2020 Goals!

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. 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 one hundred and twenty six, which is airing first on the very last day of twenty nineteen, and so it's fitting that in this episode we will be talking about our twenty twenty goals. We are big into goal setting here at Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I both get into this concept. So when do you usually get around to setting your goals and how do you go about doing it? Sarah, I usually start sometime in the beginning of November. You guys all know my Quintiles method, or at least many of you do, where I divide the year up into five segments instead of the typical four quarters, and the fifth quintile is from November first, so it starts right after Halloween, so it goes through the whole holiday season, and the theme of that quintile is just kind of celebrating and reflecting. So it's a natural fit for goal setting. So I'd say I start around then, and it kind of fits in with filling in my next year's planner, kind of deciding the big things I want to do for my year. And I've changed, like I've done different structures to my goals, and I guess I did do them sort of more generally this year, but you have a more structured approach. Yeah, So we're recording this ahead of time. We're trying to get our beginning of the year episodes done and have them in the hopper for baby planning purposes here. So I have to say that knowing we were recording this episode ahead of time gave me the kick in the pants to actually sit down and set my twenty twenty goals. I might have let it linger for a little while otherwise, but I tend to do this in quarters and corresponding with the normal Q one, Q two, Q three, Q four that people are familiar with the three months, and I got this idea from a woman named Angela Gia Kim many years ago. She was it runs a small business and had pitched an article on goals setting in different ways, and I thought it was a great idea. I wrote about it, and then I modified it to take my quarterly goals and use the rubric that I do for many things in terms of planning, thinking about life, three spheres, career, relationships, self. So the result is that I tried to set twelve goals generally that are one in each of those three categories, for each of the four quarters. I did that last year. I enjoy the process of doing it, but it doesn't totally fit with my method, where I actually like to sit down each quarter or quintile and think about my goals, and they often change because sometimes if I didn't do something in a given quintile, then maybe I want to do it in the next one. So I think I'm better off just making big goals for the entire year and then kind of refining things at the beginning of each segment of the year. But you go for the whole thing at once, does that ever backfire? Where you know you get to quarter four. But it looks like most of your goals don't depend on the prior goals, which is smart. No, they don't, which is which is good. And I mean the honest too that I'm not even sure we had to revisit our goals at some point in the year. I'm not sure that I've been doing all of them, which is of course the problem of setting these far ahead of time. But you know, I mean, enough of them are things that are reasonably within my control that it doesn't necessarily twelve was not a crazy number of goals. I mean, it's actually pretty restrained, I would say. And I actually like the quarter system because it allows me to think about the goals for the year. But no, I don't have to do anything about most of them right away. Like so I might think, oh, it'd be fun to do well, I mean, just hint hint of what's coming, like a race or or you know whatever else, But I don't have to do that immediately. Like it's not like scratches your itch. It's something it's to say, I'm going to do it, but not now. And I like that. I think the phrase not now is great for many things in life, like yes, this is a wonderful thing, but not now. Well, I'm sure you're familiar with David Allen's Someday maybe list. I find that very satisfying to have certain things that are I don't want to forget about, so they get parked somewhere and then you can do them later or not. But I guess the quarters it kind of means I'm going to do them. I don't want them so vaguely I want to do them this year. So yeah, that's cool, That's how I do it. Well, I think we should go ahead and dive into yours. Why don't you talk about what is on the docket for Sarah in twenty twenty, what she hopes to accomplish. Yeah, and in case you want some visuals, maybe I will like post a picture. I emailed Laura pictures of my planning in her journal. It was her specific goal. Why I type this out when I can just send you the pictures of what I wrote out so nicely? So I just kind of divided things into different realms, and so instead of going by time, I just went by kind of thing in my life. So the first realm was the blog and the podcast, which I did combine into one big thing. And I still would like to complete my proposal and shop it around. Whether it gets accepted, who the hell knows. That doesn't matter. I just want to try to do the part you can control exactly exactly. And I definitely want to launch my newsletter, which I have the platform all set up and I have kind of all the parts in place, and I've been looking and other newsletters to see what I like and don't like, and I think I just wanted to share some more private or juicy tidbits that I don't necessarily want on the blog. Yeah, and I want to maybe I do want to build an email list because that would help with part one, and I just think it would be fun projects. So I definitely want launch that next year. So that's for that realm. I don't have specific podcast goals yet, Laura, but we'll work on that. Other than to grow, which we definitely we want to grow our audience home, I don't really have a lot of goals. I do feel like I would like a more systematic approach to I just feel like the kids' clothes are like insane, and I have no systematic way of dealing with theirs or mine, and I'm still enticed by the whole capsule wardrobe thing. So I would like to audit my own closet in their closet each quintile. But that's my only home goal, which is pretty much aiming low. But that's how I feel about home, and by home, I don't mean like family stuff. I mean like my dwelling, my interiors or at least you only have one dwelling now right, well, hopefully by the time this airs, Yes, okay. My next domain, of course is work, and I would like to publish at least one poster and that's already in the works. I am possibly going to also apply to do a presentation at a meeting. And I put master time blocking because I still feel like this is a skill. It really is new. What does this mean to you when you say time to me? It be the discipline of keeping my stupid email, like like to be sitting there and actually get my sort of longer, more concentrated task on blocking the interruptions in a purposeful way, because I'm getting better at it, like I see myself improving it, but I really have never had to do that. Patient notes are different. You put your it's a different. It's just my tasks are more nebulous and sometimes require a lot more deeper concentration than the sort of superficial cranking out not not the patients is superficial. It's not at all, actually, But it's just a totally different brain space. That's right forward, administrator. It's complex, concrete, and now it's complex but abstract, and I need to like make times where I'm just not interrupted at all, either by my own things or by other people. So that's what I'd like to do. And there's this physician coaching program that we're going to potentially train the residents in and then learn how to offer some coaching for them as well that I'm thinking about. So that's sort of nebulous too. I had a bunch of question marks and my work, Okay, this is like my quintitle goals or where it gets real of like this is what I actually want to accomplish. I think of this as more just like what brain spaces do I want to be in this year? Should I keep going and we'll go to you. Okay, fitness, No, I don't have one specific one. I'm just going to pick something new each quintile. So I just mentioned that there will be fitness goals year's I might join in your goals, so I'll talk about that family. I just want to do a kid day with each of the big kids. I'm not sure Genevieve needs her own kid day yet, probably when she's four, Potinchel three or four. I want to completely pay off the When I say pay off the house, you'd say, but you sold your house. I'd say, well, yes, but it actually cost money to sell our house in this particular climate. So we want to have that all paid off by the end of twenty twenty, and we are aiming for at least in my mind, I'd like to have at least a twenty percent savings rate. So this is not a financial podcast. I'll leave that to my friends at how to Money. But there you go, there's some numbers for you. And then my personal list. I'm going to do something a little different. Last year I made a summer reading list, and I really enjoyed that just having this kind of list to go off and summer was all filled with very light, juicy, mostly Novelly type stuff. So I'm going to make a list for each quintile and kind of curate my own list for each one, because I think what happens is I get kind of stuck. I don't know what's read next. But if I put the four thought in, then I tend to plow through the list. So I try it for the whole year. How many books do you think are going to get on each quintiles? I would think eight to ten. I mean, that's a that's what I read this year, though, I mean I think I counted up that I was something like thirty eight books, and it's like, you know, so I'm not aiming for a lot more books, but I just I think I'd like to do that kind of list form for the whole year and see what happens, and then I want to get I'm thinking about doing like many petties monthly, because I kind of do them sporadically and then every time I do them, I'm like, why didn't I just schedule this? And I'm thinking about a massage like subscription it's going to say prescription is late, and then finally I'm going to try to get my pm D D issues all ironed out. Yeah, that's that's quite the goal for the year. I mean, is that do you have specific steps you're going to take for that. You're just in a general you're to solve all all problem number of things. I may try, increading hormonal like who knows, wait, I got to experiment. Maybe i'll report back. Maybe that will be something for my private newsletters subscribers. When you're emailing thousands of people, it's not really all that private. Just maybe it won't. It'll be intimate. I don't know. We'll see. It'll be like a vetting process. We'll see who I let it now. I'm just kidding. Anybody can subscribe. Anyone can subscribe. That's true, all right, So I'm excited for you to reveal yours of some good stuff in here. All right, Well, I guess i'll, you know, get through at least the beginning before we need to take our break. So I do mine in quarters as we said, so Q one in the work category. I want to get my next non fiction book locked in yay, So hopefully you know that will we'll move forward on the relationship front. I intend to have a baby and I daily at some point in early January, and as part of that focus on becoming a family of seven, because there's always transition, you know, helping the older kids adjust to this, just the things that we'll need to change about the rhythm of our family life as we become a family of seven. So that will be a pretty big relationship goal for that. In the self category, I want to get outside for twenty minutes a day. And I know this is probably easy if you're in Florida, it is less so when you are in the cold, northern, dark climate up here, and also with a newborn, it can be very easy to become house bound. But I would like to not be house bound. So you know that means handing the baby over somebody else for a little bit, going outside, just in the backyard or whatever. But I would like to get outside. And I did this as a goal actually last year and it was a very positive thing for winter in general, which can be depressing, but fresh air as a natural mood booster. So I intend to do that. On the Q two front, the work, I guess this could be a relationship thing, but I want to manage my childcare situation to support my return to work with an infant plus for older kids, and I know that it's going to require some more childcare than we have currently, and so I'm thinking about what that will look like, what the ideal set up would be, but what will most make it possible for me to still feel like I can push forward with things, which is something I would advise anyone coming off maternity leave to do. So I'm giving that advice to myself. The relationship front, I want to have our vacations book for the year. We're going to take our first one ideally in mid April. Pretty low key, but we would like to at least do that, but plan them all. We've got tentative plans now, but I want them all booked at that point. Are there any Miami plans? Well, if you want to invite me, I could come down. We may wind up doing another Orlando extravaganza. We'll see. It's uh, you know, if that's what the troops like. Sometimes you just have to give the troops what the troops want. And then in the self front, we have tentative plans to wind up in Germany, if I can talk about this now, possibly with friends, possibly with podcasting friends, lots of podcasting friends. But yeah, I'm planning to go to the Bach Festival in Leipzig. Leipzig, how are you saying that Leipzig, Germany, which is where Bach is from. I'm a big fan of box music, particularly his choral music, and there is an annual festival there and this is the year that it's going to get pulled off the bucket list and done. So we've been talking goals. Sarah has shared her broad goals for the year, which she will refine through her quintile system. I have been sharing my quarterly goals, which I set in the three categories of work, relationships, and self, so Q three. On the workfront, I want to do a marketing push on speaking. Most of my speaking business has grown fairly organically with people. Generally, what happens is people watch the video of my TED talk and then decide if they want to hire me or else. They've been at a conference where I spoke and want to bring me to their group and that's been awesome. But is now four years post TED who it will be in Q three and so it's probably time to actually get off my button do some actual marketing myself. So I'll do that. On the relationship front, I want to do mommy with all four big kids, and summer is a good time to do this. Q three is July through October, and usually it tends to happen in July and August because June is a busy speaking month, so it's better not to schedule it for that. Plus we don't get out of school till mid June late June. Anyway, on the self front, I don't know if this truly fits in the self category, but I want to execute on and embrace a housing decision whatever, so all the way in Q three, So this baby's going to be like a big baby by the time you have embraced your think that works because the baby can be in your room before that. So yeah, well we actually we have moved people around, so Ruth and Alex are going to be sharing for the first six months or so of the of the baby's life, and then the baby will be in Alex's room by you know, as that as his room, and then our two big boys still share. But if we renovate the house, then that project will start probably in September. If we move, it would probably take us at least that long to close on a house and get the renovations done there too, So I mean, there's no way this gets solved before Q three of twenty twenty anyway, so I will embrace my housing situation, whatever it turns out to be, and just try not to think about it too much and stew over it anyway. Q four Work. I want to get this novel i've been working on done and out into the world in some capacity. I wrote a draft of a novel during National Novel Writing Month twenty eighteen that I tentatively called The Norwegian Secret to Enjoying Winter, which is a playoff a blog post I wrote at one point that was about the upsides of winter and all this, and I turned it into a novel and I've been revising it ing Q four of twenty nineteen, so you know, I'll keep revising it. I like it. I don't know if anyone else will. But I can always self publish these things and distribute it to my email newsletter list, so that's the upside of having one. And finally, relationships. I want to do a short family leaf peeping trip. This is not an official vacation. It's probably gonna be like a day trip or weekend trip. But I had such a good time doing our cherry blossom visiting in March of twenty nineteen. I got so into it. I took so many photos. When we went to Washington, d C. For the cherry blossoms, I wound up buying a cherry blossom painting by one of my favorite artists. Like I really got into it. It's now hanging in my bedroom, so you know it's I always love autumn leaves, and so I want to really make a trip out of it. Go somewhere gorgeous, really focus on seeing the leaves. Probably happen in mid to late October, given how the leaves go. That's so funny. We were You don't know if you saw my travel lisp, but we like have I have similar plans. I think we're going to do a very short weekend in the Berkshires with my friends from college because we're going to go near where our college is. And one of them has having twins, so she's gonna bring her twin she's due right when you're due. And then the other one has a baby Jenevie's age, so we're gonna have a little baby toddler fun trip with with the big kids and Josh and everything too. So yeah, that would be beautiful. I mean mountains and leaves, I mean we don't have that done here. So yeah, I'm trying to think we're I mean, the Poconots are obviously pretty. We could go there. We could do like Upstate New York. We could go to the Blue Rich Mountains if we want to go a little later. I mean, there's obviously there's many places we can go. It's just a matter of doing it, like booking a place and all that good stuff. But on it and then the self category. Now this is perhaps ambitious, but the Philadelphia Marathon is here every year in November, and so it would be a relatively easy one to sign up for. And then I could decide, you know, did I truly want to do it or not? Since I wouldn't be out any travel or need to make plans around that. So what I think I would do is start training for the full and then evaluate and see how it goes. I put with this one. My goal is to run a marathon in the self care category for Q four, but I will accept a half if it looks like a half is more reasonable, which is possibly what might end up happening. I mean, I've done many half in that timeframe after a baby. I've never done a full in that time. I've actually none have not done. I've done for four foals, but none since having any children. And that's why I'm sort of intrigued by the idea of doing it. But I will be like, I'm a little tired thinking about doing a fun I mean, so I did a full after having Sam, and say I did it when Sam was seven months old. Oh so you totally did this, did this, this, and this would in fact be more. This would be when the baby is like ten months old, so that actually stretches out the training a bit more, gives you a little bit more leeway and ramping up. You know. I just I need a big running goal to get me excited about. And while no I think it's great, I'm excited. I mean I'm really tempted. You know, well you could come run it with me? Does your family? And I told you it's not the perfect training season for me because it just starts getting nice now. So it would mean like suffering through August and September and October long runs, which I don't know, but maybe people like do overlapping ones and I'll do one in January or so, Okay, well what's yours? I mean, the problem is you can't get me January here, that's not a good idea. No, Miami Marathon is like mid January, January or early somewhere in January. Yeah, hey, so maybe i'll but if I miss it, and if I miss it in November, like if I'm not trained and wind up doing the half in November, then maybe I could get myself to the full by January and then can come to Miami and I would still be forty because I remember when we had the right we're going to do the people, I was like, well, I'm turning forty, but so I would still be forty in January. I wouldn't have turned forty one. I don't use the ability to run marathons when we're forty one, because I should take that into account. Then, I believe I read a book that said there is data that shows that like you, the number of people that run marathons on like their you know, zero years or maybe it's like the nine year I don't know, but you're trying to is much higher and then it like goes down. So I'm just going to be a stereotype. That's awesome. Yeah, So those are my goals for twenty twenty and we'll see. And now I have them written so I can look at them. I guess. So I forgot what my twenty nineteen ones were. Hopefully I hit some of them. But I've got these now typed out. I can put them in a slightly more prominent place. Yes, got to keep looking at them otherwise otherwise they're gone. Yes. And I also need to sit down and do what you did and do the whole mapping out your entire year of travel situation. Yeah. No, that's good. I kind of mopped it out for myself, but I probably should make sure Josh is on board. See what he thinks. Yeah, all right, Well let's go to our Q and A. All right, I will read it. It can via Instagram. What tips do you have from managing meltdowns when you have to travel, especially for work. My partner works to calm my seven year old down, and FaceTime seems to calm him shortly, but come time for him to go to bed, I get reports on the number of meltdowns. Though I shouldn't I end up feeling guilty for the boy not understanding why I'm gone, and the partner having to deal with multiple meltdowns. Any tips and tricks to help explain why travel is necessary, which I love to do, would be greatly appreciated. So this is an interesting question. I mean, you know, my kids are never entirely thrilled with my travel either, they're slightly more used to it with Michael, although Josper definitely is not happy about Michael traveling either. I don't know that meltdowns is the right word to use, and I'm kind of curious if this is as much a partner issue as it is a kid issue, So that this listener's partner, which I'm not sure if the partner is male or female from this question, may not be thrilled about the whole travel situation and may not be how do I want to put this? You know what I'm saying that meltdowns happen partly based on how the parent in charge is reacting to the situation as well, And it could be that this listener's partner is feeling like there's way too much travel, in which case the seven year old is picking up on that and isn't happy. And so I think it's hard to know, like as she gone to Asia for three out of every four weeks each month, or is this sort of more run of the mill business travel where she's gone one to two nights every two weeks or so. Because if it's the latter, then I think they really need to sort of sit down and try to keep this in context for everyone, Right, Like, Okay, I track my time, I was literally gone two nights out of three weeks or something, or is gone four nights this month. You know there's thirty one nights in a month. We probably don't need to make this a huge relationship sticking point. Based on that, you can also start sharing this with children. Yes, the meltdowns are kind of scary, but sometimes meltdowns happen because people feel like they're completely not in control of a situation, whereas if they know when they're coming up, they can be a little bit less melt down about it. It's possible maybe that if these dates are kept in context and they are known ahead of time, our listener's partner could plan special things for that night. I know that if my husband and I are both traveling, often our nanny will do special things for a given evening, like they'll have, you know, sit in front of the fire, or they'll watch a special movie or just something to make it seem a little bit more celebratory, which can be kind of fun for everyone. And then you know, I would also say if maybe it's again, if this is a partner issue as much as a kid issue, if the partner is feeling like he or she is not getting enough personal time because of this travel, then that's something maybe you can address. Like I will take the kid on weekends for a while if it's a week where it's heavy travel to sort of sort through that. Because again, if the parents are making a big deal about it, the kids will pick up on that and be distraught. So if you don't make a big deal about it, then then it becomes more just something that happens, and hopefully that's something that your partner can also contribute to. But if your partner can't, if they're not a mental space is where they can do that, then that's a bigger issue that needs to be addressed. Yeah. I like all of that. I mean I also wonder she says she gets reports on the number of mountdowns. Yeah, that's why I say it's a partner issue, Like this person is unhappy. I can't tell how many, Like I was picturing like that she's getting like a text and then another text ten minutes later, like meltdown is still continuing, but maybe it's maybe it's just one report. I don't know. Yeah, I think I think you mentioned like kind of the making sure your kid knows what to expect, like a visual calendar so they see exactly when you're leaving and exactly when you're coming back, maybe with a little bit of a countdown to it, and as you mentioned, maybe a reward at the end of the countdown. Like I mean, as kind of materialistic as it is, all I have to say to make my kids like literally happy that I'm leaving is like you get a toy when I get and they're like, oh okay bye, Like well literally had a Jennifer Petricliaria on the podcast. She said she bought those toy like hamsters somewhere or toy squirrels right that she brought back for her kids. She took punos of the squirrel in various places in Broadway in the UK. Yes, yes, yeah, so I mean sometimes obviously this person may have already thought of that, that's sort of you know, obvious, but it definitely helps in our particular case and find out if the kid has some anxiety. I mean maybe the kid actually has some I don't know. They may have explored things already too, But are they afraid of the air travel? Are they afraid that Mom's going to leave? Is there is there some kind of like, you know, attachment issue surrounding this, like is there something the kid needs to work through? Is important? Because seven year old and melt down I mean, I will say my seven year old still does have what might be described as meltdown's, but it's starting to be a little less typical for that age group compared to if you said, like a toddler. Yeah, although again I get it, yeah, yeah, exactly, but and a toddler would have no concept then of like what is five days from now? Anyway? So it's kind of a hard true, yeah, but a seven year old could and oh absolutely, so you can definitely that's exactly when the age because Cameron is still like what day is it? Is? It? Is it tomorrow? I mean he doesn't need and Annabelle is like drawing actual calendars and she has her own hob anichi right, Well, no, she's decided on an Aaron Condrin kids planner instead because it's got stickers well, speaking of which, what is your love of the week, Sarah, I wanted to give a shout out to my lovely ink Weell Press disc bound planner that I got last year that is just for writing goals and it's cute and I think I will keep it long term because it has blank pages and I could just have goals in it forever. Yeah, yeah, that sounds great. It's funny because in some ways we're very similar, but in some ways were very different. Because I scribbled my goals on the back of a piece of paper I'd printed up because I had to sign a contract, and so then I scanned it in and so I had the paper and I was like, oh, well, scratch paper, I'll write my goals on the back of this. And so there's which is funny because I have like a dozen nice notebooks sitting in my desk door that I could have used, Like, I get these notebooks from various things, and I don't know, I'm saving them for the perfect occasion. Apparently my twenty twenty goals wasn't wasn't that? So there's they're written on the back of a contract, but you're going to put it somewhere prominent so that's now you're going to be reminded of that contract every time. Yeah, I know I should have been more. Okay, anyway, my love of the week it won't be that. We've had very nice Christmas decorations this year. And you know, I'm not the sort of person who would put a whole lot of time and effort into doing it, but our nanny decided to and it was it was awesome, Like they looked amazing. I saw them on Instagram. Beautiful, beautiful, and so it's so nice to have a decorated home. And I don't know why I didn't think to ask somebody else to do this before, but it's solved that problem. So yeah, good, good to do. That's amazing. That's amazing. Holiday decorations in general, I love it. I love having them. I don't love doing them, but I love having them. So that's my love of the week. Well, Happy New Year everyone, Happy New Year everyone. We'll be back in twenty twenty with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.