Playing the Career Long Game with Dorie Clark

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and sixteen, which is airing in late September of twenty twenty one. I'm going to be interviewing Dori Clark, who is the author of the book The Long Game, which is about building a long term, thriving career in a world that's really obsessed with short term thinking. Dory's a longtime friend of mine. She's a great networker. I've met her through various things that she's done, hosting various author dinners over the years, gotten to know her as she's built her career. It's a fascinating book. I definitely recommend reading it. But one of the things she talks about is, you know, when you achieve various career breakthroughs, when you first look at it, it's easy to say like, oh, it's, you know, either a great stroke of luck or else. You know, the person is just so talented and fabulous that of course this was going to happen. But when you look at it and analyze it in retrospect, it's often that the person had lots of what she calls at bats, so none of us bats a thousand, which means that if you want to hit something out of the park, you need to guarantee that you were getting more chances to get more pitches so that you can hit one of those. And you know, it's part of being the right place at the right time. But sometimes you're not in the right place at the right time for stuff that you could have gotten but you just didn't. There's a big element of subjectivity to all this. So Sarah, let's talk about this. You've had some big breaks in your career. Let's analyze those in retrospect and talk about what's you know, being in the right place, right time, but being prepared and having other things that could have happened too well. I can think of two. So the first you're gonna laugh. But I just thought of the fact that like this podcast in a way could be considered that. I mean, it was such wonderful timing that I had thought about doing a podcast at the same time you were mumbling it over, and that we were able to create this partnership. It wasn't something that like, you know, was destined to be or anything, but it was really really i don't know, like serendipitous combination. And it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been blogging for like eight million years and in contact with you many times prior. So I would say that would be the first and then the second in my professional career. I mean, I kind of always was interested in having some kind of leadership role, but I wasn't sure exactly what that was going to be. But I definitely am the kind of person who puts themselves out there and I go to meetings and I meet people. And when our hospital systems started talking about making a residency program, I guess I was just I was in the right place at the right time and was able to, you know, start doing that. And then when the program director stepped down, I was able to step into his role. So I mean, there are different paths that I could have ended up doing. It wasn't like I set out to do that specifically, but to me that rings very true. It's like, well, if you want to go in a certain direction, you can have a lot of different options, and then as long as you put yourself out there, probably one of those at bats is going to make sense. And that I've found that to be very true. So I really like that idea. Yeah, I mean, Doriy's got a great section in her book about in the year twenty nineteen she tried a bunch of big goals, all of which had a reasonable chance of happening. Like these were very specific things that she wanted to do, and she had a path to getting there four out of five like crashed and burned. This is you know, this is a woman who has you know, a huge course business as you know, many great public speaking, written several books. Like you don't think that she's getting rejected for stuff, and yet it still happens. I can to promise I get rejected for stuff all the time, Like I submit stuff that doesn't doesn't fly. I had a funny thing happen of a major publication which i'll go names, was commissioned a piece, and then after it was written, commissioned for it rejected it. I was just like, you have to laugh. I mean, what else can you do? Right? But I was thinking for my you know, one of the big breaks. Getting to do a Ted Talk, for instance, was a fantastic stroke of luck. And I don't think it's you know, it's certainly not because I was just like dustined, you know, fabulous speaker going to be lauded up to the top of the TED stage or something. What happened. There's a couple of things that, you know, I was putting myself out there a lot, like I was speaking at a lot of different events. Had even something that could basically be a Ted Talk audition, because I had done the Edison Talks at the Chicago Ideas Festival the year before, and those are eighteen minute talks with your little face mic up up on stage and jeans and a cool shirt. I mean, so basically they are like a smaller version of the Ted Talk. And I had that video out there, so it was like an audition for that more or less. And so then the reason I got noticed for it is I had written an article for The New York Times about tracking my time for a year, which I was trying that just because I thought it would be interesting and I could write about it for somewhere. I had no idea what it would lead to. There were sort of different things. I thought it might, you know, maybe it would be a book, maybe be an article somewhere, and maybe I could, you know, produce an audio series on I don't know what it was going to do, but I thought if I did the work for this, it would turn into something. I happened to get noticed by an editor at the Times who asked me to write a piece about it. I did, marvelously. At the same time, the TED Women conference for that year was going to be about the theme of time, and so they saw it, and then I had basically the audition tape that I could show them. So it got to happen. But it's like, you certainly can't. Like people have asked me then since then, like how do I get to be a TED spee. I'm like, I have no idea, Like there's nothing I can tell you other than like keep speaking, have tapes out there, you know, try to get yourself noticed various places because you have no idea where it will be, but you just try lots of different things and maybe one will work. I love that, you know. It's funny, Like part of me thinks, well, it goes against the planning nature a little bit, because if you're too rigid about your plans and you think you're going to follow one specific pathway, you might end up closing off avenues to turn out to be really cool and fruitful. So I guess that would be a reminder to that your plans don't have to be fixed. They can be evolving. And then if you're interested in something, it's probably worthwhile to say yes. I'm not saying say yes to everything if you're not passionate about it, but if something sounds cool and you can do it, why not give it a try? Yeah? And what are the point story makes with this, I mean actually talks about all the things that didn't work in twenty nineteen, is that none of this is entirely wasted. She was able to repurpose some of the things that were rejected other places, you know, projects that didn't work out. She could cut into other pieces and do other things with them, she made some connections through other things that were useful. So as long as you view it that way, it's like you can plan to do these big things and understand that there's an element of subjectivity of whether you'll get them or not, but a lot of the prep work will still be useful. You know, I wasn't aiming for a TED talk by writing, you know, about how I spent my time for a year, necessarily, but I thought I could use my time tracking data somewhere, and I probably could even if you know, it had just been my blog, a serious you know, a blog series, although that would have been a lot less excited, and you end up learning, right, Like, you learn from what doesn't work, and you learn what you don't like. So yeah, it's true. It's never a waste. Dory is awesome. All right, Well, let's let's hear from Dory. Well, Sarah and I are so excited to welcome Dory Clark to the program. So, Dory, can you introduce yourself to our listeners? Laura, thank you so much. Yes, I'm Dori Clark. I teach at Duke University's Fuquis School of Business. I write books. My most recent is the long game, how to be a long term thinker in a short term world. And mostly I think of my work as finding ways to help smart, talented people get their messages heard in a very noisy and crowded environment. Yeah, and so to that end, you've been doing a lot of different things. You write, books, you teach, you do courses. Tell us a little bit about the arc of your career. Well, I started out well, actually, I started out with a lot of things that didn't work, and I tried to be a university professor, and after I got my master's degree, and I got turned down by all the doctoral programs, and so then I became a journalist like you, and then I got laid off and I worked on political campaigns, including some big ones. I worked on a governor's race and a presidential race and they lost, but you know, so to strake it out there. But I started my own business fifteen years ago, and I feel very lucky because I've had the opportunity to do a lot of things since then. In terms of creating creating online courses you were mentioning some of them might have. It was just announced last week that one of my courses, strategic Thinking, was the number two most popular course this year on the LinkedIn learning platform. There's thousand courses. Yes, wow, thank you. It was pretty pretty cool. One point two million people have taken it, which which is kind of awesome. And university teaching and writing and speaking and things like that, which are which are pretty fulfilling ways to get to connect with people. Yeah, that's awesome. So let's talk a little bit about your book, The Long Game. People switch jobs a lot these days. I was just reading a story about how with virtual work there are people who have started jobs and ended jobs without ever actually meeting their colleagues. I mean, particularly now, what does it mean to the long game? Is that something we should really be aiming for in this world where people move around so much. People do move around a lot, and certainly with the pandemic, everybody flex their muscles for the short term, which is great. It's important. We need to know how to adapt to change. We need to be agile and flexible in all of these things. But what I believe is that we can't just be that, because ultimately, if we get in the habit, or if we are in the rut of only responding to external stimuli, we're never really fulfilling our own agenda. I mean it's almost like at work, just literally spending your entire day answering email. It might feel productive to see the tally and your inbox go down, but at the end of the day, what have you actually accomplished. You've been doing everyone else's agenda, not yours. And so for me, long term thinking is really almost a kind of reclamation of our autonomy and saying no, I am going to put a steak in the ground. Here's a thing I want to aspire toward, and it might take longer than we want, it might not quite unfold the way we want, but it's a thing we're aiming toward. Awesome. Well, I'm sure both of us have been trying to play the long game here as we go through a lot of different things we've tried over the years, things that I've worked and have not. But I want to talk about a few of your tips that I thought we're best from the book. First, my absolute favorite, no asks for a year. So let's talk about Dori's rule of no asks for a year. What does this mean? Yes, well, I think most of us have at one time or another been mugged by what I like to call a favor assailant, and this is somebody that you have just met. You know, we met him yesterday, you met him last week at some event, and they seem really nice and it seems like things are going well. And then they send you an email and they say, oh, hey, Laura, so great meeting you, blah blah blah. I see that you write for such and such publication. Hey, can you introduce me to your editor? Or Hey, I see that you're connected on LinkedIn with Jeff Bezos. Can you introduce me to Jeff Bezis first him and Beyonce. I'm connected to everybody. Yeah, I mean, obviously, it's just so ridiculous because you know, you're just your heart sinks because you're like, oh, one of those and you know, ultimately we kind of write those people off like they've blown the relationship. And for me, this really sunk in. This was like more than a decade ago now, But I met this woman who, you know, at the time was kind of on a path to prominence, and she had spoken at this conference, and I, you know, I thought it was pretty cool. It was a good place to speak, and so I was not a favor assailant, but I think that I was erroneously perceived as one. I sent her a message. You know, we'd gotten to know each other a little bit. This was not last week, but it was, you know, a few months, and I said, oh, hey, I saw your talk just came out from such and such place. You know, I'd love to speak there one day. What is your advice for someone about who wants, you know, breaking into this? And you know, that's not a bad question. I don't think it was terrible. But what I realized was she didn't have enough context about me to know that I was not going to immediately say, oh, thanks for the advice, Hey, can you introduce me now? And so she she ghosted me. She never wrote back, and I realized, like, oh oh, that's where her head went. And I realized I never wanted to be put, you know, lumped in the position of being a favor assailant. And so I created a rule for myself, which I think is not a bad rule for other people as well. No asks for a year, because you know, and I don't mean little asks like oh hey, Laura, I like that sweater, where'd you get that sweater? But I mean political capital asks, because if we hold off on that entirely, other people won't think we have an agenda, and we won't even subconsciously formulate one. It becomes all about getting to know the other person and legitimately building a relationship. Yeah, that's awesome. It makes networking so much more meaningful if you're not, you know, even thinking like what are we going to do for each other? Right, it's just you know, who are interesting people in the world. You also talk about creating more at bats, So probably a lot of baseball fans here, but you know, no one bats one thousand. What does it mean to create more at bats for yourself as you're building careers? And let's talk a little bit about how you did that. I loved your stories from twenty nineteen of the things that worked and didn't Yes in the long Game. One of the chapters includes a lengthy chronicle of all of the things that I tried in twenty nineteen that just totally didn't work. I think that that oftentimes, when you reach, you know, a certain level professionally, it's easy when you have a quote unquote failure story to tell, like the cute failure story from like well, when I was Si and I worked at McDonald's and the fro Yo machine malfunctioned. You know, it's like, oh and there was a failure, and I overcame it. But I thought it's really important to just put it out there that whatever level you're at, there are always setbacks. There's always telling you. I mean, there's probably even people telling Oprah like, no, sorry, that won't work. But certainly for me, even just a couple of years ago, I went through this space where I had five big goals for the year and they were all stretch goals, but they were all very plausible goals. They were you know, potentially within reach. And I went through the year and literally four out of five of them just completely blew up. They evaporated. Finally I get one big goal, which happened, but it was a frustrating process for sure, and I think it's worth being open about that that there's always going to be gatekeepers. And so for me, one of the most important lessons is that we need to realize if we get overly fixated on one path to success, we will probably statistically, we'll probably be stymied because you know, things sometimes don't work out, But there are alternative paths. You know, it's like the doors closed, go in the window. I want more people to realize there are windows and you can go in those windows. There might be six or seven windows, and hopefully if you're getting all of them, you might get through one. All right, We're going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be right back with Dori Clark. Hello, we are back just for a minute in our own adbed because we wanted to tell you about a new, fun, little venture we are starting up. For a while, Laura and I have had the idea of trying to add a more interactive element to this podcast. I think we all feel like we need it during these times when you know, big in person get togethers are a little harder to do, and so we are creating our own Patreon so that we can offer Zoom monthly meetups to talk about all things fitting, work, family, and life together. These will be interactive, You'll get a chance to share and ask questions, and I just feel like it will add a little bit to our community. Nothing will change about our podcast, so this is just an extra little thing that we're offering. So for details, please check out either of our websites. Yeah, It's going to be so exciting to get to know more listeners in person to have these conversations. We're also creating PDFs every month with some of our best tips from the show, from our blogs, from our experience, from what we've learned from listeners. We'll be starting the first month with one on children's activities, how we've learned to manage those schedules, some of our tips that have come from talking with you all. Hopefully that will be helpful too. So yeah, come check out our Patreon page best of both worlds. We'll have more details on our blog. Looking forward to meeting some of you there. Well, I'm here talking with Dory Clark, who is the author of the book The Long Game, How to be a long term thinker in a short term world, and Dorry is sharing her tips for how we can build a long, big, and sustainable career. So you talk about strategic patience, and I think this day and age, we all see most people are not patient at all. I mean people want to see results very very quickly. How long are we talking that we should be expecting to do stuff before we receive results? And how can we keep motivating ourselves in this world where we're expecting to see you twenty likes on something in the next two minutes. Well, I think it's an important question, and obviously, depending on what your goal is, the timeline is going to vary. But one thing, Laura, that I think a lot of people fail to do that is a relatively easy change that can make a big difference, is to actually scope out the nature of your goal in advance. One of the stories that I tell in The Long Game is from Jeff Bezos writing this since you're friends with him and all. He wrote a twenty eighteen shareholder letter to Amazon shareholders, and he tells this story about a friend of his that wanted to get better at yoga and hired a handstand coach for yoga, and the yoga handstand coach said that the average person, if you ask them how long does it take to master a handstand, they will say about two weeks, And the actual truth is it takes six months of daily practice. It is you know, it's not by off by ten percent or twenty percent, it is off by a factor of twelve. And I think for so many of our goals, we are inadvertently doing that to ourselves that we've never actually taken the time to really look at or to ask people who have accomplished what we want to accomplish. Okay, so chart it out for me. What did this look like. It's not a terrible thing to run a marathon. It's hard, but it can be done. But what is terrible is if you think you're running a half marathon and you're at the finish line and somebody's like, oh, sorry, it's actually a marathon. And so I think scoping it out can enable us to understand a little bit more what we're signing up for, so we don't get blindsided and we don't get discouraged. Yeah, and you know you talk about looking for rain drops, like you were saying, these are small signs of success that if you keep doing something you can start to see little indications that things are going right. Yeah, that's that's exactly right. For so many of us, I think we you know, we're trained culturally to be looking for the big win. You know, oh well now I'm up on the podium. Okay, you know, finally done it. But the problem is those things take a really long time, and so along the way there are signs of success, just like when a rainstorm is starting. It doesn't usually go from zero to an instant deluge. There are a few rain drops along the way where you're almost wondering, like was that even? What was that? Was that a rain drop? And you're doubting it a little bit. But we need to look for those little signs because that is what shows us we're moving in the right direction and we're making progress. It might seem small, it might seem random. Okay, you're invited to speak at a conference, but they're not going to pay you. Or you're invited to speak at a conference, but you have the random little breakout session, not the keynote. You know, whatever it is. You might diminish it, but no, the point is that people are starting to be interested in what you have to say. You know, maybe you're getting more LinkedIn requests because hey, people are interested in meeting you. Those are the signs we need to notice. Awesome, and another fun tip from the book to keep our career sustainable long term is to optimize for interesting that we shouldn't be just thinking of what is the obvious next step, but what makes an interesting life. I'm very curious how you've done that in your life, because I think you have a couple cool side projects you could tell us about. Yeah, thank you. Well, I think so often in our cultural conversation around you know, what are we here for? What should we be doing? We tend to really polarize the conversation between either just optimizing for money. You know, oh, let's let's just make a ton of money, make bank, focus on that, or follow your passion, follow your heart. And you know, that's great too, But a lot of people don't necessarily know what their passion is, or they're just they're just not sure. Maybe they've been working so hard and so long they feel like they've kind of lost touch with what it is. And so what I like to suggest instead is that we just lower the bar, make it easier for ourselves, take the pressure off, and instead of looking for like your soul maje activity, just say is it interesting? Do I want to learn more about it? Is this a direction I would like to move more in? And if you have a choice between something, you know, two different things, pick the one that's more interesting. And so in my own life, certainly I have worked to try a lot of different things. I in the last few years took a number of stand up comedy classes. I have started writing musical theater and have completed a two year training program in musical theater writing. So I've been nurturing a lot of side passions. During COVID, I started taking weekly ping pong lessons, so I've been working it. I know you, Laura, You're very devoted to your choir, which is really cool. I mean, you've got your own interesting sidelines too. That's true though. I really like the idea of the two year musical theater program. I think, and when Dori writes the next Hamilton, you guys are all going to be hearing you. I heard her here first. So all of this, you know, these cool things, and writing your books and your career and all that, it takes time. It takes time to invest in building a career as well to get that breakthrough idea to reach the next step. How do I find the time? You have tracked your time? I know, and you discovered to you that maybe true, but you have done it. Many people don't when I suggest it. But you've discovered something interesting of how you were, in fact making more time through certain strategic activities. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that that is true. Yes, I didn't know what I'd find when I embarked on my time tracking experiment, but I am certainly a fan of data in general, and Laura is a persuasive advocate of the value of time tracking. So I actually did this twice, and I've written articles about all of what I excavated. But I did a time tracking experiment in February of twenty eighteen and also again in December of twenty twenty. So seeing over time what I've learned or what I'd gotten better at, and something that actually was relatively constant, it was something positive that I noticed in twenty eighteen that I wanted to retain. Was you know, we always think culturally in our conversation about multitasking is being bad. You know, so all multitasking is terrible your you know, your mind is distracted, You're not doing anything well. And that is true if you are trying to do two fundamentally similar tasks. You know, if I'm trying to simultaneously respond to an email and be on Laura's podcast, that would be bad. But there are types of complimentary activities where you can actually multiply the benefit of it by doing two things at the same time. So I really tried to think about those paired activities. So something I actually do super frequently. I did this last night is I will be taking a long walk, which is a good form of exercise and relaxation, and I'll call my mom while I'm doing that. And so you know, I try to never just call my mom when I'm sitting on my couch, because I mean, that's that's fine. But if I can kill two birds with one stone, I would much rather do that. And you can do the same thing with exercising and listening to professional development audio books, or you're cooking dinner and you're whatever, you know, listening to something. You could make sure that you are you know, to quote Keith Farrazi, that you're never eating alone, so that you were dining and networking. So there's a lot of possibilities. Yeah, I think a lot of our listeners have never eaten alone over the last eighteen months because they've had their old families in their house for all meals. That's right. Networking with your preschoolers absolutely, But I do want to pivot here to the pandemic because you know, again part of playing the long game, we're going to go through these ups and downs and these larger things we can't control as well, and it can be very frustrating if you put a lot of effort into building a certain thing as part of your life and then it disappears. So, for example, I'm sure you, like me, did a lot of public speaking in twenty nineteen twenty twenty, I'm guessing you did a lot less in person, and our public speaking very much less, yes, very much less. So you know, how did you pivot during the pandemic, and how can our listeners think about ways that they might look to pivot even as they are kind of keeping their eye on the long term goal. So I will answer this specifically about me and then kind of draw a parallel that I hope is useful for other people. So, for me, the biggest game changer during twenty twenty, because you're exactly right, all the keynotes were canceled or they were turned into virtual things. You know, nobody booked new ones, so it it's something that had been a significant revenue source for me just pretty much vaporized. But actually twenty twenty was a remarkably successful year financially for me, and the reason was that, you know, again, just like if you're constructing a stock portfolio and you want to have countercyclical things in your portfolio, want to have the stocks and the bonds to balance each other out. In our careers, we need to think about how can we hedge our bets essentially, And so since twenty fourteen, I had been experimenting with in investigating online courses and had been building a bunch of them, and I was envisioning much more prosaic threats like a recession, or like maybe I would get sick and wouldn't be able to travel or something like that. But nonetheless there was a certain amount of future oriented, long term thinking that I was doing. I realized, like, Okay, this is nice. I like traveling, I like keynoting, but there are circumstances in which this could become unsustainable. How do I protect against that? And something that is virtual, something that is asynchronous, is a pretty good answer. So I had been cultivating that sideline for six years prior to the pandemic hitting. So for me, that was the key to being able to be equally, if not more successful. And so the parallel that I'll draw for other people is there's a section in the long game where I talk about the concept of twenty percent time, which is primarily associated with Google, that they encourage their employees to pursue up to a fifth of their time on more speculative projects that are not directly related to their day to day jobs. And I want to suggest that we should all be thinking about cultivating that for ourselves, you know, whether we work for ourselves, whether we work for a company, just carving out time for something different and experimental, because doing that, that form of professional development on the side enables us to be prepared for more things and basically be more resilient because we're not putting all our eggs in one basket. We're learning new things and exploring, and it can serve the same function that slowly and steadily my six years worth of exploration in online courses served for me during the pandemic. Yeah, you could substitute the course business line for the speaking business line and really lean into that because it was already there. Well, so this is all great Dory. We always end with a love of the week, which is something that is just fun for us. This week, I can go first because I give you time to think about it. So I'm really been I'm training for a half marathon, which will not turn into a marathon. By the way, I am sure that I will be still at thirteen point one miles. And so I have this handheld water bottle Nathan handheld a speed shot plus. But you could just like put it in your hand and you don't have to grip it. It's just like there. And so it's you know, I was running with like a water bottle on my back or my waist and that's awkward or you know, carrying it, you know, and you're gripping it. So this is much better. I'm really enjoying it. So that's making running, you know, ten miles at a time slightly less terrible. How about you? Also? I love it? Wow? All right, Well I'm I'm going to go to the other end of the health spectrum. You're like, yeah, I run in a half marathon. So what I'm going to pull back the curtain and lay it all bare for you, Laura. I'm leaning full on into middle age. And what I'm going to recommend is an app that I just found out about called snore Lab. Awesome. It's great, Oh my gosh, it costs I think you know, it's a paid app. I think it costs maybe eleven dollars for a year long subscription. But what it does You plug it in next to your bed and it records you all night and it tracks your level of snoring, and then it enables you to ab test with different interventions that you have, like oh, if I try nasal strips, this works, and if I try a wedge fillow, you know it's this much. And so it assigns you a score and it tells you what percentage of the night you're actually snoring and at what velocity. And so if you're actually trying to be quantified, you know, to quantify something in a logical way, and you're trying to fix a problem for you or a partner that is annoying you, then you actually have some data. So I'm all in on snore lab. That's exciting. I once tried to record my husband and it was a denial that it ever happened made. I don't know who it was then, but yeah, that sounds great, Dory, that's that's awesome. Well, tell our listeners where they can find you, and so they can I know, you have a huge online presence that people are going to want to check out. Thank you so much, Laura. Absolutely well. The new book again is called The Long Game, How to be a long term thinker in a short term world, And if folks are interested in that, of course you can find it in all the typical book places. But additionally, I have a free Long Game Strategic Thinking self assessment, and folks can get it for free at Doryclark dot com slash The Long Game. Awesome, Well, Dori, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so great to be here. All right, well, that was lots of great career advice from Dory. As people listen, I particularly like her advice no asks for a year, just a great rule for networking in general, for playing the long game, for being an awesome person and not one of those annoying people always asking for stuff. So let's go to our question. I definitely want to get Sarah's advice on this because she's the one who's been in a group employed setting for this situation. So our listener says, I am feeling terrible in the first trimester of my pregnancy. I want to be productive but just can't and also can't tell anyone, so how to handle Well, Sarah, what do you do. Yeah. So I guess I was in this situation a couple of times, because I too felt like utter garbage during my first trimester, every single time without fail. And this is, by the way, the person who wrote in it was an audio question, but because she's anonymous, we'll keep it non audio. She mentions, this is her second pregnancy, and with the first one she did start feeling better at the second trimester mark, so there is hope for her, but right now she's just feeling like, oh my god, I had all these wonderful systems and routines in place, and now I just feel like I can't do any of them. So I am exact same way. You have to give yourself permission to minimize what you are asking of yourself, and I think that takes away the kind of meta guilt that you have, the negative feelings you have about not meeting your own expectations, which are probably your expectations more than anybody else's. In fact, I, interestingly, during both my I think this was actually not during pregnancy, but it was during the early days of having a newborn. I switched my planner out from a daily planner to a weekly planner because I hated that I couldn't get enough done to fill a whole blank page and it just felt overwhelming. I was like, you know what, I just need a small box for the day, because that's really how I can think about getting through each day. I'm going to do like my job and like maybe one or two other small things and that's all that is necessary. So you did mention your planning routines and rituals, and this might be a time to feel like, what can I strip down. The other thing that I will mention is that I am the kind of person who blurts out my pregnancies not to like everyone and everyone in public, but often to my like bosses, just because I I always ask myself, well, would I feel comfortable talking to this person if I had a loss? And sometimes the answer is actually yes. You know, if it's a senior colleague that I've worked with for a while, I would want them to be extra understanding if I did have a loss. So in that case, there's nothing to lose by saying, you know, I'm seven weeks pregnant. I feel like garbage. I don't know if this is going to come to fruition, but right now, this is where I am. So again, that's not for everyone, but we do have these societal ideas about when it's okay to tell people about your pregnancy, and you might want to just make sure that you're doing what works for you, because for me, I did feel comfortable telling people earlier than I guess was standard. Yeah, it's also possible that people are noticing a lot less that you think they are. I mean, I keep coming across this with our listeners. They just have like fabulously high standards for themselves that the rest of the world does not hold for themselves. And so you know, if you just say, like, Okay, I'm getting done what I need to get done, and I'll just let it go at that. You know, like these are the three things that absolutely have to happen today, I'll do them and then I will face down tomorrow and know that probably I will be feeling better in a few weeks and then I can return to whatever it was that I was doing before or not. You know, this may this may be the time to just not worry about it so much. I would also say, you know, if you could try and identify the times of day when you do feel better and then put anything that is going to require feeling okay during that window. And it may be only an hour or two a day, but maybe it's like that, a certain you know point you feel slightly better than other points of the day, and just you know, try to have that cell awareness and plan your days accordingly. Nap if you can. I don't know. If you have an office door, you could close it and just take a quick nap and hopefully feel better after that. Well, this has been best of both worlds. I've been interviewing Dori Clark, who's the author of the new book The Long Game, and we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.