Three hundred and fifty BC. Aristotle first explores the notion of balancing work and leisure in his work First of All Aristotle, three fifty BC. I'm sure somebody else explored it, they just didn't write it down. Okay, I don't want to be like aristantle is the first one. I was the one who knew how to write. There was probably a sewing circle where women were talking about the ship because we've had to do it forever, right.
More better, More more better.
Hey, welcome to More Better, a podcast where we do stuff to try to get better. Me not remembering how to do the intro?
Whoo really out the gate better intros?
Yeah, anyway, that's most Marrow and that's Stephanie Beatrice and here we are. Welcome back to our podcast where we try to get a little more better every day. Hopefully that's why you're here, and not to hear me talk about Real housewives like last week, although inevitably it will come up.
I mean, it is what it is.
You know.
You got to give the people what they want.
Yeah, yeah, it is what it is.
How are you?
I'm good. I'm pretty good. I'm tired, but I'm good. I'm going home soon, excited to see my family and get some family time in the midst of this marathon that is our job.
But it's great.
How are you.
I'm okay. Yeah. I did some adr for Twisted Metal ooh, and I saw some of it and.
It was good. It looks so good.
The lighting just looks exciting, stunning. And the car I saw one of the car chases it see it looks it looks I can't even begin to describe it to you. I mean, it looks absolutely out of it looks like it's I don't even know how to say. I don't know what to say. There's like ten cars they're all racing down this like, oh, it's crazy, it's crazy, it's huge.
It looks like a.
Movie or something.
I'm so excited. Does that How long did like that car chase take? Was it a full day?
Was it more than a day?
Oh no, no, there was more that.
A lot of it was the second unit with the stunt drivers because it's so dangerous and multiple cars get wrecked. Yeah, spoiler alert. But our stuff took I think our stuff took like two days to shoot, and the scenes beforehand took like a week whatever. And then the actual car, the stuff inside the cars took like a couple of days, I think.
Yeah. Yeah.
My my parents when they came to Atlanta for Thanksgiving, they visited set, and my mom's been on set a bit more than my dad, And it's like the same thing. Every time someone's on a set for the first time, they're just blown away by, like how long it takes to shoot a thing?
Fun.
And the first thing my dad asked me, he was like, Okay, when that scene that I just saw you guys do over and over again that you're not even done with, like I'm going to leave, You're not, You're still doing it. He was like, how long will that scene be in the episode? And I was like a minute and a half, maybe maybe two minutes because it's kind of a long scene.
And he was just like wow, yeah, I was like yeah. Like, and action sequences, I feel like are the biggest, most mind blowing example of that, because you will spend days on these action sequences.
That are a minute long.
Maybe yeah, it's like hours and hours and hours and hours and hours.
Of work for.
A second.
Yeah, it's for like a week for a thirty minute episode. You know, it's just like it's an incredible amount of work, an.
Incredible amount of work.
And it's really any TV show though, you know it's like, yeah, it's every TV show. Yeah, I think about that would it and how and like you know those Game of Throne battle scenes, like oh my god, that they would difference diverce like as I've been. I watched the first season and I was like, oh my god, the way that they shoot this, this is like so intense. The camera setups must just be like because they're all at this weird have you watched it?
I haven't watched it.
They're at this weird cubicle where it's like a four side it's one room, and it's they all share one large desk with their cubicle dividers and there's parts of the dividers that they can slide up and down. So like as they do cross shooting like coverage, it's just like for one scene, if more than two people talk, it's just got be like like logistically and multiple time.
I don't even know how long it would take. Anyway, if you guys are listening, I really want to be on that show because I'm sure Ben Stiller listens to this podcast.
Yeah, so hit us up, Ben, hit us up, Ben, More Better.
What are we talking about this week? Melissa?
This week we have another listener question.
We've got a voice no.
If you need help with something, by the way, in your life and you have a suggestion for a future episode or something, you can email us at More Better pod at gmail dot com and you can include a voice note and it'll be featured on the pod. Okay, roll it.
Hello, Melissa, Hello Stephanie. I'm so excited to be sending you all this voice note, and to everybody at More Better,
thank you all so much for creating this podcast. There have been so many times that you all have talked about something or how you felt about something, or something that you've learned that I have been able to identify with so deeply, and it has been such a comfort to know that I'm not the only one who is struggling with these things, and that I'm not maybe not doing as bad in my life as I think I am, because we are our own worst critics a lot of
the time. And so thank you all so much for being so open and vulnerable and sharing your wisdom with us, because it is making a difference. I know it's made such a big difference in my own life and how I feel about what I'm doing and just my own self worth and self esteem and self confidence, and so thank you.
So I would love to know.
This is my question for you all, is how have you created a work life balance in your own lives
a little bit of background. So I am a small business owner, but I also have a two year old daughter, I am married, I have friends, I have other family, I have other hobbies, and I have been working really hard to create a semblance of work life balance for myself this year, and it's been a struggle, and so I would love to know, just with you all having the careers that you do, but then also having families, how have you managed to create a work life balance
to where you don't feel guilty for maybe going to work, but then you also don't feel guilty for sacrificing your work to be with your family. So thank you all so much. And y'all are wonderful and fabulous, and I know you love to hear this, but Broke nine nine is my comfort show right now, and so.
You all are just absolutely awesome.
So keep doing what you're doing, and I can't wait to listen to more of the pod.
Oh my god, Amanda, that made my whole goddamn day, my week, my year.
That's so nice, so nice, that's so nice. Thank you, really really lovely. Yeah, but you're ship out of luck because.
There is no such thing. There is no such things, And we're gonna tell you. I think, like, let's let's discuss, first of all, what you think that means? Molso, like, what what do you think? First of all, she's doing the most, like the most. She's her own business, she's a kid, she's marrying, she's friends, she's hobbies, Like, yeah, she's doing the most, but also like we are doing the most as well, Like I don't know anybody that's not doing the most.
Yeah, first of all, congratulations and Samanda on being a small business owner. That is no small feat and it is extremely admirable and incredible. So just take a moment to be proud of yourself for that accomplishment because we read huge and yeah, I think, I mean, I don't know anyone who has it has this figured out, you know. I Our our jobs are sort of all consuming when they're happening when we're on set, and so my my personal version of work life balance, I think, you know,
looks a little different some than some other people. Because of the nature of our job. When I'm on set, in the middle of shooting a show like I currently am right now, there are a lot of things that have to fall by the wayside. Uh, And I just have to accept that. I have to accept that life is going to be a little bit messier, that there's going to be mistakes, that there's going to be you know, Uh, we we've lost two pairs of glasses of my sons in the last three weeks. We can't find them. We
don't know where they are. He's eight years old. It's you know, he needs a lot of help remembering them. And so it just is what it is. I ordered new fucking glasses. I didn't complain, I didn't get upset about it. I just ordered new fucking glasses.
And I'm just like, let's let's keep it moving. Let's keep it moving.
You know.
My close friends.
Understand that I'm not as available when I'm in the middle of shooting a show, and I try to be conscious of that as soon as the show wraps, to like reconnect with people and be like, hey, I'm back, I.
Have more time.
What's going on, let's schedule a lunch date, let's you know, because like those things have to fall by the wayside so that I can just do my job and focus all of my extra energy and time on my family. And then when I have a little more free time,
I get to the other things. And also, like I've gotten better about trying to do self care when I'm in production as well, because I know it's good for my mentals and like good for my overall being and I'm a better mom and partner and person and actor if I'm also taking care of myself, right, But like I also know that's the limit. Like family, work, self care,
that's about all that can happen during production. And then when we have these like times in between, when I'm not on set, when things are slower, that's when I kind of shift my energy and focus into life and I try to plan trips, I try to plan dinners, I try to see friends, I you know, work out more, exercise more, like do things that are good for me more, and you know, I try to like just shift more energy into those things and for me that at the end of the year that ends up being its own
version of balance, right, And I don't know what kind of business you have, Amanda, but you know, I think in general most businesses have busy seasons and slower seasons. Again, I don't I don't know what your business is, so
hopefully this applies to you. But I you know, we all know when it's on, it's on, and we can't feel guilty about the things that have to fall by the wayside so that we can get the job done and still be like a decent human being throughout the process, right, And then when things slow down and we come up for air, then it's like, Okay, well, now I got to fill my cup. Like I've got to see the
people that make me feel good. I've got to you know, maybe do a few extra self carry things, spend time and might spend the extra time with my partner, spend extra time with my kids. You know, when I was home for Christmas and I had two weeks off from set, I made sure to schedule time to like do things individually with my kids. So like I had a day with Enzo and I had a day with Axel, and like, you know, try to be conscious of just like making sure I fill my cup, but I fill their cups.
You know what I mean to like get us to the next slow period.
I guess your favorite day? Who's your favorite? Just kidding?
Well, since I'm already saving up for their future therapy appointments, let me just say.
I mean that's where I've kind of it's been. You know.
I think it's an ever evolving process for me, and I'm always kind of like trying to check in of like okay, like especially when I start to feel burnt out, like what next time?
What can I do so that I don't get to this point?
Yeah, you know, I think that that's helpful too, just like the continuous check in with yourself with your partner, you know.
But it's it's hard. It's really hard work life balance.
I mean, I think it's why we talk about it so much in society.
Yeah, I mean I wrote down something that my own life coach, Lena Florio said to me, which is, you can have it all, just not all at once. Oh yeah, and I think about that all the time.
It's true.
You can have it all. You can have a flourishing career, you can have a romantic relationship with your partner, you can have kids that you're close to and love you. You can be involved in your community. You can be you know, spending time on yourself and filling your own cup. But you can't have that all at once. No, that's
too many things. Babe likes too many things. Nine hours in the day, there's just not And when people are like you have as many hours in the day as Beyonce, it's not true, no, because I don't have fifty and I don't have you know, and like even when Beyonce is doing work, she can't always be with her kids.
You know.
Like the thing is, you can have it all, but you can't have it all at once. And so one of the hard things about that is acknowledging that because it feels like such a well, it feels like something's being stolen from you. Yeah, you know, when I have to do sixteen hour days at work, and I'm sure when you're pulling, you know, all nighters are all we are, you know, not taking days off or whatever. Because you're
a small business owner. It's just like constant, right, So like you feel sometimes probably like this is stealing from my time with my family, This is stealing from my time with me, even though the whole point of doing it is so that you have a future for your family, right, and so like that's a really hard thing to kind
of come to terms. And so I think one of the things that I try to do is like reframe it in my mind, which is like this isn't forever, right, Like it's not gonna be like you said, like there's high seasons and low seasons, meaning sometimes things are really really really busy and sometimes they're less busy. Yeah, right, And it's taking the less busy time and going what am I going to do with this time? And not am I gonna how am I gonna cram it full more?
How am I going to use it to my two to fill me up, to fill my family up, to fill up you know. I took a parenting course online. Oh doctor Ciggy, uh.
Oh, I love doctor Sigi. I love doctor Ciggy.
And she was like, you know, your kid doesn't need all the hours in the day, but they do need a small amount of concentrated time with you and they need to hear you acknowledge it. And so she said something like, you know, make sure your kids says make sure you say to your kid, wow, I'm so thank you so much for spending this special time with just
me and you. I really loved you know, reading this book or eating dinner with you or whatever that small amount of like even if it's just like helping them get dressed in the morning, like saying to them like, thank you so much for letting me witness you pick out your clothes this morning. You know, like that was so cool. I really love your sense of fashion. It's like, it really means a lot to me that you want to be around me and that you want to spend
some time with me. I love our special time together. And I say that kind of stuff to Raws all the time, even when I don't get to see her very much, because at least then she knows and she's hearing me say I love our special time together, even if it's five minutes. Yeah, you know, even if it's one episode of you know, Spidey and his amazing friends, even if I don't have the energy to you know, do some kind of like craft with her or something. So that's another thing I think the like happens too.
You go like, oh god, I'm not with my kid, and like they're not getting any like that. I see all these moms and they're like, man, just sorrying and they're all doing these things and it's like, okay, well, like I don't have the energy and time to do
that all the time. Sometimes all I can give her is thirty minutes of Spidy and his amazing friends, you know, like, yeah, that's what I got today, and like we're gonna watch that together, and I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna say to you when it's over, like thank you so much. I think Spidey's so funny, Like I love Ghost Spider or whatever, you know, like connect with them over the thing.
It's it's much more about like the quality of the time, meaning like the connection that you have with your kid, or the connection that you have with your partner, or the connection that you have with your friends. I remember reading this article in the Time and the New York Times. It was like just call your friend, like call them randomly and like don't spend more than like ten minutes on the phone with them, but just like chat with them so that you can reconnect with them and like
see them for a minute. And that's it. It doesn't have to be like we planned a vacation to Mexico, doesn't you know. It can just be you know, Hey, what's up. What's going on?
You know, thinking about you?
Yeah, yeah, it's so true.
And I love that advice.
When I was becoming a mom, my good friend Courtney gave me the good the same good advice. Courtney is like a high level pr exec at a big studio and she travels a lot for work, and I was freaking out about becoming a mom and being on set all the time and being away from my kid, and she was like, Melissa, it's quality over quantity, Like totally, that's it. You just have to make sure that you are making quality time happen no matter how long or
short it is. As long as your kid has that, like, they'll know that they're loved and they know that you're there for them, you know.
And I know, just a lot of freedom and like giving up this idea that you're supposed to do it a certain way, yeah, that you're supposed to spend there, And I'm saying this my right way, yeah right, Like I'm saying this to myself. There is a lot of freedom in going like, this is my family and this is my kids, my career, and I'm going to try to figure out the way that this works for me. And I can have it all. I just can't have it all at once.
Yeah, I love that?
Is that good?
It's so good, It's so good.
I want to talk about the history of work life balance as a concept because like we all everybody hears about it, right, like, well you got to buy a work life balance, but like, what the fuck is that?
Like, yeah, who originally thought it up?
Did?
Where did the idea come from?
Right?
Because like you know, when they were freaking kings and queens and surfs, there wasn't no one was. Like people weren't in like medieval England being wing I want to work my balance.
I mean maybe they were. Maybe we don't know. And so how did we get here? How did we get here?
Three hundred and fifty BC. Aristotle first explores the notion of balancing work and leisure in his works Nicomackian Ethics and Politics. First of all, Aristotle three fifty BC. I'm sure somebody else explored it. They just didn't write it down, Okay, I don't want to be like Aristotle is the first one. Some ladies somewhere were somebody's somewhere, you know, write down. There was the one who knew how to write showing circle where women were talking about the shit because we've
had to do it forever right. Fifteen thirty six, with the publication of Institutes of the Christian Religion, French theologian John Calvin helped create the concept that we know today as the Protestant work ethic. The gist God has predetermined who's going to heaven and who's not, and there's really nothing you could do to change your outcome. However, there are outward signs of who's who God's chosen or elected people are. And one of those signs is being successful in business alone.
A fuck off.
Oh, that's so absolutely deranged. I just want to say. The idea that, first of all, you know, not to get into religion too much here or not, but the idea that someone has predetermined your life and where you're going to end up is just so absolutely bonkers. Banana grams just come on. You don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow.
Like yeah, and then it's like nothing matters if that's the case, so not nothing, should we purge?
Should we work like anyway?
Like yeah? Also, like the idea that like your success in business somehow that your idea like The idea that somehow, like the the the the amount of money that you have is directly related to your goodness as a human being is just absolutely ridunculous. And we all know that's true because we can look at American's politics.
Okay seventeen Also, like Saints like saints, like so, yes, Saints were poor. Yeah, so like we didn't mean it when we like appointed these incredible maples.
Saints didn't mean it.
We didn't mean it because they were not successful in business and so obviously they are not chosen like a.
Guide to bear. I do think some of those saints had pr people. Okay, some of them.
It's like why why they ran a very successful campaigns, a very tight campaign, a lot of people knocking.
Also sure that seventeen sixty four the Industrial Revolution. As the world became more industrialized, the amount of hours people spent working beyanda increased. By the mid nineteenth century, i e. Around eighteen fifty, the average full time worker in Britain clocked in as much as four thousand, five hundred, five
hundred hours per care. Let's talk about this right now, yeah, quickly, because you know what, the Industrial Revolution great in so many ways, but I don't know if you've read any of the American Girl books, but there was a character called Samantha, And did you read them when you were kod I did not know.
I was like, am Belly high Girl?
Oh my god, well American Girl when it was originally owned by the I think it was like a mount Pleasant Company or something. These books were. They were so lovely because they were a fictionalized girl that was like ten years old in different eras of the United States. And the first one, I believe was Kirsten. The second one was Samantha, and she was like right around, like right when the automobile was coming into play, like turn of the century.
And in one of.
The books she there's a servant girl named Nelly who works I believe works for them, but in Samantha learns a lesson. If you've read these books, and you should read them to your kids as when they're little, because it's such a great way to introduce history and the difference in classes in society. Samantha's rich and Nellie's not,
and she's a servant girl. And Samantha does this speech for school about how the industrial revolution is so great because everyone can get things and like, you know, you can get thread and fabric and everyone can access all these things. And then she reads her little speech out
loud to Nelly, and Nelly's like quiet. Samantha's like, well, what's wrong, And Nellie's like, well, the reason the thread is so cheap is because all of us were children in the factories, like working, you know, sixteen hour days, and we had to keep our hair short because you could get your hair cut in the machine. And I saw one girl who's haircutt in the machine. She was covered in blood. And you couldn't wear shoes because you
had to scramble over the machines really quick. I mean, it was I just think I'd like, there's no there's no world in which there's no world in which this was. The Industrial Revolution was great in many ways, however, fuck okay, well, well we fucked it up, like we fuck everything else up. Because it should have made things easier, it should have made people. It did for some people work less.
Do you know what I mean? In theory? But what it all? What it just?
I think it created rabid consumerism, you know, also output and.
Yeah, but on the other hand, it created a way for people to like access money, that maybe never ever had the chance before too, So do we have the answers? We don't, Okay, we don't. Eighteen fifty to nineteen fifty, the workers rights era. This is when people started being like, maybe we shouldn't be working in a factory that could burn down around us and trap us all inside.
Yeah, and maybe we should have some hours to ourselves.
Yeah. The five day work week was introduced, which is our Monday through Friday, the advent of paid annual holiday entitlements. As a result, the typical working year for full time employed workers fell to less than two thousand hours in the post Second World War era. Then in the nineteenth seventies, the term work life balance was coined in the UK. In the late seventies as part of the feminist movements. Shot suppresh shock game. Well, well, well, and here it
is everybody. Now, why do we think that is? Uh, we could sit here and talk about it for a long long time, but I'm gonna guess it's because women started wanting to go into the workforce in a bigger, broader way, and that advent of birth control and also this you know, historical role in the family as being the main caretaker, so like, how do you do all of those things right? Right?
Yeah, you need time back.
So like today, the tech revolution, cell phones, social media, work from home, et cetera, led to a culture of being always on or available. Work life balance becomes vital to everyone and it's in the zeitgeist cause lots of us lack it. So there's something that I want to just like touch on really quickly, which is if you're always on or available. Like Brad my husband, when he was working at a job that had a slack it was hell because that thing would go off all the
time and it was just constant, constant, constant. It was worse than text messaging. It was like, yeah, all the time. I am so grateful and thankful that I'm not in a job that makes me. I mean, obviously we've got texts and we've got email and our jobs like when we're there, we're there, But fuck a slack man, Like that's just a slack crazy to me, Like that is bumananas.
Yeah, I would hidink, you know.
And I think what's interesting about going through this history that we just did is like all of us feeling like there's no balance and it's this impossible thing.
It's like not our fault, like because.
Our society isn't literally set up, it's stacked against us. So that's why it's so fucking hard, and that's why we all feel like we're failing all the time. So yeah, you're you're not alone. You're not alone in how you feel about that. And I think you know. I'm remembering too when you were talking about the tech stuff and slack And I remember at one point calling my manager and it was like after six pm or something, and
he answered the call and like answered my question. He was like, oh, and by the way, like just for the future, like I'm turning my phone off at six pm every day, like I'm just not going to look like I'm not going to be available, Like I'm just trying to like be better about being present for the family during dinner time.
Blah blah blah blah blah. And you were like you're fired.
No, But I almost immediately felt a little embarrassed because I was like, oh, my god, that's never even occurred to me that.
I could do that. I can do that, yeah, And I was.
Like that's amazing, thank you, And I'm going to try to do the same. And so it's not all. It doesn't happen all the time. It doesn't work all the time, but especially in the slow seasons, like I really try between the hours of like five and eight, when dinner and homework and you know, bedtime and all that shit is happening, that I like leave my phone in the other room, yeah, you know, to try to do that and just like be present with the family, you know,
and like so it's like little things like that. And then I think it's also because I think Amanda brought this up too, is like the guilt is like, let that shit go. Let that shit girl go. Girl, We're all doing our best. That's a hard yeah, try.
It's a hard one.
But when you catch yourself feeling guilty, I don't know, maybe pretend you're like your own best friend, Like what would you say to your best friend who was feeling guilty in that moment? Would you tell them to be like, yeah, girl, you feel guilty.
You fucked up.
No, you probably would be like, let that shit go. You're doing great. Why are you being so hard on yourself? Why are you being so critical on yourself?
Right?
Like, yeah, put yourself in your best friend's shoes or call your fucking best friend.
Yeah, so they can tell you.
Maybe maybe they'll tell you like, yeah, you're working too much, you have to slow down, Like, so maybe they will tell you. Maybe they'll tell you like, yeah, you're not spending enough time with your partner or husband, Like yeah, you're not spending enough time with your friends.
Yeah, you know.
But at least then you're not just in your head shitting on yourself exactly. Then you're getting actual feedback from people that are in your life instead of just your head.
Yeah.
And if you feel and your partner too, you know, if it's it's sometimes it's sitting down with your partner and going like I need help, I need to like top this out, Like how do I create more space for our family or for our personal life, or like how do we figure out how to go on a trip, like you know, and like delegate, you don't have to do this shit alone. That's why we have people. That's why we have loved ones, you know, lean on them.
I mean, we didn't even get into that. I hope, Amanda, that your partner is helping you, because if they that's another podcast, that's another podcast.
More better.
I feel? How do you feel?
I feel?
A little more better about this, But.
It's this one is like one that's gonna probably sit with me tomorrow.
It brings a lot of stuff up.
Yeah, it brings a lot of stuff up. Yeah, but we're not alone. We all feel it.
We're all going through it, and just try to be kind to yourself.
And remember you can have it all, just not all at once.
I love that. That's my new motto in life.
Yeah man, Okay, all right, guys, we'll see you next week.
Keep sending us voice notes, talk a lot more uh shit.
And also there's gonna be some golden nuggets of wisdom in there. I'm sure sure of it. I'm just sure of it. Okay, see next week, Bye bye.
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Shoot us your thoughts and ideas at Morebetter pod at gmail dot com and include a voice note if you want to be featured on the pod. Ooh, More Better with Stephanie Melissa is a production from Wvsound and iHeartMedia's Mike Utura podcast Network, hosted by me, Stephanie Viatriz and Melissa Fumero. More Better is produced by Isis Madrid and Sophie Spencer Zagos. Our executive producers are Wilmer Valderrama and
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