Hi.
This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.
And this is Sarah hart Unger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families.
Welcome to best of both worlds.
Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life.
Welcome the best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is our Annual Goals episode. This is going to be Goals twenty twenty four, which is airing at the very end of December twenty twenty three. I think this is our last episode in twenty twenty three, So thank you to everyone who has been listening to us in the course of the year. So, Sarah, somewhat of a meta question here, but when do you consider your choices of
Annual Goals final? Like we're making this episode weeks ahead of time, I guess things could change before it actually airs, but when is the final final?
I feel like the final is when I've written them by hand. In my notebook of choice that I'm using for my annual goals, because then they're there. So I actually considered mine still to be slightly in draft mode mostly solidified at this point, but yeah, I won't give them the final until they're like written down in inc.
Or carved in stone or something like that. Well, I mean, the truth is day you can always add goals during the year. They're like, I want to do this by the end of the year, so I guess it's not final final until December thirty, first the year. But on the other hand, I tend to think of like the New Year's specific goals need to be set by New Year's Like, if I'm going to do something every day during the year, then probably it needs to be known
by the start of the year. I mean, although I guess doing it three hundred thirty days of three hundred
and sixty five is probably pretty good too. But one thing I've been doing lately and talking about is the idea of practicing your goals, especially when you are setting New Year goals, to practice them in November and December before January, so that if you do get a lot of New Year New U sort of energy, you can actually hit the ground on January first, ready to go, Like you figured out what this goal is going to look like in your life, how much time it takes,
what logistics need to be figured out, so that you're not sorting through those problems in the first few days, which is when people often abandon a goal because they've realized, oh, it's not going to work, and then they're trying to change it. But then they don't have that new year, new U energy anymore. So you know, it might be worth doing a trial run of anything you are serious about.
I love that concept. I heard it as like almost like a pilot you know, like a pilot study, Like Okay, let's see if I actually like doing this meditation app before I commit myself to three hundred and sixty five days of it or whatever. It is not that we're saying that all goals need to be streaks or anything
like that, but yeah, I love the trial run idea. Plus, if there are resources that you need to procure for said goals, like let's say it is an exercise type goal and you want to do it at a gym, but like you might not be sure what the best gym fit is for you. So maybe your pilot could consist of going to four different gyms and doing a trial workout near you so that when January hits, you know which one is the right fit.
Yeah. I mean, you could even think of it as your goals preseason, Like December is goals preseason, and you are in training for your real season, and you might you know, if you think about like the football preseason, people are even doing games sometimes it's just they don't count towards the standings, but you are in fact doing most of the stuff that you would do in the actual season. It's just doesn't count for real. So that might be a helpful mindset for it.
And some people are listening are like I just want to go to Christmas parties and like, drink it not and leave me alone.
But feel well, you don't have to listen to us. Then we like Christmas parties. We go to Christmas parties. We just also practice our goals before January first too. I don't know, I actually think it is a key component of success though, the preparation that was often what is the difference between a goal happening and not happening,
And so for something like in twenty twenty three. When I was reading all the works of Jane Austen, I needed to have the books there, and then I needed to figure out how many pages and how much I was going to read per day. And so with that, it's the preparation that makes success possible. And so if you are really serious about a goal, I think you can't believe that you were going to be an entirely different person on January first than you were on any
day before that. And so if it doesn't fit in your life on December twenty seven, it's not going to magically fit in your life on January second, either. So you know, you might want to keep that mindset as a way of choosing goals that are both worth doing and doable.
And since we're saying all this like a mere week before the new year is about to hit, you can also use January as your pilot period. You know, like, even though January one is very enticing, like give yourself grace and like some lee, weigh that first month to really figure out what's going to work for the rest of the year.
Yeah, because if there's a goal you're serious about, it be far better to you know, try it out in January and hit the ground running in February than to not do it at all. So yeah, there is nothing magical about January first. But I also know that for a lot of our listeners there is something magical about January first. So you know, you have to know yourself,
which is probably true for everything in life. So we tend to divide our goals into a couple different categories, which are more or less the same for both of us. I mean, work is a clear one for both of them. So I think we should go ahead and dive right Well, no, are we? Are we still? Yes? Okay, we'll dive right in, Sarah, work, What are you doing?
Work? So I want to just make this a year of working on office efficiency. I feel like I have started to work on that, but I feel like there are things I could do in our electronic medical record to make things faster. I actually successfully abandoned this practice I had of like running around printing everything out and created these checkout cards that have saved me probably a solid like five minutes per patient, which is a big deal.
I did that in November, but I feel like I could make that even better, more streamlined, Like I just I don't even want to work on that because I'm behind, like I actually feel like i'm not, but I want to like figure out what works so I can even like help others in my group and just really really understand some of the issues around offices not running smoothly sometimes. So yeah, I want to keep having Friday lunches with
my work colleagues. We've done this, I want to continue to set it as a goal rather than just feeling like it's already autopilot because we've done it some in twenty twenty three, but I want to just like make it like a very regular, predictable thing. In twenty twenty four, I want to attend and possibly spearhead one or two work social events that's like my clinical work, and then thinking of my other work, which I now kind of put in the same category, although I do kind of
generate the lists separately. That's why they're in order. I want to create a seasonal planning series called Planning by Season. So that's my big new offering that I'm excited about in twenty twenty four. I'm going to redo some of the things I've already done, but that's like my I feel like one really big new thing is like what I can handle. I want to continue to reach out to podcasts that do interviews where I feel like i'd be able to contribute. I love doing this, but I'm not.
It's kind of scary because you know, you sometimes just get ignored or rejected, and that's hard, but that's okay. Like you just do more than you think and then someone will be excited and then you can share with a new audience, so that's good. And then I do want to be better about ruthlessly blocking some non clinical days for deep work. I want to have like one
day a season. And when I say deep work, I actually think I'll use this kind of like for planning for myself, like doing my seasonal planning, and I've already kind of started to put that in my calendar for twenty twenty four. And I also have noticed a pattern where whenever I am on call the Tuesday after, I just want to like pull my hair out because I've
been working for eight straight days. I'm usually behind on all kinds of creative stuff because I can't do that much of it when I'm clinically on call, and so I want to try to protect those tuesdays. Ironically, we're recording this on one of those Tuesdays, and I'm like, yep, need to work on that. Although this has been very pleasant.
I'm glad I'm not, you know, a tedious thing on your calendar, like why I really wish I'd gotten rid of that one.
No, I'm glad. We're talking about some of my favorite things today. So this has been great, all right. How about your work goals?
Well, So I'm working on a book proposal currently, So in the new year, I want to finish that book proposal and get a book contract with a publisher and mostly write the new book over the course of twenty twenty four. My guess is it would probably then come out at the end of twenty twenty five or something like that, or maybe New Year, New YU twenty twenty six.
But books take a long time, so you have to make sure that it's what you want to be writing, that you're going to be excited about it for two three years of your life. So that's kind of a high bar doing a more in depth proposal this time around for various reasons, but that's going to take some work. So that is a big professional goal for the year. Another one is to be hired to speak somewhere internationally,
not Canada. As much as I love Canada, I just have spoken there a lot, so I'm not the US Canada market is kind of one market in terms of businesses and conferences and all that, So I'm talking somewhere else other than Canada. So looking in hopefully that will
happen in the course of twenty twenty five four. And the key thing here is be hired to speak right, Like, I'm sure you know you could find some random group that you know would let you speak to them for free somewhere in the world, but it's just to do like as part of my speaking business more of an international presence. I am going to keep writing my sonnets. So every year I do a writing goal, and it's taken me several years to figure out something that I
find truly motivational. So like in twenty twenty one, I was writing just like one hundred to two hundred words a day of something. I was viewing it as like my morning pages with people who've read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I'm like, Okay, I'm going to write two hundred words of something every morning, and then it was just like so much useless stuff, like I wasn't getting anything out of it, Like I wrote two hundred words a day and nothing comes of it, no book ideas,
no insights into life. Nothing. So I'm like, okay, well, I need to focus it a little more. So in twenty twenty two, I decided to write I mean almost like novella, but it was like one hundred and two hundred words a day of a moment in the life of a character over the course of a single day, which I loosely modeled on my own December fourteenth, twenty twenty one. It is like a busy day with a lot of stuff going on. So I'm like, okay, I'm
gonna do this. And I sort of, you know, hat tipped to Ulysses wandering you know, bloom wandering around Dublin like in the course of the day. Whatever. But I was gonna write a day in the life of the character for a year, so I did that. It was okay. I started rereading it after the end of the year and I was like, eh, I don't like it, Like I don't there's nothing, it's it's bad, Like it's just bad, okay, Like I I'm laughing. I think it sounds.
I still I'm like, I would read that.
You'd read that, well, you can read it. Then I'm not reading it. I stopped. So then I'm like, okay, well, well, other writing goal am I going to find? Motivational? And so for twenty twenty three, I began writing sun it. So I'd put on my list of one hundred dreams numerous times. I want to write a collection of seasonal sonnets. I am drawn to the idea of a poem fourteen
lines of ambit pentameter. It's ten syllables each line. It's an A, B, A, B, C, D, C, D E, F E f gg rhyming scheme, and with the pentameter it's every other syllable is emphasized. So anyway, long story, short, two lines a day, fourteen lines, wait fifty two sonnits in the course of the year. I've done that for twenty twenty three, as we discussed in our review of the year. I enjoyed it. So I'm gonna keep going because you know, fifty two sonnets are great. One hundred
and four would be even better. I don't know, you know, one hundred and fifty six. When I do this the next year, you know if just the more I do of them, the better I get at them, and then some of them are terrible and some of them are okay, and so the more of them that I write, the bigger the collection of okay ones will be. And so then maybe after three or four years of this, I'll have a collection that's worth sharing with the world of sonnets.
I will admit I did not see that one coming like that. To me, that seemed like something you would do.
For a year and a bit.
I'm excited. Yeah, that's great, and.
Then the last one we'll see. I go back and forth on whether I truly am going to do this, but I think I am because I'm going to view it as an experiment, and you know, I can run it for six months or a year, and if I don't want to do it, then I can stop, which is that I will launch the vander Hack's newsletter. So I know that substack newsletters are like the shiny thing that podcasts were six or seven years ago, and on some levels like, okay, well, I'm diving on to it
as it's like maybe peaking. But on the other hand, so we're podcasts six or seven years ago, but there's always a market for people who stick with it, who produce something that's worth listening to. And at this point between before Breakfast and best of both worlds, it's, you know, a major component of my business. So I figure out give it a shot. So vander hacks are gonna be short every weekday tips on making your life better. So we'll see maybe by the time this errs, you'll be
able to subscribe to it. Feel free to go check that out, but if not, it will happen shortly thereafter. And yeah, that's you.
Give me my first substack.
You'd be the first.
Okay, well, great, Like I've never done one.
So I think I have to add like ten emails to start it. Like, so put Sarah on there.
I will do it, will do. I will be a paying substacker. It'll be paying substacker for me. That would be awesome. Fil Thank you for considering it. Well, let's take a quick ad break and we will be back with a few more of our goals for twenty twenty four. Well, we are back talking all things goals twenty twenty four. We do this annually. It's always exciting to come up with our goals.
And I think Sarah and I have both realized that knowing we need to record this, and in fact we need to record it ahead of time because our sound and production team does not want to be working on our stuff over the holidays. We have to set these goals ahead of time. And that's probably good for us for thinking that through. I appreciate that sense of accountability. I might not do this if it was just me doing it and not needing to get it in before
the holidays. So, Sarah, let's talk about your personal goals for twenty twenty four.
Yeah, so I'm going to make this another running year. I am hoping, hopening, that's terrible, hoping to qualify for the Boston Marathon this year. I hope they don't change the standards. They might, but the good news is that by the fall I will be able to use a older and easier standard. So yay, I want to actually be forty five. But they wait, it's not actually true.
Well, so it's how old you'd be when you ran Boston, Like say, you could qualify the year before, and you.
Can qualify like more than a year in advance, exactly, So I'd be qualifying for the twenty twenty six Boston marathon potentially in late twenty twenty four.
That was correct.
You can do that, so we'll see. Or maybe I'll even qualify earlier if I'm really lucky, or maybe I'll get injured and not qualify at all. But my goal is to try.
It's not your goal for twenty twenty four. Let's her goal is injury free for twenty twenty four.
Yeah, And I mean I'm setting it more as a process goal. My goal is to train and to continue working with my coach, and on the way, maybe I can try to collect a new half marathon in five k PR. I still want to strength train regularly, so and I'm keeping that on the list because I don't really like it, so I need it to actually be a goal to make sure I continue to do it. I want to have another refeat goal from last year.
I want to go to a yoga class in person, and I actually think I want to try to wrote my husband into doing it as like a date type of situation, so we'll see how that goes. I want to re every day, which I already do honestly, but I want to record the pages read. So this is actually a much less stringent goal than last year. But I just I think it'd be cool to like have like a little map of like how much I read of like which type of book throughout the year. And
I do want to challenge myself a little bit. Sometimes I feel like I pick easy books and sometimes I need that and that's great, but I feel like I could throw in something a little bit more literary. I mean, actually I'm pretty good with literary fiction, but it's the nonfiction where I generally don't go that route. So I think I'd like to read like maybe some history or like religion, like in the original text or something like that, So we'll see. I do want to make this a
wardrobe updating year. I feel like I've been wearing a lot of clothes from like two three years ago, and I just want to update certain staples, like jeans. No more skinny jeans in twenty twenty four. Actually I haven't really been wearing those for a while. That was a hot topic on all the blogs and I think our Patreon recently. But want some cute wide leg jeans or flares or something like that. I still want to work on my nails, so that's another repeat goal. I would
like to get a massage every month. That's a really indulgent goal, but I'm going to see if that fits into my allowance. And then two more on the personal I have a lot of personal goals. I'm sorry, I just do. I want to use screens thoughtfully, so I'm kind of like thinking about that a little bit differently than I did in the past, where I really tried
to like focus on numbers of minutes. Instead it's a more holistic idea and that's a takeaway from my digital detox experience, both doing it and teaching it, so can go into that later. And then finally, I chose experience as my word of the year, and I want to keep an experience journal. I want to write in it most days. I mean ideally every day, but every day can be hard. I have a journal all picked out. It's this little small hobanichi, so I can fill a page with not a lot of words or just like
a sticker or something. And I want to seek out more experiences that like art, music, theater, all that kind of stuff that I'm already excited about, and I want to write about it in the journal. And then finally, I will see Taylor swift into twenty four, unless she stops touring for some reason.
You intend at least to see Taylor Swift.
I intend she's coming to Miami. The tickets are expensive, but not unattainably, so I've let go of the idea of taking the entire family, which greatly reduces the cost. I will take the one other extremely enthusiastic Taylor Swift fan in the family, and I intend to be there in October in Miami.
Yeah, well, I can tell you, I mean, from having taken only one other family member in May of twenty twenty three, that does, in fact make it a far more affordable experience. If there's only two tickets versus gosh, I mean, seven, would have been terrible.
Taylor Swift Pan.
Henry's first Taylor's Swift experience, Oh my god, No, no, that would have been not not worth doing. Talk about spending money in ways that are not contributing to anyone's happiness. So personal goals for me for the year my major, Like normally, I've set reading goals. So I've read someth big, you know. I read Warren Piece in twenty twenty one.
I read all the works of Shakespeare in twenty twenty two works of Jane Austen in twenty twenty three, I decided to change it up a little bit for twenty twenty four, and I'm going to listen to all the works of Bach because I am really into Bach as a composer. I love so much of the choral work he has produced, you know, I play some of the piano pieces. I really enjoy so much of what he composed, and he composed a lot. So it turns out that this is a project that kind of lends itself to
a year. And somebody who's doing this project with me looked it up. Somebody had made a list on Spotify of everything and it was like exactly one hundred and sixty eight hours worth of listening. She's like, it's a sign. It's a sign. So I don't know if it's exactly one hundred and sixty eight, and that would of course completely depend on which recordings you are listening to, also whether they include the BWV numbers that are over ten eighty.
So there were ten eighty one thousand and eighty original ones. But a lot of box work was lost and then is at sometimes rediscovered, right like you can find new pieces. Things are we realize they are Bock writing. It's not some other composer, it's actually Box. So there's up to eleven hundred and seventy six b WV numbers, although some
of the last fifty are lost. We don't really know what they are, but we can sort of piece them together based on they're probably very similar to other works anyway. It's a long lot more than maybe anyone wanted to know. But I am learning all this as I am setting this up, because you could just listen to them in order, right like first January one, I will listen to BWV one and two, and like January two, I will listen
to b WV to it three and four. But there are vastly different links of time, like so it can be a forty five second piano invention, or it could be a two hour oratorio right like, and so you probably need to be a little bit more strategic about when it is. It's also the first two hundred and twenty four are all cantatas. They are all roughly twenty minute vocal pieces. So you know, if you want only all kantatas all the time till March, like, you'd be
listening in order. I don't want to do that, so I'm mixing it up from the first half of Coral in the second half of Instrumental, making a map to get myself to roughly thirty to forty minutes of listening per day.
So question, okay, you actually I have two questions, Okay. Question one is how much do you have to be paying attention for account? Like are you gonna like sit and like consentraate and like feel the box or you're like I'm driving whatever that I can drive?
Yeah, I can definitely, I'm gonna be I'll be driving. Yes, Okay, Sorry, what's your second question?
Well, and like would you be talking over it? Like are you really hearing it?
I would probably not be usually doing this with kids in the car. It's more like if I'm dry having to pick up a kid, I would put it on and then probably turn it off or put on their music or whatever for when they're in the car with me. Okay.
My second question is do you have any specific reading type goal, because I feel like you've always had one, or is it just going to.
Be free for all? It's going to be a free for all, total free for all. In twenty twenty four and then I'll be a little bit more structured in twenty twenty five perhaps, but yeah, I love it. One of the times that I know I saw I can listen while I'm driving. I can also listen while doing my back stretches because I have a sequence of sort of stretches, strength training things and yoga posas that I
do every single day. It takes about ten minutes, So that's ten minutes that I can listen to Bach and make it a little bit less boring the fact that I need to tend this aging body of mine in order to not fall apart. At least while I am staving off the inevitable falling apart, I will be listening to Gorge music.
And so it's a strength training also a specific goal for you.
Well, So I am going to continue working out with my trainer once a week and then my goal is to do another session at least once a week. So he sends me a list of the exercises that we did in the session, so I can just redo those or even if I just remember them, or I can pick my favorites. I'm not setting any rules for myself on what the second session is it's just that it
has to happen. So, you know, if I just want to go to the y and lift weights there because the kid wants to go work out there, like that would totally count. Or if I wanted to just run through a series of my favorite things, I could do that, but it needs to be something a second time a week awesome.
All right. Well, I had a lot more personal goals than you, as is typical.
Yeah, but I talked for a long time about box.
I kind of like that back and back, you know, like the.
Year in my back, by the way, that's your word, it soaring, amazing, the sound of God thinking, and one just my own like middle aged woes.
So your mortality facing more tight. We won't get too deep, all right. Relationships category number two three. Category number three is sorry, You're right, we did work, okay, I am. I don't know. This is like two nebulous of a goal. This goal needs refinement, okay, because I haven't set like the cadence or specific but I eventually will. Before January. First, I want to carve out more one to one time with each family member, every kid and my husband. The
husband part I figured out. I want at least one date with just us per month, preferably one with just us and one social date. That might be a hard sell. My husband doesn't like people.
That much sometimes, so well, maybe you guys can come here or one of your Philadelphia trips, will do I mean that can would he tolerate us? I don't know.
Yes, no, he likes people, but like he might agree to like people every other month, not every month. But I want it to be at least just us every month, and then something like that with the kids. But I need to figure out the right cadence in time. And then I want to take two couples trips with Josh. They can involve running races, do double duty that way,
but as long as it's just us. And then I do want to see my sister and my adorable niece, who is so fun now she's at like a really funny age, like she's turning four, So I feel like this is what I really really want to hang out with them. So that worked out pretty well, and I want to see them at least three times. I kind of have the dates already tentatively figured out, but it's awesome to have my parents and my sister in the same place. Which happens to be where you live to so it's awesome.
It's awesome we fit it all together. You know, when you make the trip, you can get many things out of one plane ticket, which is great. So my relationship goals. So the first one is kind of a phyllisical approach to my time over the next year that will then be reflected in how I spend my day to day hours, which is that I want to prioritize time with my older children. And within that, I mean, you know, Jasper
is in his junior year of high school. He will most likely not be around us, you know, in another two years, less than two years, he'll be at school somewhere. At least that's the plan. And I don't believe he's going somewhere local. That could change, but you know, regardless, it's like we're going to be seeing less of him in about a year and a half from when this is airing, and so and then Sam and Ruth are not that far behind. The three of them are stacked
fairly close together. So knowing that time with my older kids is a top priority then informs my schedule with activities like it is worth having help with Henry on the weekend, Like that can be a financial priority to pay for some help with Henry on the weekend, because it means that I can do things with the older kids or just like hang out with them, right like go sit at the kitchen table having a Starbucks drink together and chat and not be like jumping up to
go help a child in the bathroom or like, you know, he's doing something else. Like three year olds are just naturally more needy, and that's nothing wrong with it. It's just the reality of having a younger child. But given that I did have five children spread out quite a bit, I need to make sure that I have the time to engage with my older children in the way that
I would like to. And so that's something that will be you know, reflected in that taking trips with the older children, doing the Starbucks runs again, you know, like Starbucks has this reputation in the personal finance literature is like being the biggest waste of money in the world or whatever. And yeah, I make my coffee in the morning at home and I like it perfectly fine. But Starbucks for me is not in the like daily caffeine category. It's in social time with my kids. Category and that
is worth a lot to me. So we spend a lot of money on Starbucks in this household, but you know, I think it's worth doing in terms of an investment in our relationship.
It's so funny how it's such a tween and teen magnet.
Yes, it is absolutely a teen and tween magnet. But you know whatever, it's fine. I don't mind the drinks, like I'm happy to have a Starbucks drink, so oh yeah, that's great. So that's kind of the mindset. I don't know if there's like a word that engages with that, but as I evaluate what I am doing in any given period of time, it's like, Okay, is this going to allow me to spend more time engaged with my older children. If so, it's probably a good use of
time and resources to do that. I am celebrating my twentieth anniversary or a twentieth wedding anniversary with Michael this year, so we will do something to celebrate that, hopefully something reasonably creative, but we'll see what that is. And I guess, you know, just in general, to realize we have been together twenty years and have that inform our kind of couple time together, and I do want to do more
regular friend stuff. And again, this is like you said, the one on one time, it's kind of a nebulous thing. So what does that mean to do regular friend stuff. I have a couple of local friends that I exercise with regularly, either that I run or walk with, and that's good because it means that you do it regularly, but that always, you know, could make more local friends. That would be awesome. You know, there are people you
see regularly that can move up the friendship ladder. But also there are people I like in other places around the country, and some of whom I feel reasonably close to. But it's like you haven't really necessarily built up the relationship as much because they're not local. And I'm like, okay, I have flexibility in my job. I have the you know, if this is a priority for me, Like plane tickets aren't that expensive, right, and just go buy a plane ticket and go stay with her friends for a couple
of days. That's a relatively cheap trip. So I have the ability to do that. So I would like to do that, so nurture relationships with friends both near and more far flung.
I love it well. I made a sort of subcategory, even though I like having four categories, but I felt like relationships and household, like your rationale is that, like, well, your household goals are to support relationships, but I feel like there are some logistical things I wanted to work on, so I made another category for myself.
My shick is supporting my relationships.
Well, that's not on the list. I want to establish a family reading routine, which is funny because I read on a blog the other day about somebody wanting to do that. I'm like, yes, so maybe this is a thing. But kids who have devices.
In relationship, that's a relationship goal. I like parenting goals as part of relationships. I don't know, maybe yeah, it could be in the relationship, but okay, what do you mean by that? What is a family reading tea?
I just like, well, Genevieve can't read on her own yet, but I'm thinking this will be the year that she probably will cross that milestone to like easy books, And I just like the idea of like twenty or thirty minutes like that, we just like all like are off of devices and read together, just because I want to instill that habit. And again, devices, I let my kids
use devices. I'm not like not giving it to them at all, But I also want them to be able to sit still and read a page for thirty minutes. And I don't think that's like too much to ask, especially if like they get to pick the book, any graphic novel, any series book. I don't care. So I just I want to work on cultivating that habit. I mean, my husband and I both love reading, and my big kids do enjoy reading, like when it happens. I just would like it to be more regular. And then I
want to have better family meetings. And I feel like we're just finally at the age where everyone could participate and it wouldn't be so chaotic. We've kind of gotten into a rhythm of Sunday dinner, so I'm going to kind of combine that with Sunday dinner and have a little bit more of an agenda that we talked through the week ahead. And then fine, I will do the estate planning.
I mean, I'll finish it.
I have higher hopes. I feel like I actually like might actually finish it.
You might finish it, all right, Well, check back in when we do our review of twenty twenty four when that episode airs in early December of twenty twenty four, we can see did Sarah do her estate planning this year? We will find out, so stay tuned. Hopefully you will still be listening to us. Then, I did not set any particular household goals. I mean, I guess you know, some of this is like just habits we already have, right, So nine o'clock is devices docked in mom and Dad's
room so kids can read for an hour. I mean, they can also do homework if they have homework, but it's a time that at least builds structurally that they would read, and most of them do at that time. We also are going to do a little bit more reading with the kids, and I think particularly I mean I already do with Henry. I read him stories every night. But Alex can still listen to stuff, and so this
is not necessarily my goal. But Michael and I have talked about this, and he does more of the reading to the bigger kids. So he was reading with Ruth last night. They were reading some Encyclopedia Brown, like vintage Encyclopedia Brown. That's kind of fun. They had read through, you know, a lot of the old Nancy Drew books again, vintage Nancy Drew, some less politically correct stuff in there,
but still good mystery stories. I think they're going to try to restart the Harry Potter reading with Alex because that's been a little bit touch and go lately. But yeah, you know, these are all things that are great to have a family reading routine. So yeah, I'm not setting any house goals though, like I'm done, Like the past two years, we've done so much stuff with this house.
I'm I'm none of my household goals involved the house.
As you notice, have about no renovation projects for twenty thirty four. That's my goal. It won't happen because something will break and we'll we'll have to do it. We have ambitions for it, but nothing is pressing. We should just enjoy the house as it is.
Little take a break, Yeah, enjoy what you've already accomplished.
Yeah.
Well, I have one addendum, which is that you know, it's very popular to come up with like I think it. I don't know if Gretchen Rubin originated it, but she definitely talks about it on her podcast, which is to do like twenty two for twenty two, twenty three for twenty three, twenty four for twenty four. Yes, the numbers are getting bigger.
They have acknowledged that doing like sixty seven for sixty seven. You know, this gets a little unwieldy at some point.
It does get unwieldy, which is why I actually thought it'd be fun to just I mean, this is already like my goal is to do more experiences, so I just thought it'd be fun to make a little like template of twenty four different types of experiences that I was wanting to do anyway where I would just like fill in a little thing so I can post this, but basically, like I'm not going to read all of it, but like two live music experiences, six movies, et cetera, to add up to twenty four different things.
We have a couple of interesting categories in here because I can, so I'll share with You're not going to read it, but I will. But natural areas, so visiting some like pretty park somewhere exactly, host gathering so holding three sort of parties over the course of the year. A scent experience that was very Gretchad Rubin, I was very Gretchen inspired. And then a handful of new recipes that you're going to try as well.
Yes, five for the whole year. Like five, I'm n setting the bar super high. We're not doing twenty four in each category or anything nuts, just like keeping it manageable. But I think when it's done, what a cute portrait of twenty twenty four it would be.
Yeah, now that I'm thinking about this, maybe one thing I would like to do is actually document some of our household processes, because I think it's not something I always write about, but I have thought through a lot of stuff in just managing a household of seven people and various other things. And you know, we talked about family reading routines. I'm like, oh, yeah, we have, we
have one and our meals. I guess I've talked about that some or know how shopping works or how laundry works or how whatever else, and so you know, maybe it would be of interest to someone. So perhaps I'll try recording that as.
A I like that standard operating procedures.
Standard operating procedures for our household. Yes, exactly, all right, So okay, do you want to read the question or sure?
I will kind of not be very specific about it, but this is a listener that is working towards obtaining a certification, a professional certification that is the gold standard in their field. They're done with education and experience, but have to sit for the actual test, which is a four hour test. It costs four hundred dollars and has
quote a low pass rate. I don't know how low is low, but I'm guessing not ninely, just saying percent of people don't pass, Like it's it's going to be way below that.
Okay.
Yeah, So, and then she writes she's been doing self paced studying, but something often comes up and she gets off her schedule. And in September she found out she was pregnant with twins yay, And they also at the same time had all this other home stuff going on, a move, et cetera, and the pregnancy has been very exhausting. So her question was, do we have experience studying for big exams like this, any tips to share, any tips on managing this and home life is a parent because
home life does not go away. And then she notes that she does not want to miss her couple hours in the evening with her daughter.
So, yeah, this is a topic I think we've talked about a little bit before because I mean, first of all, congrats on the twins. I mean, you know, having a two year old and twins on the way is kind of a big exciting part of life. But then also having these big professional goals too. I think it's just wonderful.
You have so much going on, and so you should hopefully take a pause to think about how great this is that you have a career you're excited about to the point where you're trying to propel yourself forward to the next level in it, and your family is growing so many wonderful things. Yay. I read an incredibly disturbing study a few years ago about so many surgical fields after you've done your training to do this like mantal exam.
I mean, Sarah can tell me what the exact name is for it, but you have to answer all these oral questions and stuff. And it turns out a study of it, the pass rate for single men and single women was very very similar. Right, So of course, right, we wouldn't think that there's anything that you women can't be surgeons. Obviously they can be. The pass rate for women with children was significantly lower than the pass rate for men with children, So men with children passed about
the same rate as single men women with children. It was something like a fifty percent pass rate versus like ninety without it. I mean, it was a huge gap. Those aren't the exact numbers, but we're talking that sort of order of magnitude of the gap. So basically, women with children were far less likely to pass this high stakes exam that was sort of the culmination of their
surgical training as they were getting into practicing. And so you know why is that, Well, it's probably a combination of discrimination, and I'm sure there's old surgeons or like that doesn't look like a surgeon to me, she looks like a mommy. But there's also the reality that you have to prepare a lot for these sorts of things, and in some cases, I feel it becomes a household priority for the male surgeon that he have the time
and mental space to prepare for it. It then becomes not so much a household priority for mom to have the time and space to prepare for it. Many of the cases, she's still doing whatever she would have been doing even though she has this high stakes exam coming up. And you know, it's not just it's probably there's stereotypes or part of it. Maybe men are slacking, you know, but it's also that women probably feel like they do
still need to do this. As those woman says in this question, I don't want to miss my evening hours with my daughter. So what do we do with that? Well, you have to decide is this a household priority for you now or not, because it's not going to get
easier once the twins arrive. Like, so if you're goal is to like take this exam in like the end of your second trimester, so before things get really falling apart, and you know, after you're done with at least some of the exhaustion of the first though I know that twin pregnancies are totally different, then it needs to be an intense household priority for the next few months scheduled exam and take it, and you are gonna spend tons of time with your daughter, like over the next few years,
like you're gonna be on I assume a maternity leave from your full time job for a couple months with the twins, You'll have lots of time with your two year old then too, because it's not like she disappears during that time. She's gonna be around as well. So it's like, you're gonna have this very intense family period coming up. So I think it's probably okay to have a very intense work period while you study for this exam and sit for it, and your partner can spend
more time with your two year old. If there's a reason that he can't do that, then you can find some other caring adult to spend some of this extra time with the two year old. And she's not going to remember any of this, Like she's two, she's not going to remember it, but she will remember if mommy is feeling happy and fulfilled in her life as she
grows up. So I think we can have seasons and maybe this can be an intense work season knowing that there's going to be an intense family one coming out.
Yeah. I also would say, just from a practical note, Okay, so I do have sort of experience in this. I took my Pied's End of Boards, which I don't I don't know if it has a high fail rate or not. I don't think everybody passes it. Maybe something like eighty percent, so you know you can fail it. But anyway, so I took my peed's end of Boards in twenty thirteen in the fall, which meant I had a toddler and I I was pregnant. I was said, like first or
second trimester with Cameron. And because you take your boards after you finish fellowship, when you started your first job, usually get hired as board eligible. Anyway, I'll stop that part. But I would say I didn't study to win awards, meaning I didn't study the way I used to study, like when I studied for my USMOS, Like I was like, I want to get the highest possible score. I want to like devote all of my free time to this. I'm going to be like crazy and like do two
three out, you know whatever. It was more like, okay, what do I need to do to like probably pass that I can handle? Meaning a evening study session. I would tell say, Okay, I'm going to do it. It's gonna be thirty minutes and I'm going to do it versus like some pie in the sky, I'm going to spend four hours and then like not want to even
start it because like it's just totally daunting. So I do think like there's something for like giving yourself a reasonable amount on your plate and being consistent with it versus trying for like a one hundred percent chance that you'll pass and being really really stressed about it. So like there is that to think about. I mean, it's four hundred dollars, which sucks if you fail, but you know you can take it again, so then you might
know how much effort is really involved. Sometimes really conscientious people might actually overestimate the amount of studying they have to do for different things. Of course depends, I don't know. This exam may be very different from my exam, But I guess there's that to think about. The other thing is to like possibly throw money at the problem on every angle. So again, childcare, as Laura mentioned, like yeah, and you know, remember you don't have to do something
every single day for it to be true. So if you're spending two three days a week with intense study sessions and then the rest of the evenings with your daughter, you're still spending a ton of our daughter or son, I don't know, child, You're still spending a ton of time with your child. And if you're really consistent about
those sessions, it may be enough. So not setting yourself up till like it has to be every day or bust getting the best, most targeted, efficient review materials you can get, or even like hiring a coach in that field, if that's something that's available. So figuring out ways to
make this a more digestible thing for you. Also, if there's any kind of like audio resource that you could do when you're just like tired and just lying down, like, think about whether there are ways of stettying for this that could potentially be more palatable. But I also very much agree with Laura in that the idea that you have to spend every single night with your two year old or you're a missing something or be a bad mom or see harming her in any way like that just isn't true.
Nope, but we wish you the best of luck on it. I mean, I'm it's exciting, it's a you know, I think it is totally possible to make the space to study it and still have a full family life. And I think it's just you have to be rational about planning it out. So Love of the week, So we
both have been buying planners for twenty twenty four. Sarah is a bit more into this than I am, but I am experimenting with a plum paper sort of more custom planner that I purchased because Whitney English, which was the planner that Sarah had set me up with a couple of years ago as a week on a page planner, they were not making that planner for twenty twenty four, and I was like, oh, well, now I got to
find something else. So I went on Reddit, and as the Internet is very helpful, I figured out what people were buying who had been buying that Whitney English planner and now needed another one. Somebody suggested this particular plumb paper, so I went and designed it. They were having Black Friday sales. Great I designed it, came to me, and then I saw that Whitney English was also having a
sale on an undated version of the planner. They decided to offer the planner that I had been using, just without dates on it, which I know that some people are like, well, look I need the dates, but you can fill it in day to day. I mean, just write the numbers on it. So I went ahead and ordered that as a backup, and if I wind up sticking with the plump paper in twenty twenty four, then I can use the Whitney English in twenty twenty five.
But if I decide I don't like the plump paper, then I can have my Whitney English non dated starting whenever I want, Like, I can start it in April if I if I need to. So I guess my planner stack is now my love of the week.
Yay planner stack. I mean I can see from Whitney's perspective why an undated planner might be a better business proposition, because you can sell it anytime versus something with a very specific shelf life. It's rough to make dated planners. That's why I don't do that anyway. So my love of the week is my planner stock for twenty twenty four. If you want a visual, I will make a video. You can find me by searching. I don't even know how to find me. I don't know best laid plans.
Just search pod or something. Just yeah, I'll put a link somewhere. So super excited for my whole planner lineup for this year.
Yeah, well, we are super excited in general for twenty twenty four. So hoping that people will keep listening to us in the new year and hold us accountable for all these goals. We hope you've set marvelous goals that have you excited about the new year as well, and we'll be back next year with more on making work in 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.