Hi. I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.
And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This episode is airing at the end of July of twenty twenty four. We're going to be discussing how to design your ideal work week. So lots of people have more flexibility these days in terms of when and how and
where they work. So if you are in a position where you can choose these things, it might be worth spending a little bit of time thinking about it and considering different things that might matter to you and that
might make your schedule feel more doable. This episode is about creating an ideal work week schedule if you are thinking of working part time, what those hours should be if you work full time, but can set your own hours what those might look like, or if you have a hybrid schedule where you're in the office some days and working from home some days, you might be wanting to figure out when it is best to work from
home or work from work. And so we're going to give a couple ideas of things to think about, frameworks to consider, and all that. So Sarah, maybe you can talk a little bit about what your work life looks like right now.
Yeah, and also kind of what inspired this episode a little bit. I work part time. You guys know that, you listeners know. I have three patient days per week. Two of those are full days, like basically a full business day, and then one of them is kind of like two thirds full. As my colleagues get half day of an admin kind of time to call patients back per week, and mine is a little bit less in proportion
to my kind of patient care role. And every year around July we have to figure out the schedule going forward basically until December of the next year.
So, Sarah, July for the following year seems awfully early. What's going on with that?
Well, the truth is that it's easier for to book an entire year at once because the clinic schedules all kind of are built around the call schedule, and the call schedule has to be equal and kind of waited with various people. Plus there's the fact that a lot of what we do is very kind of long term, Like we see a lot of patients every six months, for example, or some patients even a year later, and so it's best if they can book their next appointment
while they're at the office. I know, I definitely prefer it when I'm getting anything done for my teeths, my hair, to be booking my next appointment right then and there. And in order to do that, you have to have schedules, which means you have to have call schedules, which means the doctors have to actually figure all this stuff out
way in advance. And there is certainly the ability to swap like if I have an event into November of twenty twenty five right now, I could certainly figure something out, but for the most part, we have to kind of I don't know, decide on vacation requests, kind of do all that stuff. And then one of the things that I had to do was that basically since some part time, I asked like, is there do I have flexibility? Like, do I have to stay Monday, Wednesday Friday? And I
was told, no, actually you do. You like, we have like enough office space that you can tell me what three days you want to work and we will build that in for twenty twenty five. So I was like, Wow, that's really fun. I get a clean slate to design my work week for next year based on what I've learned doing this three d a week thing so far, which I've been doing since October of twenty twenty two. So I guess I have been Monday, Wednesday Friday for
two years now and really really enjoying it. But there was some things that I did not love. So my laundry list of complaints. So I'm just kidding.
Yes, no, well what I mean, because I feel like it's been good, but there were a couple of things that you thought maybe could be tweaked.
Yes, And the reasons that I chose Monday, Wednesday Friday in the first place is that I was nervous about having any significant length of time go on between business days, if that makes sense. Like some people are like, why don't you do Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? And then you have like a built in five day weekend. But I don't want someone to get a result, a result to come back at six pm on Friday and then may not be able to like respond to that result until the
next Wednesday. Like that's way too long. So I wanted
to minimize that and that worked out okay. But the things that I didn't love were that Monday holidays are really really frequent, and a lot of times they would just eat up a vacation day because for us, I mean, this is getting into the weeds, but our vacations are like holidays are included in our pl days, which actually, in my mind makes it more fair in a way, because every day is kind of created equal and you can decide whether to take December twenty fifth off and
it's Christmas or February fourth, and either way it counts the same. And so for me, that would just ate up a lot of Mondays. And the other thing is that there was no easy way for me to take any three day weekend without taking a paid leave day, and I was like, oh, I did that to myself. But it would be nice to be able to either do Saturday, Sunday, Monday or Friday or Saturday Sunday without using up paid leave. In addition, the Monday after call
is I talked about it in the last episode. It's like torture, Like I've worked a solid week and then I have to work a solid day, and I guess
it's not torture. I could do it, but I would prefer not too if it's not necessary, And this would allow me to actually have a day off, not off, but like on my own as I finished call and then finally, Mondays are just a little bit hectic, and I definitely suffer from some degree of Sunday stress of feeling like I have all the ducks, have to have all the ducks in the row because the kids go to school, and kind of once I get to work,
I'm just hitting the ground running. And I have a very constrained Monday morning schedule, and so I just thought it might be allow me to enjoy my weekend a little bit more if Monday was a bit more flexible. So for all those reasons, I went through a fairly detailed analysis of all the options. I listened to what
people had to say. I've read a blog post about it, and I actually heard from several people who work part time including positions and the schedules that they liked, and ultimately I went with Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Thursday being the shorter day. Oh, by the way, for some reason, I'm not supposed to take the shorter day on Friday, so that was not a choice. But Tuesday Thursday as a shorter day and then Friday as a full day, and then I think this is going to be a
pretty good happy medium. The only thing I noticed already is that there were a few Thursday Friday things that like instantly appeared on the calendar as soon as I made this change, and I'm like, oh my god, well now I'm meeting up too days every time I do something like that. However, I do have a little bit of leeway to sometimes like work a Wednesday, and so I think I'll be able to put that to good
use and make up for some of this. So I'm super excited and grateful that I had the opportunity to kind of design things, and I assume that in twenty twenty six, as long as office space is not an issue, I could redesign them.
Yeah. Yeah, Well, now it'll be interesting to see how it goes. I feel like there's gonna be pluses and minuses in any version of this, and there's some constraints either way, right Like if you didn't want to take that many work days business days off in a row, given the situation of needing to respond to people, then it meant some obvious suggestions of how you would do it wouldn't work. We also have to move around various things in terms of when we record, but there's nothing
set with this, so we can do it whenever. So yeah, I think it'll be interesting to to see how it works out.
Laura, do you think we will record on Mondays or Wednesdays? Because those are going to be our new options.
I would say wednesdays, that would be my choice, agree, because I tend to like to do my writing for the week that has to get done on Monday. But I'm open to different ideas so we can figure it out.
I think Wednesday will be excellent.
Wednesday we'll be recording. All right, there we go, all right, Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and we'll be back talking more about ways you might think about going part time, working from home, designing your ideal work week, and so forth. Well, we are back talking how to
design your ideal work week. We open with Sarah discussing why she is going to be trying a Tuesday, Thursday, Friday schedule for her clinical work next year, with her Monday and Wednesday work from home days and her own entrepreneurial stuff. If you are thinking of going part time, there's obviously various things to consider. I mean, one thing we always warn people have out here at best of both worlds is don't automatically assume that that's going to
be the best of both worlds. We can. Yeah, we talked last week about my manifestos, but this is another one. In many jobs, there isn't a whole lot of accountability. So when Sarah is working clinically, she is seeing patients, there's not a whole lot of gray area about this, like she's in an office seeing patients or she is not doing that. So there's not like a patient randomly when she's not on call. There's not a patient showing up at her house at eight pm to be seen.
Whereas if you are working part time in many sort of information related jobs, it is totally possible that something will come up at like five pm on your non work day and you are like, well, do I deal with it or do I not? So if there's no accountability. We often see women on part time schedules working more hours than women on full time schedules. It's just that it happens with different managers or in different settings, or
how strict your boundaries are. When I've collected time logs, I've seen women on part time schedules working more hours than women on full time schedules in the same company, in the same company. So going part time definitely means you will be paid less. It doesn't always mean you will work less, so be very careful about what you are doing. Also, if you are going to go part time, be clear about what you are doing with the hours
that you are not working. In Sarah's case, she is doing her podcasting, doing her course creation, working on her book proposal, those various things.
Which I all if you are away, by the way, which you all enjoy fun. Because you're going to give another example, I would push back at like the financial piece being that important, but the fun piece is very important. Okay, give your example.
Well, just you know, I've had people say I need to work part time because the laundry isn't getting done, And I think that those are separate problems, right, And somebody else could likely do the laundry for less than what many people are earning in a professional capacity. So make sure that if you are substituting lower paid labor for higher paid labor, you understand what you are doing.
And maybe you want to make sure that if you are giving up like the opportunity cost of a high income, that you are doing something with the time that you truly value, yes, as opposed to just that like the house isn't getting clean, no one's cleaning the bathroom, so I need to work part time. It's like, okay, hire
a cleaning service and keep working. I mean, maybe you want the time to hang out with your kids, you want the time to relax, you want to pursue a creative hobby, you want to start your own business as a different matter, but totally very careful with lower paid labor substitution.
Yeah, and I think the key really does have to do with what you want to be doing. Yeah, which maybe somebody loves laundry that much, but yeah, not mean.
But Sarah, so you did not want to do like five shorter days and then do you know, like so maybe you can talk a little bit about that consideration.
Yeah, so there's different configurations you could choose should you decide to take the leap and go part time. I actually have a friend who works five shorter days. But I think for most people that is a very dangerous thing to do, because shorter days it's just going to be very hard to kind of leave your work with stuff hanging, and shorter days could become longer so so quickly and so so habitually that all of a sudden
you are just working normal days. I will give my one example of my friend who was so valuable to the place where she's working that they essentially pay her full time and she's like, I'm only going to be there from this to this, and that works out very very well for her. But I think as a general rule, unless you're able to work out that kind of an arrangement,
this can be dangerous. I will also say, like, you know, you could say, oh, I'm going to be there and then available for emergencies later, and that would maybe be okay if you know exactly how often the emergencies are or what they are, or maybe if there's some sort of contract arrangement where if there is said emergency. Every time there is one, you get paid time and a half or some financial incentive. But I don't know, seems very dangerous to me.
Yeah, I mean I understand why people do it, because they're like, well that I can be home in the
afternoon for my kids. But you might be able to work out something where you can often be home in the afternoon for I mean school aged kids for instance, because you're working from home, right and you're there, but your eight year old, who can't be home alone, doesn't actually need you to be on them, And so you could work from eight to four full time, but you're just home working most days, and so you're there physically
even though you're still doing work. I don't know, I think it's that would be a rough one to assume you should do. But if you are going to choose certain days to work, you know, it's popular to take Friday off, but that doesn't actually have to be the choice. And many people find that Fridays might be a sort of slower day in your workplace, so you might be able to get more sort of done without as many distractions, and so maybe that would be a good day to
take as a work day. If you have a long commute or a very stressful job, maybe taking one of the days off in the middle of the week would be better because if you take Wednesday off, you only are working two days in a row. And so if it is a stressful job, or if it's a very long commute, then and you only have to do it twice before you get a day to not do it, and I think that can be mentally helpful.
People also say that traffic is a little bit better on Fridays, So if you have to drive in a certain number of days, making one of them Friday could actually be of benefit. People also can be in like a better mood, so we'll talk about that when we go into our hybrid work section. But that might be a time that you might more want to kind of nurture relationships and hang out with others versus being home with your head down.
Yeah. I would say another thing though, even if you have complete flexibility of choosing when you are working part time, I mean, this is something you know I've heard people do, like I'm going to work from five to nine every morning. I think you gotta be a little careful with this.
There's still this mindset. I think a lot of people have that you shouldn't be doing work ever if your kids are awake and available, And so people are like trying to work part time by working from five to eight in the morning and then one to three during nap time. And I think that's a way to get yourself exhausted. And given that there is nothing wrong with childcare, it would be worth considering a different schedule. If you are trying to work part time, it's okay to have
coverage for that. So hybrid though this has become more and more of a thing. I mean not so much in medicine, but certainly I mean with your friends. I mean you're seeing like the number of people who can work from home these days. It's just crazy.
Yes, And it seems like a lot of jobs that went entirely remote now have some sort of fluctuating, sometimes nebulous in office requirement like once a week, twice a week. I actually some close friends of mine like all kind of struggle with this and then they never know like how often do they really have to go versus what the rules are? So I think it can be probably worth really intentionally thinking through when it makes sense to be in the office and when it makes sense to be home.
Yeah, I mean a lot of companies have happened on this sort of like, I of will be three days in the office and two days at home. But then what if people travel for work, Like how does that count? Is that counting against the home days or the office days? I think most people would counted against the office days. But then you can't go on badge swipes or anything
like that. I mean some companies have tried to do something ridiculous like you have to swipe one hundred and forty times a year, But then that's going to lead to people doing stuff like coming in for an hour swiping and going home and working at home for various reasons. I mean, they're probably still doing their jobs, it's just that their life works better, or maybe they can concentrate more in their home office versus some open cubicle plan.
And given in a lot of offices you don't have to swipe on the way out, it's almost impossible to police, like how long the person is going to be there? And I mean, how would you even do it? Like, oh, they were they leaving for lunch or were they leaving to go home? I don't know. So I think it is better for organizations, if you are in a management capacity, to be very clear on what people's jobs require, like what are their objectives that they need to meet in
any given week, for instance. If you can do that, try to figure out how do I know that this person is doing a good job? And if these things happen, then we know they are doing a good job. And if they happen, then we don't need to be quite so worried about where the work is happening. That said, if you do have a hybrid office and you are working for one of these places, it's probably worth coming
in from time to time. I mean, I know Sarah and I have found that when we are in person together, we have an easier time brainstorming, We have an easier time sort of planning things that involve a lot of back and forth. I mean, there are things that are best done in person.
Absolutely. I mean I think I'm a fairly fairly extreme outlier with this. Even with clinical work, I have some colleagues who are like, oh, I'll do telehealth here and there, and I'm like, nope, nope, nope, want to go to the office away from my house. Away from my kids and talk to people in person as much as possible. So there are things that are just more conducive to face and face. I guess the problem is some people
who have this kind of voluntary hybrid arrangement. Unfortunately the meetings aren't really like in person or they involve multiple people who are out in California, so they're actually commuting to an office so that they can then zoom with people at like other remote offices, and like that's hard.
I hope that if anybody in the manager capacity or has any power to change that is listening to, like, really, if you're going to require people to come in to make sure there's some in person natural components of their day and that there are like meetings that involve contact with others in that same building.
Yeah, so some places are starting to do certain things like a Wednesday catered lunch, right, that is understood that this if you are working from home a lot, this would be a good time to come in because all the company higher ups will be there, so if you want to talk with them, if you have things you want to even just get FaceTime, that would be a really good time to come in because you will see everybody, and even just sort of consciously when you're planning your week,
thinking of those in office days as your social days, and that the days that you're working from home are more about putting your head down getting through those individual deliverables. If you're going to be in the office, like make sure you have some like in person meeting, some lunch plans with a colleague, some coffee plans with a colleague, or you're going out to happy hour with your team afterwards or something too, you know, or going to an
in office learning event. Something to make it worthwhile mentally, make it worth your commute, Yes, exactly, make their commute worthwhile. So if you are doing the three to two, would you do Monday Friday? I mean, that's a lot of places are doing that, but would you? I mean, you didn't choose that for your part time schedule, So maybe you can talk about that.
You're saying, if I had to do two days in office and three days.
Well, you are doing three days in an office, and so thinking about from the commute perspective, I.
Mean you yeah, I mean maybe I would do it. I would depend on what's happening in the office. If there was like an all hands meeting. I would try to I would work around that. I find one of the other reasons that I chose Friday as a clinical day because I could have even though I can't have the short day Friday, I could have just said, oh, I'm just a Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. But I was worried about my own ability to be productive on a Friday
at the end of a hard week. I think I'd have more desire to just put my feet up and not get a lot done. So to some extent, I sort of based it on my I feel like I'll be more productive because I know I'll be staying patient, like I'll be forced. You don't really have a choice when you go in for a clinical day, like you're working. So I felt like this would serve would actually help me from a productivity standpoint. So I don't know, maybe I would do it the same.
Yeah, we'll take a quick ad break and we'll talk a little bit more about the Friday question. Well, we are back talking how to design a hybrid schedule. We've been talking about how to design a part time schedule. So I mean I think that there would be something we say for coming into the office on Friday gain, we talked about the traffic being lower, people might be in a more social, festive mood, like if you know,
you'd just be taking an so backing up. Like before COVID, it was often this thing like you could maybe work from home on Fridays, like that was the ultimate perk if you had been in a company five years and you had high ratings, like you could negotiate to work from home on Fridays, and like everyone sort of understood that it was it meant you weren't really working, right, Like that's the idea, is that people assume working from home that you weren't working, and so Friday is the
low opportunity cost day. That was the day they were willing to give up. So I think some of that mindset is still there that people are like, well, we'll have to have people in the office Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, because people are just taking long weekends. But if you actually view working from home about as productivity based, which I do, then it doesn't actually make sense to take
Monday or Friday as your work from home days. With Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in the office, I think it makes a lot more sense to do something different I mean, certainly, maybe it's that Monday, you come into the office and set your goals with your team for the week, and then people can go execute on them on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then you're back in the office as a team on Thursday and Friday, and Thursday is when you're push push,
pushing through to get to all your deliverables, and then Friday is more celebratory and social. I mean, I can see that as making total sense as a rhythm where you're still getting the work done and you're not writing these days off as like oh, when people are working from home, they're not working. It's just that it makes sense for the rhythm of the work itself.
Agree And I mean, there is just leting to be said about Friday putting everybody in a more talkative and happy mood. That's why we do our little office lunches on Friday. Actually, our division meetings tend to be Friday. Like Friday is kind of when you like, I don't know, want to hang out with each other and maybe just
wrap things up. There is a natural something there. I think that if I had a company and I was running it, I would encourage people to come in specifically on Friday, maybe only for yeah, and I.
Know there is a tendency for people to try to leave as soon as possible on Friday, and so people are always worried about, like, well, if we do this celebratory Friday lunch, people are just going to walk out afterwards,
which may be the case. You can sort of work with that by having lunch start at like the last possible work lunch time at like one thirty, so you know, kind of in that celebratory lunch from one thirty to three or so, and then people are leaving around three, which is you know, close to the end of the day anyway, So that might be something to think about.
Or maybe it's that you have some sort of reception at three o'clock, and you know, maybe there's complic things with having alcohol involved in work and all that, but you could do it some other sort of celebratory way that you're clearly breaking for the week at like three o'clock or something, and people would probably stick around to that.
Having something at like five point thirty on Friday is just ridiculous, Like, you know, people want to go home, But I think you can manipulate that a little bit to push it another hour to forward when people are having that kind of end of the week celebration.
I don't think we're going to have any Madman style drink krk coming around my office.
On the drink Kirk. Yes, I'm not sure. At a hospital, that's a great idea.
No, I'm definitely not not advised, not advised at all.
But days that we work for ourselves, which for me is every day, but Sarah for two days a week. I mean, have you gotten to sort of a rhythm of if you think about designing those? I mean, do you mostly work nine to five, Sarah? Or do what do you view as your work hours on your work from home for yourself days?
Oh, that's a good question. I feel like I usually work from kid drop off to around five most of the time. Sometimes I have to finish earlier, but then other times I can like sit in gymnastics and like finish stuff on the later side. So I feel like on average it's like that. And it took me a while to like decide to come up with certain rhythms, but I definitely feel like I have where Tuesday is like almost always recording day. It helps that, like my
best laid plans. Episodes are due by Tuesday, so I'm almost always recording one, and then Laura and I often do Tuesday as well. Thursday tend to be more like my own like creative work in the morning, working on course stuff or writing, and then often at noon I have some kind of like presentation, and then afternoons I just know, I'm like it's like more cleanup and less creation. Unfortunately, so it does mean I'm fairly limited, and then I tend to sometimes do it. I hate working at night,
like I do not do it. My brain is done. But I feel like I've been like throwing in a couple Saturday a little bit more frequently, just because it's like kids are occupied and it's fun work anyway, and it's like limited. So I think that's how I sometimes make up for the fact that like maybe by Thursday afternoon not all that productive. Yeah.
Yeah, So for me, I tend to do my basic weekly content creation on Mondays. I'm trying to get through all my I have this new newsletter called vander Hacks over at Substack. I try to mostly have those written, and mostly have my before breakfast podcast scripts written on Mondays and whatever else is kind of like urgently needing
to get done during the week. Sometimes there are a few small things, or I do a blog post Tuesday, often recording if we're doing something, or if I'm doing podcast notes for this but starting to do other things in the afternoon. You know, I'll often set interviews for longer term projects in the afternoon on Tuesday. Wednesday morning
is often a good before breakfast recording time. I try to get through at pretty quickly, like do the whole weeks in thirty to forty minutes max if I can, and then use the rest of that day for longer term projects. Same on Thursday, and then Friday is kind of a mop up day whatever I didn't get to or things on my punch list. I make a list of kind of small tasks that I don't want to interrupt to the rest of my life. But I can
try to get done on Fridays. But I don't know, I'm probably not quite as good about this as I should be. I sort of often like to do what I feel like doing. I've been getting better about making a full on to do list for the next day the day before, and there's been different parts in my life where I've done that more readily. I don't know,
for whatever reason I haven't been. I'm getting back to it because it allows me to feel a little bit more like I'm on top of things, and then I do have space for thinking up future stuff and working on my book project and all that without worrying that I'm forgetting something.
That makes sense. Yeah, I feel like when I get into an unstructured day, I've already usually assigned myself a few things that are kind of due, and then I think about my rhythms for filling in the rest of it, like, Okay, this is a writing morning, or this is a podcasting day, et cetera. Cool.
Yeah, I mean, I do generally try to work it's eight thirty to sometime in the late afternoon. I like it when I can stretch it a little longer, like I've been trying to sort of say hello to the kids when they get home from camp or school and then get back in for another hour hour and a half. Sometimes I will drive a kid to an activity so
I can sit there and work there. I find that I can get a lot written during sitting at the sidelines of gymnastics or somewhere else like that, So stretching it a little bit further into the evening as I can makes sense.
Well, I will say there are some jobs where you're like, Okay, that's great, you have days that's real cute. But I'm an er doctor and so this is like totally not applicable to me, or some other job where most days are going to feel kind of like the same, or you know, maybe you're I don't know, I don't know other careers like that, but you get what I'm saying.
I will say that sometimes you could still kind of do a light version of this, where you make little shifts in your day to maybe make days stand out in different ways. So, for example, mentoring Mondays, you could be like, Monday is the day I see if there's any students around or someone below me, and just make sure they're getting what they need, et cetera. You could do like in the medical world, we have to do cme in the law world at cle and you know,
et cetera, et cetera. So maybe Wednesdays you're like, Okay, if I have a pocket of free time, that's when I tackle these annoying modules that I have to do. And then as we talked about Friday can often be kind of a social day. So even if this episode did not apply to you, because your job is in general not flexible at all and maybe not remote, there might be ways that you can kind of build a little bit of rhythm to your week.
Even so, and you've done the exercise of designing your ideal week, like actually sitting down with some sort of calendar or spreadsheet or whatever and making like, this is what I want my week to look like, and it can be very useful. It is super useful. So it's funny.
I think I was like, where did I get this from? Because I think you mentioned something similar to this in one hundred and sixty eight hours perhaps, But the actual physical template that I use was kind of came from the Full Focus Planner, which is the Michael Hyatt's company, and every single quarterly planner had a spread where from like six am to ten pm or whatever the hours he chose, you were basically supposed to fill out like what would I want my ideal week to look like?
So you can see if all these things you want to do are actually realistic to put on the calendar, because truthfully, if they don't fit on the calendar, they are also not going to fit in your life, so super valuable. And I was like, well, do you really need this in every single planner? This is a quarterly planner, And it turns out it was like, yes, I do, I actually do, because there are just things that change and make life's time constraints very very different. We are
in summer right now. Summer is completely different. I have so much more time right now than I know I'm going to have in just a couple of months, and so thinking through how I want to use that ideally is really really valuable. And my head is already spinning thinking about what my ideal week will need to look like come fall, because I have just already found out that we basically have things until almost nine o'clock every single weeknight next year, so certain things are going to
have to change. I personally really like to do it in a vertical layout where you have the days of the week on top and then kind of the hours going down from the top to the bottom. Kind of looks like if you're a planner nerd like a hopuni chee cousin the weekly pages or a hemlock an oak. But obviously you could also create your own with this
configuration with a blank sheet of paper. It also kind of looks like a Google calendar, so you could do this digitally and actually create I have seen others create an ideal week the it's digital that they can then kind of superimpose on top of their real life and see how close it's actually coming, which is kind of fun. So whatever you do, it's just you fill it out. This is where my workout goes, this is when I'm going to clean up from dinner, this is where my
work hours are. This is my sleep, and you see does everything actually fit? And I really believe that doing this every single season is very helpful and has has helped me figure out what I need to say no to and has also helped me realize when I have a little bit more open time to do more.
Yeah, and I think this can help you sort of think creatively. I mean, we mentioned briefly the idea of like if you can set your hours more like you work in someplace that's more flexible, like what you might
decide to do. And so if you're generally aiming for forty hours a week, you might decide to do two longer days for instance, that you might decide, well, it's worth it to me to work till seven or eight o'clock on these two days, and then I'm going to purposefully work shorter on other days for whatever reason that is. And you know, you have a company culture that will
respect that or whatever it is. But or if you work for yourself, I mean, maybe that's what you could decide that you know, there are some things that it helps me to be able to do in the evenings, or I like to get to the flow of things, and so I'm going to purposely choose these two long days and then I'm gonna take shorter days and I'm gonna feel totally fine about it on these days. But when you see the whole week, you can do that in a way that it's harder to when you're just
kind of focused on individual days. You're like, oh, gosh, I'm working so late. This is maybe not what I should be doing. It's like, well, but if there's a reason for it, because you are fitting forty hours in the week in this way, then it helps to be able to see that.
I will get back to everyone when I figure out how I'm going to work out, get enough sleep and deal with my kids. Activities until nine pm. But that is going to be a fun puzzle to have to try to.
Take some of the nights off, right, Like, I mean, I think that some nights you will not be responsible for any activities and then you can do some stuff. Then I guess, let's hope. Yeah, that sounds good. Well, So pivoting to our q es for the week. Sarah, this one more or less the person rights should I buy a beach house? And the question is that she notes that a lot of people in their community buy a vacation home at some point where that becomes financially feasible.
Neither of you have ever talked about doing that, So maybe talk why you haven't made this a financial priority for either now or in the future.
So Sarah, Yeah, I mean I also know people who have done this as investments, and honestly, sometimes it works out very well. Sometimes it doesn't. But you could purchase a beach house with the idea that you're going to use it for some part of the year, but you're also going to rent it out for the lot of the year, so it's not always even you know, it sounds very like extravagant, but it may actually be sort
of a business decision for some people. All that said, I have no desire to manage even my own current house, so adding another house to our list of things to think about is just like a hard no. We also prefer the idea of flexibility and being able to go to different places. I mean, it is true we tend to kind of choose the same locations sometimes to repeat, but I don't think I want to be locked into them.
I mean, if I have a bad ski year at Big Sky, then I want to go to Colorado the year after and not be like, well, we have a house here, like I guess, I just I want to be open to more possibilities than one would have if you had a house in one specific places. So I don't see this in our future now. If we are like very very lucky to have the means to someday maybe not spend summer in Florida on, that could change the calculus, especially if they were like kids to live near.
I don't know that happened to be in a beautiful, picturesque Vermont village where there were affordable summer homes. Like, yeah, my calculus might change, But for now I've noticed.
I mean, so I would say, like landlording in general. I mean this is obviously we have people who listen to this who landlord professionally and I'm sure do an awesome job and it can be a great career. And then there are people who also do it as a side hustle. I think you need to sort of be clear that it's not passive income in any way, shape or form. You can pay a management company, but you're
still dealing with some of it. So the question is, would you prefer that work to doing more, for instance, of the work you do in your main job. And I think for my husband and me, we definitely prefer the job that we do as our main job to adding any sort of side hustle job. You know, I think landlording is often somebody people like, well, I don't want to work in an office, so I'm going to come up with something else I can do that can make money while I don't work for myself, And that
can be a great option. But if you prefer your existing job, don't think that's what you need to do in order to necessarily bring in extra money for that. But even with that, like home number one, is challenging. Yeah, I think having home number two to also deal with with, just like earlier as the sound of the dog. I don't know if anyone heard that. It's probably because the plumber was leaving now because we have the plumber here dealing with something today. I mean, just one house has issues.
I feel like a second house would have more issues, especially if that house is in some sort of ruggedly beautiful location. Like if you are on the beach, guess what, there are storms on the beach. It's often pretty in summer, but if you're somewhere on the East Coast, you gotta have horrible winter storms that could do damage to your house. You know, if you're off in the mountains, like if you're in somewhere gorgeous Colorado, I don't know, there might
be for uss. Yeah, like the places that are beautiful maybe more close to nature, and nature is wonderful. Nature can also do things to your house, so just keep that in mind. We also like going to different places and not just each year. Like my husband loves skiing and I love the beach. So I'm not sure where we'd buy the house because I would want the beach house and he would want the ski condo, and I don't think we're buying three houses total, so it's not
clear which one we would do. I just don't know what percent of our vacation weeks we would use to go to the vacation house. Like a lot of families around here that buy a house on the Jersey Shore, the model is that mom and the kids go out for the summer and then dad comes on the weekends. And that's just like not our model, Like it's not what I would want. I would have to make sure that I had childcare out there because I'd be trying to work, and so if that's part of your life,
it's a lot harder to pull that off. So what we do is we've been renting the same beach house multiple years in a row for two weeks in the summer, and that kind of scratches that which for the most part. No, obviously they could sell it and then that would end it for us that we've been building traditions and memories around this place that isn't ours. There's always that danger,
but for now that's been okay. And I'm not saying never because especially I think, as you said, as kids get older, it's kind of nice to have a place that they would want to come. I'm not sure that my kids would be that excited about visiting suburban Pennsylvania. Whereas if you have the beach house, like, oh well, we'll bring our kids for a week of vacation at the beach house, or if the ski condo, like, we'll bring our family to stay for a week in ski
at your ski condo. But obviously that's not the case for us yet, so we'll see at some point in the future.
I will say my aunt and uncle bought a house in Avalon, New Jersey, on the Jersey Shore for I think exactly that purpose, and it did work, and now they've moved into it as their primary home. So that's always an option as well, where you're actually kind of moving toward and eventual transition rather than hoping to own two homes.
Yeah, my husband's sister and her husband they built a house on a lake in North Carolina and they actually retired there. That they were going back and forth between them, but the idea is that once they left their full time jobs, they would wind up there, and so that's what they've done. Seemed to like it a lot, So yeah, that can be a transition that you're thinking of making at some point too. All right, well, love of the week, Sarah, what is your love of the week this week?
What is my love of the week. That's a great question. I know, I wrote it down the book. Yeah, well, speaking of beach houses, this is perfectly on theme. Just finished Sandwich by Catherine Newman, which is a novel set at a beach house. A week at a beach house with a kind of mid fifties woman, her husband, her parents, and her twenty something kids, and honestly, not like that much happens, but it was just so delightful and it put me in the phase of mind of like, well
will that phase of my life perhaps look like? And I don't know, it was so good. I loved it.
Recommend Yeah, maybe I'll have to read it. I know that sounds like a good one. So my love of the week is pickles. I did not grow up eating pickles. I don't know if my parents just don't like them. It was just never a food that was in the house.
You know how you have these things that there's like foods that never enter your life because your parents either don't like them or they didn't grow up eating them or something, and you know even when I'd watched them, like at restaurants, they would always like, pick the pickles off a burger. I don't know. So in my mind pickles are something you like pick off your burger, like
the toothpick you pull it out. I don't know it just and then at some point I'm like, well, yeah, I'll try them, and I like them, and especially I
like the big kosher dill ones. This are not necessarily the little buttany ones that put on a fast food hammer or that's that's kind of not that great, but the big fat kosher dill ones, especially if you buy good ones, excellent eating and having that as a side with sandwiches, burgers, everything else for summer meals and making up for lost time in terms of pickle consumption in my life.
Pickles are so good. I'm glad you discovered them.
Yes, as I'm pondering, like, what are the foods my children will never know about, because like I don't buy them or something you just don't even think about it. I don't know, you never know, Cilantro c Laandro, Yeah, that'll be for you. All right, Well, this has been best in both worlds. We've been talking about designing your ideal workweek, whether you have a part time schedule, hybrid schedule, whatever it is, what are the things you should be
thinking about. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can.
Find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more. I'm making work and life work together.