How often do you go back and look at your goals lists?
I try look at my weekly list at least daily, my monthly list at least weekly, and my quarterly list at least monthly. WHEW! I am also contemplating printing a version of my 20 for 2020 so I see it fairly often.
I am also finding it is much easier to do certain goals when they are tagged to a specific time frame. Which is why I just added “shop for bras etc” to January 23 (my next day off from work).
I’m actually quite pleased with the progress so far, given that half the month is still left! C’s bday party planning has started too but I haven’t heard back from our chosen place yet so I don’t want to check off the item until we are booked & set. I may be able to check off my 3rd “WORK” goal today. And while I did not work on Jan 9 on book proposal stuff, I did do two sessions of drafting over the weekend to make up for it.
I have also read 2.5 books (report to come at end of month) and am doing a daily meditation challenge on the app I’m using. I do need to get cracking on one of my non-fiction picks, as those always seem to take longer!
PS: No niece yet! BUT ANY DAY!!!!
On an unrelated note:
Laura and I are planning upcoming BOBW episodes! Many of you have been amazing idea sources in the past. If you have an idea for a) a topic you’d like covered or b) a guest, please let me know!
Several episodes/topics in the works include some more financial-focused content, a childcare redux, and a life hacks episode (with ideas from listeners/readers). I think we need some more work-focused content too, and I’d love a fashion-focused guest! Send ideas & suggestions via the comments, or you can email me if that’s preferable.
39 Comments
A working mom of 2, one with special needs, including tons of therapy. It makes fitting in working hard around all the doctor and therapy appointments. I would love to have an episode detailing how to handle that.
Yes, what she said! Throw in multiple IEP meetings annually and visits with medical specialists (who never have clinic on the same day!)…
This! I love how you get 2 seconds notice to get yourself to an IEP meeting. But when I send an email to schedule triennial testing…crickets!
THIS. I’ve already cut back to 3 days/wk, and I still can’t fit it all in. Its also a matter of trying to squeeze these appointments around school as much as possible, so my already-behind-grade level kid doesn’t fall further back.
Two parents with lots of travel. We’ve got a pretty good system down for scheduling and juggling while one or the other is away, but I’d particularly like to hear strategies for helping the kids deal with it. The constant trying to transition one parent in and out of family life is disruptive to them and causes some behavior problems!
Alison from Get Your Pretty On could be a good guest for the fashion episode. She does a seasonal workwear capsule that’s great for working women.
Audrey from Putting Me Together would be another good choice, she also does a good capsule for working women and is a mom of two.
Emily from Cupcakes and Cashmere would be good for a fashion podcast. She’s a working mom who runs her own business and looks really good while doing it.
I would love to hear a guest episode maybe with a professional nanny or night nurse or daycare owner. Get the other side on what parents can do to help their care givers.
Ooh, I like this idea. A lot of the guests on BOBW have hired help, so it would be really interesting to hear from that perspective.
I LOVE this idea.
Sarah can you explain your planning PROCESS a little more? I look at Quintile 1/Month 1 – are those your Quintile 1 goals rewritten, or just Month 1 goals? And can you talk about how you check-in on the various lists you have? A blog post of podcast episode would be great…
If you want more financial ideas, Liz from frugalwoods.com would be great. She and her husband “retired” in their early 30s and now work from their homestead in Vermont. She has been on several finance and parenting podcasts. She could bring a different perspective to BOBW. Her story is really interesting.
As Heather mentioned above, I’d love a discussion regarding transitions. My husband travels for work 30-40% of the time, and I find the transitions tough on all of us. He generally away for about a week at a time, often internationally, and roles shift when he gets home/leaves and even though the kids don’t articulate it, I know it’s tough for them. I find things go more smoothly when he returns on a work/school day and can just ease back in to the routine. Returning on weekends is tough. He’s often jet-lagged, the kids are home and bored, and I’m exhausted and want hubby to pick up slack, when he wants to sleep and decompress. I know what you/Laura would say – HIRE help! I will say that is more of a challenge where I live (in rural Canada), but I need to make an effort to do this more frequently.
I’d also love an episode on time hacks and a discussion re morning and evening routines. What do you have in place to streamline mornings? How do you get up early without waking your spouse or children? I have to walk by my kiddos’ room to get to the kitchen or office and they are such light sleepers in the 6:00ish AM timeframe (even with white noise on). I am NOT a morning person, but feel like I really need to start getting up way earlier to fit in pleasure reading, getting dressed before the kids are pounding on the door etc.
I am co-owner of a small business AND have a side-hustle at a local university, but work from home the majority of the time. Because of location/finances, we don’t have too much extra help. While I know you and Laura are HUGE proponents of hiring help, I’d love to hear from a guest on how to make things work with limited extra babysitting and no go-to nanny?
I think it would be super helpful to find a guest who could speak to balancing work and family in the case of a more moderate income family that perhaps cannot afford au pairs, nannies, etc all the time. In many cases just paying for basic daycare is a huge financial burden and can’t always be expanded. So in those cases, the daily grind of commuting, working, kids’ activities, cooking meals, buying groceries, doing homework, etc plus trying to find time to read, exercise, spend time with your spouse is SO much harder if you are not able to for example hire someone to cook your meals or drive your kids around. So maybe finding someone that is living on a tighter budget but yet facing these same challenges could be really interesting and a different perspective!
YES. Would love to hear from someone who has to find more creative ways to balance work/family and can’t just outsource everything.
This is the boat I’m in. I am the interim rector of a church and also teach group exercise classes and serve as a chaplain in the reserves, but we only have 15 hours of preschool per week for our two-year-old (Our seven-year-old is in school). My husband works full time. I asked that the church position be 25 hours/week rather than full time, and the church agreed. I personally did not want to outsource some things even if I could. We make less money, but we also spend less money because we can do more ourselves (cooking, cleaning, etc.) since I’m home more. Our lives are full, and we do live and die by our Google Calendar, but we get creative, especially those four weeks I am away on reserve duty each year. We don’t have family nearby, so we are always looking far out into the future and anticipating what might come up.
Yes to this. Examples from people with demanding dual careers that include travel but pay in the mid 5 figure range and have no local family for help would be great.
Yes totally agree. I really really enjoy your podcast overall but sometimes Laura’s advice is “just hire more childcare” and that’s not at all possible for some of us.
Yes! This is my vote. Our full time childcare is more expensive than our mortgage and I sometimes cringe when the main suggestion is to pay for more. Love the podcast!
My vote too. The main thing I find alienating about the podcast in the focus on just hiring more help to solve the problem. Not really realistic for the majority of ppl- even dual income families
I might suggest an episode regarding strategies for dealing with difficult people in your life (to the extent you feel comfortable doing so). Difficult people create all sorts of work/life challenges. Also, I prefer the episodes with just you and Laura! The guests are good but the reason I listen is for you two. Thanks!
I would love to hear an episode about dealing with aging parents and finding longterm eldercare. How do you balance the needs of an ill or aging parent with the rest of life and work, especially when you still have young children? I had children later in life and I know that at some point before my kids are grown we will probably have to care for my parents as well, so I would love to have tips and practical suggestions for that phase of life.
Yes! Total sandwich generation here. I have a parent struggling to be independent after the death of my other parent about a year ago (the deceased parent having been the one to handle all finances and insurance). And my spouse has a parent with a serious illness who is fighting assisted living even though it would probably extend life expectancy. Great topic.
YES!!! Also about having difficult conversations with your parents around their end-of-life wishes, their estate planning, etc.
Fashion guest suggestions: Audrey from Putting Me Together & LeAnn from Classy Yet Trendy blog.
Parenting-wise, I’d love a tween-focused episode – how/when do you start giving more freedom? How much freedom? How can you foster independence while ensuring safety? How do you make sure your kids are getting the life skills they need? Work-wise, I’d love some insight into time blocking and practical tips on how to manage professional to do lists in a fast paced environment…pings, e-mails, constant ‘Do you have a minute?’ conversations are a constant challenge and I need some news systems!
Love the work you two are doing; it’s a bright spot on my Tuesday commute every week!
If you are open to a guest who is not a mom, but does lots of great fashion posts for working moms Angie from YouLookFab.com is wonderful.
Hi. Carolyn Creswell is the CEO of Carmen Foods and provides some great podcast interviews in Australia on balancing work and family. Annabel Crabb is an Australia journalist who has written on the work life balance “wife drought”.
Can you post about different possible things that you can use a planner to track? Besides meals, workouts etc.
On the goals…. yes, i recommend printing out your 20 in 2020 and keeping a copy wherever you can. I have one in my goals folder, one in my diary (planner) and one in my bullet journal. I also take a picture of it and “favourite” it so I can find it quickly in my phone if I need to check something and am too lazy to walk upstairs to my study.
I look at goals thoroughly on the last day of the month. I creatively call it Goals Night 🙂 and then i look at those monthly goals weekly too.
I would love to hear an episode on building confidence in the workplace, advocating for yourself and dealing with impostor syndrome. I think you have definitely touched on this before, and would love to hear from you and Laura and possibly a a guest on the topic!
agreed! imposter syndrome is real, even for very successful women
I would love a post about confidence at work.
I think an episode on nurturing your marriage would be interesting. I listened to the last episode and was kind of flabbergasted by the fact that your guest has a weekly date night with her husband! We hired a babysitter twice last year… Eeks. Our son is almost 2 so I feel like we are in the exhausting stage of parenting where we don’t feel like going anywhere once he’s in bed, and he’s in bed pretty early (7) so that leaves us a couple of hours to spend together. We don’t have family to help out so it feels really expensive to hire a babysitter to sit on the couch while our son sleeps… She probably does 1 hour of work (we love our babysitter but it just feels like it’s not worth the cost!)
But I’m curious if the desire for date nights changes as your kids age or if this is something we need to try to be more intentional about? Granted we did not do a lot of date nights before we had our son as we were home bodies.
How about an episode (I think you maybe did one earlier) on transitioning to college and the emotional and economic consequences. (some of us are past the childcare stage :)). Or… how to be more efficient at work. This is a big time management issue for me (i.e. when I’m not efficient at work, my work spills over into life). thanks.
Would love to hear an episode about time management strategies at work – particularly for protecting time to do deep work (e.g., time blocking, email batching). I find it challenging to just shut my door because it feels standoffish but I know I need to protect my time so I can do my big projects.
I’d like to hear about managing energy levels – physically and emotionally! Even without kids, working more than 8 hours a day is really hard for me. Which seems ok because I only have to work 8 hours a day, but it would be nice to be able to work on a side project during the evening. How do you guys maintain enough energy to be able to focus?
For a fashion episode, Jen from Everyday Style (She also has a podcast called The Everyday Style School) spoke at my MOPS group and I thought it was fantastic. She focuses on capsule wardrobes and dressing for life transitions (pregnancy, postpartum, nursing, etc)
Would be fab to have an episode with the details of your current childcare / outsourcing set-ups – the details of who works what hours, the responsiblities people take, what has worked at different ages / stages. Also, not sure if you can share how much this costs but perhaps as a percentage of your income to give it some context? And, random guest idea – Leo Babuata from Zen Habits. Thanks for sharing your life and what works on the blog and podcast.