Midyear/Fall Goals for the rest of 2020

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and sixty. We are going to be talking goals today, always a favorite topic around here. How we've done on our twenty twenty goals, such as we've been able to accomplish over the past few months, and any goals for the rest of the year. And it turns out that Sarah has been setting goals for a long long time. Sarah, would you like to tell us about that? So we had this episode planned and then serendipitously, my sister took a trip to visit my parents in near Laura, actually outside of Philadelphia, and during this trip she uncovered a stack of papers that I definitely was not able to find over my last few visits there. And there were some gems. There's like a typewriter short story that looks terrible that I wrote. There are some really embarrassing diary type entries that somehow I was compelled to like type out in what looks like word perfect and then print out like why, I don't know. And then there was one that is slightly less embarrassing but kind of funny. That is a goals list that I wrote in nineteen ninety six, and I set goals pretty much the same way, So nineteen ninety sixty or what sixteen, that's exactly sixteen. I had just turned sixteen, because it was a summer nineteen ninety six list. There were some pretty humorous categories. The first one said intellectual and was mostly Violin related stuff, plus to read times, to and gloss the Scarlet Letter, which was the summer reading book. There was a fitness category which included items such as work on cheer jump and gymnastics. There was an other category in which I wrote get a good tan Ha, which meant that my sixteen year old self knew it was ridiculous, but I was determined to do it anyway, a financial category with an item that said, don't buy tons of clothes, and then a category called guys, which I will not be detailing here because it is absolutely mortifying your goals for your guys, ordering on diabolical and just no. So other than the guys category, we no longer have a category called kinds. I feel like I still do this very similarly, except now I tend to diviye them into like work, personal and other, and other has now taken to mean blog and podcasts for the most part. So that's just so funny. I mean it literally like looked like a formatted page that could have been from from now, and it was from twenty four years ago, because you are who you are. And I feel like I've been living close to this, you know, artifact of early Sarah goal setting for all these years and didn't know that it was buried with treasure a few miles from my house. Yeah. Now I'm like, what else is there? Well, my sister dug up some wow. I mean wow. Anyway, so I'm excited to talk about goals today because we're overdue. We usually do two goals episodes per year, but for obvious reasons we got a little behind in twenty twenty. Yeah, I was trying to think back to what, you know, what my twenty twenty goals were, and sadly, I think I wrote them on a slip of paper for recording our episode about our goals, and then possibly threw that out, which is about how we can think of twenty twenty at the moment. I mean, you know, it's good stuff and bad stuff and all that. I mean, I did some things, you know. I got a childcare arrangement for the summer. I knew that our long time nanny was going to be on leave and so I needed something set up for the summer that would support my re entry to work, which has looked a little different than I thought it would, but to you know, still pull that off. We became a family of seven, you know, we folded Henry into the mix. I think he's felt welcomed and the other kids have you know, enjoyed becoming a larger family. And you know, did I did sell another book. It was on a topic I didn't know I'd be writing about at the beginning of the year, but that that happened, so that's exciting. I mean, but the other stuff, you know, I was just not within your control. I mean, like, I, well, I could run a marathon on November seventeen or whatever date it's supposed to be, but I probably won't given that it was canceled. So Sarah, how about you? How have you been doing on the twenty twenty goals that we set before or all this changed and happened. Okay, I mean, I don't remember if you did or not, but I did kind of revamp my goals list for the pandemic. But I think when I did that, I was thinking that it would be like for a few months, you know, not necessarily the rest of twenty twenty. So I feel like, I mean, you know, a lot of the goals that I set are fairly pandemic friendly, and then the few that aren't, I kind of replace some of them. I feel like maybe in your case, well, first of all, I just want to say, I think you've done more. Maybe you didn't write them down as goals, but considering the fact that this was a new baby year for you, you you actually did a ton. I mean, I think people forget that that year, that first year after each new baby, at least for me, is like survival year, Like you make it through each day, You've met a goal, and you've continued to do all your podcasts, and you're writing, and you released a book, and you're active on everything else. I mean, like you've actually kept everything going well. Nursing a baby every fifteen seconds, which is roughly I think that's about the timeline. Yes, so I think that whether or not you put them on paper, which probably was smart not to commit yourself to a million different things during that baby year, you actually did a lot. Yay, let's go with that. But how about you, So you've you've done several things, You've read a bunch of books. Yeah. So I had a goal of forty books for the year, and it's so funny. I like just calculated, like, okay, well, am I on track? And I kind of fractionated the month, and if I were to estimate the exact same rate, I would read like forty point eight books in twenty twenty. So apparently book reading speed, not pandemic impacted, at least for me, So that part is good. I one of my pandemic goals was that I wanted to start doing many petties, and I think I mentioned on a prior episode. This is like a splurt that I think I may no longer need to do, so that's it's going, Okay, I need more skills, but at least I've attempted. I feel like I've had more success on my feet than on my hands, because I you know, but that's hard. Yeah, hands are hard, and then you mess it up. But that's true of professional manicures too, in my experience. So I don't know. I was going to cut Cameron's hair, but then I decided Josh would be better at it, so that was rightfully outsourced. Ooh, the eighty day obsessions. So at the last time about this, and so we must have done like a pandemic goals discussion or something, because I remember mentioning it and you were like, well, how far along are you? And I'm like number twelve. But now I had just completed work out number seventy one this morning, so I feel like, I can, you know, feel pretty good that that goal is going to become to fruition. It's a six times a week program, and I don't think I've missed any I mean, there is a built in rest day, so I definitely have one day a week that I do nothing, but I'm pretty proud of that achievement. I did work on my wardrobe, as I discussed. I launched my podcast, so that was awesome and I feel like it had a great initial response for a niche pod is what I called it. Investment stuff, so I was supposed to finish a state planning and stuff, and we did do a little bit of investment cleanup, like, for example, I had like five twenty nines that weren't actually five twenty nine. It was just like a category and my budget that said five twenty nine, and now they're actually five twenty nine. But then the funny thing is, I'm sure I should have wait, I should have waited for the market to fall again, but yeah, so's it's up like crazy over the past couple months, by the way, So like if I had only just crossed that one off my list in March, but no, I didn't. So but now they actually exist, so that's cool, and you know, we have a lot of years for them to fall and recover again. So that's okay, especially for gen v Hannabelle. Not as many let's see organized declutter the home no fail. I got through like half no, maybe like forty percent of that project, and then decided that that on top of the eighty day Obsesson and I was going to have to pick one because the eighty day workouts were long and it's just it was just too much. So I tabled that because maybe in the fall I will feel more I don't know, inspired. Yes, yes, I'll be done with eighty day and can do shorter workouts and then I don't know. I had a lot of other goals that I had taken from my yearly list that I decided we're still like worthy in the pandemic era. I think we could do a best of both worlds install live or something. I had a meet up. Yeah, I don't see a meetup happening. Maybe we should do like a live Q and a one time on install like that. I just I just did an Instagram live the other day with something, so of course you and I could do one together as well. That would be great. Is it hard? I've never actually done an install live. I don't think so. But with a live portion does terrify me slightly? Like what if something comes out of my mouth and I'm like, I can never take it back it's live? But well, I mean, if you ever do radio or television or anything like that, that's the same thing. So, you know, just everything too stupid. I'll try not to. And the irony is like we do so little editing on the podcast that it almost might as well be live, so I should just get over it. But okay, yeah, so maybe an install live that would be fun. And then cooking Sunday dinners. You guys have been doing more family dinners, so I don't know if that was a goal or not, but it was achieved without being a goal. I mean, hare's and we've achieved things that we may have wanted to do just because of life going as it goes. But yeah, we eat dinner together as a family pretty much every night. Who usually cooks it depends right now. Michael tends to cook Friday, Saturday, Sunday, sometimes Monday, sometimes I do Monday. I tend to do Tuesday and Wednesday, and then we order in on Thursday. So that's amazing. You have a rotation. I love to we do. I feel like I have not done every Sunday this year, but it has become a much more routine thing, especially because Sunday is now my grocery shopping day, and so you know, I can. I don't actually have to like plan that meal for in advance. I'll just buy whatever. And I'm pretty proud of the like crab dinner I made at Annabel's request, I got some she wanted snow crab. They had dungeness crab figured close enough and we dipped it in butter and it was amazing, and as is anything dipped in butter. So Sunday dinners have been good. I did do a forty eight hour screen free experience during Memorial Day weekend. That was pretty fun. I wanted to develop a meditation habit, which I have been doing just using headspace. And I wanted to get a work bag that zips that has really fallen down the priority list and mostly sporting back and forth. Yes, and then finally I had wanted to try orange theory, but then I you know, subbed in the eighty day obsession instead. So yeah, I feel I actually feel like pretty good about this. You know. The funny thing is, I've on my other podcasts and everything I'm I've talked a lot about like the timeframes at which I typically make goals, and I have yearly goals, and then quintile goals and monthly goals. I kind of like zero in from there, but I didn't actually make any quintile goals this summer. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm just not feeling that excited about goals at the moment. I don't know. There may be long list of Laura goals from the past in some you know paper files somewhere. My parents sold their house a couple of years ago and downsized, or like a year or two ago actually, so I got a lot of my old papers back from their attic and basement and things like that. But I haven't really gone through all that much to see what my various New Year's resolutions or goals may have been. But I do know that on our basement wall there have been a couple kid goal things that are listed. So one of our nannies a few years ago had the kids write down their goals, or she helped them write down what they wanted to do. It's really cute because its stuff from when they're like four, you know, like they want to try a new food, which I'm not sure if or have ever happened, because when if they ever wanted to try new foods. These may have been assisted goals somebody else telling them it would be good if you wrote this down, or score a goal in soccer or something like that. But those have been up there. We tend not to take stuff down off the basement wall once it's up there, so it's like a kid's twenty fourteen goal still up there on the mirror. Maybe we'll save that for them in the future for them to do. But yeah, I don't know. It's like he said the newborn year, it's hard. You can set goals, but there's a limited amount of energy on a day to day basis. And you know, Henry's doing well. He's growing rapidly. I've gotten him to finally sleep more in his crib, which is good. You know, there'd been various issues, so you know, to get a little bit of a reprieve on that, and he's sleeping a little better. I have some goals, I mean, exercise goals. I'm just kind of releasing myself from a lot of that right now. I had that long running street going that ended at the end of last year, and I haven't wanted to start anything like that, and I wasn't going to run the marathon but when that was canceled, I was like, well, I don't really feel like setting another one. So I'm just kind of running here and there and doing what I can. And you know, I had the few things I want to do in the fall. I want to do a leaf peeping trip, you know, have that to look forward to. Maybe it's a long weekend. Well, why don't we take a quick ad break. We'll be right back. We are back again. Yes, what a strategic break. We just had actually shocked that no one has wandered into my office as well. We are recording this not at our usual time, and at least on my end, not with the usual childcare backup. So this is an adventure. Yes, it's always an adventure, and we're figuring out how to deal with that. So yeah, I would say a leaf peeping trip, and I want to do a personal retreat day. I would like to get away by myself for a while. Amazing, So we're you gonna like drive somewhere remote and like sit in a cabin? I think yeah, probably. And as Henry becomes more able to take a cup and you know, solid food, that becomes more of an opportunity there This past weekend we took the big kids fishing, and so we had to drive an hour and a half to the lake and then we're on the lake for like four hours and then drove back and he did well with it. You know. I was gone for about seven hours and he survived. So it's it's becoming more of a possibility than it would have been maybe like two three months ago. So I'm looking forward to that. I think, you know, just having any sort of quiet individual time right now sounds really really good. So we can set that as a goal that sounds wonderful. Anything else you wanted to set for your rest of the year, you know, I didn't even think about that. I feel like I more just want to keep working on the list I kind of gave, like I don't think I have I don't think I have room for anything in addition to that, given you know, the challenges that are likely up ahead with different school schedules starting and some virtual and some not, and just the challenges of finishing out this crazy year. So no, I think I'd like to just you know, keep my new podcast going and keep working on Maybe I'll go back to the organizing challenge that I started. I will say So the organizing challenge, by the way, was the Lisa Woodruff's Organized three hundred and sixty five or her one hundred day program, which she actually gifted to me, which was very nice of her. I I think it's a great program. I just got tired and I'm going to resume it. But I just pre ordered her book and it came to the mail the paper organizing solution, So I would like to I don't mean like the paper on my desk, like I'm very good at that kind of stuff. This is more like your tax documents and like your you know, receipts, Like we have this file cabinet which is like functional, but it's ridiculous, like it's just kind of overflowing with like ten years of stuff. And I feel like that's the purpose of her book is to help you figure out what you need to actually keep. So I would love to streamline that. And I don't think it'll be a huge project, more like a like two solid days during nap time or something like that. Maybe I'm fooling myself, but I guess like, actually it will be the rest of your life if I limit myself to like I'm just going to weed through this cabinet and not like try to corral everything in my house. Then hopefully that wouldn't be enormal. So yes, that would be a goal. And similar to your personal retreat, I would love to have one night where our nanny takes the kids home and she's offered to do this, and I was like, well, I want you to do this, but I want you to do this like when I know what's going to happen, so I can look forward to it and like know that it's going to be like a nice date night and we can maybe sleep in the next day. And yeah, so that I guess that's my other not too ambitious goal. Those sound like great goals. Yeah, I mean I think with with goals in general, I mean we can go in and out of our excitement about them and our level of ambition over time. And as we've talked to you, even if you set goals or don't set goals, good stuff still happens. I mean, I think you're always on the lookout for cool stuff and cool opportunities that might be there, and so these things are not either or Sometimes we can not set specific goals but just be open to things that do come. And you know, that could be a good as well. All right, well, let's go to our Q and A. We have a question from a listener who says, what do you do when your kid won't listen to your nanny? Also, does your nanny help with schoolwork? Mine has mentioned that she wasn't hired as part of the original job to be a teacher. So what do you say, Sarah. I'll answer the teacher part first. I mean, she's right, she wasn't hired to be a teacher. She's probably not compensated like a teacher, and she probably was doing other things that she thinks she still needs to do, like maybe household tasks, so it might be hard for her to wrap around helping with schoolwork. So I think we have to be very understanding about that. I mean, I personally am not the world's best teacher myself, so to expect somebody else to just jump in and do it is not so easy. So I think, you know, for the teaching, a setting low expectations like, Okay, I don't expect you to teach you. I just want to make sure that you're supervising so that they're basically logging on the way they're supposed to like, hopefully they should be able to handle that, and then offering some kind of raise. In our case, we did once the pandemic started and we realized the kids are going to be home and we knew that wasn't exactly what our nanny had signed up for, even though she's done permutations of that in the past when the kids were much younger. We increased her pay and shortened her hours at the same time because I didn't need her necessarily during the entire commute. So, I mean, I did feel like it was a lot for her, and it was. I mean, it still is, but I feel like at least that's soften the blow to not have to come in quite as early and to get a little bit more for the hard work that she's doing. So that's that part of it for us. In terms of the listening part, this part's hard, and I mean, I think it could also be applied to not just a nanny, but a babysitter or a family member, caregiver, h pair, whatever you need to make sure that they're able to have their own discipline structure with their kids that doesn't involve you, Like if we're depending on you screaming at them or telling them giving them consequences to listen to the any like that doesn't make sense. It's better if your caregiver themselves has things that they can leverage. In our house, I mean, this is who knows, Like I don't know what some parenting expert would say about this, but the most effective tool that we have right now is we'll tell the kids, if you don't stop doing X, Y or Z, you will lose x minutes of iPad time. And that happens to be very effective in our household. So our nanny can say the same thing and it's equally effective when she says it. It's just that she has to be very consistent and you know, make sure that she follows through in it, and she has and so they know that it's, you know, just as serious when she says that as when we say it. So I guess they have to be able to leverage some sort of reward or punishment system or however you do discipline, if you're going to expect that the kids are going to follow the same behavior standards. And also I would say try to stay out of it. Like if you hear a little bit of a power struggle going on between them. Your kids may be listening and sort of waiting to see if you'll jump in, and I find that if they learn that you won't, that sets the standard of like, no, I'm seeing patients, I'm not going to be stopping in the middle to arbitrate an argument. So they kind of learned to work it out on their own a little better. Yeah, this was definitely I mean, this question. Wasn't afraid that this is a pandemic question here because my guess is that a lot of people were working away from the house and so you never would have been partied to this event going on that your kids were, you know, being rude or arguing or whatever. And now you're at home and you're in your home office, and so you can hear it, and so all of a sudden, it's an issue that actually wasn't an issue before for you. So treat it as also not an issue now. Like you are working, and if you are working, there is another adult in charge, and that adult is charge, is fully in charge, which means that you know her roles, her consequences, her dealing with the situation. You know, if I've certainly had kids come in the past and try to complain about a rule that has come down, and well, nope, I'm in here, I'm not get away. Not my business. You know, she's in charge, not me, because if you start getting involved in it, then it all just falls apart. I mean, your character is being undermined. Your kid is you know, learning that they can try to pit adults against each other, or you know that there may be different consequences from different people or whatever else. But you know, if you are working, then you are not in charge, and that means whoever is in charge, can you know, deal with what is going on. I think it's it's usually not the case that you're going to be more slack than the nanny is that they feel like can get away. It's more that you don't want your kid being rude to another person. Like it's really hard if you hear somebody saying something that you're like, that's mean, or that's rude or I can't believe my kids said that, Like you want to come out and you know, lay down the law like that is unacceptable. But you're going to have to have that conversation later because otherwise you're just going to be interrupted all day. And that's not what is supposed to be happening. You are supposed to be working during that time. As for the teaching, yeah, I don't know. I mean we certainly you know, our nanny was doing the little kids stuff with them. I mean, you know, math like elementary school. Math is hopefully within the realm of your caregiver, like that they can work on or reading books with the kids or things like that, setting up zoom. If you have older kids who are home from school, that this is I don't think it's fair to expect somebody to be like an algebra tutor like that. That is not what they signed up for. So if that's what you're looking for, then yeah, you need to hire somebody and through like varsity tutors or another service like that, who can work with your kids on that stuff that is being assigned. Awesome, Well, I think maybe that's something other episode. We'll discuss it further. But it seems like there are myriad creative ways that people have come up with to help with school other than just outsourcing nanny our caregiver to help with virtual school. So that's been sort of interesting to see. All right, should we go to our love of the week. Wow, Yes, this is a short episode since we know many of you are not commuting as much as and just like us, your kids are running into your office. We're trying to do this during nap time with Sarah's Sarah doesn't have child to heat today. And okay, so love of the week. Yes, my love of the week is the Apple Notes app. It's just that little native It looks like a notepad. It comes on your phone, it's on your computer, it's on your iPad. It's like built in there. You don't have to download it. It's actually like it's great. It's so simple, and I'm surprised I wasn't using it more before. I always used it to some extent, but I've started to really like open new pages, like I have now one for each podcast and I put each episode on a page, and I'm like, this is more organized than Gmail. I like it. It works for work stuff too. It's a good dumping ground. I never got into like ever Note or any of those other things because I felt like you had to open this extra third party thing. And I know some people love them, but somehow this feels more integrated with my devices themselves, because I do use an Apple laptop and an iPhone, So yeah, Apple Notes has grown on me. Well. My love of the week, and I may have mentioned this before, is our small camps that we've been doing. So the original summer spreadsheet camp spreadsheet was obliterated through camp closures, but as we have moved into our green phase of reopening, a lot of smaller programs were able to open up for sort of you know outdoor or limited attendance or you know, socially distanced staff. And so my kids have been doing some of that. Alex has been doing a soccer camp, Ruth has been doing a three day a week pottery camp at a local studio here. My two older boys have been trading off at a local arts center that has offered in person teen and preteen studios, so learning about our ceramics or magazine type drawing or Jasper did one with a stage and screen makeup that was actually really cool. He looked like a He did fake bullet wounds all for himself, really really quite dramatic. But you know, this is all stuff that is open and available, and it's been really nice to get kids out doing something and seeing somebody other than us for you know, three hours a day. A couple of days a week, you know, here and there, and I wish they could have gone to these awesome camps that I had them set up for all this summer. But since that's not there, I'm glad that there's still been some stuff that we've been able to do and they've been really good about. You know, they just go out the door with their little masks on and going to their camp and staying however part they're supposed to be from other people, and you know, it's good. So I'm glad for things that are still there. They're probably just thrilled to be out and doing anything. You know, it's interesting. I feel like my kid, I will say. I think initially was like, oh my god, how will the kids wear the masks? But kids are very adaptable and if it's just what you do, it's kind of amazing how quick quickly they they're fine with it. So that's great what you do. So all right, well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking about our goals among other things, and we'll be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box 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