In today’s episode, I start off by sharing some answers to listener questions.
TOPICS:
1- Planning adjacent question around protein intake, as a listener wanted to know which planning tactics help for meeting nutritional goals.
2- Options for managing on-the-fly screenshots. (Assuming you’ll just randomly come across them in your camera feed – DANGER ZONE for airtight task management!)
3- A listener with a toddler asks for advice for this challenging era and I do the best I can (but also mostly just agreeing it’s REALLY HARD!)
Then, I shift gears and talk about the idea of seasonality or periodicity – the idea that we can’t push hard all the time but instead need different levels of effort + rest within a day, week, month, season, and even year.
NOTES:
Course info is here! Registration is OPEN for Planning 2027 / Planning 2027 CME Edition, and Planning By Season (yearlong course meeting monthly throughout 2027) will be available for signup on 11/2 first via the newsletter.

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14 Comments
Re: screenshot management. I clean out all my photos from the previous months around the 1st of the month. This allows me to either delete screenshots that are no longer relevant, move something to my calendar if its an event, and/or put whatever it is or the screenshot itself into my OneNote which I use as my second brain.
ooh love this – it’s a ritual that supports an easy photo capture! I guess you just would need to ensure nothing was time sensitive (ie everything can sit there for up to 30 days!)
We really enjoy our daily routine with screenshots/ all of our photos. Every day we put in the photo app search, the same date we’re on, and the photo app brings up everything that happened on that date for all past years. It’s fun, nostalgic and bonding, as sometimes I’ll text photos to family and friends, who are always happy to get them and share memories. And, we’ll also delete unneeded screenshots or duplicate/unnecessary photos. (I also enjoy a daily review with my one line a day diary, write a daily entry, then go back and read everything that happened on that date back to 2010.)
WOW daily! This is really cool. Maybe I should try this (not for screenshots, but for photo review . . . SO many years, I wonder how long each review would take!)
Re: sceenshots: I have a similar process, but it’s party of my “weekly review.” Screenshots get turned into to dos or calendar events (and are then deleted), and I also use that time to move photos into albums and delete anything else I no longer want. If there is a screenshot that needs more immediate action, I’ll email the photo to myself in the moment.
I think I will have to have a screenshot follow up segment- this is great!! Thank you Hilary!
For the toddler mom – I echo Sarah. Just wait – it gets so much better. I did not enjoy the toddler phase. It is really hard, both mentally and physically. My kids are 5 and 8 and I love this stage and feel like it will only get better as they grow and mature. My advice is to take lots of videos of little moments. I took lots of videos when my boys were babies and toddlers and now they are so fun to watch, especially with the kids. We get such a kick out of their developing vocabulary and their little voices. To be clear, when we watch videos of them as toddlers, I feel nothing but relief that that stage is behind me, but it’s very fun for my remembering self to watch those videos. I want to go back in time and tell myself – this is hard, but there’s so much fun ahead for you!
YES! Love this Lisa!! I’m going to forward this to her in case she doesn’t see it 🙂
I haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but wanted to share something new I am trying with protein. I track what I eat in a google spreadsheet, sometimes copying and pasting a recipe. Then ask Chat GPT to calculate. I hate tracking things, in part because of how cumbersome it can be to find the exact thing you ate. This way lets AI do that work. I am sure it’s not exact, but it’s a good idea to see how I am doing.
I am sure it’s good at estimating! I like the photo feature in calAI a lot for when I don’t have barcodes to scan or easy ingredients to enter. It’s always imperfect I am sure but it’s also a reasonable estimate!
I may have to check that out. I’ve thought about taking photos but don’t pay for chat so don’t want to waste usage!
I came across this today on a website for a gym that a colleague owns was fascinated by the idea: https://www.alphasgym.com/chatgpt. I haven’t explored too much yet.
I loved your little discussion on periodicity, definitely listening at a time when I am in an intense work phase, and feeling pretty exhausted, so good reminder to build in some extra rest when things are a little calmer the next few weeks, rather than just go back to a normal but full workload. I think its easy to do extra work when its really busy, but not automatically then do a bit less work when its quiet. But that recovery time is so important! Hope call week is treating you well (and you’re treating yourself well during this time too!).
I treat screenshots as just another inbox to manage during my weekly review.
I’m going to to push back on the “it gets better” narrative. That may be true with some (or many) kids. That’s not true to every kid. I personally would take any part of infant to age 5 over ages 6-10 with my neurodivergent child. I’d say every stage with every kid is different with it’s own joys and challenges. That same kid is an absolute JOY as a middle/high schooler. I worry we set up some parents to feel like they “failed” when it does not, indeed, get easier (and in fact gets harder).
Hmm – interesting! I had the gut feeling she NEEDED to hear that bc she’s being inundated with “awww, savor it!” tropes. And for so many of us, it’s just not the peak of parenting whatsoever. But I do see what you are saying!