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 in mid to late July of twenty twenty four. We are going to be talking about rest and also what we're calling a trade Off manifesto, a way that people can get enough rest despite having a busy life. So we're going to be rethinking what rest means and also talking strategies for getting rest.
Sarah, why did you want to do this topic?
So sometimes we have different ones of us suggest different topics, and this was definitely a Sarah suggestion. So maybe you can talk a little bit about why you wanted to do the topic.
Yeah, I think I came up with rest actually, and you came up with trade off, which makes sense. You're like, I have a practical solution to your rest dilemma. I just feel like I see this a lot. I mean, we had that period of time when a lot of books were about doing nothing and resting, etc. And they were interesting, So I feel like it continues to be a little bit of a hot topic. I think I've gotten some questions about this, both in my Best Laid Plans universe and also to our Best of Both Worlds.
Listeners have asked about this, and I think a lot of people kind of talk about being frustrated with the ways they use their downtime, or like maybe saying something like I don't have any downtime, but then if you question them, they may actually spend a lot of their time doing things they don't want to be doing and
feel a certain way about it. So I thought this would be a fun way for us to just kind of explore this topic and talk about it a little more, including the ways that we rest, ways to enjoy rest. And then you came up with the idea that one way that we can get some rest as parents is to make sure our partners are helping us achieve our rest goals. I guess I.
Don't know our rest goals. Yes, we have goals about everything around here. I have to admit I'm a little bit skeptical of all the rest stuff. I mean, there's certainly books talking about how we're all so overworked and busy and we have to grab at rest from some evil culture that doesn't want us to rest.
The culture doesn't care if you rest or not.
Honestly, and I think practically, the data is that the average person has a reasonable amount of downtime in their lives. The American Time You Survey comes out every June. Came out in twenty twenty four. Looking at all the days of twenty twenty three, thousands of Americans talking through their previous day four am to four am on an average day, I am quoting nearly everyone aged fifteen and over engaged in some sort of leisure. The vast majority had many hours.
Most of this is spent on screens. If you look at the time devoted to different things, a lot of people still watching TV. Interestingly enough, I don't know exactly how the American Time Youth Survey is counting all sorts of video watching, Like is video watching on a phone now being counted as sort of watching TV. It's hard to know, but point being that the average American is watching two point seven hours of television per day even in this day and age, different proportions of people using
screens for leisure, games, socializing, and communicating whatever. It's all a long list. People who have kids young kids at home under age six have fewer hours per day of leisure than other people. It comes out to about three point three hours per day versus at least an hour more than that for people who do not have kids
at home. And also that people between the ages of like thirty five and forty four, I think have the least about And so what was coming out of this data for me is not that people who are like in the demographic who watch listen to this podcast, so you know, working parents with generally younger kids don't have zero downtime, is that they tend to have less than other people. And that may be parents versus non parents.
To some degree, men versus women. Men have a little bit more than women do, and I think this may explain why it's a sore point. So again, not that working mothers get zero downtime, is that they get less than other people in their lives, and so the comparison is the part that can really start to irk.
I could see that question when they get this data, are they asking people to recall a twenty four hour window or are they like buzzing people on their phones at three pm and saying, what are you doing now?
Well, it's yesterday, right, So it's talking through yesterday, which is the American Timey Survey day. If I remember correctly, it starts at four am, goes to four am, so they're like, what were you doing at four am yesterday?
What did you do next?
And people can generally recall the previous twenty four hours quite well. Past that, it starts to disappear rapidly, so you remember, you know, lunch yesterday, You don't remember lunch two days ago. I don't know why that is. There's something with the human brain of how this goes. But there have been comparisons of doing this reconstructive method of talking it through versus like checking in buzzing, And it's pretty accurate. It's not one hundred percent accurate, but it's
very close. And so you know, I mean, we have often these stories we tell about our lives of like oh, I have no free time whatsoever.
But that's based on the.
Day where you were working late and you had three kid activities and some plumbing went awry and so you spent all potential leisure time dealing with the plumber.
It's like, okay, well that was one day.
On another day you were on a disney cruise with childcare all day and massage.
For now, it just.
Depends which day do we find you that we decide which is typical. And of course, you know, one of the things we like to talk about in this podcast is that we want to look at all of life, not one particular moment, but the comparison thing is what I think gets a lot of people, and so we'll definitely talk about that. But first, you don't want to
talk little bit about rethinking rest. Rest doesn't always need to look like a day at the spa, nor does it actually need to look at like sitting on the couch, because in many cases, sitting on the couch scrolling around online doesn't.
Actually feel all that RESTful.
It can in certain moments, I guess, But the purpose of rest, I would say, is to rejuvenate you and add to your energy levels. I mean, I don't know, is that what you were thinking about with rest?
That's such an interesting question, because you're right, Like, and I made a joke about rest goals, and I don't love the idea of like rest framed as like something you have to do to be more productive later. Like I think there should be enjoyment of rest for rest's sake, and for me, a lot of the activities that I find RESTful are also inherently enjoyable in and of themselves. So but you're right, I guess you could have sort of some of each. That's an interesting question.
Yeah, well, I.
Mean that rest could be lying down closing your eyes, but rest could also be going for a solo walk outside to clear your head. I mean, rest could be doing a hobby that you find relaxing. So there's different ways to think about it. So I would encourage people not to just think of it as I need more time on the couch, because for some of this that doesn't actually sound that appealing to me. I don't know, maybe it does to other people. Sometimes it really does.
As we'll talk about our own favorite forms of rest, mine often does involve a couch, So that's I guess okay too. If that brings you joy and rejuvenation, And I don't know the right kind of what you need to recover from the rest of life. My running coach likes to say that there are no recovery runs. It's only like preparation runs or something. But I don't know.
I kind of think there should be recovery time built into our lives, particularly if we do maybe push hard in other realms with our kids, with work, et cetera.
Exactly, All right, Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back to talk about what rest looks like and how we can get more of it. Well, we are back talking all things rest and then how we might be able to engineer more RESTful times into a busy life with work and young kids. So, Sarah, what are your favorite forms of rest if you are going to make a list of things you find RESTful.
So, my most favorite RESTful activities are to have a book that is fun to read, and to lie down on the couch and read it and then maybe even let it turn into a nap or perhaps lie down with the purposes of taking a nap, but like kind of to read first as like a little prelude and I would say my kind of alternate form of rest if I'm even kind of too tired to read or just not in the mood to read, would be letting myself lie around and either text with friends or a
family member, or maybe even watch like one of my favorite YouTube creators that do planning stuff. And I'm not a heavy YouTube user, so it's not like I'm like clicking around constantly or keeping up with certain things, but there are like very few channels I enjoy checking in on, and if I'm just completely like unable to do much else, then that is often what I will go to. We've talked at length about various social media et cetera. I
quit read It one month ago. I have not been on since June fifteenth, so that's kind of exciting, and I feel like I did after. I mean, there were times when I use social media for rest, but I found it very unrestful and actually probably a little bit stressful, and had kind of found Reddit creeping in as like my social media substitute, so intentionally talk about manifestos. Quitting that has been very very positive for me, and so that is no longer a former rest that I turned to.
But I will say that I in the past did some of that as well.
So I have a question.
When you read with the idea that it's going to turn into a nap, do like actually put down your book to then consciously go to sleep or does it kind.
Of like fall on you? Like how does this work?
Oh? No, I consciously put it down. So I do a lot of my fiction reading lying down, So I'm like laying on the couch on pillows, maybe with a blanket, and then like when I'm like, oh, I'm I just read this page three times. Perfect, put the book down, go to sleep, go to sever nap. Okay.
I was just wondering, you know, if this is one of these things. I know some people fall asleep reading, and I've always wondered exactly what that looks like, because it feels like then there's a heavy book that winds up on you some way, shape or form.
I know what that looks like because my husband does it sometimes. Yeah, so does one of my kids. But no, I usually like actually put it down.
Yeah.
Well, the humor with that, I remember somebody telling me about this. I was talking about somebody how they made more time to read, and she mentioned you often is falling asleep reading and then she wakes up because her husban's like taking her glasses off.
She's in her bed.
I was like, you can fall asleep with your glasses on while holding a book.
That's impressive. I don't believe I can do that. My rest is there's a couple of things I like to do.
I like to sit in our hammock when the weather is nice and read, or maybe it's reading stories and books, but it could also be on my phone. I don't mind using my phone for a little bit of downtime. Going on a solo swim.
Again, this is summer.
Being in the pool on my own, just sort of floating around is very RESTful to me. Doesn't happen very often because I tend to be lifeguarding other people. But I will take the moments when I'm there on my own doing puzzles, like doing a puzzle. Although I've had to choose the right kinds of puzzles because now that I've done enough of them, I have definite preferences, and sometimes I really want ones that are not mentally that taxing.
It's like a little taxing, but I kind of like the ones where you're not totally stumped of where things go. I find one hundred and fifty pieces of blue Sky to be just tedious and not my favorite form of puzzle doing. So I've been making sure to find puzzles that are a little bit more filled in than that, so I don't have to text my brain too much. I like you, I find I spend a lot of
time texting. I don't know I was adding up my texting time looking at my screen time function as many hours a week, which I have not really included in my mental model of what life looks like because it's so quick, usually back and forth, like you know, three minutes here and there are not even that. But obviously it adds up if you look at the amount of time you spend on messages on your phone.
And I find texting like one of my favorite uses of the phone. I love my various groups that I have, my college friends, texting you, texting my sister, texting my parents. Like, there's a lot of texting in my day to day, and I'm not sad about that particular motive device use.
Yeah, and then I also just like to sit with my cup of coffee for a little bit.
One thing I've been doing.
If I'm up early enough, is sometimes I will make my coffee and go sit outside. Again, morning tends to be nice in Pennsylvania in summer, although it's been a bit muggy lately. But if I just challenge myself to kind of sit and not look at my phone, or sit and look at the sky and all that, even five minutes can feel pretty long with no distractions, and so being aware of what time is available, and if you're not trying to distract yourself with other things, you can get into that kind of WHOA.
I've had some downtime state fairly quickly with that.
But we encourage people to make a list, like make a list of the things that you find RESTful, so you at least have these top of mind. You also want to think about how you are building in rest into your life. And sometimes this is again if we're thinking one hundred and sixty eight hours, not twenty four, thinking through busy periods and less busy periods. Sarah, you've actually made a conscious choice of how to structure your schedule to deal with post call needing a little bit
more downtime. Maybe you can talk about that.
Yes, I find myself absolutely use. So my call is from Monday morning to the next Monday morning, and currently I also have Monday as a clinic day, so that means basically, I mean until Monday at five pm. I'm like, it's just all clinical stuff and a lot of responsibility and a lot of stress no matter how long I do it, and that's okay. Again not resenting the stress, but I have to acknowledge it at the same time. And the next day is a Tuesday, which is usually
a like podcasting day, et cetera. And I have found that, like I don't want to do anything on that day and I very much just crave some quiet, some silence, some just downtime because I didn't get any on that past weekend. Even if it wasn't a busy weekend, I'm still thinking about the patients. I'm still sort of like in it. So I just need like a I need
a recharge period. So my very low tech and ridiculous solution is that my next call week, I was like, let me just write on my planner, don't schedule anything, because I will if I don't, like specifically have some kind of block, I will put stuff and you know,
sometimes you end up putting stuff anyway. But at least I can be mindful of the intensity of those activities, like I'm not going to schedule a talk and invited talk on that day or something like that, or a mega recording session with Laura, as fun as those are, Like I need some time not to be on stage, and that post call day is really really important.
Yeah, I've learned over the years that after I give a speech, I tend not to be able to do much focused work. And so especially if I'm like getting on an airplane after a speech. In my mind, I'm like, well, that's great work time, and then I've sort of realized, no, it's not great work time. I tend to be like I've been on and performing and then I need to
kind of not do that for a while. And I've done back to back speeches, like I have done two in a day, but it is very taxing when you need to do that, and so I need to be mindful of like, Okay, probably I'll just read a magazine on the flight on the way home and give myself permission to do that and build that into my model of how the work is getting done in the course of the week. Fine to do work on the flight there flight home maybe not happening so much unless it's
the next day that I'm flying out. Totally makes sense. What about during drink Oh, go ahead, Yeah, I was gonna say during individual days, right, there are times that you find you need some rest. I mean again fun as these recording sessions are, I find if I've been talking into a microphone for several hours, I probably need to like not do anything for at least thirty minutes after I finally turned the microphone off.
I would say, for me, it's like during my clinical days, I've been talking, talking, talking, and also kind of moving as fast as possible, like writing my notes, like kind of an overdrive, and so I really crave that. It's not always a full hour, but from like twelve fifteen to one, I'm usually able to just do things that are much lower speed and for me or it's like
lunch with friends or whatever. My manager was like, oh, do you want to start your afternoon earlier so you can finish earlier, because I guess some of my colleagues wanted that, and I was like, absolutely not. I know that I won't be able to go into the afternoon with the right energy and mindset if I don't have at least like a little bit of unwinding between the two sessions.
Yeah, and I've found it's helpful when I'm trying to get into a RESTful mindset. A phrase that I I've been using a lot is cultivate a Saturday vibe. And now, again both of us have lived through Saturdays with like two year olds.
That is not what we mean. We mean more the.
Ideal Saturday where you maybe ease into the day and you have a few things you need to get done, but you're sort of moving a little bit slower and doing fun things and interspersed with it. If you have that kind of mindset of being in a Saturday mode, that can kind of help you think about restfulness and what you're trying to achieve.
So is your summer Saturday mode in general or no.
I'm trying to Yeah, I say, well, if June is the Friday night of summer, I guess July is a Saturday. So I've been telling myself to have a Saturday vibe for July. Sometimes that's happening more than others.
But you know, super fun.
I like it.
It's all good. It's all good. So why is rest a hot topic?
I mean, I think I read somewhere that like does a feminist issue, which I don't know if that's the case, but because I think many people don't feel that rest is entirely equal in their lives, whether it's with other people they know, sometimes with their own partners, or even like their older children, I think that this is the thing that needs to be addressed. I know I've found
myself feeling slightly resentful. If you know, we've just had dinner and my kids all like walk off and the kitchen still has to be cleaned up, and I'm like, wait a minute, why do you go get to watch your phone while I'm loading the dishwasher. This doesn't seem right. Why do you feel even entitled to walk off and go on your phone? If because obviously I will stop people and ask them to help. But then it gets a little bit like, wait a minute, why.
Did I even have to ask? Why is this considered part of your purview as well?
Yes, yeah that why are you going to rest so quickly? And I do not automatically get this. So this brings us to part two, which is the trade off manifesto.
I'm so glad you called it a manifesto because I love manifestos.
You love manifestos.
I just think that it's perfect trade off manifesto.
How do you for sure get rest if you have little kids, for instance, and a busy life, and if you are in a two parent family, Adopting a very explicit strategy of trading off for blocks of time over who is with the kids allows each party to have some moments of real rest, even though there are little people around who need constant vigilance.
And one way to think about this.
Which I know some folks who gotten divorced and wound
up with fifty to fifty co parenting arrangements. Each of them is then fully on with the kids fifty percent of the time, and for many people that has been a growing and learning experience if they were not used to being fully on with the kids fifty percent of the time, but now they are doing it and everyone is dealing, and the idea is, well, why not do at least some of that while you're still married so you don't necessarily wind up in a resentful situation over
this where it confess to and lead to problems in the marriage long term, or you know, hopefully not ending over something like.
This where you want your free time so badly, you're like, fine, fifty to fifty.
Fifty to fifty sounds great.
Yeah, Now we want to make sure that you can have free time while remaining happily partnered, if that is your current state. So the idea is that you actually map it out because I think many women, and again we speak mostly with women in this, their partners are kind of an under utilized resource in the quest to get downtime. Like you all hang out together on weekends or evenings, and that's great, but I mean, the guy
is willing to be helpful. But if you are the primary parent and the kids consider you the primary parents, and even when you're all hanging out together, like you're all sitting on the couch, the kid is asking you to go get the drink of water. It is a mommy, I need help with the potty or mommy, you know, it's just and so you don't get the downtime, and it can lead to this resentful because you're all there, but neither you are not getting any of the rest so half hours where each of.
You is officially in charge.
I mean, do you guys, do this at all, I would say we at this juncture, do not do it explicitly. I did find a blog post and I had a memory of doing it very explicitly when we had one like eight month old, and I really felt like I needed some time to just not be I think she was newly crawling, so it was at that stage where you're like, I am on injury prevention every single second she is awake, because it's like otherwise head injuries happen and it's my fault. So one weekend I was like,
let's literally take shifts. And by the way, the naps don't count, so you don't get to be like, oh, well, my shift she.
Happened one to three in the afternoon. Yes, And I like mapped it.
Out specifically so that like during her awake time we were sharing. And I think I remember when I first posed this, it was like huh, like why and it's like but then actually he was like, Okay, I kind of see it because the fact that I was like why means that maybe you.
Were doing defaults.
Yeah, I mean he was like doing it, but I was like the default doing it. And again there was breastfeeding, like there were reasons for that to some extent, but anyway, it did work on that day. The blog post strikes me as somewhat embarrassing for whatever reason now, but yes, we did it in a very explicit way back then,
and I think that can work in certain scenarios. At this point, I don't feel I need quite that level of like scheduling, mostly because the kids do not really need like one on one following at ages six, ten
and twelve. So instead I just try to be really really upfront about what I do need, and I will announce I'm taking a nap and dare anyone to challenge me, and usually they don't, which is wonderful, and then I take my nap, or I will specifically say, like, hey, I'm going to take the girls to get our nails done, like can you do something? Well that's splitting the kids, But sometimes it'll be I'm taking all three kids to this, can you take them all three to a movie tomorrow?
So that like I can get some time And so I'll make a suggestion and then that will kind of work out, and then maybe it also serves you know, with the ages of the kids, we can kind of fit the interest to the activities as.
Well, yeah, I've definitely had. I mean, I remember when the kids were really little, like when we were living in New York, we had going for quite a while that Michael would take them out of the house on Saturday or Sunday for excursion of some variety, and the idea is that they would go out and do something and not be home right because then I could be in the.
House by myself. That was good.
That was a recognition that I was doing more of it during the week, and then he needed to do his shift on the weekend. And again, as the kids get older, you need less of it. But we're still tell you with Henry like, Okay, this is your time. You're gonna go play this video game with him. That's one thing they do together. And then I can go outside and sit on my hammock and relax and then make sure that it's explicit like who is in charge of him at any given time.
So there is definitely some of it.
We're gonna take one more quick ad break and then we'll be back with more on how we can make trading off work. Well, we are back talking how we can have rest and downtime, particularly if there are little
kids involved. And we're saying that in families that have two parents, having a very explicit schedule of trading off can increase the chances that both parties get adequate downtime, both the person that might more automatically get it and the person who might be less likely to automatically get the rest that they feel that they need. Now, are we saying it has to be every single one hour
of the one hundred and sixty eight hours in a week. Well, no, if you are not divorced and co parenting and so actually you're totally splitting the week, then obviously there's gonna be time when you're all together. But you might need to think about what would make it feel adequate for me. And maybe it's that one party gets Saturday morning and one gets Saturday after noon and you spend Saturday evening together as a family. Or maybe one party gets Friday night,
the other gets a few hours on Sunday afternoon. Maybe one party wants the mornings to themselves during the week and that works and then the other party. You know, then that party who is off on the mornings will do the early evenings or whatever it happens to be. But thinking about what it might look like in the family schedule.
I think this is just such an important conversation because one thing that sometimes strikes me as I'm listening to podcasts with male hosts and them talking about fitting in their workout and getting their downtime, is I love hearing about them taking their retreat, but like, please normalize it for the female have to And I think that's actually important.
Even if one partner is more staying at home or has a less demanding job, that persons still going to need some like alone time and some rich charge times. So I think this just has to really really go both ways. And I don't necessarily mean a fifty to fifty split. I mean we can talk about that, but instead each person truly getting what they want a need out of life, out of the relationship, out of the partnership, et cetera. And I guess I feel like this isn't.
Talked about enough.
People love to talk about their own stuff, and then sometimes there's just this like nebulous partner lurking in the distance that seems to be soaking up all the excess. And I guess this conversation will tell you. I guess we are that partner and we want our own time too.
Well, and we're saying it could be a couple hours built into sort of the weekly schedule. It can also be that when you are on vacation with a family, maybe you trade off days, like one of you covers one day and then the other partner covers the other day, so we each get some downtime on vacation. I well remember Michael and I did this when we were with
the family in San Diego in twenty sixteens. We had four very young kids at that point, and he took them all, which, by the way, our nanny at the time came too, So it's a we were trading off with help, but it was still one partner was going with it. They went to Disneyland for the day, so I had a whole day all to myself. It was awesome, and I covered another day for sure. Or you could
also do long weekends like I think. I think each partner should ideally get at least one long weekend away in the course of the year to do what you want. You don't have to spend all your PTO together. It's really hard also for many families to get an overnight babysitter but it is not at all hard for one parent to be the overnight coverage, so you can take a couple days away pretty easily if the partner is covering,
versus if both of you are trying to go. It's this huge trying to fit together all sorts of different kinds of childcare to make it work.
I struggle with this one, mostly because I seem to be the only one that really wants these weekends. But I guess it is what it is, and I'll continue to encourage Josh to I don't know, not that he specifically has to go away, but if there's some event or thing that excites him to make sure that he carves out time to do that. It's a concert or a sports event or whatever it is. So addressing a
few objections with the trade off philosophy here. Obviously, if people don't have a partner co parent, this is much harder, but you can perhaps co op with another mom who is in a similar situation. So if you have a good friend who is also a single parent, a neighbor who is also a single parent, or you know a relative in a similar situation, the two of you can say, okay, well, I host the play date on Saturday. She hosts the
play date on Sunday. That gives each of us some time off to do whatever we need to for ourselves and hopefully relax.
There are some people who have.
Agreements with families, So perhaps a single mom's extended family takes the kid one weekend a month. That might be a really great situation that an extended family might be willing to offer as something to help make life feel more sustainable for her. You can budget for your rest. Think about if you were co parenting with somebody, your kids were going off to that person, like, what would it look like and sort of there was an old
custody arrangement. I guess where the kids would go to dad for Wednesday evening and every other Saturday or something like that. So maybe that's what you budget for, right one every weekday, one Wednesday evening and a couple of hours on Saturday.
You're talking about paid care, and that ye care, right to hire a sitter, that makes.
Hire a sitter for that and or even if you have regular work childcare being able to stretch it a tiny bit. So maybe it's something like your daycare is from eight to six, but you are often done with work at five. You normally just get your kid then, and that is awesome, But maybe two days a week you let it go a little closer to six and give yourself that fifty minutes to just chill and try to rejuvenate yourself before you have the evening on.
Yeah, I mean, I absolutely acknowledge that all of this does become more complicated when you are single, and I can hear some arguments from single people close to me, but I think that still there are probably something is better than nothing in many cases, and even small doses of extra downtime can feel like a lot when it's going from zero to something.
Yeah.
Now, of course, the related objection is I have a partner, but he's never reliably around. I would push back on this for the vast.
Majority of jobs.
Now, obviously, if your husband is deployed somewhere for nine months, that is a different scenario, and then you can go back to the ways you might build and rest in downtime if you don't have a partner around. But if we're talking to somebody with a fairly normal job, they just tend to work longer hours, there's probably at least
some point that they could take. You know, maybe it's that they're almost never working on Saturday mornings, well maybe that could be your time, or maybe it's that you also then hopefully your partner's being compensated for all this availability, and you can hire a sitter, right, Sarah.
Yes. And my favorite reminder is like, if that is the case, the sitter is not covering you, they're really covering your partner. If you're doing ninety percent of stuff and you want to do eighty percent and you want that ten percent help and your partner really can't do it, then again you should feel very much good about getting that help and not even feel like it's kind of subbing your labor. It's really subbing the other person. Yeah, exactly.
A second objection is that this all seems so transactional and petty, Like, if we're in a loving family, why do we need to explicitly say that Dad covers Thursday evening, Mom covers Wednesday evening, and we split Saturday.
So, Sarah, what would you say to that?
And this is not from, by the way, not from personal experience myself, but from more hearing other people, But I feel like from what people have told me, the ones who object to with the most are the ones who are kind of slept with this striking realization that they're going to have to do a lot more than they are current. So it may not seem petty if it's not a big change, but if all of a sudden they're like, wait, I have to do bedtime twice a week.
Oh, that's so petty. Like, hm, I don't know, maybe it's not so petty. Maybe it's time to step up to the game. Yeah. And the earlier you start, the more natural it will seem for everyone, because everyone becomes competent with taking care of the kids on their own. I know we've both laughed when we've heard some mostly fathers make the joke when they have the third kid of like, oh, we're moving from man to man to zone defense. It's like, well, that means you have never
taken the two kids on your own. It's like, that is a pretty embarrassing revelation if you're already by your third child. So let's make sure that everyone can do all the parenting on their own should they need to. And you know, in some of my studies, you know, I've suggested people go take one night for them to do a hobby and people like women. It's always women have said, well my partner can't handle multiple kid bedtimes.
It's like, well, because that's he's never had to. But if he is not completely incompetent, my guess is he can do it.
If he needs to, he can learn.
And so the earlier you start with that, the more comfortable and confident everyone will feel in their parenting.
I will say, as a related note, I personally find it sometimes easier to parent, especially in the bedtime hour when I am by myself with all three kids. Because we've talked about this before. It's like it's becomes like a dictator ship or something like I'm the only one we'll do there's no one to diffuse, like well mom said this, but Dad usually lets me do that, and blah blah blah. It's like, nope, sorry, I'm the only one here. To the point where my kids will be
like is daddy home and I'm like nope. That means you have to listen to me, and it actually kind of works.
So yeah, well I found this.
I mean, because we've split the family for I mean, with five kids, use less of this. You know, one person taking all five often, but you know we have, but like if we have split family trips that I'm taking some of the kids and Michael's taking some of the others, you are fully in charge, right, There's no question of who's in charge. Whereas if the both of us are together, we're negotiating over different things, what we're
doing at different points. We may have different interests and we're both sort of figuring out what we're going to go with. Whereas, yes, when you are the only adult that you can run it as your benevolent dictatorship, and sometimes that is easier even if you don't have the support of the other person. The last objection, the problem with all this trading off is we like family time altogether.
Say, well, great, I do too.
Covering for each other for a few hours per week so everyone can get adequate rest does not negate that at all. There are one hundred and sixty eight hours in a week, fifty two weeks in a year, right, Sarah, you can still.
Have a lot of time together. Yes, so I think this is really important. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing. It does not have to be an even split. We're not dividing one hundred and six into two and you'll never see each other again. But at the same time, I think many of us find that having some solo, non kid experiences is very life and enriching, and there should be ways that we can all have a little of that in our lives.
Absolutely well.
Today's question is somewhat about trading off, but figuring out what somebody wants to be when they grow up when they have had their kids quite young. So i'll paraphrase this question, then Sarah can give her answers that she's sent to this person. This listener had her fourth and she says final baby about six months ago, so she has four kids who are ages six to baby.
She is only twenty nine years old.
She has taken some time off work for various reasons while her kids were little. During this time, her husband's income has gone up considerably. However, now that she has done with having her babies, she is itching to get back into the workforce to some degree. However, she's wondering if maybe it seems like the only reason she needs she would be working is to keep herself from being bored, So she's a little wondering if that's okay. She's also feeling like all the universe is open to her given
that she is so young. I mean, she could go back to school, she could try a completely different career, she could get re licensed in her particular area. So she's just unclear how to proceed from there and wondering if she should be trying to get back in the workforce and also what she should be doing. So, Sarah, you had a few thoughts for her. Yeah, this was such an interesting question. I want to read one quote from this. Very lad did a wonderful paraphrase, but there was a good quoting here.
I'm just gonna read it. And she said she's itching to get into more development and MEETI work to dig into with newfound intellectual and emotional bandwidth and the buying power to me maybe start making space on the calendar. She feels like she has all the building blocks. If she could just make sure she was going in the
right direction, she could make it happen. But for a career that is quote potentially inconvenient and financially unimportant, I'm feeling pressure to make sure it is somehow the most fulfilling possible option. Oh my gosh, so much pressure this person is putting on herself. So, and I think this is such a great question, and she is a very thoughtful person for kind of like laying it all out there. So I hope that maybe even just sending the question
has been helpful. My first few thoughts have been are kind of like the like depressing side of this, which is like you just never know. I mean, maybe you're okay, Like maybe your spouse is like a hedge fund billionaire, and this is like a moot point, but like if it's just like someone who makes a good high earning, that could change. Maybe that person won't have a long life and long working life like you expect them to. Maybe the relationship won't last like you expected to, Like
you just kind of never know. So assuming that whatever you do is always going to be financially unimportant, I think is a little bit dangerous in most cases. Plus, there's always the chance that even if they do have this wonderful, high powered career, what if at some point they decide like they're burned out and they want to kind of do something a little more low key, And so maybe you would find yourself feeling a little bit
more important. Another thing on that note, and again, if he's a hedge fund billionaire this maybe again, but.
At which point you can do whatever you want to, right, Like I mean, you want to start a business that's losing fifty thousand dollars a month, go for it. Yes, But I get I mean, you know, honestly like that, because right any just do whatever you want just for absolute fun.
But no, I was going to argue the financial piece again, which is that I feel like going in when my kids were little, I thought X amount of money would be like a great amount of money, and that more than we could know what to do with. And as they've gotten older, I've only like found more and more expensive things I want to give to them, experiences whatever, I mean, are they needed?
No?
But like, do I find value in some of them? Yes? And am I glad that I have a job that helps making some of them more feasible? But that might not be if they're so lopsided, that might not be true. But I'm just just throwing that out there that you might not know what the magic total will be for you when the kids are older. Maybe it's higher than you think. Now, I guess that's what I was getting at.
And then I just thought, like I hear a lot of like perfection, like I have to find my perfect thing, or like pie in the sky like idea. And I think, remember, you can do career crafting, and the only way you're going to figure out if certain pass work is to probably try them. So I would try to let go of the idea of finding the exact passion direction position because that may make you kind of stuck in paralysis for years.
Yeah, well, I think she can definitely give herself six to twelve months to think about it again because she's so young. She's like, well, I can start anything at twenty nine, where you can start anything at thirty.
Two, So it's it's totally fine.
I mean, even if you do to do a career with a long training field, like you want to go to law school, you want to go to medical school, like you could do that at thirty just like you could do it at twenty nine. So think about what this is. Spend six to twelve months really actually practically trying things out. You know, what do I want to
be when I grow up? Try little projects in different areas that you find interesting, Make long lists of anything you think are exciting to do, ways you like spending your time, and then you can start weaving these together and figuring out what your ideal life will look like, doing a lot of networking because people will have ideas of what you could try doing, and let go of this idea that you're going to find anything perfectly immediately. But as you try things out, then you can try
the next thing out. And again, if you don't have to work, which is what we're hearing with this, then you don't have to decide this quickly. You can try something and then try something else. But over the course of a couple years, I think you will figure out a job that you really really enjoy and that uses your brain and that makes you feel like you're contributing in multiple different spheres with all your kids and in the larger world as well. Something meaty, as you put it.
I love that something meaty. I know she's bored.
She was.
In her letter.
She mentioned she'd done all their house projects, she was reading one hundred books a year. It was time for her to get back to work. So I think she's going to find something that will use all that extra intellectual capacity that she's dying to put to some different purpose. And we can't wait to hear what that is all right, Sarah, what is your love of the week.
Well, the opening ceremonies of the Olympics are this week, so I am super excited to tune in. Feel like I have reached the promised land of ages of kids that will actually sit through watching some of these events with me, and that's it's been a while. There's always been like a two year old running around the last few Olympics. So super super excited for that.
Yeah, exactly, Kids who can sit still and watch that is always a love of the week. Well, I'd say the Olympics and Shark Week. We've been watching some of the Shark Week programming and it's always a little bit over the top and funny, but you know, it's a summer tradition at this point. It's a great way to spend a little bit of time in July, and most
years there aren't in Olympics in July. I'm sure we'll watch less Shark programming that we've taped once the Olympics start, but for non Olympics July that can be great.
Well, this has been.
Best of both worlds. We've been talking about rest, rethinking what rest looks like and what it means and then discussing a way the trade Off Manifesto that people who feel they are not getting adequate rest can make sure that they do get more rest, even if there are young kids involved and who need constant supervision. Well, 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 on making work and life work together.