Favorite Time Management Tips!

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi.

00:00:03
Speaker 2: This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:08
Speaker 3: 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.

00:00:17
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds.

00:00:19
Speaker 2: 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.

00:00:32
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds, this says Laura.

00:00:35
Speaker 2: This episode is airing if we have our ducks in a row in mid September of twenty twenty three, which should also again, if I have my ducks in a row, be the week I am leading a time tracking challenge. So September is always a time of new starts, new routines, and whenever our routines shift, our schedules shift, it's helpful to just figure out where the time truly goes, because when you know where the time goes, then you can make wise choices about where you would like it to go. And it could be that all is wonderful, in which case you should celebrate that fact. Pop the champagne, release the balloons, whatever it is you're going to do. But if there's anything that you're finding a source of stress or anxiety, or you just think isn't as smooth as it could be, then knowing where the time goes is a.

00:01:19
Speaker 1: Great way to figure out what you can do about it.

00:01:22
Speaker 2: So I have been tracking my time for a long long time. I began in April of twenty fifteen. I had tracked a few weeks here and there before then for various projects, but I began continuously then and have been going since. I find it pretty easy to do at this point, and kind of even fun to do on occasion. Sarah, you do not entirely share my feelings about time tracking, so maybe we should explore this a little bit.

00:01:47
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:01:48
Speaker 3: Well, I'm certainly not against time tracking whatsoever. I think it's an incredibly useful tool, and I actually treat time tracking more like an intermittent practice rather than something constant, because I guess I just find it a litle a little bit more difficult than you do. For whatever reason. I think I get bogged down and trying to make it like too perfect or something, and then you know, I'll forget something and just be like ah, So it just and it just doesn't feel needed for me to do it all the time, but I absolutely love it to do it intermittently. And my preferred kind of cadence that I've landed on as of late is to do it like once a quintile so, or like once a quarter so, like five times a year with the shift of the seasons, whether that's the beginning of summer or the beginning of the school year.

00:02:32
Speaker 1: Et cetera.

00:02:33
Speaker 3: I think it's a great time to kind of take stock, just as you said, like where is the time actually going? Because it really helps me with troubleshooting and figuring out where pockets of time might be or making decisions about things that I might want to cut out.

00:02:47
Speaker 1: So I think it's a fantastic tool. Yeah, But I mean, somebody like you, you have a.

00:02:52
Speaker 2: Pretty good sense of your time already, partly because it is so highly planned that there tend not to be big stretches of time that you couldn't account for, which I think is something that happens with some people. So those people are always find time tracking the most eye opening. I think though, that even people who mostly know where the time goes. There's always something to be learned from it. I mean I look back over my time logs. I like to see them as memories. They you know, check the time from six years ago, for instance, every week and see what was going on then in my life. And I also just like to spot check my time logs at the end of the week and say, well, was I doing the things that I think I should be doing, Like what do I want to change? Or what went well? What didn't go well? And you know, did this look like an interesting week? If I was going to share this week with someone, would I be like, jeez, I my life is boring or terrible or whatever?

00:03:53
Speaker 1: Or is it like, oh yeah, no, that we got to do some pretty cool stuff. So I think that's always I find that interesting.

00:03:58
Speaker 3: Like what is your I think people would want to know too, Like what does your time audit practice look like? Because I know you've been going back to review your log and then you also have been like going back to previous years. So when do you do this, what does it look like? Give us a little picture.

00:04:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty quick.

00:04:14
Speaker 2: It tends to be a Monday morning sort of thing, because that is when my time log week starts, so I name the file after that date. So the week we were recording this, for instance, is August twenty one, twenty twenty three. It would have been August twenty one, but it turns out August twenty one happened in twenty sixteen, and I'm still recording on the same laptop, So I didn't originally name it with the file of the year.

00:04:41
Speaker 1: I don't know.

00:04:42
Speaker 2: I didn't know that i'd still be doing it in twenty twenty three, so this didn't occur to me that I should label it with the year originally. So I finished the log on Monday morning, the previous log, because it goes to five am Monday, right, that's when it starts. So I record the end of Sunday night, like when I went to bed, if there were any wake ups or anything like that, and then I archived that log and open a new one. And so as part of archiving it now I look back over it and say, how did the week go. I tend not to add up things anymore. I don't look at how many hours I work. I don't look at how many hours I slept or exercised or anything like that. It's more a holistic kind of look at it, and then I open the new one and start it for Monday morning, and then I open the one from six years ago with the corresponding date and take a look and quick trip.

00:05:34
Speaker 1: Down memory lane.

00:05:35
Speaker 2: And I always have to kind of nudge myself to do it, because of course it's Monday morning and I'm like, it's time to get started. I need to get to work. This is the beginning of the week. I've got that fired up energy to start the week. But I do find it rewarding to do so, and sometimes I even get ideas looking at the past of you know, oh that I did this and this and I could write about that or whatever, so.

00:05:55
Speaker 1: It's worth doing.

00:05:57
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have to do it Monday morning, like maybe I should do it more as like Monday lunch kind of thing, just to not have that tension between needing to get started on Monday morning versus revisiting the past.

00:06:08
Speaker 1: So that's something I could change. Interesting.

00:06:10
Speaker 3: I feel like the closest thing I have to that look back is that I I am on my third year of a five year journal, so it's still because my five year journal began in twenty twenty one and the world looked kind.

00:06:21
Speaker 1: Of crazy that year. It's actually like, wow, a lot has changed.

00:06:25
Speaker 3: I had some comment about like first day of school pictures with masks on or something two years ago.

00:06:32
Speaker 1: But you also look back at your old blogs. Yeah, I think that's more like random world.

00:06:37
Speaker 2: I don't have systematically, I feel because you've linked to some I feel like, as you know.

00:06:43
Speaker 3: It's more like, oh, like that'll just pop into my head. I mean, there's very little systematic about my blog in general. But yeah, like I'll think of something and google it, I'll search for it on my own blog.

00:06:53
Speaker 2: Although sometimes it's fun to look at memory Lane with this because you have the same widget I do. I mean, it may be made by a different company, but it suggest other blog posts that you might wish to read at the bottom of your blog. And it's also because it's usually because it's got some same keyword in it, right, like this is not it's very rudimentary AI, but it suggests that because so sometimes I wind up looking back on those as well, because I'm like, oh, yeah, what was I doing when I last had this thought of X? And I find that I write the same thing a lot.

00:07:25
Speaker 1: But maybe that's just me.

00:07:28
Speaker 3: It hasn't gotten old for me yet. So I don't think you need to worry about writing the same thing. But yes, I do click on those sometimes. I just don't have like any.

00:07:34
Speaker 1: Kind of ritual around it.

00:07:35
Speaker 2: It's just, yeah, organic I'm gonna I'm gonna move it to Monday lunch.

00:07:39
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about this now.

00:07:41
Speaker 2: I can remember what I was doing Sunday night and Monday morning through to Monday lunch.

00:07:44
Speaker 1: I don't have to open the timelog first thing. I can get it. So anyway, we're gonna be talking time management in this episode.

00:07:52
Speaker 2: Obviously a favorite topic of mine, although I'd say it's a favorite topic of Sarah's as well.

00:07:57
Speaker 1: So we just have a couple tips.

00:07:59
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about some of our favorites that have come up over the years from looking at our own time, looking at other people's time. Because people send details about their schedules to me, they send them to Sarah as well, as she's been doing a lot of you know, work with different people on planning. So we'll go ahead and talk about them. So one of my favorite ones is deciding how much time to give certain tasks that certain tasks we're not going to just like do them when they vaguely need to be done or when they occur to us, or until they're like over whatever that means, because they will expand to fill all available space. And two of the most obvious ones one at work, one at home, email at work and housework at home. Both of these are almost never going to be done in any sense of truly being done, like for a long period of time.

00:08:50
Speaker 1: I mean, you could get to inbox zero, but like.

00:08:52
Speaker 2: Within about three minutes, somebody has emailed to you again. So it's a very fleeting sense of done, which is the same thing with housework and empty the dishwasher and scrub everything down, and then there's something somewhere I don't know, somebody puts something in a trash can, or there's dirty clothes and in hand for I mean, it's never done in the sense that there will never have to be done again for any length of time.

00:09:13
Speaker 1: So with that you have to kind of decide.

00:09:17
Speaker 2: What amount of time you wish to devote to them, as opposed to letting them dictate how much time you do. So for email, for many people, it helps to set certain windows that they're going to check they could be frequent windows, like if you need to be very responsive, you might decide to be off email for forty five minutes and on for fifteen and off for forty five and on for fifteen or something like that.

00:09:40
Speaker 1: Or if you have a little bit more of a relaxed kind of.

00:09:43
Speaker 2: Schedule, it could be in the morning, at lunch, at the end of the day or something. But you decide and then do it then and then don't do it so much at other times.

00:09:53
Speaker 1: So same with housework.

00:09:55
Speaker 2: You might decide, Okay, we're gonna spend twenty minutes after dinner tidying up, and then if it's important to it gets done in those twenty minutes. If it wasn't, we're not going to sit there and do it all evening just to reach some standard of done. Sarah, Yeah, you feel differently a little bit about email, although you've.

00:10:11
Speaker 3: Done the same different and the same. I mean, I one hundred percent agree with you. You could literally spend your entire day like being in your inbox and responding to everything. And by the way, I think how Newport brought this up, but like the more emails you respond to, the more emails are going to get back. So actually, if you want to make the task less of a task, don't respond all the time, don't be up to date one hundred percent of the time, because then more emails are going to come back to you, and stuff is just going to move faster faster than you can handle it, and then you're going to be in your email all day. So my answer to that is, yes, I do want to get to inbox zero. I want to acknowledge every message. I want to clear it out. I don't, as I've spoken, I don't do any fancy like FULD.

00:10:45
Speaker 1: I'm just like.

00:10:46
Speaker 3: Archive archive archive, or process or like respond or deal with it that way. I know nothing in there is getting entirely missed. But I really only do that like when I've decided to do it. Generally it's most Fridays, but if I'm on vacation, I may miss a Friday, and then I may need a longer Friday. But by giving myself permission that, like generally, I'm not clearing out my inbox except for these designated times, I think I'm more efficient and it prevents that like spinning wheel from getting out of control in terms of the responses. And I guess I would say similar for household, Like I've never felt like it was a good use of time to like run around after the kids to like pick up each toy they played with, like continuously, But rather if I put a container like maybe I do want to get the house to a certain level of tidiness, but be like we're just gonna deal with it at the end of the day and try to do it.

00:11:32
Speaker 1: In fifteen minutes.

00:11:33
Speaker 3: Like that, it just corrals a task that could literally be continuous, and you can't be an inbox zero or clean house zero one hundred percent of the time or like that is your entire life.

00:11:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, so really.

00:11:47
Speaker 2: I mean the closest we come to it being clean is sort of well, the cleaning service in our house comes every week, but they alternate what they do. They do the kitchen every time, but they do the bedrooms one week and do the other parts of the house the other week. And so after they've done the bedrooms and the kitchen and we've tidied up a little bit the night before, like just to get stuff put away so it doesn't disappear when they come in and clean, it's clean for like a little bit, but then somebody's in the house.

00:12:16
Speaker 1: It doesn't stay that way, Like somebody.

00:12:17
Speaker 2: Puts mail on the calendar, or somebody puts the you know, the dishwasher has been run or something. So somebody leaves a dish in the think because they didn't want to empty the whole day, I don't know. But it's clean for an hour maybe, and then it's over. And so you just have to kind of deal with this reality. And I think some people have harder psychological time with that. I don't know that they feel like the state of their house is reflective on them. But I think you could be like orderly without being over the top tidy. So decide how much time you want to put into it, keep it at that, move on. The next tip we want to talk about is multitasking. So you can't make more time, and you can't multitask similar activities, but you can make more time by doing two unrelated things at once. Sarah and I recently read The Long Game, or I reread it, but The Long Game by Dori Clark, which we have been talking about with our Patreon group as part of our book club, and she talks about how when she logged her time for a month, she was able to kind of double up on enough activities that she was able to feel like she actually made several more hours in a week than the one hundred and sixty eight hours the week actually contains. I mean, so that would be things like exercising with a friend or calling her mom while doing housework or something, you know, just so that it was the time was used for two activities at the same time, but two that weren't going to conflict with each other. So not I'm on a zoom call and I'm checking my email at the same time, because you're not paying attention to one of them. But if you are walking to work and calling your mom at the same time, you've gotten yourself to work and you've nurtured that relationship.

00:13:54
Speaker 1: So it's a bonus, Sarah, you do this all the time.

00:13:59
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I feel like I mean, I think a lot of us do this all the time. I think earbuds have been a great way to make tasks that don't require any brain power a little bit more fun because you can enjoy your favorite podcast while you are tidying up or unloading the dishwasher. So that maybe, like what we just talked about in the last part, even when you are doing that fifteen minute cleanup, it doesn't feel like you're jrudgery. But I also absolutely embrace that kind of social slash like other things. So I think book club is great for that because like you're doing social but you're also reading and like it's kind of two in one. And then my running group is a great example because I'm getting my workout in and spending time with friends at the same time trying to do a weekly lunch with my work colleagues. That's like networking slash, you have to eat lunch slash.

00:14:43
Speaker 1: Just fun. So one hundred percent.

00:14:45
Speaker 3: And yeah, I loved how Dory talked about She's like, I actually had two hundred hours in my week.

00:14:51
Speaker 2: Well she's a very productive person, but yeah, I mean it's she was making time.

00:14:56
Speaker 1: Left and right, which is very funny.

00:14:58
Speaker 2: There was actually an article of The New York Times long ago by Oliver Berkman, who is a friend of the podcast.

00:15:03
Speaker 1: We've had him on.

00:15:04
Speaker 2: We love Oliver, but it was also kind of like only do one thing at once, like don't listen to that podcast while doing chores, Like come on, Oliver, are you never doing chores? Like do you just hate all podcasts. I don't know what's going on with that, but I think for most of us that is a way to feel like we have a little bit more time, particularly if there are things in your life that aren't as discretionary, like.

00:15:27
Speaker 1: Commuting or chores.

00:15:30
Speaker 2: That being able to do something that you enjoy at the same time as a way to feel like you have a little bit more leisure in your life.

00:15:36
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean I don't listen to a podcast while I do headspace. That would be well, that's yes, that would be defeating the point. Don't do that.

00:15:46
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and we will be right back with a few more of our favorite time management tips. Well, we are back talking time management, a favorite topic of both of ours, and just a few of our favorite strategies that we use personally we've seen other people use.

00:16:13
Speaker 1: So one of our favorites.

00:16:14
Speaker 2: As well is that sleep and exercise don't take time, They make time because you will be more productive if you are sleeping. The amount of time that you need to sleep and moving your body something reasonable, you know, thirty minutes a day.

00:16:30
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be.

00:16:30
Speaker 2: Three hours a day, but thirty minutes would probably have a massive benefit over doing nothing. So Sarah has made time for well, you have a little you know, the sleep is a little harder, I think for you.

00:16:43
Speaker 3: My problem is those two things are actually exactly at odds with each other. I want three hours a day of activity, and I don't have time to do that and sleep. I'm joking about three hours.

00:16:53
Speaker 1: That would be no. Well, you have run three hours a day. I mean I've seen it.

00:16:56
Speaker 3: That's just I have not a day but on a occasional days as CADI training program.

00:17:03
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's tough.

00:17:04
Speaker 3: I mean, I one hundred percent agree, though everything in life is easier if you've gotten at least kind of what your body's minimum of sleep is. I think it helps to kind of figure out what that is. I know for you it's like seven point four hours on average, right, yes, And for me, I think it's similar. If I am like at that seven hour mark for too many nights in a row, I'm just like by the fourth or fifth day, like, oh my god, like everything is so hard. And I guess I will also go against like conventional sleep advice and just reality check and say, like, you know, it does help to sometimes get like a ton of sleep. I mean, I know you can't like bank sleep, but sometimes I do feel better if I go those few days in a row with just seven and then have a day of like nine, I can feel really really good. So I know that's not what the experts say, but it tends to work for me.

00:17:53
Speaker 2: Well, if it can work in your schedule. I mean, that's the problem is for many people. I think it's harder for that to work if they don't have any flexibility on one end.

00:18:04
Speaker 1: Or the other.

00:18:05
Speaker 2: And you don't most days, but you can sometimes then Sundays.

00:18:09
Speaker 3: My kids now sleep reliably until eight a lot of times on weekends, which you know, when they were little that certainly wasn't the case. And I don't usually run that morning, so if I go to bed at ten, man, that's well.

00:18:21
Speaker 1: And that's the.

00:18:22
Speaker 2: Choice to decide that you are going to prioritize getting your sleep over the weekend, as opposed to the sort of magical thinking people have of like, oh, I'm, you know, gonna have my leisure late at night and then somehow, also magically, all the sleep.

00:18:34
Speaker 1: Will get caught up, and that that doesn't necessarily happen.

00:18:38
Speaker 2: And if you can't, you know if it doesn't work for you to do big chunks of exercise. I mean, I love exercising, Sarah's like clearly mis exercise queen here.

00:18:47
Speaker 1: But you can do little bits.

00:18:49
Speaker 2: I mean you go going for a ten minute walk two times a day, and then you know, jumping around at night or something. You can get to thirty minutes pretty easily, even pretty packed schedule.

00:19:01
Speaker 1: I think you just have to prioritize doing it.

00:19:04
Speaker 2: As opposed to say, checking email in your breaks, You're probably going to be better off having walked than checked email for an extra ten minutes.

00:19:13
Speaker 1: You'll be able to get through more of your emails later if you do that.

00:19:17
Speaker 2: Another one, which we you know it's this is about everything is nuanced, right.

00:19:23
Speaker 1: So I have a general saying that people are a good use of time.

00:19:27
Speaker 2: Now we need to balance that with the idea that sometimes we have to say no to things. Right. We can't say yes to everything, and sometimes especially I think women in particular get asked for a lot of extra uncompensated stuff that we need to be careful about drawing boundaries around. On the other hand, there's also the reality that most relationships are going to be built around a yes, you know that you say yes to doing something with somebody as a friendship or maybe on a professional front, that you great to meet with someone and you actually really hit it off and you come up with good ideas, or you know, you do something for somebody early in your career and then they turn out to be a total rock star later and it's like, Wow, that.

00:20:08
Speaker 1: Was good that that happened, right, you know.

00:20:10
Speaker 2: So I think it's it's obviously something we have to figure out. But whenever I've felt like meeting someone or having a call with someone under that I've has made it through and I've gotten it on the calendar and it's maybe doesn't really go anywhere, I'm like, well, you know, I could have wasted thirty minutes reading stupid headlights online too, So and try to be semi at least accessible. I guess that's my idea.

00:20:32
Speaker 3: Yes, I feel like I'm currently struggling with feeling like requests come at me a lot, But I think that's more in the nature of the stage of life I'm in in my career field. And you're right, I mean, there is something to be said for just being like, if I have the time, I should try to help the best I can within reasonable limits. And so and it's rare that I regret spending time with someone that I know, like even if it's like you know, something for school and getting to know the other parents and things like that.

00:21:05
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:21:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, So saying yes when we can, I mean there's a place for no, for everything, but being yes.

00:21:12
Speaker 1: Strategically as well.

00:21:13
Speaker 2: Okay, always having something you could look forward too. This is a big one. It changes the entire experience of life. I feel like a lot of people get to a certain point in life and realize they need something like a hobby or like nights out with friends, or just something you know in your life that's not necessarily work or caring for family members, but something you're genuinely looking forward to just for its sake. I mean, you schedule like massages every couple of weeks, right, that's a.

00:21:39
Speaker 3: Oh I wish it was ever every month, like every other month, every other month. I love like this is I feel like my when I look at that like monthly calendar spread, I want to see like at least two things that I am like psyched about, and maybe one of them will be like a small trip our family goes away for a weekend and one of them is a massage or a friend date or a that I'm running, like something that's like really really fun for me. And I feel like that tends to be like the view and a month is enough time to like plan it if you're looking at the next month to like plan for stuff like that. I don't necessarily feel like I can fit in something fun and exciting every single day. I mean, although little adventures, I know, little adventures, but on the kind of month scale, I want to have some great stuff to look forward to. And it does keep you going. I mean it's like, why are we doing this?

00:22:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's life for what.

00:22:28
Speaker 2: It's like for I know, I know I totally feel this way too. It's just like if I know I have a cool trip coming up, suddenly the month feels entirely different than if I'm just oh, it feels like such a slog, like there's nothing good going. But the thing is, this is just like they're not sprinkled from heaven, these things that are like you know that you're looking forward to.

00:22:44
Speaker 1: It's not like some people have lives where there's stuff that they are always.

00:22:47
Speaker 2: Looking forward to and somewhere they don't I mean, I understand that there's certain structural differences in people's lives too, but like, we all have the power to reach out to a friend that you like seeing and schedule two things so if one gets canceled, at.

00:23:01
Speaker 1: Least the other is still there.

00:23:03
Speaker 2: Or think about what you genuinely enjoy and figure out what logistics would need to happen for you to do that one day in the next you know, month or two, and then it, Yeah, life feels entirely different.

00:23:15
Speaker 3: It can even be something as simple as like this TV show that I've been waiting for the new season to come out is like this date, and I put it on my calendar, and maybe like I have a friend that likes to too, and we text you. Like, these things don't need to be a plane flight somewhere, but yeah, it can still bring you joy to see. Oh yeah, next Thursday night, like new season of whatever is starting.

00:23:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna text each other about it. It's gonna be awesome. Yeay, yay yay.

00:23:39
Speaker 2: So with that one of the ways we can make time for thinking about what we would enjoy and putting it on the calendar.

00:23:47
Speaker 1: I always am a big fan of Friday planning.

00:23:50
Speaker 2: But whether you plan on Fridays or not, you should plan your life at least in weeks. A week is a long enough time to be holistic, right, so you don't wind up in artificial crunches day to day. But it's also short enough that you have a very good sense of what's going to happen. Like the far future may be unknowable, but next week is like gonna happen like most likely, and the contours of the stuff you've planned is also most likely going to happen. So with that in mind, as you are doing this, figure out what's important for you professionally, of course, but I'm guessing many people already do that. I think it's really helpful to also give yourself two other categories of things that are most important for you in next week, relationships and self. So the three categories career relationships, Self, what would make it a good week for you in terms of your relationships with family and friends, What would make it a good week for you in terms of doing stuff that you particularly find meaningful or enjoyable, and making sure you have some of that happening is again going to make life feel a lot more balanced. I think in a way that's not just about like, oh am, I only working X number of hours per week, right, that's true. Balance is when you feel like there are good things in all spheres of life.

00:25:05
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:25:06
Speaker 3: I love that my categories are like, slightly different but pretty much the same. I do like self, family, which can encompass friends and then work, so basically the same.

00:25:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:25:15
Speaker 2: I mean they weren't random categories. They're the ones that seem like to happen most often, you know, with people like if they're thinking about it. So yeah, yeah, that's it speaking of family. Another you know, this is one that's dear to our hearts here at best of both worlds as a time management thing, because I get blogs and questions and stuff from people all the time about this. But limiting your use of childcare is not a sign that you are winning at time management. It often results in feeling frazzled and behind. And we know that there are all sorts of narratives out there about paid childcare and how it's I don't know, a sign that you're like failing or something. There's one influencer I follow on Instagram that you know, they get thousands of comments on posts and somebody you know, they're expecting like some umptieth child or whatever, and somebody asks, like, you know, why don't you talk about like your childcare, your nanny or whatever, like you could talk about that.

00:26:10
Speaker 1: Maybe's somebody who's read me.

00:26:11
Speaker 2: I don't know, And both she and her husband like responded almost instantly like, well, we don't have a nanny, that's why we don't talk about it. And I was like thousands of comments, why why that?

00:26:21
Speaker 1: Like why?

00:26:23
Speaker 2: And I think it's because there is such this narrative that like if you have childcareer, suddenly you're not doing it right.

00:26:30
Speaker 1: But how is that even possible? Like I don't know.

00:26:34
Speaker 2: Even people who are not in the paid work for us will ask like a relative to watch their kids while they go to the doctor or while they might occasionally visit another relative in the hospital or something.

00:26:46
Speaker 1: You know, it's like you ask other people to watch your kids.

00:26:49
Speaker 2: Like the fact that you are paying somebody who is responsible is not a sign that you fail. Is maybe a sign that you don't have ready, willing and available other care around to do that. I mean, it's just or you know that they have their limits as well. Anyway, point view, that's a soapbox here.

00:27:07
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking about the influencer lifestyle, and if you're a successful influencer, you're like filming videos all day long, and if you have ten children and you don't have any childcare, I actually don't undersdand.

00:27:18
Speaker 2: How that would water We're going back to, like, I mean, this is not the same influencer, but the lady who was at the water park, who was pregnant with like her seventh kid or something said in my heart was full. After the experience, I'm like, how do you keep like three kids from drowning on your own?

00:27:31
Speaker 1: Like I don't believe like your two year old as water safe.

00:27:33
Speaker 2: You know, there had to be other people around, of course, Like you're pregnant, you're running to the bathroom every ten minutes, Like you can't leave seven kids in the water park.

00:27:41
Speaker 1: I don't even know. I only have three kids and I lost a kid at the water park.

00:27:44
Speaker 2: So there are other people around. And maybe it's that they're they're calling them their business assistant, but they watch the kids. Because that says a lot about our idea of female empowerment, Like it's fine to, you know, have employees, but.

00:27:59
Speaker 1: God forbid, they watch your kids.

00:28:01
Speaker 2: Anyway, my point being here that it's not a sign that you're winning at time management, and stop thinking it is.

00:28:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, we understand like that sometimes there are like financial or circumstantial barriers to having full time care. So this is not to say you're stupid if you don't, because no, no, you know, but there are people that could have, perhaps that it wouldn't actually make much of a difference financially or logistically, that have decided not to for those types of reasons. And I mean, if you're enjoying your life, great, but you don't get a prize.

00:28:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, or and like cobbling stuff to gather is often to result in more mental load that will keep you from focusing at your job in a way that maybe just figuring out that you are going to do the high quality care full time and then that will enable you to focus and maybe hopefully improve your finances over time. And certainly people shouldn't feel guilty about, you know, like using full time daycare. I mean, that's not a sign that you're a terrible parent, even though people put stuff out And I remember reading a version of a book that shall go nameless, but talking about how no parent ever wanted to put their kid in daycare.

00:29:14
Speaker 1: I'm like, I did, Like, who are you? Like? Who is this? That was great?

00:29:20
Speaker 2: Toddler daycare is the most amazing thing in the world. Now, if they, you know, can figure out how to stop people from getting respiratory viruses, that's a different matter. But anyway, Yeah, okay, so stingy use bad for all parties. Plan for your future self. Think about your future self. However, again, this is another one that is nuanced. Your future self will not be incompetent, so you don't have to spend your entire life thinking about what you know.

00:29:48
Speaker 1: You're planning for the future.

00:29:50
Speaker 2: You don't have to spend your entire weekend prepping for the upcoming week, for instance. So Sarah, you have a limited set of things you will do for your future self.

00:29:57
Speaker 3: You know what future self is incompat my morning pre coffee self is.

00:30:03
Speaker 1: Totally she is truly incompetent. That's true for all of us.

00:30:07
Speaker 3: So for her, I always set up the coffee because it's ready and then she's so happy.

00:30:11
Speaker 1: So yeah, lunches.

00:30:15
Speaker 3: Lunch prep we usually do do the day before because my kids are fairly in calls over competent in the morning, and I need all my energy to get them out the door rather than also juggling lunch stuff.

00:30:25
Speaker 1: And as you know, we're this is after the back to school episode.

00:30:28
Speaker 3: We're on a fairly tight timeline. We have to get everybody out the door and then fun. Like we talked about those things to look forward to, like that I get excited about on the calendar, like someone has to make those happen, And so that's something I enjoy doing for my future self being like oh we should all see this show or.

00:30:47
Speaker 1: Go out to this restaurant or whatever it is.

00:30:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, you're never going to feel like doing something. I mean, so it's not like if you do it now it's massive time savings for future I don't know, you're not often saving time it around. So the question is is now a good time or are you giving something up by doing it now versus doing it else time. I mean I find that like, actually, if I were making lunches, doing it when I'm already in the kitchen for breakfast would be fine because you can like throw something together while something else is on the stove, versus like taking leisure time when the kids are in bed. The night before to do it, so, but your mileage mayvery Again, just please don't spend your entire weekend making food for the week.

00:31:31
Speaker 1: That makes me sad.

00:31:34
Speaker 2: Create a weekend template because weekends are real time too, and you should think at least a little bit through what you want your weekend to look like by Wednesday or Thursday. And Sarah, you use even a whiteboard for this product.

00:31:48
Speaker 3: Whole week is on a whiteboard, and so Saturday and Sunday are on there. So thank you Aaron Condron for including Saturday and Sunday, because actually sometimes those sorts of things don't like they treat it like there's five days and then like what's there's like two.

00:32:00
Speaker 2: Tiny boxes and the planner like what these are like not real days or Saturdays?

00:32:04
Speaker 1: They are the same box as if these are the same days. I'm like, what agree is this? I don't I don't understand. I don't know Saturday.

00:32:12
Speaker 3: Interestingly, there's a planner company that I've done reviews on that had a stacked and they got so much feedback that this year they came out with a they call it the unstacked version. We're Saturday and Sunday get their own full sized columns. So yes, I totally agree. We just put stuff on the whiteboard. That's happening. I used to send an email, Now you send an email. Maybe I should go back to the email, like there were just so many moving parts. I'd be like, send it to my husband. Now we just kind of have it on the whiteboard, and I feel like things repeat enough that we generally know, and then anything that deviates from our normal is on the whiteboard.

00:32:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I've I'm sending the email and now I'm starting to add the older kids to the email for the weekend, just so they have an idea of what's upcoming. I mean, I can talk to the little kids or they kind of take life as it comes. But especially if the older ones are thinking about doing stuff with friends, I mean tell them like, this is the time that's available. You know, it would be great during this window. This other window is like not great, so please not then.

00:33:11
Speaker 3: But if they ever write you back and say like, okay, great, I'll need a ride to like Jen's house at three o'clock.

00:33:16
Speaker 1: It's it's certain we've had some of that.

00:33:18
Speaker 2: Or just like you know, if I suggest two different activities for a window of time, I will get votes back from uh or sometimes they're a little bit more sullen, like not that, but it's a work in progress.

00:33:32
Speaker 1: I love that.

00:33:34
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, by the way, sort of air you know, weekend cruise director here. But you know, there are a lot of moving parts, and people have lots of different activities, and you'll generally do the stuff that you have to do. But I think if you want to personally have fun amid like five kids doing multiple different activities, then it's kind of got to be thought through ahead of time, because otherwise you won't. And finally, the last one we want to talk about is to embrace your golden hours. This is a little phrase I have started using to describe the Monday to Thursday post work pre bed hours, and I think for many of us they are some of the hardest hours to use well in our entire weeks because you're tired. You are kind of getting everyone through to the end of the day. Many people are like counting the hours to bedtime at that point, and you know, at the after the kids have gone to bed, you're just sort of exhausted, so you do whatever kind of cutter around.

00:34:31
Speaker 1: But it's not no time.

00:34:33
Speaker 2: I mean if you were done with work at like five thirty and went to bed at ten thirty. That's five hours four nights so week. That's twenty hours of your week. It's like the equivalent of a part time job. I mean, so having no idea or no intentions of what one wants to do at this time seems like kind of a waste or at least, you know, not necessarily how we might wish to live our lives, especially if we don't want to be wishing time away, given how precious time ultimately is. So Sarah Taala, like you, you're not a huge fan of the golden hours, well the.

00:35:06
Speaker 3: Idea, because you know, when I reflect on it, that is probably the peace of my life I'm like least satisfied with. So I love that it's getting attention. I just personally don't like see a lot of easy routes around. What makes it hard, And part of what makes it hard is I get up very early, so like I go to bed right after the kids, and by seven thirty eight, I'm like, I hate everything, Like.

00:35:29
Speaker 1: I just I want no stimulation.

00:35:31
Speaker 3: But I also am in a phase of life where my kids have activities almost every single night of the pretty much every single night of the week during those golden hours, and usually I'm doing at least one drive and so like it's yeah, I mean, I guess part of it would be strategically thinking about when I can get breaks from that. And also people pointed out, like for soccer, like hey, you could somehow use some of that time as like you time and figure out if you could take a walk during soccer practice or read a book or you know, things like that, And it's worth thinking through.

00:36:00
Speaker 1: Absolutely. So I'm excited this time is going to.

00:36:02
Speaker 3: Get more attention from you perhaps in the future, but I definitely think it's a challenging one for me personally.

00:36:10
Speaker 1: Well, it's challenging for everyone.

00:36:12
Speaker 2: I mean, that's why I think it needs this rebrand as opposed to being like the Witching Hour or the second shift or some other you know, negative version of it.

00:36:21
Speaker 1: I think for me, I mean, you.

00:36:22
Speaker 2: Know, I understand like when you have like little little kids, it's so hard, but especially as my kids get older, I'm trying to, you know, plot through is there something I can be do that's enjoyable in the course of the evening, And often there is some discretionary time, there's not a ton, But it's like, do I have a book I want to read? And if I do, then can I get myself into my room shortly after ten? Like can I be done with my kid chats by like ten ten or whatever? Ten starter earlier? So I'm done at ten and then you know, ten to eleven, I can basically sit there and read this book that's I'm really enjoying. Can I think about if there is open time in the evening, like do our toad time time outside after dinner? Or if I am at a kid's activity, is there something I'd want to do there that would be enjoyable for me? You know, just putting a little bit more source of pleasure into those hours.

00:37:13
Speaker 1: I like it. I'm excited for more to come perhaps on that to.

00:37:17
Speaker 2: Come to turn that, yes exactly, let us know how do you how do you want to improve your golden hours? And then Sarah, you just had a few you wanted to throw in extra.

00:37:27
Speaker 1: I'll do two quick ones.

00:37:29
Speaker 3: One is that I just think most people generally blanket statement, do not give themselves time to plan because they're so eager to rush into what they're doing. They feel hary, they feel behind, and then it like backfires because if they had taken the time to plan, then maybe they would have been less rushed in the first place. So usually when I convince people to try it, they're like, oh, that really really helps. So give yourself time and permission.

00:37:52
Speaker 1: Almost too relaxed, give.

00:37:55
Speaker 3: Yourself time and permission to spend time planning. And my other one is to make sure you have one calendar somewhere that is just like your ultimate reference and has everything relevant to you on it, because I've run into people who have, like I call.

00:38:11
Speaker 1: It one source of truth.

00:38:12
Speaker 3: I mean that sometimes people will have like, oh, their kids soccer calendar on here, but I use Google Calendar, but I have a paper planner for work, and like, okay, like all those are great, but like there needs to be one where it just has everything. Whether that's Google calendar with different overlays where you can see everything, or on paper, like there are so many different ways to do this, but to have one reliable source that you keep updated is incredibly helpful because it's hard to plan going forward when you don't actually know what's like on your docket to begin with.

00:38:41
Speaker 1: Those are wow, my favorites, no.

00:38:43
Speaker 2: And and the people come up with all sorts of reasons why they can't do that. Of like, well, I don't want my colleagues to see that I'm whatever, have some embarrassing medical condition that you're like getting.

00:38:52
Speaker 1: Treated for or something. I don't know what it is, but like I get it.

00:38:57
Speaker 2: But there are ways to do it, right, So stop making excuses for why you can't have one source of truth and instead look at a way that you could so that you don't miss things, drop balls, you know, or make just like stupid work life things that wouldn't have happened if you'd thought about it right that, Like, you have control over your time. Somebody asks to meet You're like four o'clock Wednesday, and then you're like, wait, have this huge thing in my family at four o'clock Wednesday, which again I could have gone to, but I like now have a crisis that I've got to solve.

00:39:27
Speaker 1: So it's better to have one source of.

00:39:30
Speaker 3: Truth, all right, I'll save the rest for you know, Time management Tips Part two.

00:39:35
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I was talking too much. No, we were good, We were good.

00:39:40
Speaker 3: We just have we have even more to say on this reducts in January or something.

00:39:44
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly exactly all right.

00:39:47
Speaker 2: So question This came from a listener who wrote to Sarah with a planning adjacent question about timing to start a family. She enjoyed the recent episode we had about expanding your family. That's the one we did about having three kids or more. What was curious about your thoughts on deciding when to begin having kids. I know timing does not work for everyone, but it's tough to always, you know, if you're always thinking, well, once I get the next promotion, then I start my family, or once I've saved x y z amount, or once we get our fill of travel with just the two of us.

00:40:18
Speaker 1: So curious your thoughts about this.

00:40:19
Speaker 2: So, Sarah, can you plan the timing of your starting your family?

00:40:24
Speaker 3: I mean, you can decide when you want to start your family, but I guess I would just caution anybody to wait for some very specific time or milestone, like there's probably not once you've achieved x y Z goal, then you're going to think of like ABC goal, and like there's not necessarily going to be an obvious milestone. I mean, there are maybe some exceptions to this, like surgical residency training is notoriously brutal, but at the same time, it's really long, so and maternity policies have improved, So even something like that, like you know, you weigh the pros and cons, but there's not no necessarily a right answer, So I guess I would just embrace the fact that.

00:41:04
Speaker 1: There is no perfect time.

00:41:05
Speaker 3: So if there's like a reasonable time and you're excited about having kids, you might as well start moving forward with it. Fertility is never guaranteed at any point, and I don't like the kind of myths that, like, you know, once you turn thirty five, you're like not gonna have any more babies, Like that's you know, we both had lots of babies after that time frame. But statistically, like a forty two year old is going to have more trouble getting pregnant than a twenty seven year old on average. So keep that in mind to some healthy and reasonable extent, and remember that time is fungible, so if you do have kids earlier, then you have like a longer healthy period later. Like I can think of some people who have teenagers who are younger than I am, and they're going to have an empty nest like before they're fifty, and like, you know, there's a lot of vitality, Like you can travel the world when you're fifty, you can climb mountains when you're fifty. So it's not like, oh, well, we're adventurous people, so we should wait to kids. Like on the contrary, maybe you have kids earlier and then you'll have more like kid free adventurous time. On the back end, Also, big families take time to make, so you know, keep that time frame in mind as well.

00:42:11
Speaker 2: Usually yeah, yeah, no, I think if you're writing this in because you're excited about having kids, so now is a good time, right, I mean I think so, yeah, there's never never a perfect time. If you want more than one kid, two kids, probably starting earlier, we'll give you more space to do that without thinking that you have to have them right on top of each other. If that's something that would be more challenging for you or your body or anything else.

00:42:37
Speaker 1: So yeah, go for it.

00:42:40
Speaker 3: And I don't think there's any financial specific milestone you need to meet either, because you know, the nice thing about kids is like they don't grow that fast and they don't need that much in the beginning. I guess the only thing is to think about your as we've preached before, your childcare plan should be like the first thing you think of more than any other logistical details. So I mean, if you can think of some way that you could handle childcare, then you're ready go.

00:43:05
Speaker 2: For you, or at least you know there's at least one stable job between the two of you, right right, right right, or or you can combine to have a stable job, like each of you has half of a stable job.

00:43:15
Speaker 1: Like maybe that works too.

00:43:15
Speaker 2: I don't know, Yeah, it's probably fine. Yeah, all right, well, Love of the Week.

00:43:20
Speaker 1: I guess we got to do that. Huh. Now we both have to think about it.

00:43:25
Speaker 3: Well.

00:43:25
Speaker 2: I will say these time tracking challenges that I do are definitely Love of the weeks for me because often we get like thousands of people signing up for them at this point, and it's just so cool to think of thousands of people tracking through their time and thinking about where the time is going and recording it and being accountable for this and getting insights into their time. And I've certainly gotten a lot of interesting insight from it. When I ran this time challenge last January, actually had a research or do some work on it, and it turns out that people who track their time for a week feel better about their time than people who don't, Like they feel more satisfied with their time. And you know, maybe that's because you know, if you stick with something for the week, you're the kind of the person who's in charge of things, Like you're with it right, You've got certain sticktuitiveness and planning and all that stuff that maybe people who couldn't stick with it for a week didn't have. But on the other hand, the people who stuck with it for a week had higher scores at the beginning and time satisfaction than everyone else, and their time satisfaction score still rose over the course of the week as they track their time. I mean for two reasons. I mean, one, they saw that they could course correct if something was wrong, like instead of spending three hours on Twitter because you're bored, You're like, I don't want to write that down, and so you do something more fun instead, and then life is better. But it's also that people often see that they are spending their time in really cool ways. There's usually something to celebrate, and that's great.

00:44:54
Speaker 3: Well, I will go kind of low tech because we did mention it briefly, but I love the idea of having like a little five year journal. There are so many different ones out there, but five years is enough time to see a lot of things change, and it's so usually most of them don't have a ton of space for writing, so it could be a quick little ritual where you just write down a highlight and then you can at a glance see what life was like on that day for five years. So I have the one from hobani Sheet, which as this episode's out, you know, Hobanichi season basically begins September first, so you know you can get your order in. You can start your five year journal in twenty twenty four if you'd like. And yeah, it does bring me joy.

00:45:30
Speaker 1: I like it. Yeah, awesome.

00:45:31
Speaker 2: Well, we've been talking some of our favorite time management strategies that we've used that other people use to good effect. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:45:43
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.

00:45:44
Speaker 3: You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.

00:45:51
Speaker 2: Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.

00:45:55
Speaker 1: This has been the best of both Worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more. I am making work and life work together.