May 21, 2024 • 41 mins
Today's episode is all about building career capital and raising your profile without working around the clock. Sarah and Laura discuss their own work hours, and then discuss strategies in 4 categories listed below:
- Building a schedule that prioritizes space for the important
- Minimizing other work and making life sustainable
- Paying into career capital accounts
- Be everyone's favorite to work with!
In the Q&A, a listener asks how to tactfully get chattier coworkers to give her some space during downtime so that she can be productive.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
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 sort of mid to late May of
(00:46):
twenty twenty four. Our title is Conquer the World in
forty Hours a Week, which what we're getting at here
is an episode about building career capital and raising your
profile without work working around the clock. I think there's
often a misconception that if you want to do anything
ambitiously with your career, you need to be working eighty
(01:08):
hours a week or something, and we emphatically believe that
is not the case, partly because we don't believe people
generally work eighty hours a week, even when they claim
they do.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Right, Sarah, yep, I think this is one of the
highlights of one of your books that we're going to
talk about that you expose some of the myths around this.
But this is hard, and I mean we're going to
talk about how many hours we work, and I already
can picture people listening to this who are going to
be like, that's so low. I can't believe they're getting
anything done of substance. I work so much more than that.
(01:40):
That's a lame number. So there's like weird judge layers
around this, but I think there's also a lot of
just like blatant dishonesty. So it's a very interesting thing
to think about.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, I mean, I track my time, so I am
aware of my work hours, and you know, I will
admit here that I did it as well. Like I
used to talk about working fifty hours a week, and
even that was when I was tracking my time after
writing one hundred and sixty eight hours. I'd track a
week here and there, but I would always choose specific
weeks to track, and it was ones where I knew
(02:12):
I was going to be at my desk the whole week,
like I wasn't gonna have something else, There wasn't something
major coming up that would pull me away from it,
and so shockingly like, if everything goes perfectly, I am
working longer hours.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
But that doesn't always happen.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
And so when I began tracking my time continuously, the
average those first few years was about forty and since
it's dipped a little bit more, I tend to be
working more like thirty five to forty hours a week
is the average, the long term average on my time logs.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Sarah, have you tracked this loosely?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I mean I went back and kind of looked at
my planner the week. Clinical work is easy, I mean
I can see when I have patients and when I don't,
and I have like basically two and two thirds clinical days,
and I tend to work the rest of that other
one doing sm other stuff. So it's like, but then
the rest of it often gets chopped up by varyious things.
So I would estimate thirty five ish, I mean, on
(03:04):
a good week.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
But I would like to point out that Sarah earns
a good salary and is raising her profile with her
various creative endeavors as well.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I also will raise my hand and say I think
I do things really fast.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yes, there is that as well.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yes, she is very efficient which is one of the
ways that you can make space for career building activities
even if you are going to work more in the
forty hour a week range.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
When I did research for I Know How She Does It,
which was a time diary study looking at women who
earned six figures and also have kids at home, most
people were not working around the clock. The average on
my time logs was just a hair north of forty
hours a week, and that included people working in all
sorts of careers like the tech industry, finance, legal world,
(03:57):
all those things that we think of as being long hours, consulting,
and that was where the average was. The person who
was working the longest in the week that we looked
at was working sixty nine hours, So nobody worked over
seventy hours. And the person who was working sixty nine
was an accountant in busy season, and she sent me
her file of her work hours because she does track
(04:18):
them for the entire year basically, and we looked at
it and her average of billable hours was about fifty
which means that she was probably working about fifty five
to sixty hours a week on average.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So it's not eighty.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Even people in sort of extreme hours things, and somebody's
gonna write us a, look, I.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Did eighty yeah during residency, and when there's times that
you're you kind of are working eighty I mean there's
not a lot of it's maybe not all intense work,
but you're allowed to work up to eighty hours. And
there were definitely significant numbers of weeks where that actually
was happening with maybe like maybe it was more like
(04:57):
seventy four with like a little bit of sleep, one
ho on call or something. Then you know there's a
reason there's a time limited amount that people do that,
Like no one's going to sign up to do that forever.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Forever, yeah, because it's not really sustainable. And so anyway,
that's always something no. But that's something I always you know,
push back against when people talk about, oh, well, you know,
you shouldn't consider this career because the hours are going
to be crazy. And I think that's one of the
ways that men try to get women out of their
competition is by claiming that you have to work around
(05:28):
the clock, and then if you look at how they're
actually working, in many cases they aren't working those hours,
or if you know, they're somewhere for those hours, they're
not actually working, they're doing whatever because they don't feel
like coming home. I don't know that's people's own problem.
But giving that the vast majority of people do not
work seventy hours a week, the reality is you have
(05:49):
to be able to work less than that advance your
career because people are advancing in their careers and not
working seventy hours a week. I mean, there was even
a time dary study of like CEOs of major companies
and it was not seventy hours a week. So you
can build your career working limited hours, but if you
want to progress, it's important to be smart about how
you allocate your hours, and so part of that is
(06:10):
making sure that you make space for the career capital
building stuff and put this into your schedule with a
more prominent emphasis as opposed to leaving it for the end,
which is I think what a lot of us tend
to do.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
But first you know to.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Do that, you want to know what those career capital
building activities are, the things that would raise your profile
and helpful to even make a list, like Sarah in
your life, what do you think of as the career
capital building activities?
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely two sides of my career.
I feel like on the clinical side, like developing specific
areas where I feel really really strong in and working
on ways to just like communicate super well with patients
about certain things. I think goes a long way, especially
because things are repetitive. So if you get excellent at
teaching people about their diabetes care, then that just compounds
(07:03):
itself and to become known as someone who's really really
good at that. On the other side, I feel like
I've focused more on like the delivery and refinement of
my ideas in the last year, including packaging them into courses.
I mean, I actually just posted a rant about how
I'm not making much progress on the writing side, but
I have to give myself credit for having done a
(07:23):
lot of important work that I think is a good
lead up to that piece, and so yeah, that's kind
of I think important, as well as doing activities that
lead to more growth, like reaching out to other podcasts,
which is something I try to do, promoting the newsletter,
and generally trying to make our content really fun and
awesome so that you know, we hope that people find it.
(07:44):
So sometimes the core activities can also be important. Yeah,
and share it that's always important too. Yeah, I was
thinking in this list for me as we were doing
this episode, definitely being on other podcasts and then sharing,
because then there's always somebody who's listening to that who
is never heard of you before, and inevitably somebody's like, oh,
well that sounds like something I'm interested in, and so
(08:05):
that kind of expands your influence, as does media appearances.
Sometimes writing my own media stuff, so writing articles for
major publications, or speaking gigs for certain places. If you
speak for a company, that's awesome, you're sharing news with them,
but it's somewhat of a limited thing because it's only
within that audience. Sometimes speaking at conferences where different people
(08:29):
come in from different places has a little bit more
influence just because they all take that back to their
own companies and share it, and so it's got just a.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Little bit more of a multiplier effect. So I'm always
keeping that in mind too. But as we were thinking
about this, I think about there's kind of a four
part framework here for how you can build career capital
and raise your influence if you are trying to work
somewhat limited out not limited but normal hours, normal sustainable hours.
(09:00):
So we're going to be talking about building your schedule
so you can prioritize space for the high profile stuff,
minimizing other work or being really efficient at it and
making life sustainable that way, regularly paying into your career
capital account kind of as a habit, and just being
everybody's favorite person to work with, because that is how
(09:21):
you grow your influence over time. So, Sarah, since we're
starting with planning, you need to take this one over.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, this was the first thing that came to my
mind when I was thinking about this, which is that
if you do not think about what's going to be
the priorities of your week, review your schedule prior to
going into Monday, you're already behind. And I do think
that planning gives back the time you put into it,
like severalfold, and so it's always worth doing. It's worth
doing in the rest of life, it's worth doing for work.
(09:51):
So making sure that you have a ritual around your
planning for your work. Maybe it's a Friday afternoon, maybe
it's a different afternoon to Friday. Does it work where
you look at your calendar up ahead, you look for
the times that you're going to have like a little
bit more quote freedom or ability to do deeper work,
and you think about what are the priorities that you're
going to slot in those hours. If you do those things,
(10:14):
you'll also be able to put out fires, and as
a bonus, not only will you get more done, but
probably the whole thing will feel a little bit less
stressful as well. So if you don't have a ritual
like that in place, I highly encourage you to get
one set up.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Absolutely, And you can also try to figure out where
you will put this high profile stuff. And one of
the things we always wind up not doing is any
sort of speculative work or long term kind of thing,
And so think, well, maybe Monday morning is where I
do it, or if that doesn't work for you, maybe
it's like Tuesday afternoon is what I think of a
speculative time where I'm maybe not scheduling it quite so tightly,
(10:50):
but thinking of that space is when I am doing
that career boosting work. We also want to leave buffer
for unexpected emergencies, right, Sarah.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Yes, I feel like I learned from you like leave
that free slot because the truth is that as much
as we try to estimate what needs to happen, things
take longer than you think they will, and there will
always be some sort of quote unquote urgent, unexpected task
dumped into your lap. So we need to kind of
build in the idea that that's going to happen so
(11:19):
that when it does happen, it doesn't derail all these
other plans you've already put into place. So having that
backup slot, I think that was one of the tranquility
by Tuesday tenants is super important, and that again applies
to your life, but your work calendar as well.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, I mean I think it's smart in general, but
in particular if you are trying to do career capital
boosting work or some long term project that is going
to raise your profile. What happens is people like I'm
going to get to it this week, and then what
happens this week, Well, your biggest client has an emergency
or one of your kids get sick, and you're like, well,
I couldn't get to it this week because this unexpected
(11:57):
thing happened. It's like, well, guess what, something unexpected is
going to happen every single week, which is why you
will never get around to writing that business plan or
submitting that article for publication, or making a video of
yourself that you can send into that conference to be
a speaker or whatever it is. Because something is always
(12:18):
going to come up, and since you don't have to
do the career profile boosting thing, you don't, so in
order to make sure that those things don't derail you,
you build in space for the emergency to happen.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
And speaking in building in space, one other buffer to
think about is processing time after meetings if you can
help it, and you can't always. I know some company
cultures just kind of book you back to back, although
it seems like a lot of the larger companies are
starting to do like fifty minute meetings or twenty five
minute meetings to kind of help with this. But you
are going to need to take time to think about
(12:51):
what was just said, to write down any to dos,
to capture kind of the essence so you don't forget
about what happened and have to revisit it. So not
only do you need that unexpected spot buffer, but kind
of not booking things back to back as a practice
and assuming you'll need some processing time for each thing
that you do is smart. And speaking of buffers, we're
(13:12):
going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Well, we are back talking about how to conquer the
world in forty hours a week, trying to figure out
how we can do career boosting work if we don't
wish to work excessive hours, if we want to have
a work life balance that is sustainable over the long term.
And so we talked about building a schedule that allows
you to have space for these longer term, speculative kind
(13:48):
of ventures. But one of the ways that we also
make space is to minimize the sort of work that
is not necessarily career boosting. Profile raising may have to
get done, but it isn't necessarily your top priority.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
So let's talk about meetings.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
You said processing time after meetings, Sarah, But what can
we do to make every meeting be a little bit
less of a waste of time?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Well, our prior guest, Laura may Martin, talked about how
she doesn't go to any meeting without an agenda, and
maybe that might be extreme in your personal circumstance.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Did she ask you for an agenda before you interviewed her?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
No? No, okay, oh no, she didn't. That must be
an exception. Probably her PR firm was like, no one's
going to give you an agenda, so just be.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
On the one up for you so you have one.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
I mean, this is a very high profile podcast and
a coveted slot, so you know she wouldn't want to
do something to put that in jeopardy.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Okay, But for your average run of the mill meeting,
we need an agenda.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yes, okay, So I mean if there's not specifically an agenda,
you're not demanding an agenda. Still, you can think through
what is the point of meeting? What do you want
to get out of this meeting, because that can help
you do a couple of things. It can help you
prepare to make the time that you're spending with a
person more useful. It might even help you tell them
what to prepare if you realize that the roadblock is
(15:13):
going to be on their side. Perhaps you have done
this in your review of the week prior and are like, ooh,
I'm meeting with the person i'm supervising, but I don't
know what they've done. So you tell them submit me
a paragraph like before the meeting so we have something
to chat about, and really just like make sure you
actually have to go to said meeting, because sometimes if
you think through the meeting and what the purpose is,
(15:34):
and you really can't come up with one, And it's
just like about FaceTime. You know, there's probably enough other
meetings that you have FaceTime. And again this may vary
depending on what the culture is of where you are.
But if there is any way there is some meeting
that you find may not be the most important, you
could perhaps point out the fifteen other meetings on your
calendar that week and maybe you could just get the
(15:56):
notes for that one. So really understanding what the purpose
the meeting is for can do can do a lot
for you, especially in advance. You don't want to be
having these thoughts three minutes before the meeting starts.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Another idea is, you know, sometimes we waste a lot
of time because we are waiting for other things from
other people and we can't sort of start on anything else,
and we're constantly tracking things down. So you have a
system as well, Sarah, for looping back on stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Yes, it's funny, that's a funny I put the phrase
in there. But then I'm also like, you know, when
you get a email from someone like two days after
they sent you an email that you like didn't feel
like responding to, and they're like looping them back and
you're like, oh my god.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Momping this up to the top of your inbox.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
That's just like more when it's like an unsolicited thing.
But that's not really what we're talking about here. Looping
back to me means like something's on the back burner
and I don't want to forget about it, but I
don't want it to like bother me, and I also
don't want to fail to deal with it all together.
So making sure you have some kind of reliable place
to put things that you need to check back on
and a ritual that includes checking that folder or place
(17:02):
those two things will allow you to kind of put
them out of your mind but also not missing. So
my practice is to have I actually don't have this
in my personal email, I haven't needed it, But in
my work like outlook email, like at clinical work, there's
a waiting on folder where if there's something that's just
like cooking, like I've asked for something I'm waiting for
a response, I just put it in there, and every
single week when I do kind of like my clean
(17:23):
out and review process, I just check and glance and
see what's in there, and if there's anything I need
to send a bump up email about although I never ever.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Just pinging you, Sarah.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yeah, well, our.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Friend Laura May Martin will tell us though, I mean,
this is in her book. The problem is if you
don't answer the email, you're going to get something else.
It's going to be a second email or third email,
it's going to be an instant chat, or somebody's going
to add a calend, you know, meeting to your calendar
to get an answer. So even if you can't answer,
you're better off at least responding and saying, you know,
I'll be working on this on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
I'll get back to you on Wednesday, and then people
feel heard.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Another way to sort of work more sustainable hours is
to make sure you're only working on a certain number
of things at once, and we learn this from our
conversation with Cal Newport on slow productivity. But the way
I like to think of it is, actually, and we're
recording this shortly after tax day, is that every project
you were doing has some sort of administrative tax associated
(18:24):
with it. And so the issue is if you have
a ton of projects going on at once, each one
of those is exacting its own administrative tax, and that
can wind up adding up to a significant number of hours,
Whereas if you limit the number of projects you take
on at any one point, you have fewer hours devoted
(18:47):
to the administrative tax, and the amount you're working is
still the same. Like, if you're working on five projects
and each has two hours of tax a week, that's
ten hours of tax. If you're working on three at once,
you still have those extra hours that you would have
been devoting to the other two, but you only have
six hours of administration. And so ideally you're getting through
those three quicker, if at all possible, because you're devoting
(19:08):
more time to it at the moment, and then when
you're done with each one, you can add another project,
but you're still limiting that total administrative tax time. So
that's one way you can sort of make life feel sustainable.
And then Sarah is a big fan of vacation.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Yeah, so you know, this isn't in the realm of minimizing,
but this is in the realm of sustainability. And this
isn't necessarily going to apply to someone who is only entrepreneurial,
as Laura will discuss, But if you work for anyone
else and you are offered vacation time. You should take it,
enjoy it, plant look forward to it. It is going
to create some kind of long jam work wise, but
(19:47):
for most people, if you don't take it, your odds
of getting burned out and just kind of tired of
what you're doing are so much higher. And it really
is included as a benefit in many many jobs. I'm
actually a not a huge fan of these new unlimited
vacation situations because I feel like that's a mind game,
(20:09):
and often people are then afraid to take it because
if you have unlimited vacation, like what has really owed
to you, But if you have like specific amounts of
vacation that you can take, I hope everyone listened to
This is like thinking about how to use that and
use it well. Some of it for family, some of
it for yourself, some of it for fun. You need
some reflective rest.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Time, absolutely, So that's about making life sustainable and minimizing
the work that is not the highest profile things you
are doing.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
We also want to make.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
It a habit to regularly pay into your career capital account.
And obviously, when you think about a bank account, it's
like money that is built up over time that you
can draw upon if you need it right. So a
lot of that is about the connections you have in life,
so building genuine work relationships. So Sarah, what do you
(20:59):
did the notes for that? So what do you mean
by building genuine work relationships as part of career capital?
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Taking time to get to know your colleagues, maintaining relationships
from older positions that you've had, connecting over non work
topics as well as work topics. I'm not suggesting to
be best friends with every single person in your office,
but just making a point to getting to know people.
If you noticed your front desk person was away for
(21:25):
a week, asked them where they went, Asked them if
they enjoyed it, Like, ask them if they went to Germany,
Like what do they do there? Like actually getting to
know the other humans you're working with just makes it
so much more fun and at the same time, like
sometimes it can lead to opportunities you might not expect.
And one practice I've talked about before in this podcast
is I really try to make Friday a social lunch day.
(21:48):
It is challenging. I like struck out last week. I
was like, actually, no, I was going to strike out,
and then at the last the eleventh hour someone texting
me and was like I can go, and I was like, perfect,
I'll meet you, and then another person actually ended up coming.
So it was great and it doesn't have to be long.
I mean we probably met for like twenty five minutes
because both of us had to run and see afternoon patients.
But still we also then saw some other doctors in
(22:11):
a different specialty and like talk to them. So like
having that camaraderie is super helpful and can pay off
in more ways than one.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, because a lot of opportunities do come through other people, right,
And even in a huge corporation where you'd think like
they're going to choose people who are best for a job,
they're going to choose people to staff on this project
that they knew who has expertise in it, Like, no,
they do not. They are staffing the person that the
project manager knows and has worked within the past. And
(22:40):
if they're like, oh, shoot, now we need somebody who's
an expert in this, what do they do? That person
asks the people they've worked with on the past six projects, like, hey,
who should we ask to do this?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Who do they suggest?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
The person they know and have been hanging out with
I mean, it is amazing how human it still is,
even in very huge places. But with that in mind,
you want to be the person that they are thinking about.
If it's something high profile, something that you know would
be building a skill set, So getting to know your colleagues,
(23:10):
getting to know people who are external because obviously you
may not work for that same place forever, and if
you do decide at some point that you would like
to go somewhere else, it is so much better to
have a friend at XYZ Corporation who's like, hey, you
should totally check out the resume from this person I
know and whose work I respect. Like you will almost
(23:30):
automatically at least get an interview if somebody out of
company has forwarded a resume.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
That's just the way most companies work.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
So worth keeping in mind if you're ever going to
be job hunting in your life.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
And I would also.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Suggest proactively reaching out to people. One of our former guests,
Molly Beck, wrote a book many years ago called reach Out,
which is about her own method which every day she
reaches out to someone, and you know, it doesn't have
to be elaborate. It's maybe somebody that you knew in
the past and want to reconnect with somebody you met recently,
(24:09):
just a close colleague or friend that you've been thinking
of and you know, wanted to share something with, or
a total blind like I'm just going to reach out
to this person in the universe because they did something
and I want to. And I was the target of
a Molly Beck reach out back in twenty thirteen, I believe,
and we've kept in touch ever since. So I just
(24:29):
suggest viewing the universe as a wonderful place of possibilities
of people, and there's no reason not to reach out.
You might not hear back from people. I'm sure she's
sent many that have resulted in crickets, but she does
enough of it that she's built a fantastic network by
doing that.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
You also wrote go to stuff, go to stuff. Maybe
I love that.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Yeah, I mean, because okay, here is the thought here.
I think a lot of people, if they feel very
busy in their personal lives, they become very focused on doing.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
The stuff of their job.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
It's like, well, I can't go to the happy hour
because I have to see my kids after work. Well, okay,
we may all want to see our kids after work,
but you're probably already doing that five days a week,
maybe once every two weeks. You don't go immediately home,
you know, you do something else and you're still with
your kids immediately after work nine out of ten days.
(25:29):
But you are at least showing that you are willing
to go to things and build sort of relationships outside
of working hours. So, whether that is industry events, if
there's a happy hour with a group of people you
work with, if it is a speaker on a topic
that is of relevance to your industry that's happening in
(25:51):
your town, it might be worth going to. That might
be worth going to a conference. Maybe you pick two
or three a year that are worth putting the effort
into traveling too. But just showing your face is going
to go a long way. You don't have to do
it every night. Nobody does it every night. Like this
is often viewed as I can either or situation like
either I go out with colleagues or I go home
(26:12):
with and see my family, and I can't do both
and I'd be a terrible parent if I didn't see
my family, so ergo, I can't go out. And it's like, well, okay,
only if you're viewing it one specific night, But people
have listened to this podcast long enough no to think
one hundred and sixty eight hours, not twenty four. So
don't view the one night where thing is in conflict
as the only time there is. There's a lot of
other times where things aren't in conflict, So you can
(26:34):
be the kind of person who does both agree. So
on that note, we'll take another ad break and we'll
be back with a little bit more on how to
build career capital.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Well, we are back talking about how to.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Conquer the world in forty hours a week, and one
way that we can continue to build our career capital
is to become better at what we do. I mean,
some of this is just happens over time. I mean,
I'm sure that Sarah, your initial sharing how to care
for diabetes on like day one of you working as
a physician was probably a little bit more awkward than
(27:18):
now many years in, but you've also actively taken steps
to improve at what you were doing.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think a lot
of that comes from kind of learning by doing, but
some of it may come from asking for feedback from
whoever your audience is. Some of it comes from interacting
with other professionals and asking how they do and kind
of taking the best snippets of what you hear, like, Oh,
that's a really good analogy. I'll try to use that.
Some of it might be reading industry stuff. I learn
(27:45):
a ton of conferences, both the academic stuff presented, but
then just as much value from like, oh, how do
you guys do this over there? As I just said, So, yeah,
I think it's really important and it makes your job
so much more fun. I find that when I don't
do those things, I don't know, it just feels a
little bit more stagnant. So I think the sustainability piece
(28:09):
also links directly with the improvement piece, because finding ways
in which to grow in our careers makes those careers
more rewarding, keeps our brains active, and it's probably going
to lead to more opportunities and success. So there's really
no reason to decide that at some point that you're
sort of done with improvement or learning.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah, well, if you are feeling that maybe it's time
to make a change in something else, I mean, unless
you know there are reasons people don't like you're three
years away from retirement in someplace with a great pension.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I get it. I totally get it.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
But if that's not the case, you might wonder what
there is in life that you might want to change
in a way that you can keep learning and growing
and don't just feel like you are punching in the clock.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Lauren and I had a little well we kind of
disagreed on one. Okay, Harvy out to this, which is
that I wrote that I will say in the young
baby years, like the pumping years, the kind of not
getting sleep years, which isn't that much time in the
grand scheme of things, even if you have five kids,
that's like five years if you pumped a year with
(29:12):
each of them out of a fairly long career. That
is the one time I felt like stagnation was the
only option. I mean, I don't mean that, and obviously
there's still subtle things you can do, but for me,
that was a time I felt like it was actually
helpful to give myself permission to be like, get your
notes done, see your patients, do what you need to
take care of them, and like the extras can wait
until you're not chained to this thing because you have
(29:34):
to then also get home to feed the baby who
wants you. Like it was a brief period of time.
It wasn't that much fun. I don't think I lost
that much. But if that happens to be you or
Snary right now, I kind of give you permission to coast.
But maybe Laura doesn't.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Well I'll point out, I mean, maybe you were coasting
in job number one. But we started this podcast when
you were five months pregnant with Genevieve, and we built
it for the first year while you were doing it
around feeding her whatever. So I mean I would maybe
argue with even your retelling of the history of events here.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
And I would also say that again.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
If you are in a limited hour situation because you
are dealing with a nursing schedule or you know, very
young baby or something like that, is maybe you want
to spend more of your time of your limited time
on the big payoff stuff versus all the basic stuff
(30:34):
of your job. So maybe this is a great opportunity
when you're coming back from eternity leave. Somebody else has
been covering that boring staff meeting that you've been running
since time memorial, Like, huh, maybe my deputy could keep
doing that while I spend that hour.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I would have been doing that reaching.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Out to people outside my company and showing them the
great work I've done on something you know that's not
a trade secret, but I can my profile that way,
So I would just you know, you might want to
rebalance it that way.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Awesome. I think depends maybe on your industry, your flexibility,
and what the deliverables look like. But I'm glad to
know I didn't seem like I was slacking on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
No, exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
And finally, the last part of this is being everyone's
favorite person to work with. And you say, well, what
does this have to do with building career capital? What
does this have to do with raising your profile? And
it's getting back to the idea of building those work relationships.
But people want to work with people that it is
pleasant to work with, Like this increases your influence in
(31:40):
so many ways because people are like, if they have
a choice, they want to do pleasant things. And if
working with you is a pleasant experience, then the number
of people who want to work with you rises, and
as such, your ability to command what you wish within
the market of your corporation, within the free market as
(32:01):
a consultant rises the more demand there is for you.
So how do you become everyone's favorite person to work with. Well,
partly it's about making sure that everything you touch has
done extremely well and efficiently. I mean Sarah's talked about
this with some of her medical processes, right.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Yes, like become you know, emptying your inbox, like making
sure not to let loose ends go undone. But also
on the process side of things, if you see something
that is happening again and again that feels sort of
like it's not running smoothly, like it sort of gums
up the works every time, then this is something to
like almost like get into that sort of lean methodology
(32:42):
six sigma, Like what can we do to make this
just like smooth sailing? Like work as a team, figure
out a process, because when you solve those kinds of problems,
people notice and it makes your life a million times easier.
I feel like, you know, we're talking about diabetes a
lot today, but like that is something I won't take
(33:03):
cared of For this. It wasn't really me, but our
group and certain people in our group have taken great
pains to make so smooth because we have new diagnoses
multiple times a week, and if every single time that
was like, oh, what do we do with this? It
would be a nightmare, and instead I feel like it's
just like we everyone it's a choreographed like beautiful dance.
(33:24):
I don't know, like people know what their role is,
we know what to do, we have a process. But
it amazes me that I've been in places or situations
where it seems like, Okay, surely this has to come
up in time and time. Again, I don't have a
great example on the tip of my tongue, but like,
surely I'm not the first person who have asked for
XYZ and it seems like it was. So find those
(33:45):
things in your work and deal with them.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
And then be unfailingly reliable.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Like if you say you were going to do something,
do it by the time you said you would do
it in the format that you said it would be done. Now,
of course we all understand that there are things that
come up that you can't but if that is going
to happen, letting people know that as soon as possible
and coming up with a way that you can help
(34:14):
solve that problem for whoever it is going to inconvenience
goes a long way toward making you still be reliable
even if the original deliverable wasn't doable, and then part
of that is only taking on what you can do.
But that's an entirely different topic.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
And the hope this goes off we're full circle now
because this all goes back to planning, because that planning
session where you figure things out, you know what you
have on your plate, is going to be the way
in which you're able to accomplish this reliability.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Absolutely. Well, we'll pivot now to our Q and A here.
So this is from a person who works as a
pharmacist and she is potentially adding a different business to
her what she's doing. She's particularly opening something new and
she also wants to get some new certifications. But because
(35:05):
she's going to be doing something new, she doesn't necessarily
want all her colleagues to know about it. Now, there
is downtime at the pharmacy. There turns out to be
times when people are not lined up to get their
expertise on things, and so she would like to use
that time for advancing her career. However, sometimes her colleagues,
when there's not a lot going on, will just come
(35:27):
over and talk, hang out, shoot the breeze, whatever people
do when they're bored at work. So she's saying, how
can I politely get people to stop doing that without
calling attention to the fact that I am kind of
setting myself up to do something big and new during
this downtime.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
So, Sarah, what do you think this can be challenging?
Speaker 3 (35:49):
I mean, my answer wouldn't be to cut off that
person or people entirely, because you want to build those relationships.
And I think if you become the one that always
is like cold shoulder, but I think you could kind
of like a balance, or maybe you make light of
it and be like, Okay, I love that gossip time,
but like, I really have to get XYZ done. You
can be vague about it. I also think headphones could
(36:09):
be really strategically employed here because if it looks like
you're listening to something could be like a meeting, a podcast, whatever,
then people might take the hint. It doesn't have to
mean you have anything going on the headphones, but maybe
some white noise would be helpful.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, I think she could legitimately say, yeah, you know,
I'd like to spend a little time studying tonight, so
I'm just gonna be over here doing that. If you
guys need me, And I mean, if they ask you
what you're studying for again, pharmacy, like there's new stuff
coming out all the time, or you could be studying
for an advanced certification, where like nobody really would need
to question that, like why on earth do you need that.
It's like, well, because I'm a pharmacist, and you know
(36:46):
I need to be on top of my field to
better serve the people we work with. So I mean,
that's that's a pretty obvious thing. So I don't think
you need to be too specific about it. I mean,
especially if you're studying electronically, like I would be if
there's a textbook that's related to something that has nothing
to do with what you guys currently do.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
But I don't think that's the case.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
I think you're probably on an iPad and so nobody
knows what you're doing. One way you can sort of
proactively deal with the fact that people do want to
chat is if you're seeing things are winding down, like
go check in with anyone you know, say like, hey,
how's it going, and just want to chat what's up?
Like budget yourself, Like five to ten minutes for each
(37:27):
person that would normally want to talk with you get
that little short conversation over with it, then go do
your thing. Be like oh that's great, Yeah, okay, I'm
still going to go study now. You know, if you
guys need me, let me know. And that way, people
feel like you asked about their weekend on Monday, you
asked on Thursday and Friday what they're going to do
on the weekend, Like you had that little small talk conversation,
(37:49):
but you're still getting time for your thing.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Love it well, love of the week. On this career episode,
I'm going to go on brand on theme here. I
love paid time off. I love it. I love having
a specific amount of it. I mean, I guess I
wouldn't love that if it was like three days a year,
that I'd be very resentful. Then I have a reasonable
amount of it. I like allocating it, I like thinking
(38:12):
about it, and I like that it kind of comes
as a benefit of my job.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, so I have never had PTO.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I was thinking back of, like, have I had any
job where I was like accruing paid time off? I
don't believe I was, because you know, I did my
like service jobs in high school and college.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
I was a part time worker.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
So you usually aren't necessarily fully accruing time with that,
and you know, then I did an internship where I
wasn't I was paid, but I wasn't like getting paid
time off or anything. It's not like part of the
job with that. And then I went and worked for
myself and well, Vandercam Inc. Is a wonderful place to
work in many ways, or paid time off policies somewhat
(38:54):
to stingy. So yeah, no, I've never had that. But
obviously I take tons of vacation. I'm generally just doing
things like checking in on email for thirty minutes in
the morning two or three times when I'm off, and
then I can take however much time I want, as
long as I meet my deliverable.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
So that is an.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Upside, sometimes a downside, but mostly an upside of self employment.
So I guess I would say my love of the week,
since it can't be PTO, is having been in the
same business for a long long time. So recently, for
various reasons, I've been meeting with a lot of people
(39:37):
in the publishing world at lots of different houses, and
the upside is I know somebody at every single one
of them. You know, I'm having meetings with teams. It's
always I know somebody from somewhere in it that you know,
they worked at somewhere I published with in the past,
or they were at a magazine that I was familiar with,
(39:58):
or I interviewed them as an expert or on something.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
It's just there's always someone and that was kind of
fun to see. So an upside of having you know,
I don't think of myself as a great networker, but
just from the sheer fact of being in something for decades,
you meet people, and sometimes the people who you met
who are so awesome, like early in your career, wind
(40:20):
up in places of influence and power, and that's really
really cool to see. So this has been best of
both worlds. We've been talking about how to conquer the
world in forty hours a week, make space for career building,
career capital building work even if you don't want to
work around the clock, because guess what, nobody really works
around the clock. We will be back next week with
(40:43):
more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram,
and you.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
This has been the best of both worlds podcasts.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Please join us next time for more on making work
and life work together.
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
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 sort of mid to late May of
(00:46):
twenty twenty four. Our title is Conquer the World in
forty Hours a Week, which what we're getting at here
is an episode about building career capital and raising your
profile without work working around the clock. I think there's
often a misconception that if you want to do anything
ambitiously with your career, you need to be working eighty
(01:08):
hours a week or something, and we emphatically believe that
is not the case, partly because we don't believe people
generally work eighty hours a week, even when they claim
they do.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Right, Sarah, yep, I think this is one of the
highlights of one of your books that we're going to
talk about that you expose some of the myths around this.
But this is hard, and I mean we're going to
talk about how many hours we work, and I already
can picture people listening to this who are going to
be like, that's so low. I can't believe they're getting
anything done of substance. I work so much more than that.
(01:40):
That's a lame number. So there's like weird judge layers
around this, but I think there's also a lot of
just like blatant dishonesty. So it's a very interesting thing
to think about.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, I mean, I track my time, so I am
aware of my work hours, and you know, I will
admit here that I did it as well. Like I
used to talk about working fifty hours a week, and
even that was when I was tracking my time after
writing one hundred and sixty eight hours. I'd track a
week here and there, but I would always choose specific
weeks to track, and it was ones where I knew
(02:12):
I was going to be at my desk the whole week,
like I wasn't gonna have something else, There wasn't something
major coming up that would pull me away from it,
and so shockingly like, if everything goes perfectly, I am
working longer hours.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
But that doesn't always happen.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
And so when I began tracking my time continuously, the
average those first few years was about forty and since
it's dipped a little bit more, I tend to be
working more like thirty five to forty hours a week
is the average, the long term average on my time logs.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Sarah, have you tracked this loosely?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I mean I went back and kind of looked at
my planner the week. Clinical work is easy, I mean
I can see when I have patients and when I don't,
and I have like basically two and two thirds clinical days,
and I tend to work the rest of that other
one doing sm other stuff. So it's like, but then
the rest of it often gets chopped up by varyious things.
So I would estimate thirty five ish, I mean, on
(03:04):
a good week.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
But I would like to point out that Sarah earns
a good salary and is raising her profile with her
various creative endeavors as well.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I also will raise my hand and say I think
I do things really fast.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yes, there is that as well.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yes, she is very efficient which is one of the
ways that you can make space for career building activities
even if you are going to work more in the
forty hour a week range.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
When I did research for I Know How She Does It,
which was a time diary study looking at women who
earned six figures and also have kids at home, most
people were not working around the clock. The average on
my time logs was just a hair north of forty
hours a week, and that included people working in all
sorts of careers like the tech industry, finance, legal world,
(03:57):
all those things that we think of as being long hours, consulting,
and that was where the average was. The person who
was working the longest in the week that we looked
at was working sixty nine hours, So nobody worked over
seventy hours. And the person who was working sixty nine
was an accountant in busy season, and she sent me
her file of her work hours because she does track
(04:18):
them for the entire year basically, and we looked at
it and her average of billable hours was about fifty
which means that she was probably working about fifty five
to sixty hours a week on average.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So it's not eighty.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Even people in sort of extreme hours things, and somebody's
gonna write us a, look, I.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Did eighty yeah during residency, and when there's times that
you're you kind of are working eighty I mean there's
not a lot of it's maybe not all intense work,
but you're allowed to work up to eighty hours. And
there were definitely significant numbers of weeks where that actually
was happening with maybe like maybe it was more like
(04:57):
seventy four with like a little bit of sleep, one
ho on call or something. Then you know there's a
reason there's a time limited amount that people do that,
Like no one's going to sign up to do that forever.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Forever, yeah, because it's not really sustainable. And so anyway,
that's always something no. But that's something I always you know,
push back against when people talk about, oh, well, you know,
you shouldn't consider this career because the hours are going
to be crazy. And I think that's one of the
ways that men try to get women out of their
competition is by claiming that you have to work around
(05:28):
the clock, and then if you look at how they're
actually working, in many cases they aren't working those hours,
or if you know, they're somewhere for those hours, they're
not actually working, they're doing whatever because they don't feel
like coming home. I don't know that's people's own problem.
But giving that the vast majority of people do not
work seventy hours a week, the reality is you have
(05:49):
to be able to work less than that advance your
career because people are advancing in their careers and not
working seventy hours a week. I mean, there was even
a time dary study of like CEOs of major companies
and it was not seventy hours a week. So you
can build your career working limited hours, but if you
want to progress, it's important to be smart about how
you allocate your hours, and so part of that is
(06:10):
making sure that you make space for the career capital
building stuff and put this into your schedule with a
more prominent emphasis as opposed to leaving it for the end,
which is I think what a lot of us tend
to do.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
But first you know to.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Do that, you want to know what those career capital
building activities are, the things that would raise your profile
and helpful to even make a list, like Sarah in
your life, what do you think of as the career
capital building activities?
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely two sides of my career.
I feel like on the clinical side, like developing specific
areas where I feel really really strong in and working
on ways to just like communicate super well with patients
about certain things. I think goes a long way, especially
because things are repetitive. So if you get excellent at
teaching people about their diabetes care, then that just compounds
(07:03):
itself and to become known as someone who's really really
good at that. On the other side, I feel like
I've focused more on like the delivery and refinement of
my ideas in the last year, including packaging them into courses.
I mean, I actually just posted a rant about how
I'm not making much progress on the writing side, but
I have to give myself credit for having done a
(07:23):
lot of important work that I think is a good
lead up to that piece, and so yeah, that's kind
of I think important, as well as doing activities that
lead to more growth, like reaching out to other podcasts,
which is something I try to do, promoting the newsletter,
and generally trying to make our content really fun and
awesome so that you know, we hope that people find it.
(07:44):
So sometimes the core activities can also be important. Yeah,
and share it that's always important too. Yeah, I was
thinking in this list for me as we were doing
this episode, definitely being on other podcasts and then sharing,
because then there's always somebody who's listening to that who
is never heard of you before, and inevitably somebody's like, oh,
well that sounds like something I'm interested in, and so
(08:05):
that kind of expands your influence, as does media appearances.
Sometimes writing my own media stuff, so writing articles for
major publications, or speaking gigs for certain places. If you
speak for a company, that's awesome, you're sharing news with them,
but it's somewhat of a limited thing because it's only
within that audience. Sometimes speaking at conferences where different people
(08:29):
come in from different places has a little bit more
influence just because they all take that back to their
own companies and share it, and so it's got just a.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Little bit more of a multiplier effect. So I'm always
keeping that in mind too. But as we were thinking
about this, I think about there's kind of a four
part framework here for how you can build career capital
and raise your influence if you are trying to work
somewhat limited out not limited but normal hours, normal sustainable hours.
(09:00):
So we're going to be talking about building your schedule
so you can prioritize space for the high profile stuff,
minimizing other work or being really efficient at it and
making life sustainable that way, regularly paying into your career
capital account kind of as a habit, and just being
everybody's favorite person to work with, because that is how
(09:21):
you grow your influence over time. So, Sarah, since we're
starting with planning, you need to take this one over.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, this was the first thing that came to my
mind when I was thinking about this, which is that
if you do not think about what's going to be
the priorities of your week, review your schedule prior to
going into Monday, you're already behind. And I do think
that planning gives back the time you put into it,
like severalfold, and so it's always worth doing. It's worth
doing in the rest of life, it's worth doing for work.
(09:51):
So making sure that you have a ritual around your
planning for your work. Maybe it's a Friday afternoon, maybe
it's a different afternoon to Friday. Does it work where
you look at your calendar up ahead, you look for
the times that you're going to have like a little
bit more quote freedom or ability to do deeper work,
and you think about what are the priorities that you're
going to slot in those hours. If you do those things,
(10:14):
you'll also be able to put out fires, and as
a bonus, not only will you get more done, but
probably the whole thing will feel a little bit less
stressful as well. So if you don't have a ritual
like that in place, I highly encourage you to get
one set up.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Absolutely, And you can also try to figure out where
you will put this high profile stuff. And one of
the things we always wind up not doing is any
sort of speculative work or long term kind of thing,
And so think, well, maybe Monday morning is where I
do it, or if that doesn't work for you, maybe
it's like Tuesday afternoon is what I think of a
speculative time where I'm maybe not scheduling it quite so tightly,
(10:50):
but thinking of that space is when I am doing
that career boosting work. We also want to leave buffer
for unexpected emergencies, right, Sarah.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Yes, I feel like I learned from you like leave
that free slot because the truth is that as much
as we try to estimate what needs to happen, things
take longer than you think they will, and there will
always be some sort of quote unquote urgent, unexpected task
dumped into your lap. So we need to kind of
build in the idea that that's going to happen so
(11:19):
that when it does happen, it doesn't derail all these
other plans you've already put into place. So having that
backup slot, I think that was one of the tranquility
by Tuesday tenants is super important, and that again applies
to your life, but your work calendar as well.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, I mean I think it's smart in general, but
in particular if you are trying to do career capital
boosting work or some long term project that is going
to raise your profile. What happens is people like I'm
going to get to it this week, and then what
happens this week, Well, your biggest client has an emergency
or one of your kids get sick, and you're like, well,
I couldn't get to it this week because this unexpected
(11:57):
thing happened. It's like, well, guess what, something unexpected is
going to happen every single week, which is why you
will never get around to writing that business plan or
submitting that article for publication, or making a video of
yourself that you can send into that conference to be
a speaker or whatever it is. Because something is always
(12:18):
going to come up, and since you don't have to
do the career profile boosting thing, you don't, so in
order to make sure that those things don't derail you,
you build in space for the emergency to happen.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
And speaking in building in space, one other buffer to
think about is processing time after meetings if you can
help it, and you can't always. I know some company
cultures just kind of book you back to back, although
it seems like a lot of the larger companies are
starting to do like fifty minute meetings or twenty five
minute meetings to kind of help with this. But you
are going to need to take time to think about
(12:51):
what was just said, to write down any to dos,
to capture kind of the essence so you don't forget
about what happened and have to revisit it. So not
only do you need that unexpected spot buffer, but kind
of not booking things back to back as a practice
and assuming you'll need some processing time for each thing
that you do is smart. And speaking of buffers, we're
(13:12):
going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Well, we are back talking about how to conquer the
world in forty hours a week, trying to figure out
how we can do career boosting work if we don't
wish to work excessive hours, if we want to have
a work life balance that is sustainable over the long term.
And so we talked about building a schedule that allows
you to have space for these longer term, speculative kind
(13:48):
of ventures. But one of the ways that we also
make space is to minimize the sort of work that
is not necessarily career boosting. Profile raising may have to
get done, but it isn't necessarily your top priority.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
So let's talk about meetings.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
You said processing time after meetings, Sarah, But what can
we do to make every meeting be a little bit
less of a waste of time?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Well, our prior guest, Laura may Martin, talked about how
she doesn't go to any meeting without an agenda, and
maybe that might be extreme in your personal circumstance.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Did she ask you for an agenda before you interviewed her?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
No? No, okay, oh no, she didn't. That must be
an exception. Probably her PR firm was like, no one's
going to give you an agenda, so just be.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
On the one up for you so you have one.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
I mean, this is a very high profile podcast and
a coveted slot, so you know she wouldn't want to
do something to put that in jeopardy.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Okay, But for your average run of the mill meeting,
we need an agenda.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yes, okay, So I mean if there's not specifically an agenda,
you're not demanding an agenda. Still, you can think through
what is the point of meeting? What do you want
to get out of this meeting, because that can help
you do a couple of things. It can help you
prepare to make the time that you're spending with a
person more useful. It might even help you tell them
what to prepare if you realize that the roadblock is
(15:13):
going to be on their side. Perhaps you have done
this in your review of the week prior and are like, ooh,
I'm meeting with the person i'm supervising, but I don't
know what they've done. So you tell them submit me
a paragraph like before the meeting so we have something
to chat about, and really just like make sure you
actually have to go to said meeting, because sometimes if
you think through the meeting and what the purpose is,
(15:34):
and you really can't come up with one, And it's
just like about FaceTime. You know, there's probably enough other
meetings that you have FaceTime. And again this may vary
depending on what the culture is of where you are.
But if there is any way there is some meeting
that you find may not be the most important, you
could perhaps point out the fifteen other meetings on your
calendar that week and maybe you could just get the
(15:56):
notes for that one. So really understanding what the purpose
the meeting is for can do can do a lot
for you, especially in advance. You don't want to be
having these thoughts three minutes before the meeting starts.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Another idea is, you know, sometimes we waste a lot
of time because we are waiting for other things from
other people and we can't sort of start on anything else,
and we're constantly tracking things down. So you have a
system as well, Sarah, for looping back on stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Yes, it's funny, that's a funny I put the phrase
in there. But then I'm also like, you know, when
you get a email from someone like two days after
they sent you an email that you like didn't feel
like responding to, and they're like looping them back and
you're like, oh my god.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Momping this up to the top of your inbox.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
That's just like more when it's like an unsolicited thing.
But that's not really what we're talking about here. Looping
back to me means like something's on the back burner
and I don't want to forget about it, but I
don't want it to like bother me, and I also
don't want to fail to deal with it all together.
So making sure you have some kind of reliable place
to put things that you need to check back on
and a ritual that includes checking that folder or place
(17:02):
those two things will allow you to kind of put
them out of your mind but also not missing. So
my practice is to have I actually don't have this
in my personal email, I haven't needed it, But in
my work like outlook email, like at clinical work, there's
a waiting on folder where if there's something that's just
like cooking, like I've asked for something I'm waiting for
a response, I just put it in there, and every
single week when I do kind of like my clean
(17:23):
out and review process, I just check and glance and
see what's in there, and if there's anything I need
to send a bump up email about although I never ever.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Just pinging you, Sarah.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yeah, well, our.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Friend Laura May Martin will tell us though, I mean,
this is in her book. The problem is if you
don't answer the email, you're going to get something else.
It's going to be a second email or third email,
it's going to be an instant chat, or somebody's going
to add a calend, you know, meeting to your calendar
to get an answer. So even if you can't answer,
you're better off at least responding and saying, you know,
I'll be working on this on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
I'll get back to you on Wednesday, and then people
feel heard.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Another way to sort of work more sustainable hours is
to make sure you're only working on a certain number
of things at once, and we learn this from our
conversation with Cal Newport on slow productivity. But the way
I like to think of it is, actually, and we're
recording this shortly after tax day, is that every project
you were doing has some sort of administrative tax associated
(18:24):
with it. And so the issue is if you have
a ton of projects going on at once, each one
of those is exacting its own administrative tax, and that
can wind up adding up to a significant number of hours,
Whereas if you limit the number of projects you take
on at any one point, you have fewer hours devoted
(18:47):
to the administrative tax, and the amount you're working is
still the same. Like, if you're working on five projects
and each has two hours of tax a week, that's
ten hours of tax. If you're working on three at once,
you still have those extra hours that you would have
been devoting to the other two, but you only have
six hours of administration. And so ideally you're getting through
those three quicker, if at all possible, because you're devoting
(19:08):
more time to it at the moment, and then when
you're done with each one, you can add another project,
but you're still limiting that total administrative tax time. So
that's one way you can sort of make life feel sustainable.
And then Sarah is a big fan of vacation.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Yeah, so you know, this isn't in the realm of minimizing,
but this is in the realm of sustainability. And this
isn't necessarily going to apply to someone who is only entrepreneurial,
as Laura will discuss, But if you work for anyone
else and you are offered vacation time. You should take it,
enjoy it, plant look forward to it. It is going
to create some kind of long jam work wise, but
(19:47):
for most people, if you don't take it, your odds
of getting burned out and just kind of tired of
what you're doing are so much higher. And it really
is included as a benefit in many many jobs. I'm
actually a not a huge fan of these new unlimited
vacation situations because I feel like that's a mind game,
(20:09):
and often people are then afraid to take it because
if you have unlimited vacation, like what has really owed
to you, But if you have like specific amounts of
vacation that you can take, I hope everyone listened to
This is like thinking about how to use that and
use it well. Some of it for family, some of
it for yourself, some of it for fun. You need
some reflective rest.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Time, absolutely, So that's about making life sustainable and minimizing
the work that is not the highest profile things you
are doing.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
We also want to make.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
It a habit to regularly pay into your career capital account.
And obviously, when you think about a bank account, it's
like money that is built up over time that you
can draw upon if you need it right. So a
lot of that is about the connections you have in life,
so building genuine work relationships. So Sarah, what do you
(20:59):
did the notes for that? So what do you mean
by building genuine work relationships as part of career capital?
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Taking time to get to know your colleagues, maintaining relationships
from older positions that you've had, connecting over non work
topics as well as work topics. I'm not suggesting to
be best friends with every single person in your office,
but just making a point to getting to know people.
If you noticed your front desk person was away for
(21:25):
a week, asked them where they went, Asked them if
they enjoyed it, Like, ask them if they went to Germany,
Like what do they do there? Like actually getting to
know the other humans you're working with just makes it
so much more fun and at the same time, like
sometimes it can lead to opportunities you might not expect.
And one practice I've talked about before in this podcast
is I really try to make Friday a social lunch day.
(21:48):
It is challenging. I like struck out last week. I
was like, actually, no, I was going to strike out,
and then at the last the eleventh hour someone texting
me and was like I can go, and I was like, perfect,
I'll meet you, and then another person actually ended up coming.
So it was great and it doesn't have to be long.
I mean we probably met for like twenty five minutes
because both of us had to run and see afternoon patients.
But still we also then saw some other doctors in
(22:11):
a different specialty and like talk to them. So like
having that camaraderie is super helpful and can pay off
in more ways than one.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, because a lot of opportunities do come through other people, right,
And even in a huge corporation where you'd think like
they're going to choose people who are best for a job,
they're going to choose people to staff on this project
that they knew who has expertise in it, Like, no,
they do not. They are staffing the person that the
project manager knows and has worked within the past. And
(22:40):
if they're like, oh, shoot, now we need somebody who's
an expert in this, what do they do? That person
asks the people they've worked with on the past six projects, like, hey,
who should we ask to do this?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Who do they suggest?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
The person they know and have been hanging out with
I mean, it is amazing how human it still is,
even in very huge places. But with that in mind,
you want to be the person that they are thinking about.
If it's something high profile, something that you know would
be building a skill set, So getting to know your colleagues,
(23:10):
getting to know people who are external because obviously you
may not work for that same place forever, and if
you do decide at some point that you would like
to go somewhere else, it is so much better to
have a friend at XYZ Corporation who's like, hey, you
should totally check out the resume from this person I
know and whose work I respect. Like you will almost
(23:30):
automatically at least get an interview if somebody out of
company has forwarded a resume.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
That's just the way most companies work.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
So worth keeping in mind if you're ever going to
be job hunting in your life.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
And I would also.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Suggest proactively reaching out to people. One of our former guests,
Molly Beck, wrote a book many years ago called reach Out,
which is about her own method which every day she
reaches out to someone, and you know, it doesn't have
to be elaborate. It's maybe somebody that you knew in
the past and want to reconnect with somebody you met recently,
(24:09):
just a close colleague or friend that you've been thinking
of and you know, wanted to share something with, or
a total blind like I'm just going to reach out
to this person in the universe because they did something
and I want to. And I was the target of
a Molly Beck reach out back in twenty thirteen, I believe,
and we've kept in touch ever since. So I just
(24:29):
suggest viewing the universe as a wonderful place of possibilities
of people, and there's no reason not to reach out.
You might not hear back from people. I'm sure she's
sent many that have resulted in crickets, but she does
enough of it that she's built a fantastic network by
doing that.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
You also wrote go to stuff, go to stuff. Maybe
I love that.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Yeah, I mean, because okay, here is the thought here.
I think a lot of people, if they feel very
busy in their personal lives, they become very focused on doing.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
The stuff of their job.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
It's like, well, I can't go to the happy hour
because I have to see my kids after work. Well, okay,
we may all want to see our kids after work,
but you're probably already doing that five days a week,
maybe once every two weeks. You don't go immediately home,
you know, you do something else and you're still with
your kids immediately after work nine out of ten days.
(25:29):
But you are at least showing that you are willing
to go to things and build sort of relationships outside
of working hours. So, whether that is industry events, if
there's a happy hour with a group of people you
work with, if it is a speaker on a topic
that is of relevance to your industry that's happening in
(25:51):
your town, it might be worth going to. That might
be worth going to a conference. Maybe you pick two
or three a year that are worth putting the effort
into traveling too. But just showing your face is going
to go a long way. You don't have to do
it every night. Nobody does it every night. Like this
is often viewed as I can either or situation like
either I go out with colleagues or I go home
(26:12):
with and see my family, and I can't do both
and I'd be a terrible parent if I didn't see
my family, so ergo, I can't go out. And it's like, well, okay,
only if you're viewing it one specific night, But people
have listened to this podcast long enough no to think
one hundred and sixty eight hours, not twenty four. So
don't view the one night where thing is in conflict
as the only time there is. There's a lot of
other times where things aren't in conflict, So you can
(26:34):
be the kind of person who does both agree. So
on that note, we'll take another ad break and we'll
be back with a little bit more on how to
build career capital.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Well, we are back talking about how to.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Conquer the world in forty hours a week, and one
way that we can continue to build our career capital
is to become better at what we do. I mean,
some of this is just happens over time. I mean,
I'm sure that Sarah, your initial sharing how to care
for diabetes on like day one of you working as
a physician was probably a little bit more awkward than
(27:18):
now many years in, but you've also actively taken steps
to improve at what you were doing.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think a lot
of that comes from kind of learning by doing, but
some of it may come from asking for feedback from
whoever your audience is. Some of it comes from interacting
with other professionals and asking how they do and kind
of taking the best snippets of what you hear, like, Oh,
that's a really good analogy. I'll try to use that.
Some of it might be reading industry stuff. I learn
(27:45):
a ton of conferences, both the academic stuff presented, but
then just as much value from like, oh, how do
you guys do this over there? As I just said, So, yeah,
I think it's really important and it makes your job
so much more fun. I find that when I don't
do those things, I don't know, it just feels a
little bit more stagnant. So I think the sustainability piece
(28:09):
also links directly with the improvement piece, because finding ways
in which to grow in our careers makes those careers
more rewarding, keeps our brains active, and it's probably going
to lead to more opportunities and success. So there's really
no reason to decide that at some point that you're
sort of done with improvement or learning.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah, well, if you are feeling that maybe it's time
to make a change in something else, I mean, unless
you know there are reasons people don't like you're three
years away from retirement in someplace with a great pension.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I get it. I totally get it.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
But if that's not the case, you might wonder what
there is in life that you might want to change
in a way that you can keep learning and growing
and don't just feel like you are punching in the clock.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Lauren and I had a little well we kind of
disagreed on one. Okay, Harvy out to this, which is
that I wrote that I will say in the young
baby years, like the pumping years, the kind of not
getting sleep years, which isn't that much time in the
grand scheme of things, even if you have five kids,
that's like five years if you pumped a year with
(29:12):
each of them out of a fairly long career. That
is the one time I felt like stagnation was the
only option. I mean, I don't mean that, and obviously
there's still subtle things you can do, but for me,
that was a time I felt like it was actually
helpful to give myself permission to be like, get your
notes done, see your patients, do what you need to
take care of them, and like the extras can wait
until you're not chained to this thing because you have
(29:34):
to then also get home to feed the baby who
wants you. Like it was a brief period of time.
It wasn't that much fun. I don't think I lost
that much. But if that happens to be you or
Snary right now, I kind of give you permission to coast.
But maybe Laura doesn't.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Well I'll point out, I mean, maybe you were coasting
in job number one. But we started this podcast when
you were five months pregnant with Genevieve, and we built
it for the first year while you were doing it
around feeding her whatever. So I mean I would maybe
argue with even your retelling of the history of events here.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
And I would also say that again.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
If you are in a limited hour situation because you
are dealing with a nursing schedule or you know, very
young baby or something like that, is maybe you want
to spend more of your time of your limited time
on the big payoff stuff versus all the basic stuff
(30:34):
of your job. So maybe this is a great opportunity
when you're coming back from eternity leave. Somebody else has
been covering that boring staff meeting that you've been running
since time memorial, Like, huh, maybe my deputy could keep
doing that while I spend that hour.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I would have been doing that reaching.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Out to people outside my company and showing them the
great work I've done on something you know that's not
a trade secret, but I can my profile that way,
So I would just you know, you might want to
rebalance it that way.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Awesome. I think depends maybe on your industry, your flexibility,
and what the deliverables look like. But I'm glad to
know I didn't seem like I was slacking on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
No, exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
And finally, the last part of this is being everyone's
favorite person to work with. And you say, well, what
does this have to do with building career capital? What
does this have to do with raising your profile? And
it's getting back to the idea of building those work relationships.
But people want to work with people that it is
pleasant to work with, Like this increases your influence in
(31:40):
so many ways because people are like, if they have
a choice, they want to do pleasant things. And if
working with you is a pleasant experience, then the number
of people who want to work with you rises, and
as such, your ability to command what you wish within
the market of your corporation, within the free market as
(32:01):
a consultant rises the more demand there is for you.
So how do you become everyone's favorite person to work with. Well,
partly it's about making sure that everything you touch has
done extremely well and efficiently. I mean Sarah's talked about
this with some of her medical processes, right.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Yes, like become you know, emptying your inbox, like making
sure not to let loose ends go undone. But also
on the process side of things, if you see something
that is happening again and again that feels sort of
like it's not running smoothly, like it sort of gums
up the works every time, then this is something to
like almost like get into that sort of lean methodology
(32:42):
six sigma, Like what can we do to make this
just like smooth sailing? Like work as a team, figure
out a process, because when you solve those kinds of problems,
people notice and it makes your life a million times easier.
I feel like, you know, we're talking about diabetes a
lot today, but like that is something I won't take
(33:03):
cared of For this. It wasn't really me, but our
group and certain people in our group have taken great
pains to make so smooth because we have new diagnoses
multiple times a week, and if every single time that
was like, oh, what do we do with this? It
would be a nightmare, and instead I feel like it's
just like we everyone it's a choreographed like beautiful dance.
(33:24):
I don't know, like people know what their role is,
we know what to do, we have a process. But
it amazes me that I've been in places or situations
where it seems like, Okay, surely this has to come
up in time and time. Again, I don't have a
great example on the tip of my tongue, but like,
surely I'm not the first person who have asked for
XYZ and it seems like it was. So find those
(33:45):
things in your work and deal with them.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
And then be unfailingly reliable.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Like if you say you were going to do something,
do it by the time you said you would do
it in the format that you said it would be done. Now,
of course we all understand that there are things that
come up that you can't but if that is going
to happen, letting people know that as soon as possible
and coming up with a way that you can help
(34:14):
solve that problem for whoever it is going to inconvenience
goes a long way toward making you still be reliable
even if the original deliverable wasn't doable, and then part
of that is only taking on what you can do.
But that's an entirely different topic.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
And the hope this goes off we're full circle now
because this all goes back to planning, because that planning
session where you figure things out, you know what you
have on your plate, is going to be the way
in which you're able to accomplish this reliability.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Absolutely. Well, we'll pivot now to our Q and A here.
So this is from a person who works as a
pharmacist and she is potentially adding a different business to
her what she's doing. She's particularly opening something new and
she also wants to get some new certifications. But because
(35:05):
she's going to be doing something new, she doesn't necessarily
want all her colleagues to know about it. Now, there
is downtime at the pharmacy. There turns out to be
times when people are not lined up to get their
expertise on things, and so she would like to use
that time for advancing her career. However, sometimes her colleagues,
when there's not a lot going on, will just come
(35:27):
over and talk, hang out, shoot the breeze, whatever people
do when they're bored at work. So she's saying, how
can I politely get people to stop doing that without
calling attention to the fact that I am kind of
setting myself up to do something big and new during
this downtime.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
So, Sarah, what do you think this can be challenging?
Speaker 3 (35:49):
I mean, my answer wouldn't be to cut off that
person or people entirely, because you want to build those relationships.
And I think if you become the one that always
is like cold shoulder, but I think you could kind
of like a balance, or maybe you make light of
it and be like, Okay, I love that gossip time,
but like, I really have to get XYZ done. You
can be vague about it. I also think headphones could
(36:09):
be really strategically employed here because if it looks like
you're listening to something could be like a meeting, a podcast, whatever,
then people might take the hint. It doesn't have to
mean you have anything going on the headphones, but maybe
some white noise would be helpful.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, I think she could legitimately say, yeah, you know,
I'd like to spend a little time studying tonight, so
I'm just gonna be over here doing that. If you
guys need me, And I mean, if they ask you
what you're studying for again, pharmacy, like there's new stuff
coming out all the time, or you could be studying
for an advanced certification, where like nobody really would need
to question that, like why on earth do you need that.
It's like, well, because I'm a pharmacist, and you know
(36:46):
I need to be on top of my field to
better serve the people we work with. So I mean,
that's that's a pretty obvious thing. So I don't think
you need to be too specific about it. I mean,
especially if you're studying electronically, like I would be if
there's a textbook that's related to something that has nothing
to do with what you guys currently do.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
But I don't think that's the case.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
I think you're probably on an iPad and so nobody
knows what you're doing. One way you can sort of
proactively deal with the fact that people do want to
chat is if you're seeing things are winding down, like
go check in with anyone you know, say like, hey,
how's it going, and just want to chat what's up?
Like budget yourself, Like five to ten minutes for each
(37:27):
person that would normally want to talk with you get
that little short conversation over with it, then go do
your thing. Be like oh that's great, Yeah, okay, I'm
still going to go study now. You know, if you
guys need me, let me know. And that way, people
feel like you asked about their weekend on Monday, you
asked on Thursday and Friday what they're going to do
on the weekend, Like you had that little small talk conversation,
(37:49):
but you're still getting time for your thing.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Love it well, love of the week. On this career episode,
I'm going to go on brand on theme here. I
love paid time off. I love it. I love having
a specific amount of it. I mean, I guess I
wouldn't love that if it was like three days a year,
that I'd be very resentful. Then I have a reasonable
amount of it. I like allocating it, I like thinking
(38:12):
about it, and I like that it kind of comes
as a benefit of my job.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, so I have never had PTO.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I was thinking back of, like, have I had any
job where I was like accruing paid time off? I
don't believe I was, because you know, I did my
like service jobs in high school and college.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
I was a part time worker.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
So you usually aren't necessarily fully accruing time with that,
and you know, then I did an internship where I
wasn't I was paid, but I wasn't like getting paid
time off or anything. It's not like part of the
job with that. And then I went and worked for
myself and well, Vandercam Inc. Is a wonderful place to
work in many ways, or paid time off policies somewhat
(38:54):
to stingy. So yeah, no, I've never had that. But
obviously I take tons of vacation. I'm generally just doing
things like checking in on email for thirty minutes in
the morning two or three times when I'm off, and
then I can take however much time I want, as
long as I meet my deliverable.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
So that is an.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Upside, sometimes a downside, but mostly an upside of self employment.
So I guess I would say my love of the week,
since it can't be PTO, is having been in the
same business for a long long time. So recently, for
various reasons, I've been meeting with a lot of people
(39:37):
in the publishing world at lots of different houses, and
the upside is I know somebody at every single one
of them. You know, I'm having meetings with teams. It's
always I know somebody from somewhere in it that you know,
they worked at somewhere I published with in the past,
or they were at a magazine that I was familiar with,
(39:58):
or I interviewed them as an expert or on something.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
It's just there's always someone and that was kind of
fun to see. So an upside of having you know,
I don't think of myself as a great networker, but
just from the sheer fact of being in something for decades,
you meet people, and sometimes the people who you met
who are so awesome, like early in your career, wind
(40:20):
up in places of influence and power, and that's really
really cool to see. So this has been best of
both worlds. We've been talking about how to conquer the
world in forty hours a week, make space for career building,
career capital building work even if you don't want to
work around the clock, because guess what, nobody really works
around the clock. We will be back next week with
(40:43):
more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram,
and you.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
This has been the best of both worlds podcasts.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Please join us next time for more on making work
and life work together.
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