Time is Big Enough for That! EP 457

00:00:09
Speaker 1: Hi.

00:00:09
Speaker 2: I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:15
Speaker 3: And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

00:00:24
Speaker 2: 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.

00:00:33
Speaker 4: Term career goals.

00:00:34
Speaker 2: We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This episode is airing in early May of twenty twenty six. Sarah and I are going to do some life updates of various travel we've been doing lately, and then we're going to spend a little time talking about Big Time. So this is my new book that's out today when this comes out, so a couple things we want to share with this audience. Really appreciate everyone being willing to listen to this. But so Sarah, it has been a whirlwind of a month for travel for you, hasn't it.

00:01:13
Speaker 3: Yes, speaking of Big Time and fitting a lot into our limited but expansive hours, this has been like a record streak for me in terms of travel, and I'm coming at you from the middle of it, and I have to say it's going better than anticipated. My saving grace is that every single one of these trips has been short, and most of them have actually not involved that much missing of work, like They've been little weekend trips. But in the past three weeks, I've done a family trip to Disney World, a family weekend in Naples, a family trip to Gainesville for the State Gymnastics Championships, and then finally a solo trip to Williamstown for my college a cappella group reunion, which was life affirming.

00:01:58
Speaker 2: Yes, well, I mean, let's talk a little bit about why you decided to do that. I mean, because that actually sort of does tie into the theme of this episode.

00:02:06
Speaker 3: It totally does. And I mean, the funny thing is this was not on my twenty twenty six list of plans. You guys know, I love my annual plans, and I do a lot of thought about what the travel is that I'm going to fit in. But the invite actually did not arrive for this event until maybe February or so. I already had my call schedule, I already had all these other trips booked and I saw it and thought, Wow, that sounds really fun and I'd love to do it, but I shouldn't because it's going to be crazy. I already have so much there, I already put so much on my plate. I'm gonna regret it. But then it just kind of kept like circling back into my head, and I, on a whim, texted two of the women that I hadn't really communicated within years and I hadn't seen in person since I went to this same reunion in two thousand and seven, okay, nineteen years ago. I'm like, are you guys going to this? And they're like, actually, we are. And one of them was flying with another one from California, and I'm like, Okay, if they can fly across the country, I can fly up the coast. Okay, I can make this happen. And Laura said, it sounds like this is one of those things that you want to do and you're trying to talk yourself out of, and in my experience, that is something you should just go ahead and do. And she was so right, because I'm actually recording this the day after I got back. Yes, it was a busy weekend I mean, Friday was the crazy day because I worked a full day of clinic, signed out my call week. I actually wasn't on call for the weekend, thankfully, but I had to be on call until five. Left for the airport at four forty five and got on a flight and was an Albany by ten and Williamstown by eleven twenty. So it was quite a long day. But I arrived at my hotel to a group of people singing outside the hotel like a song that I knew from when I was nineteen or twenty. It was magical and like then, we spent the whole next day singing together, catching up honestly, sort of role playing college because unlike a reunion, there's like less schmoozing. It was more like, no, we're just doing that than we used to do, and it was just such a blast. So yeah, I think that is such a big time type of thing, Like your book would argue that we have space for things like that, when I think a lot of sort of like typical time management advice would be like, don't do too much, you're in a busy season.

00:04:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that Rubric's actually in there.

00:04:22
Speaker 4: So when people get a copy and say.

00:04:23
Speaker 2: In chapter six, there's a little discussion about in life you want to spend I would say, like less time on things that you're trying to talk yourself into.

00:04:34
Speaker 3: Like you're not initially excited, but.

00:04:36
Speaker 2: Then you're like, oh, well it won't be that hard, it won't be that crazy, it might look good on my resume.

00:04:44
Speaker 4: Whenever it is you don't do it, I should do it.

00:04:47
Speaker 2: Those are the things you probably want to just let them go, Whereas it's the things that you are trying to talk yourself out of that are where you need to set up and pay attention because like you are excited, like you want to do it, it's just that it's outside your comfort zone, or it is going to be logistically difficult, or you might need to call in a favor from a colleague or a friend or your partner or something like that. And so you're like, oh, I have to deal with all this stuff. But a lot of logistics can be dealt with. I mean, you managed to make it right, Like you got yourself up on a flight to Albany and just had this amazing experience.

00:05:28
Speaker 4: I'm so happy to hear that I did.

00:05:29
Speaker 3: And there's some best of both worlds lessons in there too, I think because when I got home, I had been away from my kids for what like forty hours, Like it just really wasn't very much time. They were fine, they went to all their stuff, and I actually think it was so valuable for me to show them the videos and talk about what I did and I had these lasting friendships in college and how I went off and saw them again, because I actually think that them seeing that is probably going to be a more valuable life lesson for them than if I had actually been home with them. And yet that also turns on its head, you're a bad mom if you like leave your kids kind or something like that.

00:06:01
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, well there you go.

00:06:06
Speaker 3: Well you had a very exciting past few weeks as well. You had a one on one trip with one of your kids. You want to tell our listeners about that.

00:06:14
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:06:15
Speaker 2: So over spring break, Sam, who is my sixteen year old, he's kid number two in the list, He and I went to Japan for ten days. We flew from Newark, New Jersey, directly to Tokyo. United has a flight that is thirteen and a half hours long that goes from Newark, New Jersey to Tokyo. So we got there and we spent Yeah, it was then at that point, like nine days in Japan.

00:06:43
Speaker 4: We did Tokyo for.

00:06:45
Speaker 2: Three nights, then we went to Kyoto for three nights. We went to Osaka for two nights, and then back up to Tokyo for one night before taking off. And I mean, it was just such a great trip. We had so many any wonderful experiences. I mean in terms of core memories, I mean seeing the cherry blossoms in Japan. We managed to hit peak cherry blossom. Nailed it, which is we nailed it. I mean, and yes, it's always in that window, but it could have been that it bloomed like the second week of April, or it could have been done by the time we got there.

00:07:21
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, you can't.

00:07:22
Speaker 2: It's just a function of how the warmth and the weather unfolds in March, and so there's no guarantee. But we hit it, especially in Kyoto. Kyoto is the beautiful old city and had all the white blossoms everywhere, so that was quite lovely enjoyed.

00:07:40
Speaker 4: Seeing that. We ate some great food.

00:07:42
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, you sent me pictures. I was like, I want that yeah, I mean it was.

00:07:48
Speaker 4: This is the kid I had to take this trip with.

00:07:51
Speaker 2: I don't think any of my other kids could have been quite like this in that he will eat what is put in front of him. And in an American context, that is one thing.

00:08:04
Speaker 4: In Japan.

00:08:06
Speaker 2: I mean, there was like little squid with the tentacles on them, likes that still had eyeballs attached, and like, I think there's a great many adults who consider themselves adventurous eaters who might be a little bit wigged out by the tentacles and eyeballs thing.

00:08:23
Speaker 4: But he just did it.

00:08:24
Speaker 3: He did it.

00:08:25
Speaker 2: We had this chicken hot pot at a we went to a just home cooking outside Kyo two and we were like the Lake Biuois region, and one of our stops on our tours just this older couple's home to do sort of Japanese home cooking and they put their chicken hot pot stuff in raw egg as like the topping, I mean, and he ate it. He ate all of it. He was just like digging up, which of course they love. They're like, oh, teenage boy appetites here for the wind.

00:08:56
Speaker 3: And an American but it was not picky at all.

00:08:57
Speaker 4: We love that.

00:08:59
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:08:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we had a great time.

00:09:01
Speaker 2: We did a lot of really cool We went to Universal Studios Osaka.

00:09:05
Speaker 4: That was really cool.

00:09:05
Speaker 2: My son got to ride the Flying Dinosaur, which he was excited about.

00:09:09
Speaker 4: I did not go on that, but more power to him.

00:09:12
Speaker 2: And then we got to see Super Nintendo World, which he had not been able to go to when he was in Universal Studios in Florida. So that was kind of an exciting thing to get to see the Nintendo stuff in Japan.

00:09:27
Speaker 4: The rides, so many many cool highlights. We had a great time.

00:09:31
Speaker 3: The only thing missing from that well two things, Stationary and Pokemon, but I'm assuming they made some kind of appearance.

00:09:38
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, he's not into Pokemon anymore. I kind of aged out of that. I guess if he had gone when he was seven, he might have been really into it. But I did stop at two stationary stores Sarah. I did two stores in Tokyo, and I didn't wind up buying anything, partly because the lines were kind of ridiculous, and also I just try not to do too much supad air shopping because I always do carry out only. But it was really cool to look at stuff.

00:10:02
Speaker 4: I enjoyed that totally.

00:10:05
Speaker 3: Well, one more thing before we break is that if you would like to know what Laura did for thirteen and a half hours on her flight, she has a play by play available in her substack. I believe it's beyond the paywall, so you would have to become a paying substack customer. But it was pretty funny to be like hour by hour and things might have I don't know, I don't want to say fell apart, but it was just funny.

00:10:25
Speaker 4: To deteriorate it by the end.

00:10:28
Speaker 2: I think things always deteriorate by the end of a thirteen and a half hour flight. I mean, Sarah, like, you're flying to Hawaii this summer. Have you even thought about that what you intend to do?

00:10:39
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:10:39
Speaker 3: And I think that's more. I think we're even going to have more than thirteen hours in the air.

00:10:44
Speaker 4: Because because you're connecting.

00:10:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:10:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, not, we're connecting twice because I kind of like fell for a point steal, So we're like flying to Orlando first, as one does when they want to get a twenty five thousand dollars point redemption to MAUI. I mean, come on, so twenty five thousand dollars, well, twenty five thousand points, which is like two which is like amazing. Yeah, so it's a sad deal.

00:11:03
Speaker 4: Think it would cost that much to fly five people to Mawi.

00:11:05
Speaker 3: Maybe, I'm no, no, no, This was me getting a bargain and okay, grabbing it and saying, you know what, we can go to Orlando first. That's fine, but no I haven't. Future Sarah may not be very happy with you when we get there. Future Sarah, who arrives in Hawaii at nine pm Hawaii time aka what is that three am? My time is going to be so happy with that choice. So I think there'll be a lot of sleeping, probably a TV show to binge watch, and I will bring at least one juicy book to read.

00:11:35
Speaker 4: Exciting. Yeah that's a good thing. Well, I mean probably though with that long of a flight.

00:11:39
Speaker 2: So I brought a book to read and it was a great book and it filled three and a half hours.

00:11:45
Speaker 3: The book may fill one of my legs.

00:11:47
Speaker 2: One of the legs. Yeah, I still have ten hours to go. So, yes, it was a long long flight. Flying is I mean to me, it's kind of like the necessary evil to get to amazing place and you could get anywhere on the globe with a flight, I mean two flights. Usually Sarah's doing three, but in many places you can do two I guess max three and get to a lot of places. But one of those flights could be very long, but you will probably be just about anywhere in about twenty four hours.

00:12:19
Speaker 4: So that's kind of cool.

00:12:20
Speaker 3: It's kind of amazing to think about.

00:12:22
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:12:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we're going to take a quick ad break and then we will be back talking about how time is big enough for that.

00:12:41
Speaker 3: Well, we are back and we are going to talk all about Big Time, which is having its I don't know birthday today. Is that what you call your book launch day?

00:12:49
Speaker 4: Birthday today?

00:12:50
Speaker 1: Sure?

00:12:51
Speaker 4: Pub day launch day.

00:12:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, we raising a virtual glass. If you're listening to this in the morning, you can raise your raise your coffee club two up to Big Time.

00:13:00
Speaker 3: Yes, And this is Laura's fourth full length book since we started Best of Both Worlds, which is kind of amazing. Plus, there was an ebook called The New Corner Office about working from home during COVID and when I went to your website and it lists all of your publications, including fiction. This is your tenth book. Yep, that is amazing. What an incredible milestone. So that must mean that you had something else that you wanted to say about time, and I think you absolutely did that. In this book. There is definitely kind of new insights and new stuff, but let's start with the obvious, Like, what did you mean by Big Time? Where did this come from? Yeah?

00:13:35
Speaker 2: So, I mean Big Time is about what happens when you move beyond a mindset of time scarcity and truly believe that there is enough time for the things that matter to you. And I really do think it is possible for us to fall in love with our schedules, and Big Time has lots of practical strategies to do just that. Like, I want people to come out of this feeling excited about life, excited about their time, Like I've got this pot of hours that I get to manage and I'm going to do awesome life affirming things with it.

00:14:17
Speaker 3: I feel like that's so Like with many abstract concepts, there's two different ways of looking at things. You can look at life as it's very limited, I have to be in a hurry, every day is crunched, or you can look at it as wow, eighty seven sixty is that right? Hours in a year? Like that is a lot of hours. I actually have so much time and so much choice as to what I do. It's the same exact thing and two completely different lenses, And I feel like this book does such a good job of steering you down all kinds of practical ways that you can really see it through that more abundant lens, which is absolutely a more fun way to live. So what are you hoping people will get out of reading this book.

00:14:54
Speaker 2: I'm hoping that they will stop feeling like time is this total crimeunch that they need to be rushed and harried through all of life. I hope that people will challenge themselves to make space in their life for things that they are excited about, whether that is big personal projects, whether it is taking trips like going to your college a cappella reunion, whether that is a big new work project, or even just the way you approach your downtime, that all of these areas are ripe for making intentional choices that allow us to experience more joy in our lives.

00:15:38
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:15:39
Speaker 3: Now, this book had a lot of data behind it, and I think that brought about a lot of these newer revelations and kind of like the practical backbone behind it can you talk about all the way that you delved into actual people's experience and got real numbers to back up some of these ideas.

00:15:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, part of writing self help for busy people is you want to.

00:16:02
Speaker 4: Know that stuff works.

00:16:04
Speaker 2: And so as part of this book, I did four new challenges that I analyzed in some way or another, and three were full scale studies. I have a researcher I work with who has a PhD in survey design, so that we try to come up with stuff that can take impressions about time and turn them into numerical insights that might be helpful for people. And so I mean, among the challenges I did for this was having people track their time for a week. I mean, longtime listeners of the show know that I'm always trying to get people to track their time for a week. So for Big Time, I asked, well, what happens when people do track their time for a week, And I'm happy to report that their sense of time satisfaction and rises to a significant degree.

00:16:54
Speaker 4: And I talk a little bit about that.

00:16:57
Speaker 2: I had people try out a couple strategies for making the day to day experience of work more enjoyable. If you ask people how they feel about their jobs, A lot of people will be like, yeah, my job's fine.

00:17:09
Speaker 1: Right.

00:17:10
Speaker 2: However, if you ask them at ten am, when they are stuck in a staff meeting how they are feeling about work, they tend to be watching the clock hoping they are on the other side of this boring staff meeting. And so I'm very interested in this hour by hour experience of work and how we can make it better. And so I had people try out a couple strategies over the course of three weeks, and again they were able to exert a lot more agency over the experience of their working life, to the point where some people are like, well, I thought about leaving my job. I may do that at some point, but I don't feel like I have to. I feel like I have things I can do at this job to make it better if I choose to, as I am also looking for what else is out there, like I have control over the situation in either way. I had people try out some evening experiences. We've talked about golden hours and setting evening intentions and what no. A lot of people have at least sometime in the evenings after work and before bad in many cases, this is the bulk of the leisure or family time people will get to experience during the week. It is also incredibly hard to use that time well. So I had hundreds of people try out strategies for making more of this time, and then, as one sort of quirky little challenge, I had about two hundred people go on a multi week yes quest where we just said yes to things that sounded intriguing, right, the sort of things that you might be talking yourself out of. Like we mentioned that if you have the time and money, say yes, see what happens, and all sorts of crazy stuff happened as a result.

00:18:43
Speaker 3: That section was very I just fel like this whole book made you feel like, Yeah, I can do more, I have agency, I have ideas. It's like one of those books you read it'd be wonderful to read, like before you do your own kind of planning stuff, And I think this was your goal. You will think bigger, you will think about more, and you will not sell yourself short the way I think some of us might kind of automatically do, especially in certain phases of our lives. Let's go a little counter to that typical planning advice, since I love that so much. There is a chapter about serendipity. Is serendipity overrated? I'm just kidding, talk about serendipity. I think I have a sense like that in my book. So we'll we'll have a nice serendipity debate. Yeah, well, no, I mean serendipity is I mean inherent.

00:19:27
Speaker 2: Its definition is a positive thing, right, It's wonderful things not actively sought for. And I think all of us would love to have wonderful things come into our lives. And if you don't have to actively be seeking it out, all the better. Right, what's coming to you without your like making it happen forcing it to happen. Now, of course you and I both know that we can help serendipity along that serendipity is often a function of planning our lives in ways that.

00:19:58
Speaker 4: Allow us to be thought fully.

00:20:00
Speaker 2: Accessible to new good things that might find us.

00:20:05
Speaker 4: And so in this chapter I talk.

00:20:07
Speaker 2: About how you can structure your schedule to be sort of thoughtfully accessible. Yes, we need boundaries. There are a lot of bad ideas in the world. There are a lot of demanding and unpleasant people. This is why we have boundaries. But with all that could a good idea find you even if you were not actively seeking it out. And so among the things we can do is to have more open space in our calendars. I mean not just for rest and relaxation often, as wonderful as that is, it's just that when you feel swamped, you are not going to take on something new, And not even are you not going to take on something, You're not going to put in the work that is necessary to follow up on intriguing things. Somebody sends you an idea and it sounds vaguely interesting to you, but you're gonna have to set up a fifteen minute call to find out a little bit more and they're like, Okay, I do not have time for that. I can't do that. Well, maybe it would have been nothing, but maybe that would have been a project that would take you'd be doing for years and enjoying. I mean, my Before Breakfast podcast actually came out of a totally random email that someone at my old publisher sent that actually the way it was phrased was monetizing and elevating best of both worlds, and I think she had just slipped and with it, and she was like, oh podcast, Oh, she has a podcast, I'll put that title in, but it was about starting a new one with iHeartMedia.

00:21:39
Speaker 3: That was like, totally clearly, you're not making any money on that podcast, I will.

00:21:43
Speaker 2: Tell you, although we are now, but at the time we were not. But it was like just a random thing. And if, like she even put in the email, it might be a refresher on stuff you already know. What was this, I don't even know, but I agreed to have a call, and then one thing led to another and put in some work to pitch a new show. And Before Breakfast has now been around for seven years. And these are the kinds of things that you may want to.

00:22:14
Speaker 4: Be at least slightly open too.

00:22:17
Speaker 2: And so there's some practical ways you can structure your life to have that happen.

00:22:20
Speaker 3: And by the way, I love a serendipitous event, like when it does happen. So I'm kind of not anti serendipity. I just my only anti is to completely discount planning as an idea that like you will therefore not have serendipity. But I think we believe those two things can absolutely coexist.

00:22:38
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, like, yeah, they totally exist time and I would say, Sarah that the reason you felt you could take on your trip to Williams is that your life is organized enough that you knew you were getting other things done that you had to do. If you had a deadline for something, you have this spot carved out to make it happen, like you had structured all this, so it worked for you to go Yeah, And that's many people don't think they can take on things because their life is chaotic and out of control and they I have all this stuff I have to do, I can't do anything else. Well, if you sort of sort through all that stuff and figure out where it can go, as Sarah does all the time through her planning process, then you have the space for these wonderful things to take place.

00:23:25
Speaker 3: And you're right, they are wonderful and it's almost a carot So this is one wonderful benefit of having your stuff together. So yeah, yeah, Well we're going to take a break and then we're going to play a fun game. Are you ready?

00:23:38
Speaker 1: I'm ready, I'm ready.

00:23:52
Speaker 3: Well, before we get to our game, I just want to say that what we just discussed is like a mere taste of the wonderful like story and ideas in big time, so I highly suggest picking up a copy. Again, I think it's the ideal read on a plane as you're headed too a trip, or as you're getting ready to do some planning. The summer's coming up, so it might be perfect for now as you're thinking through the summer and how to make that time feel a little bit more abundant and expansive. So it's very inspiring. You will feel good after reading it, and I highly recommend it. You can get it anywhere, but if you get it today, I think that gives Laura an extra boost, So I think you should do that. Oh thank you, Sarah. So now we're going to play a fun game and fun fact, I got my assignment wrong, so Laura. We thought of this idea for me to give Laura quotes from each of her books and then she has to guess which book they're all from. And at first I thought it was all quotes from Big Time, because I guess that's how much I like Big Time. But I now have four books in the canon represented, not all of them, and they are the mic drop moments that I personally circled, but they're not too specific because I didn't want to make them like really easy. They obviously related to some vignette, then Laura might guess them right away. So I think this will be very, very fun.

00:25:07
Speaker 2: Oh now I'm nervous. I'm going to fail my own book trivia.

00:25:12
Speaker 3: All right, the first one might be the hardest because it's kind of okay, okay, you ready. In particular, we suffer when expectations exceed reality. I circled it, I liked it.

00:25:27
Speaker 4: Is it off the Clock?

00:25:28
Speaker 3: Yes? Oh my gosh, you got it. Wait, I have the books here, so I'm going to read it for context where that came from? Okay, all right, sound effects, which we don't usually have on this podcast, but if I have all of Laura's books on hard coffee, of course. So all right, So Laura says, I'm trying to say, like where to start from. Some suffering, the kind we must learn to be good at, is inevitable, but others suffering is self imposed. In particular, we suffer when expectations exceed reality. This suffering is a major cause of wasted time. Mental anguish and rumination eat up our, and they also keep us from enjoying the time. We have page one hundred and seventy three of Off the clock boy.

00:26:07
Speaker 2: I need to repeat that to myself a few times. I feel like a lot of my suffering does extend from expectations in reality not matching or even just like my expectations are worried that something's going to go wrong, and then.

00:26:21
Speaker 4: Many times it does not. So hey, take my own advice there.

00:26:24
Speaker 3: It's a mic drop moment. Yeap?

00:26:25
Speaker 4: All right?

00:26:26
Speaker 3: Number two, I think we should all be time millionaires. And this is a quote.

00:26:34
Speaker 4: That is Tranquility by Tuesday.

00:26:36
Speaker 3: Yes. And do you remember who you were quoting this? Mean?

00:26:39
Speaker 4: Is it Rachel Rogers?

00:26:41
Speaker 2: I believe her name was, Yes, because she wrote a book called We Should All Be Millionaires, Yes and So, which I heartily agree with. I mean, I think is about wealth building for women. But I'm also a fan of being a time millionaire, having that sense of time abundance.

00:26:56
Speaker 4: So yes, Tranquility by Tuesday.

00:26:58
Speaker 3: Yes, and Rachel Rogers I believe a guest on our show as well. So it all comes full circle. All right. Number three, This one's a little easy. Sorry, Okay, you have more time than you think.

00:27:13
Speaker 2: One hundred and sixty eight hours. Yes, that is, I may have said it more than once.

00:27:19
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it might be on the cover. Ald On, let me all the books fell when I was doing this here we go, So it's on page seventeen and the cover and also the cover. Okay, so that wasn't I was not playing hardball with that one.

00:27:32
Speaker 2: Well, if I was stumped on this podcast, it might be slightly embarrassing there of it.

00:27:38
Speaker 3: Well, it would have been, okay if you got three out of four. Okay, so all right, you've read a lot of books. There's ten books. I mean, I could have been really mean and chosen something from I don't know, the middle buried some random sentence from That's True Corner Office or something.

00:27:51
Speaker 2: Although it was something from the Courtland Boys, I'm sure i'd pick up because that would be the one that would be That would.

00:27:55
Speaker 1: Have been fun.

00:27:56
Speaker 3: Actually, but okay, I want to read this part. But before you put it down to go check your email, I want to make sure you take away two thoughts. You can choose how to spend your one hundred and sixty eight hours, and you have more time than you think. Do not put this book down to check your email.

00:28:12
Speaker 4: I love it.

00:28:12
Speaker 3: I love it, all right. Our final quiz show is everyone deserves to be interested in his or her own life. Is that also tranquility bites?

00:28:24
Speaker 4: No, that's big Time, that's big Time.

00:28:26
Speaker 3: Yes, I not include a quote from Big Time. So it's in the Golden Hours chapter of Big Times, and you talk about how you can completely transform your golden hours by taking one night a week for your passions. And then you say everyone deserves to be interested in his or her own life. And I'm like, ooh, that's such a mic drop, because sadly that's that should be obvious and yet it isn't.

00:28:48
Speaker 2: So yeah, well, I agree, we should be interested in our own lives.

00:28:52
Speaker 4: So glad I wrote that.

00:28:54
Speaker 3: Well, this was so fun. You should all email Laura with a random quo. I'm just kidding. Laura can She's very busy with interviews, but you can also email her trivia from a random book and she'll write you back with which book it's from. But seriously, this is so fun and it's so fun to celebrate number ten. I mean, how amazing is that? What an achievement. I think I've read all of them. Well, I might not have read Corner Office. I'll have to go back and read that, okay, but I have read I think all of the other books, including Courtland Boys, and I always enjoy reading your books, So I mean, truly, this is very exciting and I'm already excited for the next one, truly, but you should read this one first. Well, thank you, Sarah.

00:29:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for everyone who's willing to listen to this and indulge me in this. But yeah, you had so much fun writing big time, and a few little easter egg moments in there that Sarah was appreciating.

00:29:45
Speaker 3: There may be the in Permian extinction may get mentioned once, Yes, well, I mean I think you were determined to make sure that got in there. Somehow.

00:29:53
Speaker 4: It was determined to make sure that.

00:29:54
Speaker 3: I've been obsessed about it for the past two years, so like, how could I Listeners of this podcast are going to huckle at various points because you'd be like, oh, Laura, I had to put that in there. I mean I texted her like multiple times as I was reading.

00:30:07
Speaker 4: It's fun exactly exactly all right.

00:30:11
Speaker 2: So we have a question which I want to direct this one at Sarah because what both of us do for a living is content creation. And I know some people have asked Sarah about advice for an aspiring course creator so many times when people decide to launch a business that is based on their expertise, Among the things they do is to create.

00:30:38
Speaker 4: And market courses.

00:30:40
Speaker 2: And Sarah just revamped Best Laid Plans Academy two point zero. So obviously you've been thinking about how to do this and how to change a course to make it more appealing and more useful for people. So what is your advice for somebody who is thinking of launching a course?

00:30:55
Speaker 4: What should they do?

00:30:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you should really put yourself in the position of your learners and think what do they need, what do they want, what do they want to hear, and what do they want to hear specifically from you? What expertise do you have? But really it's more about them than it is about you, and that's kind of how the initial Best lay of Lands Academy was born. I had very little confidence when I went to do this. I was like, I don't really know how to do this, but I talked to I think it was Kelly Nolan actually who gave me one of the bigger pushes to get started. And she's a very well known in certain sectors course creator. She does a whole course on digital time management called the Bright Method. And Kelly's honestly like, just do it, just try it. You can tell people this is your first time, and you get to decide how you do it. And there's not really a wrong answer, which is very odd from someone coming from like a more structured career path, but I took her advice and she was right. But then comes to the part where you iterate, so you see how it worked, and you ask people and what worked and what didn't work, and then you hope that every round is going to be better than the next, and then probably going to become a time and you're like, I actually need to like start from scratch and make this all pretty and make it even better. And you get to do that, and I feel like we've done that with Best Laid Plans Live Too, that really has evolved in such a fun way, And even though the first one was amazing, I feel like it's only gotten better. So yeah, I say, just go for it. If you're listening to this and you're like, I want to be in that one is full right now. I like to keep my course size as manageable so that there is some like real personal aspects of it, but I'm sure I will be doing more later this year, and then of course I all have our virtual planning the year course and planning by season, and you can always find that stuff on my website.

00:32:39
Speaker 4: Absolutely.

00:32:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, so very lean startup, try out an idea, iterate, see what users are looking for, and talk with them and then keep iterating from there. All right, Sarah Love of the Week. I was going to say writing books, but I've decided to change that because I have discovered this tea.

00:33:01
Speaker 4: I'm not a big tea drinker, but it's called throat coat, and I do the echinia. However you say that nation lemon.

00:33:11
Speaker 3: What is it? I think it's echinaesia echinaesia lemon okay flavor.

00:33:17
Speaker 2: And it truly does make your voice less gravelly. And so I was like drinking it while recording the audiobook for Big Time. I have now started doing it before like and enduring podcast recording days.

00:33:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really does help. So it's called throat coat. So check that out.

00:33:42
Speaker 3: And if you're like Laura, sounded really good today, that's why.

00:33:46
Speaker 2: Well, okay, if you think I don't like, I mean, I'm better than it would be.

00:33:51
Speaker 4: Let's just put it that way.

00:33:52
Speaker 2: I just sang like in a concert yesterday and had a dress rehearsal the day before.

00:33:57
Speaker 3: And yeah, so there's been a lot of vocal use going on. Well same I could have. I mean I was scream singing like thirty six hours ago or something.

00:34:06
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:34:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, and my loves of the weeks are reconnecting with old friends obviously, but also I just have to say Williamstown itself, it is just it's ridiculous. It's like the ideal at college Town. I'm sure there's an emotional piece of that, but objectively it's actually just awesome. So yeah, Williamstown.

00:34:26
Speaker 2: And it's probably prettier now than like it would have been two months ago or something.

00:34:30
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean I purposely did not. They don't hold these things in February.

00:34:36
Speaker 2: Late April is the time to go, is when she went. Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been doing some life updates on recent travels. We've been talking big time as well. We will be back next.

00:34:47
Speaker 4: Week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:34:52
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.

00:35:00
Speaker 2: 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.