Time and Productivity Mastery with Laura Vanderkam

Episode 130 • 2nd January 2024 • Momma Has Goals • Kelsey Smith

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idea of doing one big adventure and one little adventure each week. The idea is that we want to make life a little bit more memorable. We want time not to just day after day bleed into each other. what even happened last week, I don't know if that was the week that you went hiking in that state park that was an hour away and you haven't been to yet you're gonna remember that or even the week where you try that new gelato place or something like that. By putting in one big adventure and one little adventure, you can stick with all your good routines. It doesn't take that much time. But it's enough of a cadence of difference that life becomes more interesting that you are making memories time doesn't just disappear.

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Let's reimagine mom life together. Mama how schools is your hub for relatable support and helpful resources that help you fuel yourself alongside motherhood. Your identity is bigger than mom, and whatever your goals are. Together, we're making them a reality. all know that we have the same 24 hours in a day, but it often doesn't feel that way. You may see someone else operating their life and their variables and their schedule and wonder how are they doing it. And I am all for getting as many tools in the toolbox as we can to help us make the most out of our life. Our days are ours and our time and I'm super excited to bring Laura Vander cam on to the podcast. today. She's the author of several time management and productivity books including the new tranquility by Tuesday, nine ways to calm the chaos and make time for what matters along with Juliet School of possibilities off the clock. I know how she does it. What the most successful people do before breakfast, and 168 hours, her work has appeared in publications including New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and fortune. She is the host of the podcast before breakfast in the co host with Sarah Hart Unger of the podcast best of both worlds. She lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband and five children and blogs at Laura Vander kam.com. We break down all different ways that you can navigate your schedule and your time how she does this with kids from 16 to three and really navigate family time for solo time with kids, teenagers, young kids and activities, and how we can set a strong foundation going into the new year for our new goals or new time management. But making sure that we're also creating sustainable success so that we can make this part of our life and create more time for fun, enjoy. So you're gonna get some tangible takeaways, great conversation, we keep it real while also giving you strategies so that you can implement now and get more time back. Here we go. Laura, I'm so excited to have you here out of our community members, I feel that most of us feel there's never enough time. This is a common theme for humans, and especially women and mothers is how does she do it? How does she get all the things and AI and I love through all your books that you have and your two podcasts, you talk a lot about making time for what matters. And so I want to dive in and ask the very first question for someone that's listening that how do you decide what matters?

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Well, that is a big question. What does matter in life, I think we all have to determine this for ourselves. And that's part of the process of self knowledge. Because you don't want to just go with what anyone else is telling you is the thing that should matter to you, you want to find out what truly does matter to you personally, there's lots of ways to do this, I suggest people think about what they'd like to spend more time doing in their lives. So we often tell ourselves, we have no time we're starved for time, so don't have any more time. So why would we even ask what we want to spend more time doing? But if you just put that thought aside for a little bit, and assume that you do have time is important to you? What would that be? Like? What would you like to spend more time doing in your life and make a really long list? And you can make it in multiple categories? What would you like to spend more time doing for yourself personally? What would you like to spend more time doing with family and friends? What would you like to spend more time doing perhaps professionally? Or if you're in school? What would you like to learn more about? Maybe there are things in your community? You want to do it just broadly, what would you like to spend more time doing? Think about what energizes you what would make you excited to get out of bed on any given day, if you saw it on your calendar, make that long list and I think you'll start to discern some things from this. Oh, those are things that truly matter to me. And if you are making this list and note that there aren't some other things on there, and maybe those are the things that don't matter so much to you. And so you are a mom of five you've written many books, you have a really wonderful business where you always super productive and knew what mattered to you, or how did you get to this place of supporting other women in our journey? Okay, I've always been into kind of productivity type tips and stuff. I think I switched high schools. I remember this back in high When I had my first high school, I didn't have to work very hard. And my second one I really did. So that was like a introduction to this idea of, oh, if I allocate my time to these different things, I can in fact change the outcome of what is happening by making slightly more strategic choices. And so that was always an interesting thing to me, which I then took forward throughout the rest of my academic career and into the early parts of the workforce. I know, like many of us, my notions of my time shifted some when I became a parent for the first time, because all of a sudden, you're just more accountable for your time, just that, first, you have a baby, that somebody has to be with 24/7. So yeah, it's either you or somebody else. But because of that, you're thinking about time, as you're counting for that. And you are no longer able to maybe make up time in a way that you could have before you're not getting your work done. You're like, oh, I'll just work on the weekend as the baby's still there. So yeah, love to deal with that reality. And all if I don't sleep enough, tonight, I'll just make it up. Tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow night, maybe we won't sleep tomorrow night, either. We don't really know. They just have to be a little bit more strategic. And I think that got me interested in how other people were spending their time, like what habits and strategies that other people do. So I began writing about it. And that's where I've been, I've been doing ever since.

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Yeah, and everyone does have different variables, right. And your kids range from 16 to three. So you have all sorts of different activities and things that you need to be involved in. And so with that comes like a lot of seasons, how have you changed some of your concepts or routines and how you manage your time depending on what season you're in? Or what your kids are in? Do you have? Just this is what we do no matter what war does it flow and change, depending on what you have going on life does

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look different at different points of the year. Although with five kids, there's always something going on. It's not like there's a downtime. It was like, Oh, do we have any days where we don't have anything going on? I'm like, okay, Christmas was the day no one's scheduled anything. That's kind of life. And I love having a full house and a lot going on. But different kids have more intensity with different things at different times. So then you say, Okay, we really have to manage this right now, one thing that's constant through all of it, and I really recommend that other people do as well as to have a designated weekly planning time. So a moment when you sit down, look at your calendar, look at your goals, think about what's going on, and draw up a list for that following week of what you would like to see happen, in addition to what needs to happen, and roughly when all those things will get done, because this is what keeps life from being chaotic. So that you can see that oh, yeah, we were recording this right before the holidays. So in December, and it feels Oh, there's all this stuff going on with the holidays we have to deal with. And like, Oh, but wait, two of my children were born right after the holidays. And those kids are going to want to celebrate and have birthday parties. You can't really just be like, sorry, you shouldn't have been born in early January. That was an oversight on your part, wasn't it? They they want to celebrate too. And okay, I you know, have to look forward and see that's coming up. Whereas if you don't look forward, if you don't have a time where you're thinking about life, and what's going on next thing what's got through the holidays, it's a kid's birthday, like the next day, and you don't have anything going on? And that would be sad. Yeah,

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yeah, definitely planning ahead and looking at that. And in your book, you talk about planning on Fridays. And typically I do what I call as a Sunday setup, I like to do it on Sundays typically talk to me about why Fridays, and why you picked that day.

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I think Friday is a really good time for a lot of people who work maybe a traditional Monday through Friday kind of job. I think there's a lot to be said, for doing your planning during business hours. And that is partly because you often discover things that need to happen or need to get scheduled or anything like that. And if you're doing say, your professional planning, and then Sunday night, you're like, I really need to meet with this person this week, because I see that something's gonna be a crisis if we don't like they don't want to take a call from you on Sunday night. And you feel bad about calling Friday afternoon, though, of course, it's business hours, you can reach them, you can get that scheduled and that's fine. Or if you need to make, you know, doctor's appointments for people or dentist appointments or therapy appointment, whatever. You can call the office on a Friday, on a Sunday. Right? Yeah, there's just the reality that certain aspects of planning require that you reach out and get things done that way. But it's also just a time that for many people, it's hard to use. You do work on Monday through Friday, kind of week, Friday afternoon. No one wants to start anything new. It is very easy to waste that time sliding into the weekend. So if you're just going to be counting during the minutes until it is acceptable to walk out the door, sign off or whatever, you may as well repurpose some of that time for thinking about what future you should be doing. Even if you don't have a traditional job or anything. I think it's good because it gives you another chance to think about the weekend. If you're planning on Friday, then you can think about what do I want to do this weekend? And if you don't have any plans, maybe you can make some right and yeah, that happened. But a lot of people suffer from Sunday night blues. And I think that's even if you like your job, it can happen. But I think it's often because you don't know what's waiting for you Monday morning, you feel trepidation about all the stuff that's waiting for you Monday morning. So if you don't plan till Sunday night, you won't get rid of that feeling until Sunday night. If you don't plan till Monday morning, you won't get rid of that feeling till Monday morning. Whereas if you plan on Friday, you can cut loose for the weekend and not worry about it till Monday. I like that that's

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a good perspective. Now, in your book, you also have this phrase that says time is elastic, and it will stretch to truly whatever you wish to put in it. And I think that this is so important for moms because we look at our past selves and our past schedules. And we're like, how did I feel like I was fooled then and now I have all these other things into my schedule, that I've just found time for AI and I have friends that don't have kids yet, my kids are pretty young still. And then I have people I'm connected with that are obviously empty nesters. And then they have a whole new shift in their schedule. And sometimes they're like, oh, I have all this time back into my schedule. And then there's other times where it's quickly filled with other new activities. So how is it that we feel like time is 24 hours in a day, but everyone has the same 24 hours. And they all spend it differently? So talk a little bit about the concept of time being elastic, and how do these women create more time? Yeah, time really does stretch

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to accommodate what you choose to put into it. And an example I've often used for people and what I use in a lot of my talks is of a schedule, I saw from a time log from a woman who was living her busy life, like going to work going to stuff in the evening had kids whatever, and she comes home one night to find her water heater has broken and there's water all over her basement. And since she's tracking her time this week, she is tracking how she responds to that and winds up spending about seven hours on this disaster of a flood in her basement. And that is quite a bit of time. I'm sure if you're talking about this at the start of the week, you're like yeah, you gotta find seven hours for whatever you're gonna train for a traffic triathlon, find seven hours for that. Seven hours to get a quarter of the way through Warren Piece or something like that, I don't know. But most of us would be like, there's no way I can just conjure up seven hours to do something. But when something is an emergency, it bumps everything else, right and bumps, other things to take those seven hours. And I think what people who are really effective wind up doing is saying, even if I'm not making a mess in my basement, I'm going to treat it with that level of importance and urgency. If I important to me to find a new job that's going to become the equivalent of my broken water heater, I'm going to make seven hours this week to look for that job. Even though I still have my old job with all of its responsibilities. Even though my family is still here. I'm still going to just decide to do that first and that everything else is going to crowd around it. Yeah. And

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as this episode comes out, we're right into the new year, the new year has this energy to it, it has this hype, it has this hit your new goals get on your best track your best habits, what are some ways that people can set a solid foundation into the new year. So things that they're not currently doing that they're going to come in, and they're going to say, Okay, I'm going to focus on productivity, I'm going to go all in, I'm going to have these goals of how I manage more time make my time elastic, but we want to be sustainable, right? If we go and we say we're going to do all these things, we're not setting ourselves up for success, then we're not able to sustain that through the year, let alone the month. What are some of the pillars that you would recommend a busy mom starting with

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need to be in your bed before: 1030

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I love that. Now, you definitely have days where things go wrong, I'm going to assume you don't have some magic potion that you drink as a mama five business owner that things never go wrong. So how do you step into like reset and not let the day go? a hold of you? What are some ways that when you're like, oh, my gosh, I had all these plans for all these goals, I had all these things I was going to do. And now I can't the first

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thing is maybe you still can't, there are different degrees of emergency, there are different degrees of things going wrong. And the stuff that's within the 90% confidence interval of what could go wrong, you should be prepared for. For instance, if you have a child in daycare, you can be 90% sure that you are going to wake up some morning with that child having a 101 degree fever, they're not that sick, but they can't go to daycare. Now what do you do? If this is a surprise to you, you are going to have total chaos in your life. You need a system, what do you do that and maybe you and your co parent can split the day, maybe you have a neighbor who is available on last minute notice and likes to pick up some hours during that time, that sort of thing. And maybe you have a family member who does, you know, but figure out what it is and have layers for when things that are anticipated will go wrong. Flights can be late, that's something you should not be surprised when a flight is delayed. This is terrible. Life is chaotic, everything has gone wrong. So you should probably think about that as a possibility are building your schedule. So if it's you're supposed to pick someone up at school, and you're going to be delayed on your plane, hopefully you have figured out who else could do it if you couldn't do it. So you've got a set up there. But and this in general, you want to build in more open space into your life so that you have a buffer. Because when things go wrong, you're not tight up against the deadline. Borrowing time from the future to make it happens just as an example. You knowing that kids can get sick, if you have this huge project at work that's due Thursday. And you leave it till Wednesday, you can bet that Wednesday is the day that the kid will wake up with the 101 degree fever. So maybe if you knew about it ahead of time, and you've done some work on it Monday, Tuesday, it's mostly done. Then when Wednesday goes wrong, it's not the end of the world, you can finish it off working at home, or you've got a colleague who can just put the final touches on it. But it's not a crisis, because you have thought ahead and thought about what can go wrong and have built in space.

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Yeah. Now for someone that's listening that there last minute person, everything's always last minute, they're listening to this. And they're like, I know, I'm supposed to get ahead of thing. How do you start to implement that into your life? Is it because I hear some people say, Oh, go to bed 10 minutes earlier, if you're trying to get an earlier bedtime and then work your way towards that, is there a way that you can apply that same thing to planning ahead?

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asier to if you need to write: 2000

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Yeah. Now your kids are in a range, you have little ones that need your full support for the most part. And then you have young adults, how are you implementing some of these strategies as a parent and helping them learn in all the different ages that they are?

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Yes, I do think that people have to come to some of this on their own. Because I can certainly tell you, as a mom of teenagers that mom telling you to do something is slightly less exciting than you might think, whether mom is a time management expert or not, you may not want mom telling you how to manage your time. That being said, you can always just have these open conversations about oh, yeah, what do you have coming up? Oh, have you done anything to prepare for that? What can I do to support you. And I can certainly see with some of my older children that they do start having that further forward thinking mindset over time, okay, I have this concert coming up in two weeks. And I should prepare this piece more for it. So I'm going to start preparing for it a little bit ahead of time, or I have all this work that needs to get done, I have tests coming up. And one of my activities has a big field trip during the day in school. And so I need to think ahead about how I can build an extra time for the things that I am missing. So I think you just keep having these conversations of what's coming up. Where can I build in time, what I need to do? And then my role is to try to support people as they're making good choices, do I need to remind you to go up and start studying at eight o'clock rather than nine o'clock? Do I need to help you find somebody who can work with you on Spanish or math or whatever else? And that's what I try to do with them?

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Yeah, so good. Now, whether it's kids or parents, just like people in general, I think one of the ways that we don't set ourselves up for success is striving for perfection, if we're really trying to hit that 100 All the time, where really, we want to make sure that we are leaving some areas for those emergencies, or for us not to do great. Yeah, I know, one of your nine ways to calm the chaos in your book, is having a habit three times a week, rather than focusing on the always Can you talk a little bit about that. And for the person that's really feeling No, I need this everyday as part of my schedule, how to maybe loosen that. And for the person that's trying to get to three times a day, how do we set ourselves up for a little more accountability? Yeah,

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so think about daily habits, they can be great, like I'm a fan of certain daily habits. But what makes daily habits sustainable, is they basically have to be like brushing your teeth, most of us have, in fact brushed our teeth every day, for years. And we don't really think that much about it. It's not Oh, look at me, I'm able to maintain a multi decade streak of brushing my teeth daily, I just must be a incredibly disciplined person. It's just, it's easy. It's relatively pleasant, you like that minty fresh feeling afterwards, like, it doesn't take much time. And if you're not in your normal environment, you figure out a way to make it happen, right, like with a toothbrush, or you go buy one if you have forgotten one. So we're able to maintain that habit without too much difficulty. And I think for something to truly be a daily habit, it really needs to be like that. Otherwise, it's going to be hard to maintain. Think about the question like, if you're thinking something should be a daily habit, would you do it on vacation? Would you do it on your birthday? And if you'd be coming up with reasons like oh, I probably I could just live a little not do it on my birthday. And then, but it's not a good daily habit for you. You don't want to be looking for reasons not to do it. You want to be knowing that there are all sorts of reasons you are doing it. Now, that said, a lot of wonderful, awesome things in life do not in fact have to happen daily. I maintain that anything that happens three times a week is a regular part of our lives. And one of the reasons I'm saying that is because being a I'm putting in quotes here but like time management expert people often want to come Tell me about their great daily habits. And then I'm asking them questions about their great daily habit. And we find out that they do it like Monday through Friday on normal weeks. So not on vacation, not on Christmas, like Monday through Friday and a normal week. And sometimes Friday doesn't happen because their schedule looks a little different. They work from home sometimes on Friday. And so they it's really more Monday through Thursday, picks up, we're really down to three or four times a week. That's all daily, but isn't so. And yet we consider it a big part of our lives if you aren't doing something regularly, Monday through Thursday, and sometimes Friday. So I think anything that happens three times a week is a regular part of our lives. And so if you can just look at the whole of the, and see where you can do this thing three times, you can probably adopt this desired identity. So an example I always use is a lot of people were like, we'd like to eat family meals. And that's a great idea. But in your life, perhaps it's not happening that somebody is unveiling a pot roast on the table and like like one of those Norman Rockwell paintings at 6pm, Monday through Friday, like there's just not happening people are activities, adults work or travel for work. So maybe you just say okay, well, it's not going to happen at 6pm, Monday through Friday. But let's look at the week and see if we can find three spots where we eat together, maybe your family usually is eating Sunday dinner together. Maybe you often have a Saturday morning pancake breakfast, like all you have to do is find one more time during the whole of the week where you can sit down together. So I don't know maybe you look at your schedule and say actually, everyone's done with activities by 7pm on Tuesday. So if we had a late dinner we ate at 730 or 745. On Tuesday, we could in fact have a family dinner then. Now you're the kind of family that eats together. It's a habit. It's a regular part of your life didn't happen every day Monday through Friday 6pm. But it didn't have to. Yeah.

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And they love the concept of figuring out when you can make it work. We talk a lot about having a problem solver mindset. And if you're looking at your calendar, and you say okay, here's when we can do it, we can do it a little bit later, instead of being like there's no time that we can do it at 5pm. Okay, what is the solution? What can we do? Yeah, and I think that we carry so much mental load as humans as parents as mothers, but we often give ourselves this narrative to, which makes it even worse. So then we're telling ourselves how mentally overloaded we are, how busy we are. And so bringing in more joy or adventure is one way to get out of that and be able to have a little more peace in our mind. You talk about one big adventure, one little adventure throughout the week, I would love to hear how you actually start this when you're in the place of overwhelm or thinking that you have no time. And how you bring your kids into maybe give you some ideas of things that they would like to do to. Yes,

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so idea of doing one big adventure and one little adventure each week. The idea is that we want to make life a little bit more memorable. We want time not to just day after day bleed into each other. what even happened last week, I don't know if that was the week that you went hiking in that state park that was an hour away and you haven't been to yet you're going to remember that or even the week where you try that new gelato place or something like that. By putting in one big adventure and one little adventure, you can stick with all your good routines. It doesn't take that much time. But it's enough of a cadence of difference that life becomes more interesting that you are making memories, time doesn't just disappear into the past. So like anything, we come back to our weekly planning habit. So as you're planning your upcoming week, you can literally sit there and say what is one big adventure I could have this week. And by big I don't mean sailing like a Viking around the fjord three to four hours on a weekend, right? So half a weekend day is a big adventure. Yeah, a little adventure can be just an hour, do it on your lunch break, do it on a weekday evening doesn't matter. But something that is a little bit out of the ordinary. And you could just say what could I do this week, maybe you have something that's already on the calendar. That's an adventure, in which case, acknowledge it like, Look, I am doing this cool thing this week, yay, me. If you don't have anything you can put it in, maybe it's meeting a friend to go for a walk in the morning somewhere different. Or maybe it's going to a cool new store that you haven't been to before on a Thursday night. Just you can make a list, you can brainstorm a list of all sorts of adventures I would like to have put yourself on the email address list for local places, get on that local farms, email list, and you'll hear about that Apple festival they're having where you can sample six different kinds of cider. And that might be a fun adventure for some weekends, and you won't know about it if you don't know about it. So put yourself in a place where you do start knowing about these things. Yeah, and I

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love that you're talking about just doing it even yourself. I can assume as a mom of five that it doesn't work to get everyone together for a big adventure all the time. Maybe people have birthday parties or games or activities, performances. And so how often and you don't have to give us a number of how often but how do you find space in your schedule for when there's like solo time with the kids things for you to do it on your own or for these big family and ventures with everyone all together, is there a method to it? Or is it really that weekly setup and just trying to make it work the best that you can.

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It's more weekly setup of trying to make it work the best I can, I'm always looking for some sort of family adventure we can all do together. But with kids between the ages of three and 16, there are very few things that are truly fun for the entire family. It just and even if it would be fun for the entire family, by the time children are, you know, mid teens, they do start to have their own lives. My feeling is that I would like them to have their own lives. And I don't want to force them to do things that they truly don't want to do if there's not a really good reason for it at a certain point, and they do well with that to my my 14 year old didn't come to a family activity A while ago because he wanted to do something else. And he responsibly I found his own rides for it so that he could just do it. And that was great. I try to encourage people to manage their own schedules that way. And I think I wouldn't be happy if somebody was forcing me to do things to do. So yeah, I try to maintain that space for them to do their own thing. But I do also look out for things that my teenagers would like to do. I make a ton of Starbucks trips. That's something we go that teens and tweens tend to like, and I can grab a kid and we can go to Starbucks together. And mom's paying, they're often willing to do stuff like that. Yeah.

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I love that. That's pretty simple, right? Starbucks has probably tripled in price since I was a teen or tween. But it gives this opportunity for this conversational time, that to your point maybe wouldn't happen otherwise. And maybe when we're having more Starbucks trips and less family forest activities, when that one full family activity does come up. They're like, alright, Mom, I haven't been to the last couple. I'll make it happen this time. And so I think to your point, it's just creating that self responsibility and ownership of your own schedule in life, which at some point, my kids are little right now. But I can assume as hard as that is, we get so excited and proud to see our kids taking that on. You had a recent episode that talked about really embracing the people in your life currently, and being present and not always wishing for something next. And I think that this is so important as a parent, but also as we're looking for friends in our lives, for embracing our partner, anyone else that we're connected to. And I think they'll Starbucks trips are such a good example of that of rather than wishing that your teen would go apple picking with you, maybe just embracing that Starbucks trip. What are some other ways that women can really be more present with their kids with their life themselves, we're often not even present enough with ourselves, do you have a morning routine or ritual or anything that you do to really just like, hone in with yourself?

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I don't know about that. But I've never been the sort of person who's shy about taking time for the things that I do want to do myself, I run regularly and exercise most days I sing in a choir, which is just a fun thing. Although now it's become a family thing, because I convinced my oldest kid to join it with me. So we go to that together now. It's just, I think it's important for everybody to have one thing that is not work and is not caring for family members. Something that is just genuinely fun for you. Right intrinsically fun for you. And it's going to be different from every for everyone. And maybe that somebody wants to play in a pickleball League, maybe that somebody wants to serve as a volunteer firefighter, and maybe that it's a book club, it could be a spiritual, a small group, or a choir, playing in a string, quartet, whatever, but choose something and ideally make a commitment to it. I'm a big fan of things that happen every week at a certain time outside of the house, because then you'll make it happen. You will go to your string quartet practice, if you're just like, Yeah, we should take more time for myself generally, what is that you can't even schedule that. And if anybody else wants you to do something, you'll do it because that's more pressing. But if you have the rehearsal on the calendar at a certain time, you will generally tend to go and then this more active form of self care, actually. Yeah,

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and a couple of different layers I see that are so beneficial to that that built in accountability of the other people you're with, as well as creating these other relationships that so often we're hoping for and looking for where now they're coming to you because you're in this outing or this group environment that you're able to connect with other people and be present with connection and that is so great. And one of the other episodes you were talking about a preparing a first question and I've heard this in like business sense. I've heard this in connection, but I actually love this as a parent. So when you're coming in, you're going to Starbucks with your teen, and you're going to go Think about what are we going to talk about? How am I going to get this person to talk to me, some teams are more open than others. But often, they don't really want to talk to them on their on their phone. It's hard to have that conversation. So maybe you don't do this. But I thought it was a really great way to think about, okay, how am I going to start this conversation? What is the question I'm preparing? What are some ways that you do this in your life, whether you do it with your kids or with different people you're associating with, I love the concept of having one of these pocket questions that are a little more valuable. And I have heard the same one that you should that's most common is what's really lighting you up right now, or what's bringing you joy? What's exciting you, I've heard that but there's so many other ways that we can start a conversation with our family, or our new friends, as we jumped into the new year, and also our kids at home. We every day, ask each other what we're grateful for. But as listening to this episode, I was like, we need to ask different questions and more questions on top of that. So what are some of your kind of go to?

35:54

Any of those are great, I mean, it's more about remembering the other person. So if you were talking with your neighbor, and they mentioned that they were going to San Francisco for work last week, then the next time you see them be like, Hey, how is San Francisco? Did you get to see this? And it's just about honoring your connection with the other person that it was worth the brain space to remember what they told you. Right? It's just that and I think our interactions with the people in our lives, we can honor them generally by thinking them through ahead of time. So whether you have a great first question, which is the thing for a podcast, right, that we always ask somebody a certain question to start off with, related to your theme, just thinking about, Okay, I'm going to see my friend, that I don't see that frequently. Next Thursday, what are the two of us going to talk about even make yourself a list? I'm not saying that you're gonna sit there with the list reading it through. Okay, now we've got to talk about this question now. Because obviously, we're human beings, we all have interaction and go with the flow to a degree, but going with the flow is not incompatible with having ahead of time with what you want the flow to look like. Whereas I think a lot of business interactions, like if you're going to go into a job interview, I would like to think that most of us would research the company ahead of time and have some answers to like how we make an impact in a situation that we were most proud of, or whatever else the standard interview questions are. But we don't put that same sort of intentionality into talking with the people in our personal lives. And maybe it's, we should borrow at least a little bit of it. Not all that intensity, but a little. Yeah,

37:38

I think it's really important, because we do have a lot going on in our brains, I do think that sometimes we make it sound worse than it is. But we have a lot going on. And so if we can put some time ahead and plan ahead for these interactions in these conversations, that person is going to feel so much more appreciated, and that we're going to be able to receive that back as well. So I absolutely love that I think it's great. Now, often, we can talk through all these amazing things, we've covered so many great topics. But taking the first step is really the hardest, right? And then you can go unpack all the different things. Now, as you're supporting women in your community and through your books and on your podcast. If someone were to listen to all that content and come back to you and say, Laura, what's the first step I should take? What would you recommend that they start with?

38:22

This may not sound like a ton of fun, but I always recommend that people try tracking their time, for a week, ideally, because a week is the cycle of life that we live in. And the reason is, if you want to spend your life better, that's a question of how you're allocating your hours, right life is lived in hours. So if you're like you want to have this good life, that means you are spending your hours on things that matter to you. And if you don't know where you're spending the time now, you don't know what the gap is, between now and this life, you are envisioning where you're spending your time on what matters. So we need to get that data. And the best way to get that data is to actually track your time for a week. And then you can look at it. And often people have the experience of like, Hey, I actually am spending some time on these things that I find important. And maybe I'm spending a little less time on this one category that I'd like but it's gone from this existential sort of problem of oh, I never have time to read to be like, actually, I read for an hour and a half this week. But I would like to read for more like four or five hours. So how do I go from one and a half hours to four hours? I need to find two and a half extra hours? Where can I do that in my schedule and all of a sudden we have a problem that is and lends itself to a rather practical solution, as opposed to just the sense that life is horrible and terrible, and I never have time for anything I want. Yeah, so

39:43

true. Before we get into our final two questions, I'd love for you to tell everyone where they can connect with you find you will definitely link down below tranquility by Tuesday so everyone can take all these nine tactics and implement them. Where else would you like people to reach out and support

39:57

they can come visit my website Laura Vander cam.com And I blog a couple times a week there. And you can also learn about my various podcasts there. And you mentioned the one best of both worlds a few minutes ago, that's when I co host with Sarah Hart hunger. We talk about issues of work and family from the perspective of people who truly enjoy both. Love that. Now,

40:17

you were just talking about tracking your time. And I think especially this day and age, we do actually waste a lot of time, I always say, Hey, have you checked your screen time tracker on your phone? And this isn't to make people feel bad, but it is to have just a little bit of self awareness and how much we're spending on our phone or doing different things? How have you seen this show up for moms and women, especially when they're feeling like they have no time? And how do you find the balance between having true time that you can check out you can scroll because a little bit of that might be okay. But then realizing where all that time is being wasted? Do you see this showing up in people's lives a lot? phone usage? Yeah.

40:56

ht and you're going to bed at: 1030

42:51

Let me keep reading. Yep. But even if you don't, you'll at least have gotten to do both. So that's cool. Yeah, I love that. Now, especially as we come into the new year, and we're ready to hit all these goals. We're ready to implement all these habits. What are some of the things to look out for if your household is not on board? If they're looking at you, and they're like, there is mom she's going after it beginning of January trying to hit all these goals have a new schedule routine your partner's I don't want to sit down on Fridays. I don't want to talk about this. Or you're like I want to spend time in these ways. How do you make this a culture in the home rather than just mom trying to dictate what happens?

43:29

I mean, I do tend to develop the family schedule. But as part of that, my husband has to be okay with whatever I come up with. If somebody wants a say in it, then they need to participate. You can't just pretend that there's no schedule because that means that mom winds up handling all of it and weather. But also, if nobody's taking on the time like with you, you can then schedule in your own stuff that you want to do. And then they just have to deal with it. You'd be like, Okay, great. You didn't want to be part of the schedule. By the way, I'm gone Tuesday and Thursday night this week, you have to deal with it. That is totally fair, because they were not part of the conversation, then we talked on the podcast, sometimes on best of both worlds about the idea of planning privilege. If you feel like somebody else is planning your life, and then you get to be like, Oh, planning is like silly. I don't want to be part of this. It's because somebody else is planning your life and making it work. And that's not really fair. So anyway, I say, Try planning and just what you want to do then, and do whatever you want to do, and the other people can deal with everything else and see how long it lasts. Yeah.

44:27

And you know, the other thing that I think about is like when we talk about taking on one thing at a time, and we look at even the nine ways in your book that you can implement that maybe it's getting someone to choose like where they want to start right to say, hey, we're going to do these things. But what is the one that you're like most excited about or what's the one that you want to focus on?

44:45

So we can bring people in? I could see that working well with some of our community members that aren't feeling as supportive. It's maybe giving options just like I do with my two year old, okay, I'm gonna give you I'm gonna pick the two choices but you get to pick out of the two. You're gonna do but it's also that planning gets a bad rap because it's often people think about I'm going to plan things I don't want to do have to put the bias on planning things you do want to do one what I often I was saying, I suggest that people take commit to something outside the house that not working, not family. And if you have a partner, maybe you could just explicitly have a conversation of, hey, I think each of us should take one night off to do something, and cover for each other. So let's decide what that we're each going to commit to. I know you've been wanting to be playing tennis with your friend, and you never feel like you get to do it. So let's decide that Tuesday night, you're going to do that. And I am going to cover. And in exchange for that on Thursday, I am going to go to this other thing and you are going to cover and I think people a lot of people could get their head around it because it's very clear, oh, wait, if I want to go do that tennis thing, this is what it's going to look like. So that might be a good place to start.

45:51

I love that. Now, you've done so many amazing things. You've shared so much expertise, what is something that you're currently really excited about lit up or a goal that you're focusing on

46:01

in: 2024

46:16

That's amazing. Laura, thank you so much for your time today. So many takeaways. I can't wait to implement some of this myself. And I know that everyone is going to go into the rest of this year with some really great new habits and productivity tips. Thank you.

46:28

Thanks for having me.

46:29

Sometimes the smallest acts of love is all a mom needs to feel reinvigorated. If you can relate to that I'd feel so supported by your five star rating and written review. Take a moment and let me know what you thought about this episode.

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