little bit more sympathetic than I would have been before. And it's interesting, you know, the running analogy again, my husband is a very talented runner. I'm not, but I'm like disciplined, and for years he actually kind of like put it to the side, not because he's in a bladger. I think he's definitely a questioner, but because he didn't like have like a reason, you know, And it's only been since he sort of set very specific goals. Oh, I want to get this much faster by the time I'm this age because I want to do this. That he's been able to be successful and it's not that he's lazier or couldn't do it before. It was just like he needed to frame it in a very different way. So, I mean, I've found your your framework to work really well in helping me be more well. Yeah, I think it definitely gives you an idea of how people could see something and you have a perspective and how people might view a situation in a different way or face different kinds of challenges. I'm married to a questioner too, and it's like, the minute he makes up his mind, he can do anything he wants, But until he makes up his mind, he's not going to do it. And that used to sort of drive me crazy, but now I'm like, that's it. I don't have to think it personally, has nothing to do with me. This is the way he is with everybody in the world, So just like, let him go about his business his way, let him do his research. Any tricks, any tricks that you've learned in that particular pairing that I could harness when it comes to your household to give you an example of something that just happened. So there was this boring bureaucratic form that we had to fill out. In a true upholder fashion, I was like, let me just go ahead and do this and get this crossed off our list so we don't have to think about it. So I'll fill it out, being the good soldier that I am. This is why it's nice to be married to an upholder. So I'm filling it out and it asked me for his work address. So I called him and I say, hey, Jamie, what's your work address? And what does he say to me? Why do you want to know? And before before I knew about the worre tendencies, I think I would have said something like does everything have to be a discussion? Can't you just answer simple question? Here? I am filling out this form and you're just like slowing me down. I just want to get it done. What does this mean about our marriage? But now I'm like, he's a questioner, and what I should have said is, hey, Jamie, I'm filling out that boring bureaucratic form, what's your work address? Because all he wants to know is why should I tell you? Why do you want to know? Why? Just tell me why? Or like I want you to do that, like or like. He a weird thing about questions. I don't know if you've noticed this in your husband, but a lot of questioners don't like ask answering questions. This is ironic and deeply annoying, but they don't like answering questions. And my husband really manifests this pattern. He will not answer questions and it makes me crazy. But I've learned that if I give him a reason about whine asking, I'm much more likely to get an answer, like what time, like, instead of saying, like, what time are we going to brunch? Because he won't tell me. He like, I know, it makes him sound like a big jerk. He just won't tell me. But if I said, what time are we going to brunch? Because I'm wondering whether I have time to go to the gym, then he would tell me because then he understands why I'm asking. But he won't just tell me because I want to know, can we clean the basement this weekend? Because we're having people over in two weeks and we're gonna need to store the bicycles there. Okay, that makes sense because he might say to a question or we need to clean out the basement, and they're thinking, why do we need to clean out the basement? We never use the basement, Like that's a big waste of our time, Like why would I do that? This comes up a lot with children. Questioner children often are perceived by teachers and coaches and adults as being disrespectful or stubborn or like not you know, not getting with a program, because they're like, well, why would I learn how to write cursive if I'm just going to use my laptop for the rest of my life. Why do I have to learn the multiplication tables? If I can look it up in my phone? Why do you know? Why do I have to learn about ancient Mesopotamia? There are there are answers to these questions, and a questioner child is going to do much better if you explain, yeah, I know this this book report seems really boring to you, and like you, I know you've read the book, so why should you have to do this book? This is really teaching you these important skills, and this is why we ask sports graders to do this because it's going to Actually, this is why you're being asked to do this assignment, because if they think it's dumb, they're not going to want to do it. If they understand why they're being asked to do something, they're much more likely to follow along as an upholder. I'm not sure I want to clean out the basement either, but that's a different matter. I found. I made my husband take the four tendencies quiz the other day and I got quite a surprise. Yes, I would have pegged him as either a question or possibly even a rebel, and the answer was obliged to unpack that one. I still haven't fully unpacked that. But do some obligers not necessarily oblige to their most like intimate inner family circle because it's like marriage obliger shouldn't he be he me? That is a very interesting question. Well, it's actually quite romantic because to an obliger way, they meet outer expectations, but they struggle to meet inner expectations. And really with their sweetheart's fouse, they're like, honey, I'm going to ignore you just the way I would ignore me, because you're so close to me, You're like me, so you're in it a very nice way been obliger like a sweethearts, but doesn't make a good accountability partner, and they will be ignored. So and this can be fluid. So like I have a friend who's an obliger. He's the greatest guy of all time, like terrific, terrific guy, and he will do anything that his wife asks, unless unless his children are ask him to do something, in which case he will meet what his children want. And then he'll do anything that his children want unless his client needs something, and then it's everything for the client. Like he literally has a picture of himself on the phone closing a deal while his wife is in the hospital giving a baby, having a baby, and so he's like anything for the client. So whatever is most outer will take precedent, and so that is moving depending on a situation. So you might have like a wife who will oblige her husband unless they have guests over, in which case she'll ignore her husband and do what the guests want because they're more outer. So this is something to really think about. If you're an obliger, you're dealing with an abliger, which is what is the form of accountability that's going to work because it really varies dramatically among obligers. Some obligers can be accountable to their sweetheart. Some obligers can be accountable to like an imaginary thing like future Gretchen does want to go, well, wish that I had gone for run, So now Gretchen has to do it because I don't want to disappoint future Gretchen. So that's like an imaginary kind of outer accountability to myself. It's amazing that obligers can use them. Some obligers can use money, like I'm going to pay for a class. Some obligers, though it doesn't matter to them if they've paid money. They're almost like, well, if I paid, it's like as good as going. So in that case, yeah, you have to pay attention to what actually is going to do or like some obligers could feel accountable to an auto reminder through an app like don't forget to take your blood pressure medication. That would remind them. Other obligers they would just ignore that. It doesn't feel like real accountability to them. So you have to be very aware of what's going to trip that valuable sense of outer accountability for you. All right, well, I'll view it in that light. That would be a much more charitable way to view it. But it's because we're so close that he is that he can ignore me. So we wanted to pivot a little bit more to We always like talking about schedules and work life combinations and how we make it work on this podcast because we are the best of both worlds, people who enjoy their families and enjoy their work too. So what does your normal workday schedule look like these days? S gratuaates, Well, I think you will fill my pain because as an upholder, of course, I would prefer that every day unfolded exactly the same and like the life of a Benedictine monk sounds incredibly enticing to me, where like it's very like everything has its place and it's on the calendar and everything gets done. But I have my days very wid widely. I always get up at six am, no matter what. I walk my dog and then I do what a lot of productivity experts tell you not to do, which is I begin my day. And I'm a morning person, so in my morning is when I met my most creative and productive. But I can't do anything until I've gone through my email and social media, So I do that, then I will walk with my daughter to school, and then I either exercise or you know, do interviews, or plan my podcast or do writing. Every day has to be slotted indifferently depending on what's happening that day, which does kind of drag me crazy. But about you plan ahead for it, it's probably an elaborate absolutely absolutely well. And I think one thing that I think comes as surprise to a lot of people is that upholders are actually very good at taking time for themselves because to them, the dutity yourself is just as important as duty to others, and if something that's on the schedule, you'll do it. So if I'm like I'm going to read on the couch for four hours on Saturday, like that as important to me as going to a dentist appointment, you know, like I'm going to do that. And they did this interesting study on Facebook looking at people who are highly conscientious, which I think we're upholders, and they found that they had a very high incidence of using words like weekend and leisure and fun. And that wasn't surprising to me because I'm like, upholders are good at that, oblagers are the ones that have trouble taking time for themselves and they have to use outer accountability even to take time for themselves. So do you plan your weekends ahead of time? I don't have an idea of what like what I want to happen, but yeah, like I know what I'm doing I'm going to be doing out any particular time. Yeah, absolutely, I walk there. You know, I'm skipping around in our questions here slightly. But one thing, Sarah about it gought up earlier. Your children are on the older end of the scale scale, you know, certainly since time when you wrote the Happiness Project that you write about your baby who is now I'm saying like a teenager. Yeah, so has things change in terms of how you schedule your time and make your work and life work together now that your kids are much older? Has that changed a lot for you? I think the biggest difference is the degree to which their daily schedule influences my daily schedule. So their school schedule still influences my schedule. When are they on spring break? When do they have holiday winter break? When is their summer? Like that still has a big thing. But like I remember, I saw Anna Quinlan speak and she said that, and she's like, you know, in her sixties. She said she still stops writing every day at three fifteen because for so many years her kids would walk in the door and then that was the end of her work day. She said she now it's like her brain just shuts off at three fifteen, even though she doesn't have kids coming back, and so one thing is like the day just feels a lot looser because like one of my daughters is in college and the other one is in seventh grade, So she can walk home by herself and she can like manage herself. I don't have to make sure that she's covered in some way or like you know, who's picking her up, what's happening. I know that she could take care of herself. We live very close to school, so for us that's like a nine block walk, so it's on and so that that's kind of a or like she can walk to school by herself. So like if I wanted to do an eight am interview, I could do, like I'm talking to somebody in the UK, So if we want to do it really early in the morning, I can do that and just say to her, oh, honey, you're just gonna walk to school by yourself today. She's like, Okay, that's fine. So it just gives me a lot more give in my schedule, in my daily schedule. Yeah. And another thing we wanted to ask you about. I know you spent a lot of time on the road since the Happiness Project came out in twenty ten, speaking at a lot of conferences. Yes, and fortunate to see you get a couple of them. It's been great. But do you have any tips, any tips for working parents who do need to travel a lot for work, things that sort of keep you going with your own productivity managing family life at the same time. Yeah, that is really that is really a challenge. And again that's easier when your children are older, because I used to have to make practically like hour by hour schedules for everybody, you know, while I was gone. One thing I would say, just in terms of like making time for yourself. One thing that I a rule that I picked up from a friend of mine that I love is when I'm traveling, Like while I'm in transit, I only read for fun. I don't do any work, I don't do email, I don't do anything. I just read for fun. So I get a lot of really fun reading done while I'm traveling, and it makes traveling much more pleasant. So I like, once I'm there, I'll do email and work in a hotel room or wherever I am, But I don't do it like while I'm in the hotel, while I'm in the airport, or while I'm flying, and that I love that. You know, I think it's hard. I'd be curious about at your experiences. I think it's hard to really be at top efficiency while traveling. And I've and every every I've had so many book tours, and i travel all the time, and I'm always like, I'm just sitting in a hotel room. Why can't I focus the way I can focus at home? And somehow I just can't seem to turn that time into as efficient time as I can at home. So I'm sorry. I always I am trying to figure out how to make the best use of that time. Well, it's funny. One of our recent guests, who's a genetics professor, is the exact opposite of you, and that she says she works. She does a lot of international travel, so very long flights and such. She's like, I work my butt off on the plane and then I relax when I get there because I feel like I did all my the essential work. So I guess it just means no. And I think that's a really important point, which is that And I think this is so true in habits and happiness and the four tendancies everything. There is no one right way, there's no one best way. There's no magic one size fits all solution because we're all different. And so it's sort of like like for me, working while traveling wasn't working very and so somebody said try this, and I'm like, well, this works much better for me. So something's not working, try something else, Like don't keep saying I could have kept saying to myself like I should be more efficient, like I should really buckle down. But I'm like, you know what, it's not a good time for me to be doing this. I'm going to do something else that's also a very high value to me. And so now I'm going to get it into my life in a different way that works much better. And so that's a great example of exactly the opposite could work for you, you know, and it's worth experimenting. If something's not working, well, I'm going to take my permission from that from Gretchen to read for fun on the plane. I was feeling bad about it too. Now I'm going to have to be okay with it. So Gretchen, we have this segment at the end of our main segment every time where we do our Love of the Week. So we're hoping we can keep you for like two more minutes while we do our Love of the Week. So mine is I'll guess travel related with that. I'm gonna say the Amtrak quiet power. Do you go on the Amtrak quiet I thought you would because otherwise I feel like when I'm not the quiet car because it's a full train or whatever, I'm always saying next to some jerk who wants to call absolutely everybody he knows in the course of like a trip from Philadelphia to New York, and I'm sitting next to him listening to him talk about, like, you know, really scintillating stuff, and I go crazy, So quiet car all the way, Sarah, what do you have this week? Well that has nothing to do with travel, but it is timely as this episode is going to air right around the New Year, and my Love of the Week is the tradition of doing family photo calendars as a gift, and maybe by putting this in this podcast, it'll mean I'll have my done, because it's a little bit of a race since I'm due in like three weeks, and you know, I don't know how how much I'll have my stuff together in December to do it, But anyway, it brings me so much joy to give it to people and to see my family members every month. So that's my love of thee Gretchen, how about you. My love of the week is I just discovered a novelist that I love that I had never heard of, and somebody was like, you got to read the novels of Scarlett Thomas, and I was like, okay, So I read one and I'm going through every single one of her novels and it's rare that there's somebody who you really want to read every single book they've written. And she's also wrote a book about writing called Monkeys with Typewriters or Typewriters with Monkeys, I can't remember. And I bought that too, though I haven't read that because I'm so entranced by her fiction. But I'm just so excited to have a new author to discover and she's kind of like if you like tenth of December or Cloud Atlas, I would say she's kind of in that vibe and really really good. So that has made me very happy. Okay, we're writing that one down. We always book recommendations. Yeah, well, Gretchen, thank you so much for being willing to be interviewed by us. We really oh so much fun. I never get to talk to two A folders. This is great. That's a funny thing is just for our listeners. So you know, we scheduled this at three o'clock that we would have our call, and by two fifty five or something we were all on the line. It's pretty funny. That is despite technical difficiony yep, we need it if you send me an evil but like, hey, can it be at three thirty? I would have been like, what it was? Three? How can I say? So? Restibility is not our strong suit, but we will show up when we said we'll show up. Not at all, no, exactly. Oh my gosh, well, thank you so much. This has been I mean, if you could have told me I would have been on this podcast doing this with both of you five years ago, I would have been floored. So thank you. Again so much. All right, it's time for our listener Q and a segment. We got one from Nikki this week, and that is another childcare question, very popular topic around here. What are your systems processes for onboarding and training new childcare providers, particularly people you'll be using more occasionally, not daily or even weekly. So you want to go first, sure, I think we probably do pretty much the same thing. You know, I've had a lot of sort of occasional date night sitters over the years, and it first, it depends if they come through a personal referral. Like if it's a personal referral, then probably the first few steps aren't necessary. But you know, I do a phone interview with them, I ask for references. I call their references. If everything checks out, I have them come over and sit for the kids while I'm there, and you know, for like an hour or so, just while I'm in the house, so you can see how it's going if it all seems to be going well, and if it does, then I might have them come back later, you know, to sit a little longer. Then you know, when I leave the house for a little bit, you know, I'm paying them for all this time that they're sitting because it's basically a babysitting job. It's just that, you know, I haven't committed to anything yet, so it's a little low stakes way to start, how about you. Yeah, I've definitely done that, and you know, instead of even thinking of it as a trial, just sort of thinking of it as like, oh, well, I get some mother's help or time to see if this works. So I could maybe like work out at home while they're here, sort of do things where I can observe but not be you know, completely involved, and then answer questions and then move to actual real sessions. I I would do have to say now that, like my oldest can talk and tell me things, I feel less anxious about babysitters in general than I did when they were like non verbal and you're like, I don't know what's going on, like Anabell would tell me, you know. So I do think as your kids get older that it might be a little bit easier. But I do think the sort of trial run while you're there is very very helpful. And the few times that I've gotten people off of I actually haven't done it that much. I've been lucky enough to find referrals after we found our nanny fromcare dot com. We've mostly found everybody else socially. But if I you know, when you do get them off of a website, so important not to just even email the references call them. You want to actually hear with their voices and to make sure it's not like actually their mom with a fake email address like you don't know, so to actually speak with references, to hear about the person that's going to be with your kids. Yeah, and then just trying them out is you know, you see a lot in person as well about how it's going to go, and that's probably good way to ease into it. Well, this has been Best of Both Worlds Episode twenty one. We've mostly been talking New Year's resolutions with Gretchen Rubin turn in next week when we'll be back 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.