Mailbag. Ep 64

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, 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 sixty four. We are talking reader our listener questions this week. We're trying to figure out what we're doing. But to say this episode is first airing. This episode sixty four. This is first airing on October twenty three, which is right before Halloween, a major holiday for anyone with young kids. Sarah, I hope you have ordered your costumes a well ahead of time, well by the time it airs. Let's hope we're recording it on October third. And I feel like you know once the calendar, so I don't really like Halloween, is the thing. I'm sure that people who like Halloween enjoy getting started in September, but I don't feel any need to like draw it out any longer than necessary. But I also need enough time for everything to arrive in the mail. So October first was a little bit of a trigger for me, and I'm going to order everything so we can survive and move on. I don't I just I'm not a big fan. I don't like all the crappy candy we live in this I think I've mentioned it, but it's like the Halloween epicenter of Miami. It's like every kid seems to get busted in for trick or treating and it's like mobs of people, hundreds of dollars of candy just evaporate. And you know, this year, I'm gonna have Genevieve and it's going to be read around her bedtime. She's gonna be tired. I don't know. I'm such a curmudgeon about Halloween really like other holidays. So it's not like I don't like I love Valentine's Day, I love Thanksgiving, I love the Christmas and Hanakha. I love holidays. Get this one. Yeah, are you going to do your non artificial candy again? Or you're wholesome, wholesome candy options, I think. So I think I'm gonna well, I will say, like we gave out glowsticks and like little like stickers and like erasers and stuff. And in addition to our like, I think I got like it's not good as healthy, but it's just like not as artificial and whatever kind of candy. So yes, I think I will do that again. And the glow sticks actually were they seemed well received, they went fast. Yeah, well that's good. And we're on a semi busy road without sidewalks, so like we rarely get many trick or treaders sometimes, like our kids friends will just I mean if they're in their car or something that will stop by. But we just put a basket out in the front and usually that that does the trick, and then we go and trick or treat In areas around us that have more sidewalks, we'd be the people who'd be coming into your neighborhood. We'd be those folks. No, I always have to put on my calendar to remember to get the costumes because yeah, just doesn't occur to me otherwise, And then you wind up having to do whatever is on Amazon and always the one, the thing that the kid wants. Yeah, I know last year there was this whole thing of like my daughter wanted to be shimmer and shine, but she didn't want to be the one that they had a lot of, Like they had shine costumes, you know, in every size, and they had no shimmer. Maybe it's the opposite. I really don't remember, but uh, you know, we could not find a shimmer costume. No, I know, it was just no fun. But uh well, we'll we'll do it. And I think that the three year old will be pretty excited about it this year. So yeah, that's true. Three is like that's the first the first time he can like really totally understand what he's doing, and that'll be fun. And I will say dressing up babies and costumes is sort of yeah. I remember one year. One year we made one of our babies then a lobs. We have this lobster costume, so then the parent can be like the chef or something. So that's that's kind of fun for an armed baby, kind kind of casting. But our elementary school does this huge parade. It's kind of one of the highlights. I mean, you tell new parents at the school, like you should plan on working from home on October thirty first, because you're you're going to be wanting to be there or at least expected to be there, so we're I do take it off of them. I take it off of work so that I can be available. Although they're not allowed to stay the word Halloween at the school for real good based religious reasons. This is the public school because Jehovah's witnesses are not allowed to practice Halloween, and I guess Orthodox Jewish, so I don't know how many of those there are the elementary school, but there must be some because they're not ledged to Halloween. But they do have a it's like a dress as your favorite book character parade on Halloween, so that's sort of yeah. Well, we can't have food for our parties now that that has been banned, so be thinking about I'm going to be running the third graders in class Halloween parties, so I'm gonna have to come up with activities and non food related stuff. You know. That's probably good though, they're going to get plenty of candy. Yeah, yeah, So we thought we might have done We were trying to figure out what we would do with this episode. We had a bunch of different ideas, all of which may be resurrected in the future. We had thought about doing a you know, advice we'd give our new momsselves, like what we did differently kid one versus Kid three or kid four. But maybe we'll do that in the future. But we encourage people to write in if you are part of a if you have a bigger family, you know, things you did differently with your latter children than the earlier children, things you learned along the way. We'd love to have those tips. But we thought, you know, we keep getting all these great questions, listeners sending questions, and if we're only doing one episode, well, we've got hundreds we're gonna run out of we want to get. So we have hundreds. Wow, okay, but so a lot, and so we wanted to get to more than if we're only doing one an episode. It is kind of hard to get to them in a timely manner. So we thought, we just do a mail bag episode. So we're going to go through a couple of questions that we've gotten recently and see what our takes are. I'm very curious to hear what Sarah's takes are on all days, so I think we'll go ahead and dive right in. Our first question is on room sharing. You want do you want me to read better? Sure? Okay, my kids are exactly four and one years old. We want them to share a room. The twelve month old is pretty reliable twelve hour per night sleeper seven p to seven A who that gives me hope for the future, and their four year old is not. There's a lot of playing, which I don't mind, between the time the adult leaves her currently in our room after bedtime stories and the time she falls asleep. At some point, I would like you to move from the sleeping bag next to our bed. It's an elephant sleeping bag by the way back to her room where her brother sleeps in his crib. Any tips are guidance for when the kids can share, how to implement the system, and if it's essential for them to have the same bedtime for it to work. And then she did right that. One option would be to try some various scenarios to see what happened. But the four year old's sleep struggle is her signature issue, and understandably she doesn't have a ton of energy for keeping an open and calm mind about the experimentation. Well, I will start with my answer, since I did go through this fairly recently, although not with a one year old with a little bit. You know, Cameron was older by the time we put them together. But I will say that you can let go of some of your fear because I had a lot of trepidation about putting my two together. I felt like they would disturb each other. I felt like they would kind of turn it into a circus. I was worried they would wake each other up before one woke up at night, and that has not been our experience at all. You know. The difference is our kids do have the same bedtime. However, you know, kids sleep very soundly, especially in the beginning of the night. You know, it's very easy to wake up the child at the end of the night, and too that wouldn't ask our sleep reach their shirt. Yes, about this, but I'm guessing it's just because they're in lighter phases of sleep. But at the beginning of the night, if you put your one year old to bed, it's pretty unlikely that they're going to stir. When you bring the four year old in, and you might be amazed at how much of a rocket the four year old could make without doing much for the one year old's sleep. And it's true you're tired, so it's not fun to experiment, But the only way you're going to find out is to do it. So I mean, I would try to let go of some of your fear. I think that having different bedtimes is fine. I think since you said your four year old is having that as their signature issue, you're at the perfect age, at least in my household, for them to understand and perhaps want to abide by a sticker chart. So maybe make a really simple one where like they get a star sticker if they stay in bed after the cut to bed, and if they get three or four stars, they get a toy. Like you know in that age group unique, it's to be a very simple sticker church, we have much more elaborate ones now most benefits. Yeah, that could be a whole episode anyway. And I will say one other thing, which is that I've heard in some cases that sleeping together sometimes helps. You know, there are some kids who you know they're feel frill of being alone, but when they know there's another person, even if it's a much younger sibling. They may actually enjoy that company, so you never know. It could it could be the opposite of backfire. I would say, don't be afraid. Yeah, I would say you're fortunate, and that the kid who would have the earlier bedtime is the really good sleeper, right, because I don't if you're if your one year old is reliably sleeping twelve hours a night, you know from seven pm on, that kid's not going to wake up. You know, when the four year old comes in and does the four year old's thing, I would say that, you know, we had a note about framing it is that they get to be together, not that they have to be together. They're like, you know, this is the way our mommy and daddy want our own time, like get out of our bedroom. It's more that they get to be together. And I would frame it even as the four year old being the special helper, right, Oh, you're being my special helper and showing your little brother or sister how to be a good sleeper, even if this is in fact exactly the opposite of what is actually happening with the two of them. So we have some room sharing. I mean this the reality of four children is that's often going to be the case unless you have an incredibly huge house. Our eleven and nine year old boys share a bedroom, which sounds like it would be perfect, like theoretically perfect. The one issue that they're different kids. They kind of have different sleep needs. I think theoretically the nine year old and my three year old are more similar and in the long run, would be better roommates. But there's that age gap, and right now the three year old is starting to sleep much much better. I mean, it is just a night and day where it was a year ago. But I'm still a little worried about that. So I totally understand the not wanting to mess around with something and when it's when sleep is on the line. I kind of hope that the way we have it set up, there's two bedrooms for the boys that are connected by a bathroom, and I have this hope that the three of them will arrive at various solutions as they get older that may be constantly changing, but that the three of them can work those out together so that, you know, maybe they'll sleep in different arrangements, maybe those will be fluid on different nights. You know, maybe they'll decide to have all three of them in room and turn one of them into like a playroom or study room or game room or something like that. I'm kind of open to what they suggest. But right now we have the nine and eleven year old together. They actually were together for the first time when we lived in New York City and we had a two bedroom apartment, so they kind of had to be together. And when we were first moving the baby out of our room, I was really worried about it same reason. You know, he wasn't as good a sleep as this person's one year old, and I was, you know, is he going to wake every month up? Because the truth is, you know, my oldest slept through everything. It didn't matter. So like kids are, kids are kind of remarkable that way. And so you know, it worked or maybe it won't work, and which case you might have to consider moving or sometimes create a solution like well, I've heard of people putting their infants or toddlers converting a closet space into her bedroom because they don't actually need a lot of space. So you know, you could always do something that seems a little crazy but actually works. All right, I mean, let's move on to question too. So this is about being a type A person and how that interacts with the reality of children. So this woman writes, I am the first time mom who just returned to work, and listening to the best of both worlds podcasts is getting her through. I'll work grateful to hear that. Thank you so much, she says. I'm definitely struggling with the fifth trimester. That's the phrase from Lauren's Smith Brodie, who was a guest before and postpartum anxiety. I am breastfeeding and pumping, so that is adding stress because I want it to go so well. I think by listening and she wrote this to Sarah, I wouldn't add that you might be a type A personality like myself. I was wondering how you deal with being a type A personality and relinquishing control as part of my anxiety. I like to control things and motherhood does not allow for this. I am trying to learn to go with the clob but it is difficult, and being a working mom is forcing me to try to be more open. But I am still struggling. All right, Sarah, what do you want to say? I wonder how she knew. Yeah, I would describe myself that way. For better or for worse. But you know, the more kids you have, the less control you get to keep. Actually, I will say, my wonderful mother in law said something like, you know, ever since you've had Jenimie, if you're actually more relaxed than you you ever were, And that was I was kind of like, maybe it's just you. At some point you have you just have to become that way. It's out of necessity. I still I think I tend to just choose my areas of control. I mean, as you know, just like you. I definitely find nursing and pumping to be something that I am dedicated to and somewhat control freakish about, although I still set limits on that to keep my own sanity in check. I might control things that aren't harmful of control, like you know, setting goals of getting in self care, things like working out or you know, writing on the blog or trying to get my patient notes done. But I mean, I think I think that the fact that you're thinking about this is helpful already, because the reality is that things like you know when your baby sleeps or when they reach certain milestones, or you know what your time is going to look like if you don't have childcare, or like, for example, you know you can't you can't freak out because your child won't map if you don't have childcare and you thought you were going to do something like I might have done that when I had Annabelle, but you know, you don't win. It's kind of like being in a traffic down, Like you can sit there freaking out that you are late, or you can just be like, well, this is happening, because you have to realize in certain situations that ruminating over something is only going to add to the stress and not provide any benefit. So I think continuing to think about where your focus is and really looking to question your own anxiety about you know, where it needs to be and where where it's more productive to focus those efforts is helpful. And maybe you should just have more kids because certain things do start to be less important sometimes than they might the first time around. And like I would, I would, I would hazard to guess that even things like my first grader's homer projects, which are sort of a source of stress, won't be by the time I have to deal with them, that there are time around. Yeah, I would say that's probably true. I'm not type at all. I was joking that I just play one professionally. But having lots of kids definitely helps. Not that I'm saying everyone needs to have three or four kids, but there's so much you sort of recognize that isn't in your hands. They are their own little people, and I mean this makes sense if we think about ourselves. I mean, you don't view yourself as an extension of your parents, and you certainly believe that you have agency apart from your parents, and you probably remember having agency as a kid as well, and so they are not you. They are their own little people. You can certainly guide them in certain things, but ultimately they will be who they are going to be. And I think when you sort of recognize that that you can kind of relax and enjoy them for who they are, because often they're very cool little people who are different from you, and that's great. I think it's always good to ask yourself why you are doing things and what stories you are telling yourself, and that if you are choosing to make life harder, that you have a very good reason. Because there's no perfect way to raise children. I mean, aside from loving them, feeding them, you know, making sure their physical needs are met. There are infinite variety of ways. I mean some are culturally specific. I mean we went and visited you know, parents and I don't know the rainforest, and we're still like a try that they'd be doing it entirely different and yet their kids are going to be fine for their culture. I mean, this is just there are many, many ways, and I think recognizing that helps a lot. So just always as yourself, why am I doing this? Is this helping? If it's making my life harder, do I have a really good reason for that? But also, she used the word anxiety a few times in this letter, which if she sees that in herself. You know, we've talked about in the past on this podcast that there's nothing wrong with getting professional help and maybe this is just a time of life that would be good to see a therapist for a while and see if that might help you work through some of those issues. Yes, totally agree, All right. Our next question comes from somebody who wants to talk about fresh starts, So this is more of a career question. She says, I'm interested in both of your perspectives on the topic of changing jobs and fresh starts after a few years working. I'm switching companies for the first time in a few weeks. Very excited and she's excited about it's more senior role in line with her career goals, comes with a significant increase in compensation yay. She's also this is the first time she's starting a job as a seasoned professional as opposed to a fresh out of school nubie, which is what she was the last time. She's in her late twenty lives with her husband. They enjoy traveling, reading, cooking in her spare time. No plans for kids yet, though she notes her employer has on site childcare, so something she's thinking about in the future. She's very ambitious and thinking of starting an MBA in the next few years and working hard. She also likes flexibility and autonomy in her schedule, so in short, she wants to use this opportunity of a new job to reset and, as she says, think about how I build my career at a new company as well as my time in day to day schedule. I'm thinking about things like establishing a networking lunch routine at my new job, building in time for walking or working out into my day, dedicating Friday afternoons for planning sessions, etc. I'm a big believer in the beginning if I intend to continue, It's hard to change routines once they're established. So what do you guys think if you had an opportunity to reset, like perhaps after Starah's recent maternity leave, how would you use that? What would you think about starting, stopping, or continuing anything you've fallen into doing at work that you would avoid if given a second chance. That's Sarah. We were kind of laughing about your maternity question, and I love the train of thought. But for all the people like me, you know, if they've recently headed back to work after maternity, that's not as fresh as a start as you might imagine, because you're not feeling fresh in ninety nine percent of cases. So I think I love the question. I love that she's thinking of it, but it postpartum life is maybe not totally the time. However, I think that just by asking this question and putting it out there, you know, she's already set herself up for a success. And I was immediately brought to mind one of Gretchen Rubens's like habits have it I don't know tenants, which is something like the strategy of the fresh start, and yes, a new job is a perfect time to think about what you might want to do differently. Now you ask specifically, what would we think about starting, stopping, and what would we potentially do differently. I think all of your ideas are fantastic. I agree with building in some networking because it can be one of those as we just mentioned on another episode, you know, important but not urgent things that falls by the wayside, and if you don't have a regular way to do it, then you might not. So I love your idea of like, you know, go out to lunch with a new person every week, or make sure to attend at least one happy hour a month, so building in that networking. Another idea would be to meet with a mentor in like for regular check ins. That's something that I've actually done ever since I started at my job, and it's been incredibly helpful. Plus I just really like her, so it's nice seeing her every month on a scheduled basis. Perhaps setting up some like learning some reach learning goals, like you know, if there's something some skill that you'd like to develop, think about like, oh, I'd like to have this expertise by this time. And finally, I will mention, since you are kind of moving up in the world, setting some boundaries because your job may come with a little bit more twenty four to seven expectation, and you need to figure out where those walls need to be for you. Do you want to have there to be Is it possible for there to be sometimes that are protected and off the grid, and how we manage that. So I think thinking through that prior to starting it's a good idea. But I'm excited to hear Lara's ideas as well. Yeah. No, I think fresh starts are great for establishing new habits because, as you said, it is easier to start something new than to convince everyone to do it differently once you've been doing it some way for a while. Not that you can't, I mean, anyone is listening that you don't have to change jobs in order to get a fresh start or to change things and expectations at work. So you know, it's always on the table to renegotiate, but it often is easier when you're coming in for the first time. So you know, one thing you might think with your daily routine in terms of your commute and all that maybe you can build in exercise or you know, breaks during the day in terms of getting physical activity. If you're the kind of person who everybody knows just we'll be going outside for a walk here and there, then it won't seem strange when you're doing it. It's just the kind of thing you do. Then people will come to expect it. You might think about using the new routine to build in like some personal good habit like journaling or meditation or any spiritual practice as you're into. If you sort of kind of assume flexibility from the start, you might be surprised to see what people will be okay with, you know, if you hopefully that was part of the negotiation sort of you know, understanding what is a complete do not ever do at your company, but what is a bit more like some people do some people don't. Maybe be a little bit more on the side. We're going to be the person who does it. One thing I would say is make sure that people don't expect that you respond to everything instantly, because that is going to be a very hard thing to maintain for your entire life at the company. If they're always like, oh, yeah, she's the person who responds to all emails in two minutes, Like you don't want to be that person who responds to all emails in two minutes. Don't let that be the defining thing about you. You know, obviously you want to respond to your manager and to the people who report to you. But making sure people know that it won't be instant is good for setting those original expectations. But yeah, no, I think it's that you jobs are always exciting. I don't know what I would, you know. I always think of having a fresh start when the school year starts each year, because then the routine changes. One thing I've been good about do I get the elementary school kids on the bus and then I come in, And that's what I think of as the start of my work day. And I can maybe answer emails here and there prior to that in the course of the morning routine, but I really can't. The way I've set things up, start real work until about eight thirty five eight forty. But if I just build that in and understand that that's the case, then I'm usually fine with it. And that also means that I'm not generally bringing our three year old to preschool. But I've decided I can't. I'm not going to keep pushing the morning forward to then starting at nine fifteen. I really would like to start at eight thirty five as opposed to nine fifteen. And so far that's been good. You know. Just having that routine helps with not making it a question every single day. All right, We've got one more question for this episode, and I will read it. This person writes in that she appreciates our discussions on mom guilt and found it helpful, so thank you for that. Her question is related to that, but is a little different. She says she gets to a point of burnout or imbalance, mostly in her work life, and then tends to take a break and slack for a while. She feels that she has a hard time bouncing back to productivity after the slacking time, and it doesn't really happen until things have piled up to the point where she has to kind of go into like overdrive work mode, and then she burns out again and gets into the behind schedule again. So out that cycle continues until it's not working for her. She says she is in a client services sector. I mean, I can imagine this being it's funny like when she described that I was like, because she, you know, doing a book deadline and then she's doing nothing and procrastinating. But no, it's more of a public client services. She's in accounting, and she says she gets a lot of requests that are quote out of the blue, but they're not really out of the blue because she knows what's coming, just that some of the timing is flexible and unpredictable. She's writing that she has found out with a lot of productivity has to try to combat this, but she still feels that nothing works totally for her, and she's an information overload and writes, my task list is growing faster than it's being taken off. She's tried to build in some buffers, and she does still deal with the sleepless sleeplessness that little kids bring. But she's really looking to try to break that cycle of kind of overdrive and then underperformance, to recover and then overdrive. So what do we have for her? I was stressed out just reading this question. I sort of know what she means a little bit. I mean, there are definitely times when I get to relax more and catch up, and sometimes it takes I have to recover. So like Okay, So for me, for an example that would parallel this is when I'm on call, sometimes I just can't keep up and then everything piles up. But I'm also really tired, so when call is over, I kind of do nothing, and then everything kind of does pile up until I'm forced to then catch up again. Now my situation, thankfully, I'm in a place where I typically can catch up, and you know what, working part time has been helpful for that. But I can imagine a scenario of kind of what she's saying. So I think, first and foremost, she needs to figure out like, maybe there is too much work. I mean, if she's always, if she's so frequently getting to a point of overdrive that's burning her out that she has to take a complete restaurant and then get further behind. Maybe there's just too much work in the first place, and she needs to take a look at that. Is there some way does she need an assistant? Is there something she could automate this or something she could outsource? Is there a specific time on the weekend that she could dedicate to catch up? But then be like, that's it, that's the amount of time I'm going to do And then you know, I'm done, So I'm really curious about, you know, what this really looks like. I do think she needs to be honest with herself, and perhaps this is a time for time tracking, look at a week of work in that busy season and see if her expectations for herself are just unrealistic. I mean, if she's not able to get enough to sleep and truly can't get things done, then it may be time to just to again figure out how she could possibly reconfigure. Now, the other thing that came to mind was that you know, expect the unexpected. She even knows. She said these requests come out of the blue, but she put that in quotes because she knows they're always going to come. I mean, we have a similar thing where we'll have patients that you know, when we're on call, we'll have to book into emergency slots, but you know, they're real slots. It's not like it's a surprise because we're always going to get them. So I think she can do the same thing, which is like have empty time that is dedicated to just like random quote emergency requests, or she could just call it random requests to take the surprise element out of it. And if she's lucky enough to have a week where man that block didn't have to go to emergency requests, then awesome. She can do some kind of you know extra thing personal development, you know, brainstorm, some more workles. But my gut when she describes her job is that she probably will fill up that time. And you know this again, tracking may allow her to know exactly how much time those random requests take on average, so she can really hone that. Yeah, so I kind of feel you. I think your situation sounds really really challenging, and I bet you're doing a fantastic job, you know, overall, because it sounds like you're an incredibly hard worker. But I agree it's you. It sounds like that you need to delve into breaking this cycle a little bit, because it doesn't sound like a fun way to live. I mean, I think some of this is just the nature of accounting and that there are busy seasons before various deadlines, whether those are the audit deadlines, or if you're in you know, tax division, that certain deadlines associated with that and nobody gets you all their stuff until close before the deadline anyway, or you know you're going into audit companies or do it right before the deadline. So it's partly the nature of accounting that there are busy seasons and then there are less busy seasons, so there is going to be an element of that regardless, you know. That said, I think it helps to, as as Sarah said, have these time blocked off for the urgent requests because they will come in as the same as physicians like having one one operating room coming in for emergencies, like you book the others but have one open. So there's some slack to deal with these things that come up. Because it's not surprising that things come ou up. You don't know what they will will be, but they are known unknowns. You know, some emergency request will come in. I think it also helps to you know, if you do have sort of long term things projects you need to do breaking them down as much as possible into doable steps, and you know, assigning yourself a certain amount of work for the day. And this is one of the things I've learned to do with my books. Right that you mentioned book writing is like was she racing toward a deadline on books? One of the reasons I have been able to avoid really racing on deadlines for books is that I, you know, outline them. I have a deadline, I assign myself a certain amount for each chunk of time before then I build in a buffer at the end. So let's say that I had a manuscript do December first, I would probably tell myself that my deadline was November first. Let's say that it was eight chapters. I would then, you know, have made sure to start September first, so I'd have the eight weeks and each chapter would get a week. I'd probably plan on Monday and Tuesday doing some of the you know, research and basic writing, Wednesday and Thursday to go back in and edit, Friday being a mop up day in case something went wrong with the first four days. And so then each week check in, have I done my chapter? And if i haven't, well that's a problem because I've got to go to the next one. But then I've got that buffer of a month at the end as well to cover that. So, you know, I different people work in different ways, but I am that kind of person. And so if you are getting stressed out by the cycle of working right before the deadline, you might think about trying to break stuff down into doable tasks and assigning them far, far far ahead of time. If it's that other people aren't getting you stuff, then you need to be more proactive about reaching out to them for the stuff, because you can't assume that they will remember at a time that is convenient for you. So just you know, give them a call say like, yeah, I've carved out some times to work on this and I would love to be as helpful as possible to use. So if you could get me act by why, I would really appreciate it, and the follow up to make sure that you get it. I also wonder I just came up with a couple other thoughts while we were talking. Because you know, she mentions her young kids and not sleeping that kind of thing. I'm wondering if she could gift herself some sort of extra support, like you know, extra childcare during certain seasons. And also because she tends to kind of burn out, to make sure she plans in some true vacations and rest time so that she doesn't struggle getting back to work, because she mentioned that, Like, I wonder if it's sort of like she never gives her self permission to truly slack because there's an element of guilt about it, and then therefore she has trouble returning. I don't know. I think a little bit more intentionality in the rest periods and the active periods rather it. You know, she mentions the word reactive. Well, it shouldn't be active, like this is this is your job, Like it's just it's just active and that's okay. And yeah, I'm wondering if she just needs to be more intentional about the cycle and see if she can actually make it work for her rather than something she's fighting and feeling guilty about. Yeah, I think the guilt is definitely part of it. And when you know you've got so much work coming up, it it makes you feel like, oh, I shouldn't take a break because I've got all this work coming up. But then that doesn't do you any favors because then you can't get going on the work because your brain is refusing to function. So definitely take breaks. They actually make you more productive. It's hard to believe, but that I promise you it's true. So think about things that will add to your energy levels and how you can build them in. So shall we go to our love of the week now? I guess we've had all Q and A for this episode, so and now for the Q and I just so Yeah, my heald of the week is iOS twelve, which is the new Apple operating system. Laura, have you installed that on your phone yet? I got the note that I'm supposed to, but I just haven't yet. Well this is a good one for a few reasons. First of all, my phone was crashing a lot, but I had read that this update was going to fix it, and so far it has. It actually seems to be faster, So I really applaud apples efforts there because you know, there's been rumors and again this is I'm not like, you know, spreading libel or something, but that you know, they make their devices lower, they get you to buy a new device, but this would go I guess that because it's definitely working better and it has a cool feature, well cool to me, called screen time. So if you do want to be able to see how much time you're spending on Instagram and actually set limits with a app built into your phone, it's there now. So yeah, I'm happy with it. I was twelve, all right, Well, then I won't put off updating. I always like just put off on. I don't feel like dealing with it right now, all right, So my love of the week is paul flowers. So I really I love as the leaves change color around here. Some of the flowers are still going. Obviously there's moms, which people decorate their yards with moms, and that's really pretty at this time of year. But many of the roses are still blooming. So the roses are nice to have, like both pink and then bright red and orange with the leaves and the asters. The fall asters come out. We have these beautiful michel Moss daisies that come out around now in their purple flowers that the last ones to bloom in the yard. But they add a nice touch of color as around well and really say that it's fall, so you know, it's a more mature color landscape, I guess than early spring, which is just everything bright and blooming but very beautiful. And I like seeing the different different seasons and the colors they bring. So I'm really enjoying the fall flowers right now. You always make me so jealous with your season stuff. Yeah, and then in January when I'm like scraping ice off my car, you can just laugh all right, well, this has been best of Both Worlds episodes sixty four. We've been doing an all listener mail bag this week. We'll probably do more of these type of episodes in the future, so please keep sending in your questions. We love them. Gives us a great idea of what people want to hear about, so we'll be back next week with more I'm 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 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.