November 19, 2024 • 37 mins
Today's episode brings you lots of ideas for lightening your own mental load. Sarah and Laura share their own current 'mental load' challenges, and then Laura shares 7 tips that you might consider if you're looking to feel less overwhelmed by the cognitive and emotional effort it takes to manage life. Strategies discussed include writing things down (always!), batching, automation, embracing vertical ownership, encouraging kids to be independent, spending out when it will help your mental peace, and the all-time favorite: care less.
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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.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Term career goals.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
This episode is airing in mid November of twenty twenty four.
Sarah and I are going to be discussing how to
lighten your mental load, which is a hot topic for
many people. I am sure we all want strategies for
creating more calm and more mental space. I know a
lot of our listeners are carrying a lot of mental
load in their lives as they manage work, family, everything
(01:07):
else that they have going on. Just a real quick definition,
so we are all working from the same page. Mental
load is the cognitive and emotional effort that it takes
to manage life. So, Sarah, do you have any cognitive
and emotional effort managing your life going on these days.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Of course, don't we all.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I mean, I am very envious of anybody who can
actually answer this and say.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
No, but yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I mean, if I had to kind of think about
what the biggest things that are driving my mental load,
I would say I'm doing a lot of spinning about
like next academic year, which seems crazy because we're like
only a few months into this academic year. But I
just feel like there might be changes and it's like
a whole logistical whirlwind if that happens, and so that
(01:56):
is weighing on me, even though it's not really close.
I feel like my mental load is taken up by
how I am fitting in my writing amongst many other
life activities. And then the third thing I would say
that's a little bit extra right now is that Cameron
is on two soccer teams, which this was the case
last year as well, but there's a season which he
(02:18):
has at school, but then he still has his club soccer.
So that leads to a schedule that is pretty much nuts,
with many days him going almost straight from soccer to soccer.
He chose to do this again. He wanted to play
with his friends. He really enjoys it, but it's like
a crazy season.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I've just been feeling like there's a lot going on
as well. I mean, we have a pretty good schedule
that's tightly orchestrated. People know at this point their activity
is what they're going to and all that. It's just
that five kids generate a lot of details, and even
though some of the basic stuff is set, there is
(03:01):
always something that is going to be different every week.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I mean, just right before we were.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Recording this, I was setting up the schedule for the
next week when I'm taking Ruth to her eye specialist appointment,
which is far away, so we have to get her
there that day. But that meant so I needed to
reschedule something else that was going on that day, figure
out the car situation, or you know when some kids
like music lesson moves all of a sudden, everything else
needs to switch around it. There's just a lot of
(03:31):
contingent parts, and I feel with some evidence that I
am the only person who has all this in my
head or even on paper. So it is a lot
to keep track of. It is just the thing that
we you know, the topic here is that it is
(03:52):
real work, and it can feel overwhelming if you are
the person in your family managing most of the home front.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
On the other hand, it doesn't have to feel quite
so overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
There are obviously larger issues of who handles what amount
of mental load in any given household, which is an
interesting topic in and of itself, but is not the
topic of this episode, which is that however much mental
load you happen to be carrying, there are ways to
make that burden more manageable and you know, maybe even
(04:27):
see some of the upsides where if you are the
one who controls the schedule, you have a certain power
associated with that. But yeah, so one of the key
things that makes it feel like there's a lot spinning
is what you were talking about, Sarah. You're just perseverating
on something, right, Like there's a lot in your.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Head, yes, and you're I'm going to let you keep going,
But I wonder if you're right, that's kind of adding
to the stress, and I haven't fixed it because it
seems too nebulous to like make concrete at this point.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, I mean, so the spinning adds up to something,
but in general, with mental load, like don't keep it
in your head heads are very bad places for any
sort of detail that needs to be remembered, because you know,
humans don't have exceptional memories. We get tired, we forget things,
details may slip us by, We may remember the wrong thing.
(05:19):
So long time readers know, I advocate our listeners whatever
we have here. I advocate a weekly planning session where
you figure out your priorities for the upcoming week. But
a key reason to do this is that if you
know there is a time for planning, then you don't
have to keep worrying about it the rest of the time.
You're like, well, how am I going to figure out
(05:41):
that tricky ride situation that is happening in a week
and a half. It's like, well, maybe you don't actually
have to figure it out right this minute. If you
have a dedicated weekly planning time, you can sort it
through at that moment and give yourself permission not to
do it at every other point.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I think that's actually huge. I think people don't recognize
that side of planning. You know, when I hear a
lot of people talking about, oh, you know, why plan
because you know you're just in that like hustle mindset
or something. It's like No, A lot of the times
I'm planning so that I can like not stress about
it later, or like just kind of have my mind
be done with the planning portion and then move on
(06:19):
to the doing portion without being polluted by all these
thoughts that are going to come, whether or not I
am trying to curate some then lifestyle or not.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
So yeah, I think that's a great point.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
And then there's something to be said for a little
bit of group planning too. I mean, I know a
lot of our listeners have some sort of family meeting
where you discuss logistics, especially if you need somebody else's
input or you need to compare calendars or anything like that. Sarah,
are you guys doing any sort of family meeting at
this point?
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It's pretty informal.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
It generally happens around Sunday dinner, which is one of
the few meals we tend to all sit down together,
and by then I usually have completed my whiteboard action,
which is getting in writing basically everyone is supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
For the next week.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
We've started putting a couple of like shared family tasks
on that board as well.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
That's sort of unfolded organically.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
It's not something I sort of set out to do,
but I kind of like the idea that Josh and
me and the kids can see like the two maybe
most pressing priorities that kind of relate to everyone in
addition to everything that's happening, And so our meeting is
generally just everybody like kind of checking that out and
me commenting on anything that is weird, like oh, there's
no school on Thursday for two out.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Of three kids or something else. An appointment.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, I mean, I basically construct a calendar for the
upcoming week for the family on Fridays. People are supposed
to get me any information that would be pertinent to this.
Some people are better about it than others. And there's
always just the reality that teens social life changes quickly.
(07:56):
It's last minute, sometimes they have new things come up.
But I get a comment that it's just that I
have the structure of the week set then we can
all work from the same document. But you know, so
you have a weekly planning session to get all this down,
but then stuff is going to occur to you at
other points, and the quickest way to get it out
(08:18):
of your head is to capture it somewhere that you
know you will be able to act on.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So, Sarah, you email yourself all the time, right.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yes, I find that a really easy and effective way
to make sure I capture things on the fly. And
I think the thing that makes it work is that
I always know I'm going to be processing my inbox
at some point, So this is a pretty fool proof
way of making sure I keep things on my radar.
Of course, sometimes I might happen to have my paper
planner with me and I can put stuff directly in there.
When that's not the case, super super easy way to
(08:49):
just not have to keep it in my head.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Excellent. Less we keep in our heads, the better.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
All Right, We're going to take a quick ad break
and we will be back talking about more ways to
lighten our mental load.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Well, we are back.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Talking about ways to lighten the mental load. Whatever you
think about how mental loads should be split in households,
in society, etc. There are always ways to lessen the
burden on yourself so you have mental space for other
things and you have a more calm and controlled life.
One of the key ways you can do this is
to batch process things. So one of the reasons people
(09:37):
feel like they're always dealing with the small details of
life is because they are always dealing with the small
details of life.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
It's always an option.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
So you're trying to squeeze them in here and there
all over your schedule, and that can be pretty inefficient.
It's better to save them all up, all these sort
of not urgent tasks and do them in one fell swoop,
possibly at a lower energy time, so you know you're
not constantly filling out permission slips. You're doing permission slips
(10:05):
on Friday afternoon at one o'clock when you are also
ordering that birthday party for your niece, answering those three invitations.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
For events from HR.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
You are reordering X, Y, and Z that you need, Sarah,
you do something like this on your lunch break right.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yes, Friday afternoon would not work because I'm already starting
to see patients at one, But twelve to one is
actually a good amount of time to get a lot
of these little things done. I just remembered Kretchen Ruben,
I think called it a power hour where you just
like designate a sixty minute period of time to get
a lot of stuff done, and over the course of
a week this can add up to a lot. So
I guess it's not one big batch, but it's still
(10:45):
better than doing it little one off, ten minute increments randomly.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah, yeah, no, getting through as much as you can.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I call it like my Friday punch list, and I
sort of keep a running list during the week. And
as these things occur to me, and as I'm tempted
to be like, oh, I'm gonna stop what I'm doing
to go go fill out all these permissions up, somebody
like no, no, no, Laura, there is a time to
do this.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Now is not that time.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
You can also automate things. So one way that you
can lessen your mental load is to not need to
constantly make decisions. You can make a decision once and
then roll with it until it needs to change. So
an example of this is taco Tuesday. Right. You know
on Tuesday, you always know you are having tacos. You
(11:29):
don't have to think about it. You don't have to
plan what's my Tuesday night meal. Everyone expects it. Every
time somebody goes to the grocery store, they get the
stuff that you know you're going to be using on
taco Tuesdays. And that's one less thing anyone has to consider. Sarah,
you do subscribe and save right as a way to
automate things.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Yes, we automate our household goods by using that feature
from Amazon, and I'm sure other companies have it as well.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
But this is just such an easy way.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
For me to not even you know, I have an
automatic trigger to ask me do you need paper towels? Essentially,
and then I just take a couple of minutes and
then they get automatically shipped to me. Now, I do
tend to I like to maximize my savings with this
particular program, which means I keep more subscriptions on there
than I actually use. So the danger is that if
you do not answer the call to tell them what
(12:20):
you need, you will get more things. However, they're all
things that are non perishable and we use eventually, So
the worst case scenario is we build up a little
bit of a stockpile. And the best case scenario is
that I just get pained gently to decide what we
need for the household in the given month, and then
it comes without having to think about it.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yay. And then you had a pretty good hack for
scheduling stuff as well.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Yes, I mean this isn't like automatic, but I've made
it an automatic to do item for myself, which is
that any appointment that I leave, I try really hard
to schedule the next appointment while I'm still there. This
does mean I bring my physical planner to various appointments
like my hair appointments, dental, kids, doctors, but it feels
automatic to me, like, oh, this is just what you
(13:03):
do at the end, and then hey, it's already booked
on your calendar when the next time rolls around, and
it's not a to do item that you have to
give yourself to do later.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I love that, Yeah, love it. Love it.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Another way to lighten your mental load is to embrace
vertical ownership, meaning that somebody else takes on a task,
but then they also take it on completely. And the
reason for this is that if you're still managing exactly
how things are done, you're not really lightening your mental
load that much because you're still telling the other person like, Okay,
(13:36):
now it's your night to go do the dishes, as
opposed to simply having somebody own a night for cleaning
the kitchen or whatever it happens to be.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Now.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
The one caveat with this, obviously, is if you have
a family, where for whatever reason, one person sort of
knows the schedule better than others, which may be what
is happening in my house. Sometimes it's kind of hard
even to totally delegate something like make the kids dentist appointments,
because if the other person does not truly have the
(14:05):
lay of the land, they may not understand that three
is a total disaster, but three point thirty is not,
and would need to come back to you like, oh,
can I book it at this point? Can I book
it at this point? Which by that point you're like, well,
I could be on the phone with tensavas myself doing
this a lot more quickly. So you might need to
assign a whole project that isn't as contingent on other things,
(14:29):
Like you don't need to know everyone's daily schedule to
book the vacation right to buy all the plane tickets,
to make the hotel reservations, to figure out if there's
trips that need to be taken in the middle of it,
or whatever else needs to do. So that could be
the kind of thing that you could assign, right Sarah.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yes, Or in our case, we have a really not
my favorite thing to do project that is due monthly
for anyone who is in the grades through one through three,
which we happen to have a first grader again at
our house, and I have no ownership of that. That
is vertically owned by Josh. And it seems small, but
like it's a huge mental load relief. And it also is,
(15:06):
like Laura said, like not very You don't really need
to have a complete grasp but the whole picture if
you're just like I'm getting this particular project done. We
also have Josh to a lot of the gift buying
for certain holidays, which is a sizeable task, but you're right,
you also don't need necessarily to understand the whole big
machine to make that done effectively.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, and you can even split up gift buying too.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So we have two fall birthdays in our household, and
my husband took the fifteen year old boy. I took
the thirteen year old girl. We each just bought whatever
presence were desired or we thought would be good for
those people. And that was probably the right way to
split it, because I'm a little bit more unsure of
(15:51):
what a fifteen year old boy might find exciting, and
I think my husband is definitely more unsure of what
a thirteen year old girl would find exciting.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
So that was a good way to split it.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
But yeah, older kids can take on things somebody who
works with your household. Maybe you can completely assign something
to them. But that is certainly a way to get
some stuff off your plate, as is encouraging kid independence.
So the more things that your kids can do on
(16:24):
their own and without your input.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Obviously, the less stuff you have to deal with.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So with my older children, I don't want them coming
to me and be like I need socks. Like that's
not a good way to approach this conversation. I say, well,
the better way is that here's a link to the
socks I want and then I can go purchase them,
or even better, for those who have shopping cart privileges
(16:50):
on our Amazon count I've put the socks I want
in the cart and then I can either go do
it or I just tell them to order it and
it's a lot more simple. Sor you quite given people
access to the purchasing privileges. Yet, yeah, I'm fine to
get them the card part. Yes, so they do have access,
and I guess they could hit by, but I tell
(17:12):
them not to do that.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yet I'm not quite ready to relinquish that.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Plus, I think it'll mess up my budgeting because anyway,
long story shorts can be hard to track Amazon expenditures,
as I'm sure is a strategic decision on their part anyway,
But I'm happy to have them put in their cart.
That makes it easier and then I can vet it
and make sure that we want to move forward with
whatever purchase. I also just think being really clear about
(17:36):
getting them to do their own thing, for example, in
the morning, like let's talk about what you need for school,
because I'm not going to manage it. You need your glasses,
you need your soccer cles, you need whatever. And just
making sure to reinforce that so that it's not something
that continually stays on my list. And then trying to
hopefully let not be micromanaging school work helps for this
(17:57):
as well. Now, of course there's a time and a
place for having to get more involved when things aren't
going well, but when they are going reasonably well, I
think this can be one where we give ourselves more
responsibility than we even need to, and you can lighten
everyone's mental load to make sure the kids are taking
ownership of what they should be.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah, I don't necessarily react all that. Well, when someone
says to me, like, help me remember my trumpet in
the morning, I'm like, okay, mommy has a million things
in her brain. It's more likely that you are going
to remember it. But what I will do is circling
back to one of her earlier tips email myself, and
often I will at least be glancing at emails in
the morning as people are getting out the door, and
so there's a reasonable chance that I will have seen it.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
But people can also put instruments like right in front
of the door.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
That's also a good idea, buy your backpack something else
that's it's hard to miss it. But yeah, some I
love when kids do start taking ownership of things. We
recently had with the Halloween costumes. My fifteen year old
like started talking about the Halloween Costume'm like, oh, you know,
(19:01):
I guess I'm gonna have to order something. And they say, well,
I'm going as a group with my friends. I'm like okay,
and he said, do we need to get you somebody.
He's like, well, no, actually, just we're giving money to
a kid who is ordering it for everyone. I'm like, oh, okay,
and he'd already given him the money, so I was like,
well that's you know, I really didn't have to do anything,
so I was very excited about that. Another idea for
(19:23):
listening the mental lode is don't be cheap. So sometimes
for things you either pay in time or you pay
in money. And I know for many of our listeners
you might be in a stage of life where time
is more strictly limited than money, so it might be
(19:44):
worth paying for a more comprehensive solution that means less
things that you have to keep track of. And where
we often see this is let's say somebody's kid is
starting preschool and they have had a full time nanny,
and they might think, well, my kid's in pre schoo
for fifteen hours a week, so I should have them
in preschool for fifteen hours and do a part time
(20:06):
care solution outside of that. But the problem is when
things are part time, sometimes people aren't as invested in
them long term.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
They might not stay around as long.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
They may be doing other things with their life because
they're only working part time, and so their other job
winds up taking precedents and they have to stop something
and it's just or you're keeping track of multiple things
like oh, well, I can bring them to early care
and then we have somebody else picking them up as
then you're managing multiple different things, and then the days
off that they you know, you have to get coverage for.
It's like, well, maybe it would have been better off
(20:37):
keeping the full time and just accepting that some weeks
you are paying for fifteen hours that you didn't actually need.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, and you're right.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
The mental load costs of managing a whole bunch of
moving parts versus one general person that you have employed
full time. It does make a big difference. And that's
not the reason that we did it. There are many
reasons that we did it. But we've definitely paid for
more hours of childcare than we have used for many years,
really in part because it's just a piece of mind thing,
(21:10):
and it is a mental load thing, because you know,
when your kid is sick, I don't have to do
backflips trying to figure out coverage if I have someone
that is going to be available because they're actually really
working those hours, whether they're physically present on a given
day or not. So I am absolutely for that. We've
also kind of paid cash for various specialists in different
(21:31):
fields when it might not be the most cost effective option,
but it was just the most expeditious option and the
one that required less legwork on our part, and like
maybe we got a recommendation. It was just easier to
go with, let's say a psychiatrist who is not in network,
but you know, is reasonably affordable and pay cash versus
(21:51):
go through the many, many steps of figuring out who's
there and then do they have limited availability and who's
actually good and going through multiple people, Like at the
end of the day, I kind of hate that, but
this is a thing in healthcare, Like we shouldn't have
multiple tiers of healthcare. And also sometimes you got to
do what you've got to do, and so this has
been what's worked for us for certain things.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, I mean in your professional life too.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
I mean, obviously, if you work for a corporation, you
sort of have the support team that you have or
don't have. But if you're more on your own, more entrepreneurial,
you don't even have to hire like a full time assistant,
but having a virtual assistant for a few hours a
week might be something that could reduce some of your
mental load. Now, obviously you have to handle this well
because if it was going to just be more mental
(22:33):
load for you in order to manage the person, then
that might not be worth it. But ideally you will
come up with a situation where there's at least some
frontloading of training the person, and then your life becomes
easier afterwards.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
I'm always like wondering what I would do with such
a person. What does your person do?
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
A lot of different things I mean related to like
formatting newsletters and doing SEO on the website and some
of the social media posts and.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Things like that.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
So I'm pretty sure you could come up with something
if you wanted to, Sarah, but we could discuss.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
You're probably right, and we also do kind of do
that with the podcast.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
That's with the podcast.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
We don't do the audio processing or really any of
the tech parts of it.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, none whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
We're going to take one more quick ad break and
then we'll be back with a little bit more on
listening your mental load. Well, we are back talking how
to reduce your mental load. To lighten your mental load,
(23:40):
as it were, the biggest way I think in many
cases to have less on your brain is simply to
care less, because the more things that you require to
be a certain way, the more things you're going to
have to think about. And obviously there are many things
that are hard to get out of. There are some
things we do even if they are hard, because they
(24:02):
matter for closely held values. But I think it's important
to ask, when you're thinking a lot about something, does
it fall in that category or does it not.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
So, for instance, I don't.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Keep track of screen time tallies for my kids, like
I don't have some elaborate system for figuring out how
many hours they're doing X, Y and z, or if
they've played too many games, or if they've been on
YouTube too much or whatever. We just set certain hours
that they cannot have their devices and keep them pretty
busy and let the chips fall where they may.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
So that's a topic I'm not really thinking about all
that much.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
I don't want to think about who's made their beds
on any given day. If they're doing that, you know
they have to clean up their rooms before the floors
get vacuumed every two weeks.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
But other than that, I'm just not going around looking
into it. You mean, there's no ten pm inspection with
a white glove at your house, Sarah, There is no
ten pm home inspection.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
I would like to point out for everyone who has
trouble like relaxing when their home is a mess, like
there's no eleven pm home inspection at your house either,
Like nobody is coming around to give you demerits if
there are toys on the floor, if there are still
papers on the counter. I like a clean house as
much as everyone, but I think you just want to
(25:15):
be careful about putting a lot of time and effort
into repeatedly getting it reset at a certain time, because
then that can mean you never have time to relax.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Oh my gosh, this was last weekend. Our house was
We had just come back from a soccer tournament. Everything
was everywhere. People had various suitcases, and I was like,
I'm taking a.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Nap, and I did well.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
The house was messy, and you know what, I woke
up with more energy to clean it up. If I
had been like, I can't rest until this is done,
I might have been on a puddle on the floor crying,
which I feel like I have put myself in that
position before, But now I've learned to just be like,
that mess will still be there, the kids can play
some games, and I'm going to sleep.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yeah, yeah, And there are all sorts of things you've
just decided to care less about.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
I mean home decor. Yeah, I mean definitely.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
If you come to our house, you will know that
home decor does not take up much of our time.
We don't replace things unless they are like not usable.
Like we did have a couch a futon that had
a few too many children jump on it and at
some point it basically was like not sitable on but
like even then, we actually haven't even replaced it yet.
We're like, eh, do we need to sit in that area?
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Eventually we will, but it will.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Batch it with a bunch of others and just like
rebuy the same like Ikia stuff. It's just like we
keep it very easy because we don't have strong values
about that. And would you know again, you're always making
choices and we just are choosing other stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, you don't want to put the effort into it,
which is good.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
So the more things you can care less about, the
light and lighter your mental load will be. And I
think sort of as a wrap up to this concept,
you also want to pay attention to when there is
less to think about, because I think we can come
up with the story that you know, I've got all
these details all the time ahead of spending all the time,
I get no time to relax whatever. And some weeks
(27:01):
may have a seemingly overwhelming number of details, but others
might have less. I know, I was well aware last summer,
like I always make a weekly schedule on Fridays for
the upcoming week, and some of them during the week
are these like multi page documents by the time we're
figuring out where everyone is going and the rides and
all that. But then summer it would be like, well,
we only have three kids at home and these two
(27:21):
are in camp, and that's all it is. Like they
go to camp in the morning, they come home in
the afternoon, camp in the morning, the next day, home
in the afternoon. Like I don't even have to print
this up, I don't have to send it around, Like
we can all keep that in our heads basically, you know,
And so just appreciate when that is happening that the
seasons are very different, definitely.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Like being aware when there are it's never going to
be like a completely clear calendar, but when you have
weeks without anomalies and conflicts and that kind of stuff,
it can make sense to notice it and be like,
all right, we're sailing in calmer waters right now, and
I do love summers for that.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
I mean, I don't love summers, but I love that
about summers, or.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Just taking a chill vacation right where you're not managing
a ton of mental load for that either.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I do not manage a lot of mental load on vacation,
and I prefer it that way.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah. Yeah, So there's different kinds of vacations. They're the
one where you go somewhere and just chill. There's others
where you're trying to see all of a country in
a week, which you know there's going to be more
mental load with that.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
But maybe in a life you kind of have both,
all right.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
So moving on to our question, this listener writes in, Hi,
Laura and Sarah, I love kids.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I also love my income.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Based on what you've seen, what are the best six
figure jobs for parents who want the flexibility to attend
kids school events? And so we don't really know whatever
life stage this particular listener may be in if they
have kids, if they don't have kids, But we were
sort of approaching this question from the perspective of if
you are younger and you're kind of planning out your life,
(28:54):
so not forty five and needing to switch careers. What
sorts of jobs might you be looking into if you
were interested in trying to earn a lot and also
having a reasonable amount of flexibility. And I think we
both realized this is a trickier question then, and trick.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Your question, And please don't be mad at us for
the question itself, because I think there were people that
were like, how could anyone like ask something like that
and it's not so entitled or something like that, and.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Like, well, we posted on our Patreon community, we posted
this question to get other people's feedback, like I don't know,
maybe there's some magical job where you earn a lot
of money and have complete flexibility and we just don't
know about it.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
So we wanted a better answer to crowdstarce that.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
But yeah, some people are like, well, you shouldn't be
looking for flexibility and optimizing that early in your career,
Like if you are twenty four years old, just out
of school, you don't have anyone depending on you for
care then you might be better off emphasizing where can
I learn a lot of skills?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Where can I grow my network.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
How can I move quickly up and get more seniority,
Because when you build that career capital, then you can
trade that in later for flexibility when you do have
people depending on you, and it might be more needed.
But you know, I think people have different opinions on that.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, what am I good at? What do I enjoy?
Speaker 2 (30:17):
What?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
At the end of the day, can I be successful
at cultivating that career capital.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I think that's the best question to ask.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
I mean, I think in many fields there's some flexibility available.
It might come in different forms. You can do more
shift like work, but that still isn't going to necessarily
give you, like in the moment flexibility. Like if you're
an er doctor and you decide to work sixty percent times,
you're going to be super flexible sometimes, but you're still
going to be totally inflexible on other times. And actually,
(30:43):
I was doing some reflection when we were talking about
this question, and I don't feel very flexible, even in
my quote flexible job. Like I somehow had this vision
that when I was working more entrepreneurially and for myself
and podcasting doing all the stuff, that I'd have this
very freely flowing calendar, and I would just get my
task done. And yet it seems like especially maybe yes
(31:06):
I have freedom like six months out, but that's true
my clinical job too. I can move days or take
time off, but if you look like a week or
two ahead, I can't just imprompt you throw some all
day school field trip on there. Like I got interview schedule,
I got this duet, I got beslie plans live Like,
the more you do something, and probably the more successful
you are at it, the more your calendar is going
(31:26):
to be crowded with like obligations related to it, probably
no matter what that thing is.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Think about Taylor Swift, she's busy. I mean she calls
the shots.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
But yes, once she's decided to do something, she's not
going to just randomly not do the Miami concert because
you know, it was a nice day.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
She felt like doing other things exactly.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
So I think flexibility is really complicated.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Well, it's so because what do we mean?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Do we mean that if you found out two days
from now that your kid was having a party a
special person's tea at their school at eleven am, would
you be able to go? And I think some jobs
the answer is absolutely not. You wouldn't be able to
some jobs you probably would, but maybe not. I mean
there's a few jobs we're totally sure whatever, But once
(32:13):
you have kind of anything on the schedule, it becomes
a little bit more complicated with stuff like that. I mean,
I think of what I do as being very flexible,
and it is on some level. But if I agreed
to fly to Florida to give a speech, I'm not
going to not do that just because there was an
(32:33):
event at the school, because that's something I've committed to doing. Yeah,
or even I mean, like you were talking about, you know,
things like medicine. I mean, medicine is a high plaid
profession and that you can have some flexibility. There's a
lot of people who do work part time in it,
but part time is not the same as flexibility, right
because part time, you know, if you always are seeing
(32:54):
patients on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you can't suddenly decide two
days before to not work Wednesday. I mean it would
need to be a like you're deathly ill for you
to cancel all those patients.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
So yeah, it's a tricky question.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
But I mean I don't think there's anything wrong with
like hoping to have a high paid job. I mean, certainly,
maybe the way to go about this is to aim
for a high paid job and then be really good
at it and turn that into flexibility. And we've seen,
we've talked to people who've done that. I mean, we
know our previous guests you've talked about this. Sarah Laura
May Martin.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
She is a Google executive who also is an author
and has a lot of passionate feelings about various time
management things. But when we interviewed her for this show,
was really remarkable to hear how she had really crafted
her day. And I think it was her level of
seniority and her kind of like specialist niche that she
had carved for herself within the company that allowed her
to call a lot of the shots, and she like
(33:48):
had lunch with her kids every day, and you know,
all these things that she seemed to want. So it's
sort of generic, but it's like, be really really good
at what you do so that you can then leverage
that for the things that you want specifics in your career.
And you know there's going to be careers where that's
less likely to happen. I mean, like I don't know,
like even just thinking about like a CT surgeon that's
(34:11):
at the top of his game is still probably going
to be doing surgeries most days, so he's not going
to be able to have lunch with the kids, or
she's not going to be able to have lunch with
the kids, most likely if you're doing a surgery that's
super long.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
So there are probably careers that are more likely to
have that kind of thing than others.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, but an interesting question if people have feelings about that.
Let us know what you would recommend. If somebody was
looking to earn a lot of money and have some flexibility,
what would you tell them to go into and just
be like the graduate plastics, go into plastics, that's what
you need.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Except don't because the same thing I think they.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Don't go there plastics summer er.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
I don't know, all right, So Sarah, love of the Week,
I will go with mine new nice notebooks. I like
spiral bound. I like the cover to be hard, I
like them to be narrow ruled. I have all these specifications,
but the problem is once I buy them, I often
don't want to write in them. Like they look so
nice and neat and perfect. I don't want to sully
(35:13):
them with my half baked thoughts, although one way I've
gotten around this is just by enough of them that
I feel such a sense of abundance that I can
leave a few untouched and write in some. And you know,
at this point, I would say that my supply of
little notebooks for capturing my great thoughts exceeds my supply
(35:34):
of actual great thoughts.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
So that's probably a good place to be in. But
I do like my notebooks. Yes, you should not be
afraid to use them, use them with glee, Glee, VIM
and vigor exactly. Yes.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
My love of the week is ordering concert merch online. Okay,
so second tailor, so with reference of the show. But
I did just recently go and it was amazing and
I did not wait in the like three hour long
merch line, and it was great and I was able
to get everything I wanted anyway and it already came.
And just like I think, if you're at a concert
and you see a very very long line, check out
(36:09):
whether you could just get the same things shipped to
your house with much less effort in waiting.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yeah, I think in general waiting in line and think
how bad that would be to miss part of the
actual concert because you are waiting in the merch line.
I don't know, I just feel like that would be
totally backward of how the experience should go, because you know,
totally I mean, I realized it's a way to remember
the experience, but you want to have the actual experience
itself in order to remember it.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
You know, just a little thing.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds.
We have been talking about how to lighten your mental load.
Lots of different strategies we can use to make life
feel a little bit more calm. We will be back
next week with more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com
or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram, and you.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join
us next time for more on making work and life
work together.
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.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Term career goals.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
This episode is airing in mid November of twenty twenty four.
Sarah and I are going to be discussing how to
lighten your mental load, which is a hot topic for
many people. I am sure we all want strategies for
creating more calm and more mental space. I know a
lot of our listeners are carrying a lot of mental
load in their lives as they manage work, family, everything
(01:07):
else that they have going on. Just a real quick definition,
so we are all working from the same page. Mental
load is the cognitive and emotional effort that it takes
to manage life. So, Sarah, do you have any cognitive
and emotional effort managing your life going on these days.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Of course, don't we all.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I mean, I am very envious of anybody who can
actually answer this and say.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
No, but yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I mean, if I had to kind of think about
what the biggest things that are driving my mental load,
I would say I'm doing a lot of spinning about
like next academic year, which seems crazy because we're like
only a few months into this academic year. But I
just feel like there might be changes and it's like
a whole logistical whirlwind if that happens, and so that
(01:56):
is weighing on me, even though it's not really close.
I feel like my mental load is taken up by
how I am fitting in my writing amongst many other
life activities. And then the third thing I would say
that's a little bit extra right now is that Cameron
is on two soccer teams, which this was the case
last year as well, but there's a season which he
(02:18):
has at school, but then he still has his club soccer.
So that leads to a schedule that is pretty much nuts,
with many days him going almost straight from soccer to soccer.
He chose to do this again. He wanted to play
with his friends. He really enjoys it, but it's like
a crazy season.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I've just been feeling like there's a lot going on
as well. I mean, we have a pretty good schedule
that's tightly orchestrated. People know at this point their activity
is what they're going to and all that. It's just
that five kids generate a lot of details, and even
though some of the basic stuff is set, there is
(03:01):
always something that is going to be different every week.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I mean, just right before we were.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Recording this, I was setting up the schedule for the
next week when I'm taking Ruth to her eye specialist appointment,
which is far away, so we have to get her
there that day. But that meant so I needed to
reschedule something else that was going on that day, figure
out the car situation, or you know when some kids
like music lesson moves all of a sudden, everything else
needs to switch around it. There's just a lot of
(03:31):
contingent parts, and I feel with some evidence that I
am the only person who has all this in my
head or even on paper. So it is a lot
to keep track of. It is just the thing that
we you know, the topic here is that it is
(03:52):
real work, and it can feel overwhelming if you are
the person in your family managing most of the home front.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
On the other hand, it doesn't have to feel quite
so overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
There are obviously larger issues of who handles what amount
of mental load in any given household, which is an
interesting topic in and of itself, but is not the
topic of this episode, which is that however much mental
load you happen to be carrying, there are ways to
make that burden more manageable and you know, maybe even
(04:27):
see some of the upsides where if you are the
one who controls the schedule, you have a certain power
associated with that. But yeah, so one of the key
things that makes it feel like there's a lot spinning
is what you were talking about, Sarah. You're just perseverating
on something, right, Like there's a lot in your.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Head, yes, and you're I'm going to let you keep going,
But I wonder if you're right, that's kind of adding
to the stress, and I haven't fixed it because it
seems too nebulous to like make concrete at this point.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, I mean, so the spinning adds up to something,
but in general, with mental load, like don't keep it
in your head heads are very bad places for any
sort of detail that needs to be remembered, because you know,
humans don't have exceptional memories. We get tired, we forget things,
details may slip us by, We may remember the wrong thing.
(05:19):
So long time readers know, I advocate our listeners whatever
we have here. I advocate a weekly planning session where
you figure out your priorities for the upcoming week. But
a key reason to do this is that if you
know there is a time for planning, then you don't
have to keep worrying about it the rest of the time.
You're like, well, how am I going to figure out
(05:41):
that tricky ride situation that is happening in a week
and a half. It's like, well, maybe you don't actually
have to figure it out right this minute. If you
have a dedicated weekly planning time, you can sort it
through at that moment and give yourself permission not to
do it at every other point.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I think that's actually huge. I think people don't recognize
that side of planning. You know, when I hear a
lot of people talking about, oh, you know, why plan
because you know you're just in that like hustle mindset
or something. It's like No, A lot of the times
I'm planning so that I can like not stress about
it later, or like just kind of have my mind
be done with the planning portion and then move on
(06:19):
to the doing portion without being polluted by all these
thoughts that are going to come, whether or not I
am trying to curate some then lifestyle or not.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
So yeah, I think that's a great point.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
And then there's something to be said for a little
bit of group planning too. I mean, I know a
lot of our listeners have some sort of family meeting
where you discuss logistics, especially if you need somebody else's
input or you need to compare calendars or anything like that. Sarah,
are you guys doing any sort of family meeting at
this point?
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It's pretty informal.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
It generally happens around Sunday dinner, which is one of
the few meals we tend to all sit down together,
and by then I usually have completed my whiteboard action,
which is getting in writing basically everyone is supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
For the next week.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
We've started putting a couple of like shared family tasks
on that board as well.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
That's sort of unfolded organically.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
It's not something I sort of set out to do,
but I kind of like the idea that Josh and
me and the kids can see like the two maybe
most pressing priorities that kind of relate to everyone in
addition to everything that's happening, And so our meeting is
generally just everybody like kind of checking that out and
me commenting on anything that is weird, like oh, there's
no school on Thursday for two out.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Of three kids or something else. An appointment.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, I mean, I basically construct a calendar for the
upcoming week for the family on Fridays. People are supposed
to get me any information that would be pertinent to this.
Some people are better about it than others. And there's
always just the reality that teens social life changes quickly.
(07:56):
It's last minute, sometimes they have new things come up.
But I get a comment that it's just that I
have the structure of the week set then we can
all work from the same document. But you know, so
you have a weekly planning session to get all this down,
but then stuff is going to occur to you at
other points, and the quickest way to get it out
(08:18):
of your head is to capture it somewhere that you
know you will be able to act on.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So, Sarah, you email yourself all the time, right.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yes, I find that a really easy and effective way
to make sure I capture things on the fly. And
I think the thing that makes it work is that
I always know I'm going to be processing my inbox
at some point, So this is a pretty fool proof
way of making sure I keep things on my radar.
Of course, sometimes I might happen to have my paper
planner with me and I can put stuff directly in there.
When that's not the case, super super easy way to
(08:49):
just not have to keep it in my head.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Excellent. Less we keep in our heads, the better.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
All Right, We're going to take a quick ad break
and we will be back talking about more ways to
lighten our mental load.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Well, we are back.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Talking about ways to lighten the mental load. Whatever you
think about how mental loads should be split in households,
in society, etc. There are always ways to lessen the
burden on yourself so you have mental space for other
things and you have a more calm and controlled life.
One of the key ways you can do this is
to batch process things. So one of the reasons people
(09:37):
feel like they're always dealing with the small details of
life is because they are always dealing with the small
details of life.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
It's always an option.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
So you're trying to squeeze them in here and there
all over your schedule, and that can be pretty inefficient.
It's better to save them all up, all these sort
of not urgent tasks and do them in one fell swoop,
possibly at a lower energy time, so you know you're
not constantly filling out permission slips. You're doing permission slips
(10:05):
on Friday afternoon at one o'clock when you are also
ordering that birthday party for your niece, answering those three invitations.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
For events from HR.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
You are reordering X, Y, and Z that you need, Sarah,
you do something like this on your lunch break right.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yes, Friday afternoon would not work because I'm already starting
to see patients at one, But twelve to one is
actually a good amount of time to get a lot
of these little things done. I just remembered Kretchen Ruben,
I think called it a power hour where you just
like designate a sixty minute period of time to get
a lot of stuff done, and over the course of
a week this can add up to a lot. So
I guess it's not one big batch, but it's still
(10:45):
better than doing it little one off, ten minute increments randomly.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah, yeah, no, getting through as much as you can.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I call it like my Friday punch list, and I
sort of keep a running list during the week. And
as these things occur to me, and as I'm tempted
to be like, oh, I'm gonna stop what I'm doing
to go go fill out all these permissions up, somebody
like no, no, no, Laura, there is a time to
do this.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Now is not that time.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
You can also automate things. So one way that you
can lessen your mental load is to not need to
constantly make decisions. You can make a decision once and
then roll with it until it needs to change. So
an example of this is taco Tuesday. Right. You know
on Tuesday, you always know you are having tacos. You
(11:29):
don't have to think about it. You don't have to
plan what's my Tuesday night meal. Everyone expects it. Every
time somebody goes to the grocery store, they get the
stuff that you know you're going to be using on
taco Tuesdays. And that's one less thing anyone has to consider. Sarah,
you do subscribe and save right as a way to
automate things.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Yes, we automate our household goods by using that feature
from Amazon, and I'm sure other companies have it as well.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
But this is just such an easy way.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
For me to not even you know, I have an
automatic trigger to ask me do you need paper towels? Essentially,
and then I just take a couple of minutes and
then they get automatically shipped to me. Now, I do
tend to I like to maximize my savings with this
particular program, which means I keep more subscriptions on there
than I actually use. So the danger is that if
you do not answer the call to tell them what
(12:20):
you need, you will get more things. However, they're all
things that are non perishable and we use eventually, So
the worst case scenario is we build up a little
bit of a stockpile. And the best case scenario is
that I just get pained gently to decide what we
need for the household in the given month, and then
it comes without having to think about it.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yay. And then you had a pretty good hack for
scheduling stuff as well.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Yes, I mean this isn't like automatic, but I've made
it an automatic to do item for myself, which is
that any appointment that I leave, I try really hard
to schedule the next appointment while I'm still there. This
does mean I bring my physical planner to various appointments
like my hair appointments, dental, kids, doctors, but it feels
automatic to me, like, oh, this is just what you
(13:03):
do at the end, and then hey, it's already booked
on your calendar when the next time rolls around, and
it's not a to do item that you have to
give yourself to do later.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I love that, Yeah, love it. Love it.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Another way to lighten your mental load is to embrace
vertical ownership, meaning that somebody else takes on a task,
but then they also take it on completely. And the
reason for this is that if you're still managing exactly
how things are done, you're not really lightening your mental
load that much because you're still telling the other person like, Okay,
(13:36):
now it's your night to go do the dishes, as
opposed to simply having somebody own a night for cleaning
the kitchen or whatever it happens to be.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Now.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
The one caveat with this, obviously, is if you have
a family, where for whatever reason, one person sort of
knows the schedule better than others, which may be what
is happening in my house. Sometimes it's kind of hard
even to totally delegate something like make the kids dentist appointments,
because if the other person does not truly have the
(14:05):
lay of the land, they may not understand that three
is a total disaster, but three point thirty is not,
and would need to come back to you like, oh,
can I book it at this point? Can I book
it at this point? Which by that point you're like, well,
I could be on the phone with tensavas myself doing
this a lot more quickly. So you might need to
assign a whole project that isn't as contingent on other things,
(14:29):
Like you don't need to know everyone's daily schedule to
book the vacation right to buy all the plane tickets,
to make the hotel reservations, to figure out if there's
trips that need to be taken in the middle of it,
or whatever else needs to do. So that could be
the kind of thing that you could assign, right Sarah.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yes, Or in our case, we have a really not
my favorite thing to do project that is due monthly
for anyone who is in the grades through one through three,
which we happen to have a first grader again at
our house, and I have no ownership of that. That
is vertically owned by Josh. And it seems small, but
like it's a huge mental load relief. And it also is,
(15:06):
like Laura said, like not very You don't really need
to have a complete grasp but the whole picture if
you're just like I'm getting this particular project done. We
also have Josh to a lot of the gift buying
for certain holidays, which is a sizeable task, but you're right,
you also don't need necessarily to understand the whole big
machine to make that done effectively.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, and you can even split up gift buying too.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So we have two fall birthdays in our household, and
my husband took the fifteen year old boy. I took
the thirteen year old girl. We each just bought whatever
presence were desired or we thought would be good for
those people. And that was probably the right way to
split it, because I'm a little bit more unsure of
(15:51):
what a fifteen year old boy might find exciting, and
I think my husband is definitely more unsure of what
a thirteen year old girl would find exciting.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
So that was a good way to split it.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
But yeah, older kids can take on things somebody who
works with your household. Maybe you can completely assign something
to them. But that is certainly a way to get
some stuff off your plate, as is encouraging kid independence.
So the more things that your kids can do on
(16:24):
their own and without your input.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Obviously, the less stuff you have to deal with.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So with my older children, I don't want them coming
to me and be like I need socks. Like that's
not a good way to approach this conversation. I say, well,
the better way is that here's a link to the
socks I want and then I can go purchase them,
or even better, for those who have shopping cart privileges
(16:50):
on our Amazon count I've put the socks I want
in the cart and then I can either go do
it or I just tell them to order it and
it's a lot more simple. Sor you quite given people
access to the purchasing privileges. Yet, yeah, I'm fine to
get them the card part. Yes, so they do have access,
and I guess they could hit by, but I tell
(17:12):
them not to do that.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yet I'm not quite ready to relinquish that.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Plus, I think it'll mess up my budgeting because anyway,
long story shorts can be hard to track Amazon expenditures,
as I'm sure is a strategic decision on their part anyway,
But I'm happy to have them put in their cart.
That makes it easier and then I can vet it
and make sure that we want to move forward with
whatever purchase. I also just think being really clear about
(17:36):
getting them to do their own thing, for example, in
the morning, like let's talk about what you need for school,
because I'm not going to manage it. You need your glasses,
you need your soccer cles, you need whatever. And just
making sure to reinforce that so that it's not something
that continually stays on my list. And then trying to
hopefully let not be micromanaging school work helps for this
(17:57):
as well. Now, of course there's a time and a
place for having to get more involved when things aren't
going well, but when they are going reasonably well, I
think this can be one where we give ourselves more
responsibility than we even need to, and you can lighten
everyone's mental load to make sure the kids are taking
ownership of what they should be.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah, I don't necessarily react all that. Well, when someone
says to me, like, help me remember my trumpet in
the morning, I'm like, okay, mommy has a million things
in her brain. It's more likely that you are going
to remember it. But what I will do is circling
back to one of her earlier tips email myself, and
often I will at least be glancing at emails in
the morning as people are getting out the door, and
so there's a reasonable chance that I will have seen it.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
But people can also put instruments like right in front
of the door.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
That's also a good idea, buy your backpack something else
that's it's hard to miss it. But yeah, some I
love when kids do start taking ownership of things. We
recently had with the Halloween costumes. My fifteen year old
like started talking about the Halloween Costume'm like, oh, you know,
(19:01):
I guess I'm gonna have to order something. And they say, well,
I'm going as a group with my friends. I'm like okay,
and he said, do we need to get you somebody.
He's like, well, no, actually, just we're giving money to
a kid who is ordering it for everyone. I'm like, oh, okay,
and he'd already given him the money, so I was like,
well that's you know, I really didn't have to do anything,
so I was very excited about that. Another idea for
(19:23):
listening the mental lode is don't be cheap. So sometimes
for things you either pay in time or you pay
in money. And I know for many of our listeners
you might be in a stage of life where time
is more strictly limited than money, so it might be
(19:44):
worth paying for a more comprehensive solution that means less
things that you have to keep track of. And where
we often see this is let's say somebody's kid is
starting preschool and they have had a full time nanny,
and they might think, well, my kid's in pre schoo
for fifteen hours a week, so I should have them
in preschool for fifteen hours and do a part time
(20:06):
care solution outside of that. But the problem is when
things are part time, sometimes people aren't as invested in
them long term.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
They might not stay around as long.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
They may be doing other things with their life because
they're only working part time, and so their other job
winds up taking precedents and they have to stop something
and it's just or you're keeping track of multiple things
like oh, well, I can bring them to early care
and then we have somebody else picking them up as
then you're managing multiple different things, and then the days
off that they you know, you have to get coverage for.
It's like, well, maybe it would have been better off
(20:37):
keeping the full time and just accepting that some weeks
you are paying for fifteen hours that you didn't actually need.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, and you're right.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
The mental load costs of managing a whole bunch of
moving parts versus one general person that you have employed
full time. It does make a big difference. And that's
not the reason that we did it. There are many
reasons that we did it. But we've definitely paid for
more hours of childcare than we have used for many years,
really in part because it's just a piece of mind thing,
(21:10):
and it is a mental load thing, because you know,
when your kid is sick, I don't have to do
backflips trying to figure out coverage if I have someone
that is going to be available because they're actually really
working those hours, whether they're physically present on a given
day or not. So I am absolutely for that. We've
also kind of paid cash for various specialists in different
(21:31):
fields when it might not be the most cost effective option,
but it was just the most expeditious option and the
one that required less legwork on our part, and like
maybe we got a recommendation. It was just easier to
go with, let's say a psychiatrist who is not in network,
but you know, is reasonably affordable and pay cash versus
(21:51):
go through the many, many steps of figuring out who's
there and then do they have limited availability and who's
actually good and going through multiple people, Like at the
end of the day, I kind of hate that, but
this is a thing in healthcare, Like we shouldn't have
multiple tiers of healthcare. And also sometimes you got to
do what you've got to do, and so this has
been what's worked for us for certain things.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, I mean in your professional life too.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
I mean, obviously, if you work for a corporation, you
sort of have the support team that you have or
don't have. But if you're more on your own, more entrepreneurial,
you don't even have to hire like a full time assistant,
but having a virtual assistant for a few hours a
week might be something that could reduce some of your
mental load. Now, obviously you have to handle this well
because if it was going to just be more mental
(22:33):
load for you in order to manage the person, then
that might not be worth it. But ideally you will
come up with a situation where there's at least some
frontloading of training the person, and then your life becomes
easier afterwards.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
I'm always like wondering what I would do with such
a person. What does your person do?
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
A lot of different things I mean related to like
formatting newsletters and doing SEO on the website and some
of the social media posts and.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Things like that.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
So I'm pretty sure you could come up with something
if you wanted to, Sarah, but we could discuss.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
You're probably right, and we also do kind of do
that with the podcast.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
That's with the podcast.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
We don't do the audio processing or really any of
the tech parts of it.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, none whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
We're going to take one more quick ad break and
then we'll be back with a little bit more on
listening your mental load. Well, we are back talking how
to reduce your mental load. To lighten your mental load,
(23:40):
as it were, the biggest way I think in many
cases to have less on your brain is simply to
care less, because the more things that you require to
be a certain way, the more things you're going to
have to think about. And obviously there are many things
that are hard to get out of. There are some
things we do even if they are hard, because they
(24:02):
matter for closely held values. But I think it's important
to ask, when you're thinking a lot about something, does
it fall in that category or does it not.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
So, for instance, I don't.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Keep track of screen time tallies for my kids, like
I don't have some elaborate system for figuring out how
many hours they're doing X, Y and z, or if
they've played too many games, or if they've been on
YouTube too much or whatever. We just set certain hours
that they cannot have their devices and keep them pretty
busy and let the chips fall where they may.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
So that's a topic I'm not really thinking about all
that much.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
I don't want to think about who's made their beds
on any given day. If they're doing that, you know
they have to clean up their rooms before the floors
get vacuumed every two weeks.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
But other than that, I'm just not going around looking
into it. You mean, there's no ten pm inspection with
a white glove at your house, Sarah, There is no
ten pm home inspection.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
I would like to point out for everyone who has
trouble like relaxing when their home is a mess, like
there's no eleven pm home inspection at your house either,
Like nobody is coming around to give you demerits if
there are toys on the floor, if there are still
papers on the counter. I like a clean house as
much as everyone, but I think you just want to
(25:15):
be careful about putting a lot of time and effort
into repeatedly getting it reset at a certain time, because
then that can mean you never have time to relax.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Oh my gosh, this was last weekend. Our house was
We had just come back from a soccer tournament. Everything
was everywhere. People had various suitcases, and I was like,
I'm taking a.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Nap, and I did well.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
The house was messy, and you know what, I woke
up with more energy to clean it up. If I
had been like, I can't rest until this is done,
I might have been on a puddle on the floor crying,
which I feel like I have put myself in that
position before, But now I've learned to just be like,
that mess will still be there, the kids can play
some games, and I'm going to sleep.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yeah, yeah, And there are all sorts of things you've
just decided to care less about.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
I mean home decor. Yeah, I mean definitely.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
If you come to our house, you will know that
home decor does not take up much of our time.
We don't replace things unless they are like not usable.
Like we did have a couch a futon that had
a few too many children jump on it and at
some point it basically was like not sitable on but
like even then, we actually haven't even replaced it yet.
We're like, eh, do we need to sit in that area?
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Eventually we will, but it will.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Batch it with a bunch of others and just like
rebuy the same like Ikia stuff. It's just like we
keep it very easy because we don't have strong values
about that. And would you know again, you're always making
choices and we just are choosing other stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, you don't want to put the effort into it,
which is good.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
So the more things you can care less about, the
light and lighter your mental load will be. And I
think sort of as a wrap up to this concept,
you also want to pay attention to when there is
less to think about, because I think we can come
up with the story that you know, I've got all
these details all the time ahead of spending all the time,
I get no time to relax whatever. And some weeks
(27:01):
may have a seemingly overwhelming number of details, but others
might have less. I know, I was well aware last summer,
like I always make a weekly schedule on Fridays for
the upcoming week, and some of them during the week
are these like multi page documents by the time we're
figuring out where everyone is going and the rides and
all that. But then summer it would be like, well,
we only have three kids at home and these two
(27:21):
are in camp, and that's all it is. Like they
go to camp in the morning, they come home in
the afternoon, camp in the morning, the next day, home
in the afternoon. Like I don't even have to print
this up, I don't have to send it around, Like
we can all keep that in our heads basically, you know,
And so just appreciate when that is happening that the
seasons are very different, definitely.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Like being aware when there are it's never going to
be like a completely clear calendar, but when you have
weeks without anomalies and conflicts and that kind of stuff,
it can make sense to notice it and be like,
all right, we're sailing in calmer waters right now, and
I do love summers for that.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
I mean, I don't love summers, but I love that
about summers, or.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Just taking a chill vacation right where you're not managing
a ton of mental load for that either.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I do not manage a lot of mental load on vacation,
and I prefer it that way.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah. Yeah, So there's different kinds of vacations. They're the
one where you go somewhere and just chill. There's others
where you're trying to see all of a country in
a week, which you know there's going to be more
mental load with that.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
But maybe in a life you kind of have both,
all right.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
So moving on to our question, this listener writes in, Hi,
Laura and Sarah, I love kids.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I also love my income.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Based on what you've seen, what are the best six
figure jobs for parents who want the flexibility to attend
kids school events? And so we don't really know whatever
life stage this particular listener may be in if they
have kids, if they don't have kids, But we were
sort of approaching this question from the perspective of if
you are younger and you're kind of planning out your life,
(28:54):
so not forty five and needing to switch careers. What
sorts of jobs might you be looking into if you
were interested in trying to earn a lot and also
having a reasonable amount of flexibility. And I think we
both realized this is a trickier question then, and trick.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Your question, And please don't be mad at us for
the question itself, because I think there were people that
were like, how could anyone like ask something like that
and it's not so entitled or something like that, and.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Like, well, we posted on our Patreon community, we posted
this question to get other people's feedback, like I don't know,
maybe there's some magical job where you earn a lot
of money and have complete flexibility and we just don't
know about it.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
So we wanted a better answer to crowdstarce that.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
But yeah, some people are like, well, you shouldn't be
looking for flexibility and optimizing that early in your career,
Like if you are twenty four years old, just out
of school, you don't have anyone depending on you for
care then you might be better off emphasizing where can
I learn a lot of skills?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Where can I grow my network.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
How can I move quickly up and get more seniority,
Because when you build that career capital, then you can
trade that in later for flexibility when you do have
people depending on you, and it might be more needed.
But you know, I think people have different opinions on that.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, what am I good at? What do I enjoy?
Speaker 2 (30:17):
What?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
At the end of the day, can I be successful
at cultivating that career capital.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I think that's the best question to ask.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
I mean, I think in many fields there's some flexibility available.
It might come in different forms. You can do more
shift like work, but that still isn't going to necessarily
give you, like in the moment flexibility. Like if you're
an er doctor and you decide to work sixty percent times,
you're going to be super flexible sometimes, but you're still
going to be totally inflexible on other times. And actually,
(30:43):
I was doing some reflection when we were talking about
this question, and I don't feel very flexible, even in
my quote flexible job. Like I somehow had this vision
that when I was working more entrepreneurially and for myself
and podcasting doing all the stuff, that I'd have this
very freely flowing calendar, and I would just get my
task done. And yet it seems like especially maybe yes
(31:06):
I have freedom like six months out, but that's true
my clinical job too. I can move days or take
time off, but if you look like a week or
two ahead, I can't just imprompt you throw some all
day school field trip on there. Like I got interview schedule,
I got this duet, I got beslie plans live Like,
the more you do something, and probably the more successful
you are at it, the more your calendar is going
(31:26):
to be crowded with like obligations related to it, probably
no matter what that thing is.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Think about Taylor Swift, she's busy. I mean she calls
the shots.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
But yes, once she's decided to do something, she's not
going to just randomly not do the Miami concert because
you know, it was a nice day.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
She felt like doing other things exactly.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
So I think flexibility is really complicated.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Well, it's so because what do we mean?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Do we mean that if you found out two days
from now that your kid was having a party a
special person's tea at their school at eleven am, would
you be able to go? And I think some jobs
the answer is absolutely not. You wouldn't be able to
some jobs you probably would, but maybe not. I mean
there's a few jobs we're totally sure whatever, But once
(32:13):
you have kind of anything on the schedule, it becomes
a little bit more complicated with stuff like that. I mean,
I think of what I do as being very flexible,
and it is on some level. But if I agreed
to fly to Florida to give a speech, I'm not
going to not do that just because there was an
(32:33):
event at the school, because that's something I've committed to doing. Yeah,
or even I mean, like you were talking about, you know,
things like medicine. I mean, medicine is a high plaid
profession and that you can have some flexibility. There's a
lot of people who do work part time in it,
but part time is not the same as flexibility, right
because part time, you know, if you always are seeing
(32:54):
patients on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you can't suddenly decide two
days before to not work Wednesday. I mean it would
need to be a like you're deathly ill for you
to cancel all those patients.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
So yeah, it's a tricky question.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
But I mean I don't think there's anything wrong with
like hoping to have a high paid job. I mean, certainly,
maybe the way to go about this is to aim
for a high paid job and then be really good
at it and turn that into flexibility. And we've seen,
we've talked to people who've done that. I mean, we
know our previous guests you've talked about this. Sarah Laura
May Martin.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
She is a Google executive who also is an author
and has a lot of passionate feelings about various time
management things. But when we interviewed her for this show,
was really remarkable to hear how she had really crafted
her day. And I think it was her level of
seniority and her kind of like specialist niche that she
had carved for herself within the company that allowed her
to call a lot of the shots, and she like
(33:48):
had lunch with her kids every day, and you know,
all these things that she seemed to want. So it's
sort of generic, but it's like, be really really good
at what you do so that you can then leverage
that for the things that you want specifics in your career.
And you know there's going to be careers where that's
less likely to happen. I mean, like I don't know,
like even just thinking about like a CT surgeon that's
(34:11):
at the top of his game is still probably going
to be doing surgeries most days, so he's not going
to be able to have lunch with the kids, or
she's not going to be able to have lunch with
the kids, most likely if you're doing a surgery that's
super long.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
So there are probably careers that are more likely to
have that kind of thing than others.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, but an interesting question if people have feelings about that.
Let us know what you would recommend. If somebody was
looking to earn a lot of money and have some flexibility,
what would you tell them to go into and just
be like the graduate plastics, go into plastics, that's what
you need.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Except don't because the same thing I think they.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Don't go there plastics summer er.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
I don't know, all right, So Sarah, love of the Week,
I will go with mine new nice notebooks. I like
spiral bound. I like the cover to be hard, I
like them to be narrow ruled. I have all these specifications,
but the problem is once I buy them, I often
don't want to write in them. Like they look so
nice and neat and perfect. I don't want to sully
(35:13):
them with my half baked thoughts, although one way I've
gotten around this is just by enough of them that
I feel such a sense of abundance that I can
leave a few untouched and write in some. And you know,
at this point, I would say that my supply of
little notebooks for capturing my great thoughts exceeds my supply
(35:34):
of actual great thoughts.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
So that's probably a good place to be in. But
I do like my notebooks. Yes, you should not be
afraid to use them, use them with glee, Glee, VIM
and vigor exactly. Yes.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
My love of the week is ordering concert merch online. Okay,
so second tailor, so with reference of the show. But
I did just recently go and it was amazing and
I did not wait in the like three hour long
merch line, and it was great and I was able
to get everything I wanted anyway and it already came.
And just like I think, if you're at a concert
and you see a very very long line, check out
(36:09):
whether you could just get the same things shipped to
your house with much less effort in waiting.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yeah, I think in general waiting in line and think
how bad that would be to miss part of the
actual concert because you are waiting in the merch line.
I don't know, I just feel like that would be
totally backward of how the experience should go, because you know,
totally I mean, I realized it's a way to remember
the experience, but you want to have the actual experience
itself in order to remember it.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
You know, just a little thing.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds.
We have been talking about how to lighten your mental load.
Lots of different strategies we can use to make life
feel a little bit more calm. We will be back
next week with more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com
or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram, and you.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join
us next time for more on making work and life
work together.
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