Work hacks (and happy birthday Laura!)

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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. Well, Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode seventy. We're mostly going to be talking about wark hacks, how we try to be more productive in our working lives. This is airing first in early December, December four which we're calling this my unofficial birthday episode. We just call it your official birthday. I guess it could be my official I mean, we're not that work hacks or I guess all I want to talk about for my birthday. But it is a milestone one are you going to let everyone know what the milestone? Maybe we figured out what it is. Yes, I'm probably not thirty, so yeah, I'm turning forty. This week yay, which is exciting. I guess in its own special way, it is exciting. I mean, I'm not quite forty, but I'm almost forty, and I'm sort of excited about it in a way. But Laura, you're on the tail end of Generation X, so I was just thinking, you have lived in multiple decades, briefly in the seventies, in the eighties, the nineties, the aughts, and now the tens, and it's very exciting. So what are you going to do to celebrate? Yeah, I don't know that I'm in the GENAX. I you know, we I think we've had this discussion before. Are we actually gen X? Or you're you're less so than I would be, But I don't really. We're both like on the cusp. I see Oregon Trail genera trail generation. I think that's the best because it's like the small cusp between like nineteen seventy seven and nineteen eighty two exactly because if you played orgon Trail and in elementary school, that was that was me. I did, in fact play or I got on the trail, except when I, you know, the so and so has died of dysentery. I guess that was you don't hear about dysentery so much anymore, which is a good thing. But yeah, no, I'm I don't have any huge celebrations planned unfortunately, probably because the planning fatigue is setting in right before you know, my birthday planned, two children's birthday parties, a couple of trips this fall. I've had a lot of other things going on, so I just, I don't know, not not been top priority. Maybe I could sort of randomly hope that my husband will plan something, but I'm not sure that will happen. So I am really hoping that he is planning something something Well, we'll say, I suspect that he will, and probably something like really amazing, like going to Paris for the weekend and something we already did that. I guess maybe he'll tell me that that was it. We could oh retrospect to rest to respective gift gift. No, I don't know, do you. Yeah, so I feel that you are where you thought you'd be at forty I mean yeah, and no, I mean I guess. On the plus side, I am a professional writer, which is definitely what I wanted to be growing up in the time when I wasn't thinking I wanted to be on stage somewhere, But now I am on stage, just not you know, performing on Broadway per se, but I'm on stage every week talking to people, so that's kind of fun. I publish books, so that's what I wanted to do, and I'm married and have four kids. I guess, you know, you always sort of wonder if it would be like I feel like I've had a bit of a slow build career, is how I would describe it. There's no you know, one book or thing that has kind of made everything, and so maybe that will happen in my forties or maybe not. We'll see. But you know, hey, if any of our listeners are like, hey, hey, I would like to do something fun for Laura for her fortieth birthday, you could go buy one of my books. That was always a great way to do. Or ask your library to order a copy they don't have one, yes, or very quickly, you could just leave a two sentence review on Amazon or Barnesannoble dot com or Goodreads five star review. Please. If it's going to be a birthday present, yes, I mean a birthday present would have to be a five star. I would have to be a five star review. But that would be great. You can also leave a reviewer rating for this podcast or tell a friend about it. So yeah, that would be a great way to celebrate turning forty. Have you been thinking about how you're turning for I heard you were thinking about a marathon. Yeah. Yeah, I'm thinking about a marathon. I think I don't think I would do that before forty. I think maybe i'll do that like when I'm forty. During that then you get to be in a different age group exactly. Well, no, I just when I think of the decades, it starts to like think back a decade and forward. Because when I thought about your I was like, what am I going to do? And then I was like, what was life like at thirty? And I'm like, oh my god, it was a total baby. I mean not really, but kind of. I actually went back and looked at some blog posts and was like, yes, there has been a lot of growth in this decade. And then I started thinking about fifty and how old my kids will be, and that was kind of like shocking, Yeah, they'll be kind of grown up at that point. Yeah, you'll have children in college, I presumably will or whatever their post whatever, they're placed. School plans are likely college, but we'll see who knows, who even knows. I'm trying to think of at thirty, if I could picture myself at forty. You know, I at thirty, I didn't even have a contract for one hundred and sixt eight Hours, which was my first time management book, so that was had not happened yet I had one. You probably didn't picture that you would have done a Ted talk prior to forty, well, partly because Ted wasn't around then. Wasn't trying to think it may have been around It may have been. I think it started right around then, but uh no, I mean the idea that I would have given a talk that like seven million people would have watched, Yes, no, that would have been an exciting thing for me. But yeah, you know a lot of things I'm happy about things changes. I didn't know we'd be out in Pennsylvania. I guess I'm not sure that I would have said we'd have four children, but that is a good development as well. I'm I'm happy to have written lots of books too, so given that I didn't have even one of them on time management, and so, yeah, you know, it's been a good decade. It's been a good yeah, and here's to the next decade. And if we did you know, I've I subscribed to several podcasts where they like seem to have beverages. So we're just hard to virtual glass virtual. I do have like a half drunk Lacroix can next to me. Well that's celebratory, that's great, that's how we that's how we roll around. Here are people. So yeah, our this episode is going to be our work hacks, which Sarah and I have actually spent this whole morning recording with various guests, with all the back and forth involved in that and trouble shooting, and so we never actually talked through how we plan to approach this if are we going to trade back and forth? Do you want one of us to go and then the other? How what do you? What do you think? Uh? Why don't we do like a few and then go back and forth be a hybrid because mine are kind of in groups, so that's true. Yeah, okay, you can give us a few, all right, I'll give you a few. My first work hack, which is honestly what I feel like makes my life work, is that I plan my upcoming weeks on Friday and I make short priority lists for the next week, the career, relationships and self category, you know, just figure out what are my top goals in each of those. And what the point of this is not so much like, oh, what do I have coming up in the next week, is that it forces me to identify what I really truly want to get done in the next week, because if everything else goes to hell, like, I'm still going to do these things. And so that's actually really helpful. Like when I do have a week where everything falls apart and you know, you wind up with various plumber visits and emergency room fund and all that, you know, you're still making progress on your goals. So I would say that that is my biggest productivity to ever is to take some time on Friday afternoon plan the week ahead. The second one is leave email till later. Whenever you're thinking about doing it, leave it till later and donal no, but just check, you know, check email less frequently. I like to leave my answering of a lot of it that's not urgent to the end of the day. I will glance at what's there, but I want to wait until later. In the day to just take you know, twenty minutes and go through what's come in and answer it rather than trying to, you know, go back and forth to it every five minutes like when stuff comes in. And I know a lot of people can't do that, but you know, even if you just say, okay, every two hours, I'm going to see what's coming in and get to you know, current, and then another two hours when I'm off it and then get back on it, like rather than trying to go in and out every few minutes through the whole course of the day. Like that is the way. I totally agree, and I will say like that was one of my big things too, and I'm not always good about doing it, but particularly actually it doesn't even matter whether I'm doing more structured work or unstructured. If I leave the window open on my browser, it's as simple as that, I'm going to get distracted and not even once, but like a million different times by things that yes, they're like to do items or whatever, but they absolutely can be batched and they should not be intruding upon either my deeper work or my even just documentation like shallower kinds of work. So I am totally with you, it has to be batched in whatever way works for you. I actually even will go so far as to say, I'm annoyed at what they've done with our medical record system because I feel like they're starting to enable more kind of interruption type pop ups, and if that continues to escalate, it's going to get to the point where my own work is interfering with my work, and that's not good for anyone. So I guess I would just say controlling the inputs is huge and sorry, but and that that if I could do one thing too, and I when I have a good day, it's because of that. So yes, Laura is right, and we actually practice it with each other because we'll often like I'll send Laura like five emails in a row and then like ignore email for a while, and then she'll write back five things, and I'll write her five. Yeah. Well, I even, you know, I do like at the end of the day or sometimes every like three or four days, I'll sit down and I have like an hour that I'm trying to get to current over the past couple of days that I haven't gotten this stuff, and and so then you just but it's amazing how efficient you can be when you're just going through with your your planner and your calendar and going through the email and either address that or don't or put it on the to D list for you know, a certain day in the future. But yeah, I think staying on top of it is somewhat overrated. Although we have different thoughts on inbox zero. But yeah, that's uh, well, that's right, said you got to You just said you got to zero. So in my first not in the sense that I don't delete everything, but I've dealt with anything I'm going to deal with. We have a similar mindset, it's just whether we hide them in archives or has in visible. I think we're more similar than we think, you exactly. So something related to that in terms of limiting the inputs is try to structure your life and so you can allow yourself that when you are in the flow, to run with it. So while I do like to plan my days to a degree, I really love to stay with a project that I'm getting into and so one of the things I will do is try to structure big blocks of open time in my schedule to allow for this. This is particularly important with things like writing drafts or editing things that it feels so good to just really get into it and not have to be watching the clock, not being like, Okay, this is going to get chopped up, you know, for a phone call now, and then I've got half hour off and then another call and then I have to do something else, you know. I like to have three or four hours open to just do that, and that's not easy to pull off, Like it's not I have to be very strategic about telling people, you know, I can't meet at that time, I have to meet at a different time, or you know, people are throwing out times for call, like let's do it at this different time, so I can create these open blocks. But then that is what makes work feel good. I guess that is how I'd say it. Like that, I'm you know, got this time that I'm getting into writing a scene in a novel. I can stick with it. So if I'm editing something, I can tell I'm really making it better, then I don't have to stop. So that's a key thing for me. I love that, and I mean my my work is not as conducive to that. But you're like, I'm really into the flow of examining this patient it's pay here for three hours. Just No, it's more in the it's more in two realms. Number one, the unstructured time. So if I have like a big project, like I had to prep this it's called the Clinical Competency Committee, and it's like a meeting where we review all the residents and I had to like structure the meeting and prep a PowerPoint and like put it together. Like if I have a big project like that, like I need to delineate a block of time when like no one can bother me. And that's kind of similar, Like I can't really realistically ever block off even half the day is tough because I really only have only two half days for my unstructured stuff, and that some of that gets filled by meetings. But if I can even block off two three hours where I'm like everyone's going to leave me alone, then it's much more pleasant and much more productive. And same thing if I'm like catching up on a bunch of notes in a row, like sometimes I just have to resign myself on a call weekend to like I'm sitting in this hour like no one's going to bother me. I'm just going to get through all of these, Yeah, although you do try to do documentation right afterwards, right, So maybe you should because you've got two types of days. You've got the inflexible ones and the flexible ones. So yeah, so I like divided things up a little bit. So, I mean, this is for our physicians, as you all know, we have become. Actually, my husband literally just forwarded me an interesting article written by the great to Tool Gwande, writer and surgeon in The New Yorker talking about how basically EPIC, which is the documentation system that many physicians use, one of the big electronical medical record companies, is like killing us all. I mean not really, but really hurting the profession, hurting our quality of lives. And that's you know, the one that most health systems use. And I think there are some wonderful things about it, but it's tough, and it gets seems to get tougher, Like there are more clicks even now than when I started. For example, that said, to the extent possible, and this is every doctor, I try to do as much documentation, either in the room with the patient or immediately after seeing the patient, because when I procrastinate and have to do it at a later time, it always takes a million times longer, feels a million times less present. I'm sure I lose actual clinical details. So this is something that's big. And my husband, I know, works on this as well for himself, really trying to not let charts sit there because I know that also very much stresses him out. And nobody can really relax when they know they have, like you know, forty seven open charts that they know they have to deal with. Yeah, and you spend some time prepping for like the patients coming in, And then I loved you you wrote a tip here about looking for ways to automate, like what let's because that sounds like a worker right the hair. Absolutely, So there are so many things that I'm sure sure many of us do. Definitely many physicians, I'm sure many lawyers that are like templates. Like I mean, there's certain things that you realistically can't automate, Like when a patient gets diagnosed with type one diabetes, I have to have a very sensitive conversation with the family, and I truly do feel for the families, but I've also like had that conversation like nine thousand times at this point, so I can't automate that, like I can't just be like, oh, here's a YouTube with my diabetes speech like have fun, because you have to actually like get close to the patient and you know, demonstrate true empathy which is real, and you know, answer their specific questions. So some things are just too sensitive to automate. But other things, like you know, a list of side effects for a fairly benign medication, or reference materials on like the you know, the treatment of I don't know, automateethiraditis, like something that's a little bit less sensitive that you're you're handing out. It's amazing what you can do with prepared handouts or phrases that go into your electronic medical record, even phrases that and and you know, as I just totally land based it our electronicals electronic medical records system. But one of the wonderful things about it is you can create something called a dot phrase, which means that like you can write one it's a text expander film. Essentially you write one word and it turns it into a paragraph of your choice. And so that can save a ton of time, whether it has to do with patient information or parts of your notes, et cetera, or even you know, things like you know patients are going to contact you with certain questions, sort of having the answers at the ready or perhaps delegated to your assistance if you have them so that it doesn't even have to get to you, if it's a straightforward question that's being answered more than one time. I think in general, like anything you can do to automate stuff. I talk about this idea of like time dividends in Off the Clock, one of my books. The idea is if you do anything multiple times in life, you know you first ask yourself when you do something like am I going to do this again? Because some stuff you're never going to do again? Or it's going to be enough different each time, Like in your case, you know you're you're having the same conversation, but every family is different, every patient is individual. Like that, that's not something that can can be automated. But you know, if I am going to do this again, is there some aspect of it that I could make easier and more efficient so I can save myself time in the future. You know this For me, this is something as simple as a lot of people ask me for a headshot, for instance, so you know, well, we put it on my website, so you can download it there. But we also I also have it named on my computer with like an underscore before the file name, so it is at the top rather than you know, be buried somewhere as Laura vandercam jpeg and have to hunt for it every time. So or same thing with my timelog. You know, that's another thing that people ask for a lot, so I can just email it very quickly. You know. One one thing that I've heard from people is just a great hack. If we've got listeners who a lot of people ask you to to pick your brain, they're like horrible phrase, and often what it is is that they're trying to get in your endoret they want some of you know, information, also want like contacts and want you to know them. And that's great because you want to be helpful for people, but you don't want to like have to answer the same question one hundred times as you're doing this. So create a list of like frequently ask questions about your industry, send it to the person who wants to pick your brain, and invite them to send you any follow up questions. Like a big chunk of people never will because they just don't like when it's mildly more difficult, they won't. But then if they do send smart follow up questions, well, that's really somebody you actually kind of do want to meet and possibly mentor so so that can be a good time hack there. I think that's awesome. It puts the onus on them and then you're right, it's like in a select for the few that actually might be somebody you might want to collaborate with in the future. Friends. Sounds great, like they asked awesome follow up questions like totally want to meet with them. Yeah, so one thing that kind of goes with your other one about meetings. Yeah, oh my goodness, So I got this. Yeah, I've read this book called The Art of Gathering by a Prea Parker's. It's a really good book and I would recommend it. You know, meetings are one of those things like millions of white collar workers are chomping from meeting to meeting like middle schoolers changing classes, like putting zero thought into it. It's just like, oh, here's my two o'clock by three o'clock, by four o'clock, and she's she's talking about gathering in general. So sometimes that means parties sometimes that means major conferences or events, but it could just be you know, Monday and Monday morning meeting too. But she's arguing that you need certain things, like you need a purpose, which is that something is going to change in the world as a result of this gathering. If your meeting cannot reach that bar like why are you having it? And like the meetings that are just to like distribute information. We have tools, like you can send that out, do you send an email or just like walk to the person's office and give it to them if you want to make sure they've received it. But like, yeah, the meeting where nothing changes is in the world should should not happen, you know, even thinking about such thing is who is in the room, Like it's not the popular table at lunch, Like you shouldn't bring everyone in who possibly could be or just people who are cool. You know, like the people who are in the room or on the phone need to be the people who are there to make something change in the world as a result of this gathering. If they are not, then they shouldn't be on there. And you know, thinking through what happens the whole time, thinking through what you want from people like that there needs to be structured, you know, inputs, like because otherwise you could just get dominated by the three people who talk loudest, So making sure you've got everyone's opinion, but being able to say in a way that it's not just like everyone reflects the most important person in the room, you know, having an agenda for the whole time. Like if you if you've got a meeting where there isn't an agenda, you should be very very worry of that meeting. I mean I just said that we we didn't talk through how we're going to do this episode, but we have a general structure for most of these things. But you know, if a meeting doesn't have set out what everyone in the room is supposed to be doing with every minute that they are there, again, you're probably not going to be as effective as you should be. And then think about the ending. The ending should not just be like okay, we're done, walk out, Like you know, you've decided on your conclusion. What's changed? Who's going to do something differently? Is that person aware of it? Like how are we going to follow up that happened? You know, all these things just and if your meeting can't reach that bar and maybe don't have it valuable. I agree meetings probably could be cut in half the way they are in most industries and down with meetings and I'm just kidding, get but you have to have an objective and then you have yes exactly, some like reason, and then some sort of specific takeaway. I usually sit there with a pen and make checkboxes, and you know, a good meeting, I have like two checkboxes that nobody would have thought of before the meeting, so it's like, oh, we actually figured something out and then we have an actionable next step. If there are no checkboxes written, it probably was not a good meeting, or it was probably really just an information distribution, which again probably doesn't need to be one in the first place. No, let's talk about breaks. Oh, yes, you have a lot of breaks right now, although not not fun breaks. No, But I did write on here I wrote take productive breaks, and maybe I was inspired by your notes. But it's true you cannot focus full on for like twelve hours street, and anyone who claims they do is probably lying. I mean, my husband does do like very long surgeries sometimes, but I think that would be like the exception, because you really like can't take a break. Even then they probably take breaks like they need to go to the bathroom, right like, Oh, surgeons do not pee for like long periods of contrust. Okay, that's not even have them on the podcast. You can you can ask him about that. If you're a pregnant surgeon, that is especially difficult. And then that's why a lot of them deliver early, because they like purposely fluid restrict themselves so they don't pee. It's terrible anyway. I don't know if there's evidence to back that up, but I've certainly heard a lot of anecdote because I like to be able to go to the bathroom when I need to go. I am with you anyway, so I don't know how we went there. But what I was going to say is, you know, I've had to pump, well, not had to pump. I've chosen to pump for all these months, and therefore I have taken like three twenty to thirty minute breaks every single day because I really have trouble doing productive things while pumping. We've discussed that before. It is not as simple as just throwing on a hands free pumping bra and doing notes. But I've survived, which means that even once I'm done pumping, I'm not planning on taking that much time. But like, nothing would happen if I left the office for a walk for thirty minutes or shut my went to a cop to the Starbucks down the street and read for thirty minutes, Like nothing earth shattering would happen. I could still get my work done. I can still have a productive day. I can take a social break and you know, have lunch with someone. It's if nothing else, you just come back to work more productive and kind of have a more multi dimensional work life when it's not completely just knows to the grindstone the entire day long. Yeah, I gotta say that when I see people's time logs, this is one of the biggest mistakes I see people making, is thinking, like, look at me, I'm all productive, I'm working through lunch, sitting at my desk like I'm going to get out of here early tonight. And then you know, two thirty three o'clock in the afternoon, they're reading the same email six times in a row and like gett an alert on Facebook and they're like, oh now I'm over on Facebook, and like forty five minutes are gone because it's what happens is that your brain needs a break, and if you don't give it a real break, it takes one of these fake ones where you fall down an internet rabbit hole for just all ungodly amounts of time, and you would have been better off taking a real structured break in there, Like if you're going to lose forty minutes to floundering around doing nothing, like far better to go outside for twenty minutes and actually get some fresh air, walk around, get your energy back, because then you could come back in and get those twenty minutes extra to work. So really kind of proactively building in breaks to the day during times when you know your energy will flag, which which is a good reason to track your time because then you can start to see that. Like if you know that you have lots of intense meetings in the morning and you always feel really fragged afterwards, well that's a good sign you need a break. Or maybe you're you have really focused intense work like head down at the desk in the morning, you really need a lunch and you need to go talk to people and get some of that social interaction. That's what you need for that. But you know, figure out what it is for you that as your energy level, build it in during the day and that's how you actually can get your work done and get up you know, done on time, as opposed to, you know, just having the afternoon be a complete wash. Also kind of on the subject of breaks, this doesn't really apply to you or any other entrepreneurial type person, but if you are somebody who works for a company, use your PTO, use your paid time off. You don't have to use all of it, but you should use a lot of it. I in my opinion, I work with people who take no time off and people who take some, and it definitely seems like there is a difference on the life satisfaction. And I mean, unless you honestly don't feel like you want to do anything other than work, like this is time that is that is yours and you should enjoy it. So I guess I find so many people. And I have a friend literally today that was talking about how incredibly burned out she was and she's working as a hourly employee, but she's not and so she doesn't have to work full time, but she often does. And I'm like, well, do you take any time off? She's like well, because I don't really have like official time off, no, I basically take like no time off. And I'm like, well, there you go, like you're standing here like practically in tears, how burned out you are and you need time for yourself and your family, and you're actually you've built yourself a flexible schedule and then taken zero advantage of it and no time for yourself. So I mean we've talked about like looking at the calendar year and really designating like these are the days I'm going to use. Probably if you look right now in your paid time off account, you probably have some I mean I like, you know, seven or ten days often will just accumulate, and then think about how many days you're going to earn over the next year. And if you know you have that buffer, you can use the same number of days you'll earn and then you still have a buffer. So I think it's very important to look at this and to plan it because otherwise it won't automatically happen, and you're entitled to it, and your company is probably happier if you take advantage of what it considers a benefit that's included to help you be a more balanced happier employee. Yeah. I mean, it's not like people are going to jump up and down and say please take your paid time off. But I mean this is one of those things where you do have to look out for the long term perspective. And there's this great scene in Cheryl Sandberg's Lean In where she talks about and she used work for consulting from many years ago, before Facebook and all that, and she talked about how the head of her office had a conversation with her about at one point and said, you know, people leave here because they're burned out, which is fine, you don't have to work here forever. But what got him was that every single person who left because they were burned out had untaken vacation time. And he said, well, you know, why don't they just take the vacation time and then maybe be less burned out. You know, if it's it's not like the company is going to you know, you have this benefit and it's up to you to take it right. The onus is on you because you know, the work will be happy to just keep taking. Like nobody's going to stop and really analyze this. Maybe they should, but they probably won't. So it's up to you that if you do want to stay within this, you know, long term, and ideally that's what your company would like as well, because it's really a pain in the butt to hire a pact. So I was going to say, even if in the short carem the company benefits, I have to imagine that employee turnover is going to suffer if there's burnout, and burnout is going to happen more often if you don't take any time. So really it's in the company's best interest to have you use at least some of it some of it, yeah, exactly, But you can also figure out different different ways to recharge. We talked about recharging during work travel. You have any good good tips on that. Yeah, I mean I treat my conferences as like part conference and immersion in the actual, you know, substance of what I'm learning, and then part break. And I take no shame in that. I often schedule a manny petty, sometimes a massage, and whatever city I'm in, I take time to go running outside where I am and I enjoy reading books on the plane. So I really treat it as as because I don't have that much time just to myself, so I'm for example, I'm super excited for next year because I haven't gone on a trip in quite a long time. But if you're somebody like me who doesn't travel often, you may be able to afford to use it as that that break that you that you need. Yeah, or at least thinking about how can I get a workout in Can I have some downtime like between my last meeting and dinner, you know, because you're not going to be a different person on the road than you are at home, so you're still going to need the same sorts of things that you would in the rest of the time. Let's see what else did we have. One thing I wanted to say is, you know, build in time to practice your skills. So in my line of works, it's pretty clear like what something like this would be blogging, for instance, is practice writing. If I can crank out an essay really quick on my blog, chances are I can do it for something else too, or I could you know, get ideas from doing this, or just the sheer practice of writing close to daily is what makes me get better at doing that. But I think in any line of work, there's some skill that you do repeatedly and you know, often we do it with repeatedly without thinking about it. So if you just put a little bit of thought into how can I use this fact that I'm doing it repeatedly to do it better? Like if I get feedback on it, or maybe record myself or you know, do something like, you know, how could I make myself get better at this skill? Is there? I mean I guess with medicine, would there be anything? Yeah? Well, I think that's one reason why institutions that have residents often really benefit from that because it forces us as attending is to you know, sometimes you kind and you just get caught in your rud of doing something without thinking about why you're doing or how can you do it better? But all of a sudden, when you have an audience, you kind of do put a little bit more depth of thought into oh am I showing them the right way? And have I looked into the latest amount of evidence about that? And you know they'll question you. So you know. My version of that would, I guess be to use your opportunities for teaching as your own learning time because it will make you better at what you do. That and taking advantage of your colleagues because I feel like I learned the most by you know, when I have a tough case, I immediately go next door to the amazing people that I work with and I run the whole thing by them. And you know, of course you're thinking of it in terms of like, oh, I have to check off what do I do for this patient, But you also have to think of it as like this is how I'm learning, I'm practicing, and I'm growing so that next time, you know, I'll know the answer or I'll know where to look. So yeah, I guess that would be like our version of that. Well, definitely asking your colleague stuff is smart in general. If we don't have to discover the world anew ourselves imagine that other hack I guess we both had, then we can get to our question. But eating that frog? Are you? Are you a fan of eating the frog? Yes? Total. I mean I'm a morning person, so I if I have unstructured time, I am better off. Just it's not oh, let me clear the decks and do my charts and notes whatever. No, Like if I have to like write a proposal or like put something together that requires a little bit more brain power, like I am much better off doing it first. Are you the same way? I think in general, I mean, I think about what does first mean, because it doesn't mean six am in the morning, you know, when i'm sometimes it does well for me, it does it? Or four thirty four thirty in the Yeah, no, I mean I would, but that time has a high chance of getting interrupted, so I really just don't want to bank on it. That's true. Then I just get frustrated. But the kids are on the bus by eight thirty five, and I'm I'm done with kid stuff at that point. So I really think of like the eight thirty five to ten window as being where I would I should not be clean clearing the decks that time. It's hard because yeah, you're like, oh, well, there's all these quick things I could knock off my to do list for the day and then I can focus. But the worry is that you'll knock all that stuff off to clear the decks, and then you'll be like, oh, it's time for my morning break, and then it's, uh, you know, well now I've got to call at ten thirty and no, you know, and then you're not getting to the important stuff until you know, the afternoon or when you're starting to get more tired. No, that makes sense. I think I have less long important projects than you. So if I have something like I can throw it. I can throw a pretty good teaching PowerPoint together at four thirty in the morning, good for you. So sometimes that is my or do some podcast scripts for example my deep work this morning. Sometimes that is Sometimes it is valuable time. I guess it just depends on what your day and your week. It's like exactly, that is not an everyday thing. By the way, No, don't anybody judge me for that. Do you have any other work hacts for I'm sure I do. But we've talked for a pretty long time. So maybe we'll have to do like a work Hacks part too, where we get to anything we didn't get to and maybe get some submissions from our wonderful listeners and readers. So if you have something you do that makes you much more effective and efficient at work, please let us know. You can always email me Elevanderkam at yahoo dot com or the shoebox blog right at shoebox Yeah, my email shoebox blog at gmail dot com, or just write to me on our Instagram which I post our episode every week, or my blog, which we do look for questions there because we this week's question came from an Instagram use it. Yes, this was an Instagram direct message, which incidentally I did just to delete the Instagram app and I'm gonna have to put it back on because I don't know how to get direct messages. Okay, can do everything else, so it's kind of frustrating anyway. So this was a question that someone asked on Instagram. It was just how do you fit in time for fitness? And I know we've kind of discussed that a little bit before, but I don't know we have ever given like a list and some of you maybe headed into resolutions season as this air, so figured why not mention it. Here's my list, ready, let's go do it in the morning, because otherwise it's never gonna happen. Again. If you have a different kind of job, and Laura will talk about her situation that may be different, but honestly, for me, if it's not done by seven thirty on a weekday anyway, it's probably not going to happen. So if you're really committed, find that early hour that you can devote be okay with a little bit. So Laura has her one mile or maybe it's you know, ten minutes of a strength training. So sometimes a little is better than nothing, and a little definitely is better than nothing. And I didn't always used to realize that, but now I have. Our guest last week talked about the seven minute app right, so I've heard good things about this seven minutes. I'm pretty sure you can find seven minutes somewhere. It's true using if you run or walk. You know, if you have an early working, early waking baby, try out a running stroller can be a good good strategy. Or send your partner out with the running stroller and then you can have time to do your workout as I did this morning. That works too. Recall the benefits that exercise brings, so you know, get to get to your why. For me, it's whatever about you know, long term health benefits met, but like being much calmer and happier during the day worth it. So you know, you have to find out what your motivation is and think about that. If you're an obliger in the Gretchen Reuben tendencies, she will tell you a million times that you need to find some sort of outer accountability. That's not Laura or me. But if that is you to find out you know who you could meet up with, gamify it, or train for something, and finally find something that you actually enjoy doing, because nobody's going to get up and like torture themselves. There's got to be something out there that's fun for you. Humans do not do well with suffering long term, right, Like, I mean, you'll stick with it for two weeks and then you'll be like screw this. You know, if you if you hate running, you could try it, but like you're not going to really probably wind up being a runner long term. But you know, if there's something else you like, maybe it's a group fitness class or just walking with a friend, right that seems more like fun rather than exercise, and that can be perfectly fine as well. So yeah, it doesn't it doesn't have to be training for a marathon, I'd say my suggestions. So this would not work for everyone. But I have actually found that doing the streak is a great way to find time for a little bit of fitness every day because then it's not the question of am I going to run? It's when am I going to run? And so then I've taken the sort of motivation question out of it, and then it's just looking at the schedule and say, well, where does it fit. I know I need I'll be so excited if somebody starts like a twenty nineteen streak based on this episode. Oh that's do it. Well, someone do it. Sure, you could totally do it. And it doesn't have to be running like so you know, other people might be you know, prone to entry seven minute app running every day might not work for them, but the seven minute app you could probably do that. Or you could say that, you know, every day this year, I'm going to do ten minutes of something, right, So whether that's walking briskly or ten minutes of you know, push ups and sit ups and crunch you know, planks or whatever. That ten minutes of something could could certainly be be done for an entire year without too much of an issue. I think often it's not so much finding time, is just designating a time that we need some queue in our lives that oh, yeah, now is the time when I exercise, rather than trying to figure it out anew all the time. So you know, if it is first thing in the morning, that's a really good queue. But maybe it's also it's your lunch break at work, or maybe it's that you know, you build it into your life, Like you get off at a different train stop, and so you have to walk briskly for fifteen minutes to your office and there you go. Now you've built in fifteen minutes of brisk walking into your day that you didn't have before. So yeah, don't it doesn't have to be big. Figure out if there's some way you can sort of build it into your life daily, and you know, if that doesn't work, don't think daily to say, like, you know, where are four times this week I could I could fit it in? Love it And speaking of loves, we will get to our love of the week. I will let you end this special birthday episode, but I will tell you that my love of the week is birthday massages. This is a tradition that Josh and I have, I don't know, developed over the years and typically on both of our birthdays. And this is super indulgent, but whatever it is, what it is. We take the day off and we both get massages together and it's like a lovely date and then we go to lunch after and so we have childcare. If it's on a weekday. Anyway, if it's not on a weekday, we'll actually move it so that we do it during a weekday. So actually, because my husband will have his own I guess it's not really a milestone birthday, double number birthday. You will have his birthday just a few days after yours, but that's on the weekend. So on your birthday, he and I are getting birthday massages for him. So there you go. I'll think of you to me, I yes, why you guys are Yeah, I may not be getting massage, and so that will have to be figure out. Well, we'll figure it out. Yeah. I try to schedule some fun stuff around my birthday, you know, even thinking of it as a birthday week like it do. I have a bunch of fun stuff during that week. It doesn't always work so well, and sometimes the day itself is kind of not what I would would hope. Last year was really rough. My husband got in a car accident. He was fine, he was a minor vendor bender, but there was there was that, and then my then two year old pulled his dresser over on himself, also fortunately not entered, but that was whoe A not fun moment, which everything has been secured to the wall now, just in case anyone's wondering. And I wound up, I was flying to I went to Chicago because I have speech the next day in Chicago, and I was in a but not like downtown Chicago, as in Deerfield, Illinois. And so I had my birthday dinner by myself in a hotel restaurant in Deerfield, Illinois, which is, you know, maybe not the peak of what one might hope for your birthday experience. Yeah, but by yourself part is the sad part. I think that you could probably have a fantastic time in deer Field, but I know they're wonderful. Place was in Deerfield, Illinois. Yeah exactly, but yes, the hotel restaurant by yourself. It reminds me of My husband told the story once year to go to me that he is the sort of lost track of what day was or everyon went out one night by himself just to get food and notes around that everyone has candlelights and flowers and Valentine's Day. He was eating by himself fancy restaurants, so it probably didn't even register with him. He's like, oh, you know, anyway, so I'm not sure what I'm doing yet, but we'll we'll know when this comes out and I'll post on my blog and you know, hopefully I've got great plans for the week. But whatever it's, it's it's good to have birthdays because it's definitely better than the alternative. So you know, embrace and love life and happy with stuff now. So yeah, well this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking mostly work hacks with a little side detour into my birthday, but 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 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.