Building Better Meetings + Laura's Top 10 WorkTips

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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 hart Unger. 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 eleven, which is airing in mid August of twenty twenty one. We are going to be talking work tips today, some of our favorite work strategy and effectiveness efficiency techniques, and then we'll be talking with Helena Weiss Duman, who will do just a short segment with us on how to have better meetings. So a lot of great tips there. Looking forward to diving in. It's kind of back to school season. We think of almost all of August is back to school season, even though my kids aren't going to back till mid September basically, and while most adults are not starting school. Some are, but most aren't. It does always help to think about how we can do things more efficiently, more effectively, right, Sarah, I mean you like that back to school energy for this sort of thing. Of course, I feel like it's your bonus new year, like that hits you know, just when you need it most, when you're not going to make it all the way until January. So yeah, perfect time to just sort of think through how you're doing things and whether there's anything that needs tweaking or optimizing exactly. So go ahead and start with our list of top ten work tips. I'll say one, Sarah will respond with her takes on it, and we'll get through it there. So the first one not a surprise to anyone who's been reading me for a while, but is to plan your upcoming work weeks On Fridays, Ally's had a little bit of time and think about what are you going to accomplish by the end of the next week. List this all out and plot it out on your schedule. I would also recommend planning tight and then planning light, so aim to do anything big on Monday or Tuesday and try to leave the latter part of the week more open because stuff is going to come up, or the big stuff that you put for Monday and Tuesday might take longer than expected. So when you have some days that are relatively more open later in the week, you have to place to put things without falling behind. Sarah, you are a Friday work planner as well, aren't you. I am, And I was just going to kind of piggyback on that. Not only should you think about building an into your routine, this sort of planning session, but you probably need to actually schedule it. I mean, it may not be true as much for Laura because she works for herself, and if she kind of knows her routine is that on Fridays at three she's going to plan her week and that's just a standing thing. Great. But for I feel like meetings are always trying to fill in every available crack and crevice, and if I don't preemptively block out my kind of wrap up weekly planning time, then it can easily just not happen, and then it's not great. So I mean, for me, this could be challenging. I don't always have large swass of time on Fridays. I actually just added back in half a day clinic on Fridays like about two weeks of the month, so that means by the time I'm done my notes, there's like not tons of time, but I do see the value in it, and honestly, I'm willing to not have Friday be an early relaxed day so I can really think through my next week and get that done and kind of have a nice clear slate before the next week. But I do have to block it in very intentionally, but honestly, when people get in the habit of doing this a designated weekly planning time and really think through the upcoming week, it becomes like a superpower because things are less likely to catch you off guard. You make space for the things that matter to you, so you're not like, Wow, another week and I didn't get to these things that are my priorities. So definitely Friday planning. Also on Friday, Tip number two, do a calendar triage, looking at what is on your calendar for the upcoming week. Is there anything that shouldn't be there, anything that could take less time, anything that someone else can do. You may be able to buy yourself an hour or more in a few minutes because one of the things you'll see is like, oh, wait, there's a meeting that's gotten rescheduled four times. Maybe if it's gotten rescheduled four times, I should just put it out of its misery, Like it's never going to happen, so let's just get it off the calendar and acknowledge that instead of continually trying to go back and forth and find a place to put it. Or if you see that three people on your team are in the same meeting, well maybe you could just share information afterwards, right, Like, this is the sort of thing that maybe you could triage in a strategic thinking situation. But what happens when people get so busy because they don't look at their calendars ahead of time, they don't think about these things strategically, and then you just wind up tramping from thing to thing. You're like middle schoolers changing classes, like by two o'clock, by three o'clock, at four o'clock, and it's like, well, did you actually have to do all of those Did all those meetings absolutely have to happen? Did they all have to take an hour? I don't know, But you're not going to ask that in the moment. You want to ask it ahead of time, and the funny thing is I've had people do this exercise in my workshops and speeches sometimes, and I would say that in a couple of minutes, twenty five to thirty percent of the people in the room can get themselves an hour over the next week. And I think if I gave them more time, a lot higher percentage would find sometime. So it's really worth doing. I love that, especially focus on meeting bloat. I've actually noticed that recently people have started to figure out how they could streamline meetings. I know that's what the topic of this episode is about, but you know, by sending kind of minutes and documents ahead of time and then saving the meeting time for actual discussion and assigning of action items, you can turn an hour long meeting into a twenty minute meeting and then wow, forty minutes to do something else forty minutes YEA, all right. Number Three. Make yourself a to do list for each work day before you leave work the night before, and what you can do is look at the day's appointments and what you want to accomplish and block out a schedule that takes all of this into account. For instance, if you have something you think will take ninety minutes of focused work, and you have a ten o'clock meeting. You might be best off doing that focused block from say eight to nine thirty. You know, even if you normally start working let's say eight thirty, it might be worth starting at eight in order to get it done on that particular day and maybe shift your hours at some other point. But if you don't look at your schedule and you don't have your to do list for the day, you won't be able to think about these strategic things, and you'll be like, wait, I've got this ninety minute project. I've got to do it. It's four o'clock now what So make the list the day before, look at the schedule, and you'll be able to get it all in. Personally, I am more of a fan of making the list early the morning of because I just happen to think and plan so much better in the morning. So just an alternative to the night before. Part of my everyday morning routine is basically looking at my calendar for the day and just roadmapping out what I'm going to do and what I'm going to try to accomplish that day. And so you know, that's an alternative to the night before is if you prefer to do it the morning of all right, So we've got tip number four, which is match the right work to the right time. So for most people, we tend to be more focused and productive in the morning. So that means that you want to do your work that requires the most intense thought in the morning, not in the afternoon. That's the time that you can do the work that's a little bit less intense, or even things that you know you're going to do anyway, right, Like you will go to that status meeting regardless of how you feel, whereas you probably won't work on really brainstorming that great new idea for your new client at two thirty when you are tired. So try to do the important stuff first, leave the less intense stuff for later. Do not clear the decks. I know a lot of people have sort of things they need to get to in the day and they're like, oh, well, I'll get to the big stuff as soon as I get rid of all the little things off my to do list. But the problem is we all run out of steam. Next thing, you know, you never get to the big stuff. You're saying, don't clear the decks in the morning. Yeah, don't clear the decks in the morning, right, Yes, agree, because clearing the decks can always take longer than you think it's going to take. And next thing, you know, mid morning you're like, oh, I'm hungry for lunch, and then there goes the day, all right. Number five is to take breaks. So if you find yourself dragging, it is much better to get up and walk around then to lose forty five minutes down an internet rabbit hole. One of my tranquility by Tuesday rules is to move by three pm. And if that is at all possible in your life, I think you will see some major productivity benefits. I find most people need some sort of break by then anyway, and a physical one will boost energy. I'm also a fan of taking a real lunch break, actually get up up, get away from your desk for a minute or two, you know, stop doing what you're doing, and then you can refocus afterwards. I still personally love to take walks at lunch when I can. At work it is not always feasible, But yesterday I did not finish all my notes, but I am very grateful that I went outside for forty minutes, even though the heat index was ninety nine degrees because I did feel way better afterwards, and honestly, if I hadn't done that, my time outside for the day would have been zero and my steps would have been about fifteen hundred. And it just doesn't feel good so so much. Highly agree with that one. Yeah, all right, So now the next one, number six. If the day has drifted, and it often does, but even if it hasn't, even if it's been perfect, take some time sixty to ninety minutes before you plan to stop working for the day to review what has happened and what still needs to happen, because that way you can make a plan to deal with it and make sure that you are not, you know, wasting that last hour doing stuff that actually doesn't need to be done for tomorrow when there is stuff that does need to be done for tomorrow. The next tip seven, if you will be it's related to this, but if you will be doing a split shift because for some reason that last sixty minutes you're not getting through everything, or you are intentionally leaving work at a very early time, let's say three thirty four in the afternoon to do the after school shift with your kids. Consciously knowing you are going to be doing work at night after they go to bed. Make sure you have a plan for the split shift, because you wouldn't get through a one thousand email backlog from nine to five during the day, and you're not going to get through it from eight to ten at night either, So don't set that out as your goal, because that's how people wind up staying up all night or feeling frustrated in general. So say, well, what are the two to three things that actually need to be accomplished as part of the split shift, And if there isn't anything, then maybe you don't have to do it. I know that the split shift is how a lot of our listeners do work long hours and manage to preserve time with young children to go to bed relatively early, But you may not have to do it every night, So that's good to keep in mind. Okay, I have two comments there. First of all, if you are the kind of person where if your day drifts, you find it psychologically difficult to get back on track, I see you, I am you. So I like this tip and I'll think about this tip, but I don't always find it as easy to execute in real life. Maybe if I take more time to kind of acknowledge and forgive myself for the drift and think about how I can care for myself by maybe getting something else done, if one thing was sort of hitting a dead end, things would be better, or maybe even just a longer break and then getting back to something else, or looking ahead on my calendar, how I can swap things to fit where I am that day. It can be hard, especially if what has set everything a drift was stressful, and often it is. I mean, truthfully, it's some work emergency, or someone's in distress and needs help unexpectedly, or it's a kid emergency, and it can be hard. But I agree that the more calmly one can kind of go through and think about how you can best recover the better. And then my other comment is that I hate the split shift, so it's okay if you do too. I will do almost anything to avoid it. The last thing I ever want to do at night is do work related to my actual job or even the podcast. Really, five am is a different story. I can bank these out at five am, So I guess it's a different kind of split shift, And maybe that's kind of my answer, but I also would much rather work late on occasion, and I'm now very lucky that I can. When I need to do I do it every night. No, I don't want to because I don't want to miss that kid time. But if I need to come home at like seven point thirty on a random Tuesday, our nanny does not mind. She is flexible in that way, and a lot of days she's able to get a later start due to school. So for me, that works better. And that's one alternative if you absolutely hate whipping out your laptop after the kids are asleep. Yeah, the early morning is in fact a split shift. It's just a different side of the sleeping. You know, it's still working so different, so it's still working when the kids are asleep, right like that is, If that is the split, you have split your major chunk of work into a morning and a day or a day and an evening, and hopefully not an early morning and a day and an evening, because then that's just crazy. So pick one, all right, Let's yeah, let's just pound through these last ones and then get to our ad break. So number seven is to batch the little things on Friday, so through the week, little stuff will come up that is not urgent but still needs to get done. Put all of these in a small window, ideally on a low opportunity cost day like Friday, but another time is fine too. Or you can also do say thirty minutes each day where you are batching the little things that come up during the day so you can power through them all at once and without them being distractions the rest of the time. Because I find this last part is the slightly more pernicious aspect of this, Like we have eight things on our to do list and we're like, oh, you know, it's it's hard to do this big project I'm working on. Hey, I could just go order that birthday present, or I could just go respond to that email about a meeting six weeks from now, or I could just go fill out that form that HR sent me. And we do these things not because they necessarily have to be done, but it feels good to cross them off, and then you feel like you've done something, whereas if you're sitting and wrestling with a big project, you may not have gotten anything done. So we sort of give ourselves those easy wins. But sometimes it's better to sit with the hard stuff for a while to allow that deep work time to be there and then to batch the little things at some other point when you can just get through them and get them done. Number nine is to commit to making space for the work you love. Now we have all seen this. It is so easy to spend days, weeks, years on the random stuff in your job. You know, you fill your day with figuring out what meeting is going on when, and how do I get to everything on time? And you know, what's the logistics of all this? And you feel like you're never doing the stuff of your job. But whatever it is that drew you to your job does irves a space on your schedule. So when you're doing that Friday planning, make sure that you have carved out space for the stuff of your job, the part that makes you happy, that makes you, you know, want to tell people about it when you're seeing them and meeting them, that deserves to have a place there. I'm curious, Sarah, what is that favorite part for you? Well, as you're speaking, I'm like reflecting. I mean, I think developing real one on one relationships that are meaningful either with patients that I get to know over the years. Because I am lucky that I'm in that kind of longitudinal well lucky for me because I like that longitudinal specialty. It's so fun to see some of these families, you know, with children with chronic illness, like year after year, and really get to know them. And then the same with residents, you know, especially when I feel like I can help them. I don't always feel that way because there are challenges inherent in that job, but when I feel like I can be helpful, it's really fun. Yeah. For me, it's writing. I'm sure anyone would know that. I really love working on book projects. So I'm really happiest when I'm deep into writing a chapter and I'm fortunate right now that that's what I'm spending my time doing. And finally, our tip number ten is that yes, working moms can go to happy hours, So don't neglect the people part of your job. Sarah just said that the people is what makes it really fun, and I'm sure a lot of people feel that way. So make sure that you don't tell yourself like, oh, I don't have time for it. I have to, you know, race home every single day. I can't have lunch. I need to work through lunch because I can't socialize because working moms can't do this. We have to get out of here. I see that on timelines people tell me about they're so efficient. Like I shut myself in my office and work through lunch and that's why I've able to leave fifteen minutes earlier every day. And I never talked to my colleagues. Like come on, all right, it's pretty shortsighted. You don't have to go to anything every night, every day whatever. Nobody wants to do it every day. But if you never socialize with your colleagues, then you don't become part of the loop. People don't really trust you as much because they don't know you as much. It makes it harder to advance. It makes it harder to figure out this sort of unofficial stuff that's going on. And knowing that unofficial channel of information is often what does intend to save us tons of time. Like you're like, don't work with that guy, right, that's the kind of information you get at the happy hour. He's a disaster, Like all of his projects are terrible. Like you want to know that, right, And by doing the socializing you get to know that. So working moms can go to happy hours, not every night, but occasionally Sarah, are you going to happy hour? Well not anymore, because that's true. That's true. I know what is right now, but you know what I mean, the metaphorical happy hour. Yes, absolutely, and when we were able to do things in person, which I hope we will again soon. You know, sometimes I would dread going to something because I just felt tired or whatever, but I never ever regretted it. And you're right. I mean, that's that's what makes work fun, is the relationships and the building them, you know, outside of the work environment, sometimes so fully indoors going to social events. Here we go, Well, those are our top ten work tips. We're going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with Helena Weistumman talking about how to have a great meeting. Well, I am here with Helena Weiss Duman, who teaches meetings and other such things over at Berkeley. So, Helena, how about you introduce yourself to our listeners. Thanks for having me. Yes, I'm Helena Weiss Duman. I teach project management and leadership at UC Berkeley Extension. My work comes from a lot of herding cats and planning lots of meetings as a project management consultant. I produce conferences and professional training programs for Stanford and my TL Berkeley or some of my clients, and I also help run a forty person department that produces events and communications for alumni and donors at UC Berkeley. Yeah, so we are excited to hear about your tips for running good meetings. So, I mean, we could start with what makes so many meetings so bad? Lack of planning is the main thing. People don't put enough strategy into it. People are running from meeting to meeting, and it does take a lot of work to put together a good meeting, but it's worth it in the long run. So there's unclear objectives, the wrong people are in the room. So you need to put some thought in ahead of time. So what does need to happen ahead of time in order for there to be a good meeting? Okay, I'm going to talk about four things that need to be in your agenda to up level your agenda. First of all, there needs to be clear objectives for each agenda item. You can't just put a topic. It should be really, what is the objective of having that item on your agendas? To share information, collect information, make a decision. So really, have an objective and being clear about that. Also, you want a timebox things y'all want to give everything a budget, a time allotment and not go over that and make sure or that you stick to that. Also, people need the background, they need relevant information data reports so that they can come to the meeting informed and knowing what they giving the context. And then also the process. Who's leading that topic, what is the process for making a decision? Are you going to have a vote? Is there going to be consensus? Is the leader going to just make a decision based on the discussion. So just knowing the process. So those are the four things that really up level your agenda. Yeah, and once you're I mean with the meeting itself, are there ways to think about what should occur during the meeting, like devote a certain number of minutes to an opener or you know a certain number of minutes at the end to recap. What should we make sure we have in the meeting itself? What I like to do is start with a little bit of connection. I don't call it an icebreaker, it seems to be a bad word, but some connection, some way to build try built psychological safety with your team and that really depends on is this a brand new team that or is this, you know, your weekly direct reports meeting, So it really depends on that. And then another component at the end of every meeting is to go over the action items that were decided upon, the who, the what, the when of the action items and any decisions that were made and make sure those are communicated. So those are some basics that I like to do at every meeting. Excellent, Well, how about giving us a few out of the box openers, I mean, and so we won't call them icebreakers since we're not supposed to use that word for some reason. But you know, I see most people just say, like, how is your weekend? And that's obviously one thing you can do, but what are some other things you could do to start a meeting? So the principles that I have for these type of connection exercises are to make them easy. Self disclosing may mean that people have a wide rate. They can go deep or go light. Make it interesting and also non competitive, so you know, you don't want to ask, oh, what was the best vacation you've ever been on, because that's that's a hard one in mind, was better than yours? Ha? Ha, exactly have to think about it. But so here are some of three of my go to So the first one is what's your hometown? And it could be the hometown, and I make that broad as well. It could be where are you from? Or you know, where were you born? So it doesn't have you know, people can self disclose however they want to do that, but you can get a lot of rich information about where someone is from. Something about their name, So I asked them, tell me about your first name, your last name, your nickname, do you like your name, does your name mean anything? And you can get a lot of interesting things about people's ethnicities, their backgrounds, what you know. It's just really interesting. And then another one, I what is the favorite holiday tradition? So that's another one where you can get some usually people. It puts a smile on someone's face when they think about something that they enjoy, and also you can learn a lot about their background. Yeah, and I love those that you can disclose as much as you want, like you don't have to share your deepest, darkest secret, although if you want to. It's that kind of group. I mean, I guess you really could, but probably not. For the Tuesday morning status meeting. So I mean, one of the questions we get from listeners a lot is like, okay, we can run good meetings ourselves, hopefully many of our listeners do. But if you are not personally running the meeting, is there anything you can do, either beforehand or during to improve the process if it's maybe not going as well as you might hope? Yes. If I'm invited to a meeting, I ask for the agenda in advance, and I ask you should I say, hey, I see we have a meeting. I want to make sure I'm prepared. Is there an agenda? So that's my polite way of saying, where's the agenda? What do we give me the agenda? So that's one way I prepare. I'll so check if everyone who is supposed to be there has responded. So I at least in our calendars we can see if the right people in the room, and if the right people are not in the room, I suggest that we postpone or you know, have a different time. I offer to record action items. So I offer to say, hey, do you mind if I record the action items? You know that helps some people if you offer to be the scribe, and then I help the facilitator by objecting to tangents. So this is helpful for me when I'm running a meeting and someone says, wait a minute, we're off topic, So I could say, you know it applied way, you know what, that's a good point. Can we have another meeting with this, or can we do this offline? Or I'd be happy to talk to you later, but I think we're running out of time, So just have your go to phrases in a polite way to help out the facilitator. Those are great ideas. Do you have particular mean You've been in so many meetings and saying so many yourself, do you have particular meeting pet peeves things that you see happen poorly in many meetings. Yes, people ask for input without any context or preparation. People say what do you think we should do about that? And people are just deer in headlights, and especially some people don't mind thinking on their feed and they process out loud, and some people really need some time to reflect, and it's just really not thoughtful if you don't allow people the time to process and come to a meeting without preparation. Everyone needs context, background to formulate their thoughts. If you want them to really participate and contribute. The thing that drives me crazy is no participation. So when people just run through their slides and like that could have been an email, record it for me, send it to me in a video and I can watch it at two times speed. If there's no participation. I tried about as much as possible. Yeah, it's like you were invited here to a theater show as opposed to an actual meeting. So are there any differences? I mean, over the past year and a half, I mean, so many people have had new experiences with virtual meetings that many people just didn't do before. I mean, you had the occasional conference call, but it wasn't sort of the normal mode of interacting. Are there any key differences between virtual meetings and in person meetings that we should keep in mind and that might help us have better virtual meetings going forward. The one thing I would highlight is this silent Yes, people don't say anything. People are assuming that they're agreeing with what is being said, So that is very misleading. So one of the things that I do to make sure that people are participating and that I get their input is it's called the gradients of agreement scale, and so I put this at the bottom of my agenda. It's at one through eight scale, and I will put the proposal in the chat. For example, we propose that we have a four hour retreat on August ninth, and so the scale means one. They will hardly endorse it to they agree with a minor point of contention. Three support with reservations four of stained, five more discussion or time needed, six don't like, but we'll support seven serious disagreement in eight veto. So that way everyone in the meeting, I'll put that proposal August ninth, department retreat, and then I wait for everyone in the meeting to give me their little vote. It's very quick, it's very easy. But then you can quickly see if there was any kind of reservation and then that will be brought up instead of just saying, okay, we August ninth, we all agree, right, Okay, let's go on to the next thing. So the silent yes is very tricky, and you need to make sure that you make sure you are getting everyone's input. Awesome, Well, those are great tips. We really appreciate it. Can you tell listeners where they can find you if they're looking for more information about you and about good meetings in general. Yes, you can find me at LinkedIn Helena Weissduman and send me a message and I would love to talk more about meetings. Awesome, Thanks Helena, Thank care. Well that was great. Now we're back with the question part. This question comes from a listener who has a two and a half year old and just found out she is pregnant with her second baby yay. She says with her first, she was in the middle of residency and did not take very good care of herself, didn't exercise and so forth, and as a result, she believes that delivery and recovery were perhaps tougher than they could have been. She has since started taking better care of herself, exercising more regularly. She says she doesn't run as much or as long as the two of you, but about four weeks ago and during her pregnancy, was able to do two to three miles at a nine thirty to ten minute mile per pace, and is inspired to try to keep this up during pregnancy. She says, but oh my goodness, the morning sickness and fatigue are so much worse for me this time around. I do not remember it being like this last time, though, who knows. I've been able to do some walks, yoga, and a few low impact peloton bike rides, but when I tried to run, I couldn't sustain my former pace and it did not feel good. I was prepared for things to be harder or slower, but not this early in my pregnancy. So I have two questions. One is do you have advice or experience about this issue? Should I push through it will get better, wait until closer to the second trimester, or will she have lost all her fitness by then or except that I'm already going to have to just convert back to walking, running, very slow running. And the second question is any gear for running while pregnant? So, Sarah, what do you have for us? Yeah? I felt pretty passionately about this. You're that's like a lot that's like fast, Like that's fast for me now, I mean, or like a good pace for me now. And I think there is absolutely no value in pushing yourself past comfort during pregnancy. I don't see why unless you're an Olympic athlete didn't have a coach that's like telling you to do that. And even then I would like question it. I mean, you should do what feels good, because our bodies, thankfully are smart and they probably you know, tell us what is good for us, especially during a time like pregnancy. There are physiologic changes that happened very early in pregnancy, so people think about like being weighed down by the baby, but actually there's changes in how your chemoglobin, you know, carries oxygen and all sorts of things that happen very very quickly that would explain changes that you might be feeling while you're working out. And I think that you know, you mentioned like do I just have to resort to run walking. I think run walking is wonderful. I don't think there's any like negative connotation to doing that during pregnancy or any other time. I do feel like I'm reaching a phase in my life where I'm like really rethinking goals around exercise, and I kind of even questioned some of my prior goals when I was younger. Yes, it was fun to train for racists sometimes, but at the same time, sometimes I think there's a little too much focused and too much stress, because the whole point is to stay healthy, stay active, stay fit, enjoy it, move our bodies, and I think there is no time to embrace that more than during pregnancy, So do what feels good, take breaks when you need to. And in terms of gear, I don't even know if this is still a thing, but I really loved the Junobras by Brooks. They had like these vulcro straps and everything felt very locked in tight, and so they were my favorite during pregnancy, as well as some really cheap like yoga pant type shorts from Old Navy that were maternity that had a band that folded over, so nothing fancy, but all of that worked pretty well for me. Yeah, I would say that, you know, the first trimester is often a lot tougher from an exercising perspective than the second, though I would say that many people do find that some light exercise helps with the feelings of fatigue and morning sickness. So your mileage may vary, but you might try to get a few little light run walks in and see if you feel better afterwards, because that can motivate you to continue the second time. Yes, ter probably will be better. You will probably feel a little less fatigued, you will feel less nauseous, I hope for your sake, and so you might be able to kick it up a notch during that time, and then at some point when you get into the third trimester, you'll start feeling more weighed down by the baby, that sense of being just huge and having random aches and pains that make it harder. But yeah, a run walk can still work. I mean, I did, in fact run every day with my running streak during my pregnancy with Henry, but by the end it was very, very slow. I'm not sure that somebody looking at it would consider it much of a run at all. It was nowhere near that nine thirty to ten minute mile pace. But it didn't have to be. It was just about feeling like I was still able to move my body, still able to get that energy boost, that mood boost that comes from exercise, which is really what it's all about, taking care of your body, taking care of your baby by exercising and doing something that's healthy for you. It doesn't need to be about pushing at all, because the good news is after you get that baby out of you and a couple weeks later, you will probably be able to start gearing back up again, especially if you have been maintaining some sort of exercise during pregnancy. It will come back. You will have great times in the future. We've all just watched the Olympics for Alison Felix, as you know, hugs her two year old after setting world records. You probably won't do that, but if she can come and set a world record after having a baby, it certainly shows that having a baby does not end your fitness forever. So take heart from that and get back out there afterwards and go run your marathon. Then all right, well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking work tips. We had a quick interview with Helena Weiss Duman about how to have great meetings. We will be back next week with more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on its, 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.