Best of Both WorldsIn today's episode, Laura and Sarah discuss their ideas for a Winter Fun list, even though they definitely have different winter climate experiences. Then, Laura introduces this year's Time Tracking Challenge! Sarah asks Laura questions about her time tracking practices, from methods to insights gained. Laura invites listeners to join her in tracking a week in January - visit her website for details (http://lauravanderkam.com)!
In the Q&A, a listener asks if it's really necessary to start thinking about summer camp now . . .
Hi.
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.
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.
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long.
Term career goals.
We want you to get the most out of life.
Welcome the best of both worlds. This is Laura.
This episode is airing in early January of twenty twenty five. We're recording in twenty twenty four, so it's a little weird to be saying that.
But welcome to the new year.
Welcome past Laura and Sarah to the new year, and welcome everybody as well. Very excited to be starting on a new year, twenty twenty five of best of both world content. So today we're going to be discussing winter fun and then also doing a deep dive into time tracking. We'll be talking a little bit more about why you might want to consider time tracking this time of year. But in the meantime, Sarah, I hear you are recording from a different location in your house.
Why is that?
Yes, So speaking of winter, you know all those winter viruses that seem to crop up and school and propagate everywhere just in time for your vacation. Well, we have some influenza in our house right now. Our family does all get flu shots. So you know, we tried. But yeah, so my husband is sick and I tried to go into my recording studio, but I could hear his coughing, and I didn't think that would make a very nice soundtrack to the episode.
I'm in Winter fun with a coughing soundtrack Winter not fun.
I mean it is sort of appropriate it as a program in Yeah, I mean Annabel's room. You can see the leg slightly purple.
Nice, I like, I like you did you guys?
Do that?
You put the purple in?
Right?
That wasn't already there?
She picked it like when we moved in.
She's already like she already wants something else. Absolutely welcome to teen tween life exactly. Yeah, we had about of the stomach bug this week in our house, which was really lovely.
You know, Winter not fun for sure. It's been a while.
I was grateful It's been a while since I've been up most of the night with a sick child, but I've experienced it again, so now I'm hoping I won't for a long time.
Because it is most definitely not fun.
But this episode is about more positive topics, like, uh, winter fun, Sarah, you live somewhere that winter actually is fun on its own. I mean, this is like the time when everyone wants to come visit you in Florida.
I know, And I feel bad when we record these episodes because I'm like, I know, the idea of winter fun was like the cozy and the hunkering down, and like, I just my experience is not aligned with that, and I'm sorry. I've experienced winters in the past. I mean, Williamstown had a real significant winter that made me move south for the rest of my life, so I get it. So but here, yeah, it's actually probably my favorite season. We have beautiful running temperatures. I don't have to live in like anticipation of thunderstorms every day. I kind of like the earlier darkness because the kids go to bed easier. I really don't love when it's like nine o'clock and still light and I have, you know, a kid under the age of eight or so, and it's like it's bedtime. Anyway, we usually go skiing, which is a fun winter highlight. And then yeah, I just feel like the way I see winter is probably how a lot of other people see summer. But the way I see summer is how a lot of people see winter.
So it's fair and you like winter. I mean, so you like winter. It's like your favorite time of year there right.
Yeah, I would say it's my I would say, yeah, it's my We're in my favorite season.
You're in your favorite season.
Awesome, Well, it is not my favorite season, not even close. And I mean it's we do get snow in this part of the world. We get definitely get all four seasons. We probably have three to four major snow falls a year that are then there for a couple days to a week. I know, we have had winters with long term snow cover. It tends not to be the whole winter we have snowcover. So a couple of years ago, February through to March there was snow on the ground every single day. So it has happened even in this modern era. But that said, it's not usual. It's more that it snows and then it melts, and then it snows again, and then it melts.
We get a lot of yuck rain. We're often in.
The high is for the day, are very frequently in the thirty two to thirty seven degree range, which is not really nature's most beautiful place to put a high for the day if it's going to precipitate. So yeah, a lot of that, but I've been trying to convince myself to enjoy it. Many years ago I wrote a post for Fast Company called the Norwegian Secret to Enjoying a law Winter, which was based on some research that someone had done about people living in Trumsa and such places in Norway that they are not just chronically depressed from November to January even though they don't see the sun, they actually really get into it. And you know, maybe it's that those are the people who have selected to live there, or even genetically if they're more traditional Norwegian folk who have just never left, but it's that, you know, they come up with ways to enjoy it, like as humans, where social creatures, we come up with ways to have community celebrations in the winter. I mean, the whole idea of Christmas, of course, is in the darkest part of the year, right after the solstice, you have this festival of light, and you can do other things to stretch that out for the two months where you don't see the sun, and you can do a lot of outdoor things like skiing and sledding and snowshoeing, and they get into that. So I don't know, I've been trying to It's work in progress.
Yeah, well, you always have a winter fun list. I guess that's part of your efforts of like finding bright spots and looking for things that are positives about the season.
Perhaps, Yeah, I mean it's sort of.
I mean, so I think the winter fun list is more like it is seasonal specific. But then some of them are things that are getting me out of the cold, so you have to kind of realize that it's also just fun things that I'm planning to do in winter. So I'd be curious, Sarah, you're making a winter fun list list this year?
What's on yours?
Well, I only made it because you told me too for this episode.
Fine, but I like it.
You can still share it, I know, I definitely will. No, I mean, I do seasonal planning, you know that, Like I do my seasonal goal setting. I don't always think about as much about like the weather and like that type of season, but I kind of I liked it, so I mean, this will probably make be my inspiration when I do sit down and do my like Q one planning. But then I also thought about, like the end of December also counts this winter, even though this episode does air Anyuary. So my winter fun list has things that kind of remind me that it is winter because sometimes I kind of feel like I want that reminder. And then also that take advantage of our nicer weather. So I have on there my neighborhood hang which I mentioned in my yearly episode, so I want to do that during the winter. I want to ski. I want to ski every winter, so this is just going to be a perennial winter fun list item. Unfortunately, living in Florida, it's not like I can like go a few times or a few weekends or something, but.
At least come up here.
Yes, I could do like two trips if I was really ambitious, but yeah, right now, we're just gonna aim for one and then you know, ski a few days on said trip. I would like to make some fun hot chocolate, So that's an item, like, do we need hot chocolate when it's high of seventy two? Probably not, but I want to remember that it's winter, so let's make some like really dark, delicious, French style hot chocolate. I'm copying you that I think I might like to go to a Dolphins game because Josh has put that on our family's list for a while and we just haven't made it happen. I don't know if every family member is going to be as excited about it, but you know, maybe a subset of us could go. I looked ahead to the media coming out in this season, and I'm very much looking forward to watching White Lotus, so that'll be a fun, cozy activity to do. Comes out in February. I would like to make some good soups or stews, which also aligns with like having better lunches for work, so this is great also fits in seasonally. And then two more, I want to resurrect the book club this season because I feel like everyone will just have the January energy and to be completely transparent, like it's already scheduled so I know I'll be able to check this off. And then finally, I think it would be really fun to do a massage with some kind of heat element, so yeah, hot stones, tubs. I've moved away from the idea that I can fit or afford like responsibly monthly massages, but like seasonally I could do well.
If you're buying all those super shoes, right, I mean, it's you would have to give it to the super choice.
In order to have the massage every month.
Yeah, have to give up something to have something. So I think seasonal is a happy medium.
Seasonal is a happy meeting. Excellent.
Let's see on mine, We're gonna go hopefully outdoor ice skating again.
We actually did this in December.
I took three of the kids to the rink that is downtown, that is on the Delaware waterfront.
And I actually really like this.
I mean, provided it as the weather is cooperating, Like I would not want to be doing this if it were freezing rain and thirty two to seven thirty seven degrees.
As sometimes happens.
But we went on a day where it was about thirty three degrees and sunny, which was absolutely perfect because I mean, obviously if it gets up to like forty five then the ice is terrible and it's no fun at all. But if it's right around freezing, then the ice is frozen, but you are also not freezing because it's not terribly overwhelmingly cold, so that's really perfect.
It was sunny. It was great.
We watched the sun sort of set as we were ice skating. I really enjoyed that. So hopefully we will go back and have that as a seasonal fun. We are likely going to go ski as a family, not me because I don't ski, but I will tag along this time and provide some Henry's support. He's gone with Michael on a trip the past few years, and I know that's been kind of challenging because Michael likes to ski as well, so he's managing either having him like right next to him or else. He's in the ski daycare. So if I'm there, I can kind of supervise him on the bunny slope and we can put him in for a half day or something like that.
I was gonna say he is ski school age, like that's true.
He will be Yeah, he's gonna be five, so that'll work. That's true. Okay, never mind, Well I'll just sit in the lodge and enjoy my I don't know. Non dairy hot chocolate have to be something else. I don't know what.
I'll be enjoying coffee, just coffee all day long, but maybe I'll go tubing or something on the same mountain.
That would be fun. I've hoped to go to.
Longwood Gardens again because they have elected to keep up their Christmas decorations until January twelfth. I think this is an excellent idea and everyone should consider doing this. I mean, if you've bothered to put your decorations up as a institution somewhere people can be festive into mid January, and I think they wanted an extra weekend of visitors and revenue from it. So that was great and that means we'll go again. I'm going to a Sixers game, so basketball is a winter sport.
My husband and I have tickets to that for some night.
I set a goal, as people know from the Goal episode, to go to three professional sports events in Philadelphia in the course of the year, so this will cross off the Sixers. If the Eagles make the playoffs and the games are here, we might consider trying to get tickets for that, and then we would have knocked two of the three off. In the first month, so that's exciting, but that, of course is hard to predict exactly what those games will be, or what the tickets will cost or anything like that.
So that's a maybe.
I am traveling to Boston to see Beethoven's eighth and ninth. This is not a winter specific thing, except that the Boston Symphony Orchestra is doing a series of Beethoven performances of all his symphonies over the course of January, so you know it's happening in winter. It's not winter specific fun. There's a few parties, including two of my children's birthday parties. I'll see Sarah in early March. You're right, that is still winter.
Winter's over, but it's not.
And then yeah, I'm.
Tagging along to one of my husband's conferences which is also in mid March, which really technically is still winter here.
So you know, lots of good stuff.
So we're going to take a quick ad break and we'll be back with a tiny bit more on winter fun before getting into the meat of time tracking. Well, we are back first talking winter fun and then moving on to time tracking. So one thing I keep putting on my list but doesn't happen due to the life of constant snowcover sleigh riding.
Now, Sarah, you have gone sleigh riding even though you are the Florida resident among us, so discuss this.
Well, it was in Montana, not in Florida. I'd be like, on sand yeah, And actually they even said so we went in late March of twenty twenty four, and they were like, you guys are lucky because it's like about to not have enough snow to even do this in Montana because it was approaching April and spring does come and start to melt. You need like a solid amount of snow because there's like horses and yeah, you can't be having them dragon along dirt. But it was amazing. We did it for this like dinner, like if you shook the sleigh ride to the dinner. It was an absolute splurge and to the point where my kids are like, are we doing that again? And I'm like, no, it's not like in every trip to kind of situation. But I think someday we'll do it again, because they loved it and they still talk about it. So I do recommend you could probably find something in conjunction with a ski trip, although maybe not in the Poconos.
Yeah, and that in the Pocono I well, if we travel somewhere else though, just ski, then we could you know, do definitely presumably be a place we're choosing with more consistent snow cover.
Yeah, the problem is here, So there's I found.
A company that did it, like when I was first looking into this, but you have to call like when there's snow. It's like because they only open up then if there is you know, six inches of snow. So the idea, like you would have to have the space to do it, Like, it's just so many things don't work with like my family situation and schedule to just magically be able to fit in a sleigh ride should it happen to snow. So that's not happened yet, but yeah, maybe on a ski trip we will figure that out. Another thing with winter fun is just trying to figure out how to keep the festivities going. Like I mentioned the Longwood Gardens thing. You can certainly keep your own white lights up as long as you might wish. Obviously Santa decorations and red and green and colored lights might start to feel a little bit dated by mid January, but there's nothing inherently Christmasy about little white lights. I mean, we have these cafe lights up outside year round, so you could certainly keep some white lights up until February March. I don't know till the sun is up more frequently. Yeah, and I'm going to be wearing a lot of winter white, how about you, Sarah.
You know I don't have a lot of winter white, but now that you've said that, it's like a that's a new goal. I love. I love the idea of winter white, especially like pants. That's just so elegant, very elegant. Yeah.
I have a white coat which I'm now looking at and thinking maybe I should take this white coat to the cleaners, because that is, of course the downside of the white coat. But it is fun to wear a white coat, so as long as it stays white, which is easier said than done some years. So another thing that is coming in January, which may be fun for some people, is my annual time tracking challenge. So longtime listeners know I've done this the past few years. Some years we've had thousands of people tracking along and during a week in January. This year, we are doing the week of January thirteenth through twentieth, So Monday, January thirteenth through the twentieth, we'll have lots of people doing it together. You know, you can sign up for that on my website. So, Sarah, have you ever done the time tracking challenge in January before?
I've definitely done time tracking, like while we've been doing it, like with the Patreon or like aligned with you, and somehow I don't know if I like, I feel like I signed up for the emails. I don't know if I did it exactly when I was supposed to do it. But I have like completed the challenge of tracking all of my time for seven days, and I actually like to do it about every season. So I love this exercise and I love that you lead it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I first tracked my time for a week in like two thousand and nine. I was writing one hundred and sixteen hours, so obviously I needed to track my time if I was having other people doing it too. But I started tracking my time continuously in April of twenty fifteen, which means that we are coming up on the ten year anniversary of that, which is kind of a long time to have done that with no real interruptions. That's the longest streak I've ever had. Well, I mean, I'll probably brush my teeth daily since twenty fifteen too, but streaks of that sort of nature.
You know, it's a that's a lot of data.
It is a lot of data, Oh my goodness.
Well it's not easily organized though, because at some point I gave up the idea of doing like the mutually exclusive, comprehensively exhaustive categories or putting it in to excel in a form where I was like actually tracking you know, what cells say, sleep, what sells they work, what sell say you know, so I would have to go in and do that now, like make it more coding friendly or something.
But you know, it's more about memory keeping at this point. I'm not sitting there.
When I track my time and post it publicly January thirteen through twenty, I will add up how much I sleep and how much I work and how much I do different things. But I don't tend to do that every week now. It's more just as a record of life, making sure things are looking more or less as I want them to do it. But I think everyone should try this at least once in their life. I mean, you know, your time very well, Sarah, and I think you still found it somewhat useful totally.
It's not even just like the data, it's like the act of doing it makes your aware of what you're doing when you're doing it, Like it can elucidate little things even with habits, like why certain things are a struggle. I don't know. I always learn something new, and I really do feel like I benefit from doing it every few months because as the seasons of life change, as our schedules change, it just feels kind of right to take stock again and figure out what's working and what's not. But yeah, learn little things every time.
Yeah, little things.
I mean just like, oh, yeah, this is what my mornings look like now, or oh it's possible that I could do this in the evenings now. I couldn't before, but you know, my life looks different now. Or you know, I used to think that Saturdays were just a lost day with kid activities, but maybe then your kids are older and they're getting themselves to things, and it opens up time again. Life changes and our time changes and should change and how we approach it. But you know, just to let make sure people know it's not about any sort of like gotcha thing. Like, you know, people are sometimes like, well, I don't really want to do it, because you know, I'm just gonna be like forced to confront how much Netflix I'm watching or forced to see that I'm on Instagram for two hours a day, and I'm like, if it brings you joy to be on Instagram two hours a day, I am one hundred percent in favor of that. Maybe it doesn't bring you joy, in which case it might be good to know, right, And then you can say, oh, well, you know, maybe there's some other website that's less, doesn't make me feel bad but would still be pretty eye candy. So let me go find this website that would be pretty eye candy but wouldn't make me feel terrible about my life in the course of looking at it. So it's always about looking for solutions and instead of just judging yourself or feeling some sort of shame about where your time goes, because everybody wastes time like I waste tons of time. I may try to waste less time during the week of January thirteen to twenty because I am posting it, but trust me, there is plenty of scrolling puttering around the house starting something and getting distracted, coming back to it, not remembering what I was doing, getting distracted again, and so on, hours disappearing.
Maybe you should make a concerted effort not to waste less time.
Not to wasteless so people can see it in all its glory. Yeah, yeah, but it's not that hard. So what you'll do is you'll download a spreadsheet from my website if you wish. You can also use a notebook, or you could use a time tracking app, whatever would be.
I mean, you've used do you use a spreadsheet when you do it? Sarah? What have you usually done?
I just use a notebook and I just I either just write everything like Hopunichi has a little timeline or my favorite notebook to use is Nostology because it has all twenty four hours in a column along the left, so it's very easy to just write, like what you're doing. But I I feel like most people probably prefer digital.
Is that right? Well?
I use the spreadsheet online and I'm not a very digital person, but that's just how I started doing it. I like to see what the week looks like all in one picture, true, which if you're tracking on a notebook, sometimes it's harder to get that all in one grid, and because you could also sort of see like the space in the morning before you wake up the space and you kind of get a sense of where it is. I love the first time I did this on a spreadsheet that is Monday through Sunday, and I saw that Thursday was the middle of the week, and it's like, you know, that insight in and of itself was just eye opening that if my timelog starts Monday at five am and goes to the next Monday at four thirty am, the middle of the week is five pm Thursday. Oh. I know.
Every single time I'm on call and I look at my watch and it's like the end of day Thursday.
I like curse you a little.
Bit because they're like, sorry, Sarah, you are only halfway through. Oh my god.
Not I'm only halfway through this.
Oh my god. I know it.
I can't pretend like other people can, like, oh well, Thursday is like the end of the week.
To be fair, the weekend's easier, so it's a little bit downhill from there. But no, I think of you every single time. I can't help it. I'm gonna vow right now that I'm going to try this digitally this year, Like, I may write it down, but I want to see it all laid out in a grid, like yeah, I want to see what it looks like well.
And obviously if you are trying to add up categories, it's a lot harder to do that if it's written down in a notebook. You know, if you have it on regular Excel, you could just total up the number of cells that said something like sleep, and that would be a fairly simple thing to do. Or even if you're just adding it up by visually looking at it, it's easier when it's all in one grid and you can see it like that, but no requirement to add things up.
It's just if you want to.
I don't do anything fancy art wise with it. We've had some people put in photos if they want to use it as a memory keeping kind of thing, or do some expanded thing where they put like just you know, visited with cousin in the cell itself, but then put some way that you can link that to a longer entry where they talk more about, you know, what they did with their cousin.
And that would be a fun way to do this too.
If you are focused more on the memory keeping aspect of it.
Totally pasting pictures looks cool too, Yeah, imagine. Well let's take a quick break and then I'm interested in what you tend to find people discover.
All right, let's do it.
All right, we are back. You have looked at many, many time logs over the years, so I'm curious what do you tend What are like.
The most common findings, Well, one very common one from a past. Especially people who listen to this podcast might be interested to hear. A lot of women who have big jobs have been telling themselves the story or have heard the story from various people over the years, that they are just not spending enough time with their kids, right like, oh, you know, I'm working all the time.
I don't see my kids all that much. It's really too bad. I do what I can.
I've had people track their time and say, well, I used to feel guilt. I don't feel guilt anymore. We are talking people in very, very demanding jobs still spending thirty forty hours a week with their children. Because it turns out that even if you work a lot, you also don't work many of the hours of the week. There are one hundred and sixty eight hours in the week. So if you are sleeping fifty six of them and sleep and working fifty of them, you have sixty two hours that are spent on other things.
And if you have.
Small children, a lot of those hours are going to be with those small children. And you know, even if they're not so small, like you're still in the same house, like, you wind up spending a ton of time with the people who are in your household, just by virtue of proximity.
So a lot of times people.
Don't necessarily think that in their lives, but then when they track their time and they see the volume of time spent with family members, it just gives you a very different picture of what life truly looks like. You know, if people say, like, wow, you know, I know I'm a full time lawyer, I didn't know I was actually a full time parent too, but it's very possible.
That you are. Wow. Well, that's probably makes people feel good and reassuring. I like it. Yeah, anything else.
Well, one of the reasons people are around their kids so much is that they work less than they think this is. I mean, it's human nature to sort of overestimate things we may not always want to do. And I'm sure people like their jobs, but there are parts that are tedious, and so it's very easy to see our longest weeks as typical. So it's not so much that you know, people are saying, oh, I work eighty hours a week and they've like never worked an eighty hour week. What it is is that they've worked an eighty hour week like four times over the course of the year, and those four times are just like burned into their brain because they were so terrible, and so they're like, oh, that's what my life looks like, but it probably isn't. Like there are probably a lot of weeks that are way less intense. So if you choose to track an eighty hour week, that's fine. But my guess is just through the nature of the luck of the draw, January thirteen to twenty may not be that week. Like, if it only happens four times a year, it's probably not going to be that week, and so you might get a different picture of how many hours you are working. Sometimes it's because we have a picture of a typical week that involves us being at work five days a week, But there are many reasons people aren't at work five days a week. Sometimes it's holidays or paid time off. Sometimes it's that you had something personal during one of the days, or day got taken away from you for some other reason, like you're working at home and you have the flu, Yes, you have the flu, or like there's a huge leak in your basement you have to deal with there, right, I mean, these are things that happen, and you know you might make up some of the work at some point, but you may not make it up hour for hour, right, and so you wind up with fewer hours than you would have thought. The good news, people often do sleep a little bit more than they think they do. We have a tendency to again view our works nights as typical, and so if you had a really bad night, like Sunday night, you were up late because you were sleeping in late Sunday morning because you can't fall asleep Sunday night, and then you have to be up at the crack of dawn on Monday, like that is what you see as your typical night, as opposed to maybe, like Thursday, you actually crash on the couch at nine thirty and sleep till like seven thirty in the morning. Well, you're not viewing ten hour you know, no one would be like, well, yeah, yeah, I sleep ten.
Hours a night, but you did, like you did.
It happened once the six hour night, also happened once in the ten hour night, but maybe it averages out to more like seven to eight, which is where the vast majority of adults land.
This is totally in aside. But when I do this, I'm gonna then see if my phone sleep record is accurate, because I never really know. I don't find enough attention, but I think this will help me.
Well, this is an interesting thing that has come up with now that there are so many sleep trackers that people are wearables that people have, and the variance between that and recorded sleep, Like if you were tracking it on a log, if I was up in the middle of the night, I would record that. If it took me more than ten minutes to fall asleep, I would probably record that on my log too, because I would have remembered that I was lying awake in my bed for a while.
I don't know if.
Everyone does that when they're recording how much they sleep, but I think you could, and then I think they would be fairly similar. Now, obviously there's some like where we go into very light stages of sleep. I mean, would you be recording that as sort of wakefulness? I don't know how those apps are always recording them. I mean, if you're just tossing and turning, I'm not sure that I would record that as being awake.
So I don't know.
It's yeah, I don't wear my watch to bed or anything like that, and so it's just relying on my phone, and my phone just happens to be like sitting, like or if I'm reading in bed, how does my phone no phone?
Your phone? I'll think? I mean, is it tracking your pulls? So I knows?
I mean it might be, but like I don't know, we'll see, I'll let you know, all right.
So well, but people might want to do that as an experiment too, like how does it differ if you have one of those aura rings or something between that and your time track?
Or I'd love to love to hear.
I think there's also a lot of people realize that sometime it's hard to account for or categorize. We all have this sort of nebulous downtime in our lives, and the good news is that you can either acknowledge it, like oh, yes, this is downtime, Like this is time I don't have to do anything else. I could just chill if I want, Or you could say, well, I don't have to keep getting up and moving something from the kitchen counter one item at a time and then getting distracted like half hearted housework that isn't really accomplishing anything. You could repurpose this for something more fun. Say I, actually, I do have nothing on the schedule this afternoon. For a Saturday afternoon, I could trade off with my partner and go to gym for an hour, like we're not doing anything. That would be fine. So people can repurpose some of that, And.
I can imagine there's a good amount of time that's just like transitions like getting out the door and then also driving.
Yeah, well, driving definitely takes a reasonable amount of time. That was something I was surprised by when I first started doing this, because I don't commute to an office, so in my mind I can't be driving that much. But I can tell you I am, in fact driving a fair amount. Between driving all my kids around, driving myself places, it adds up.
It definitely definitely adds up.
So you'll come up with lots of different insights into your life.
You know, you can then ask.
Yourself what you like about your schedule, what you want to change, what you want to spend more time doing, what you want to spend less time doing, figuring out some strategies for switching it up we're necessary, or maybe just leaning into the things that are wonderful about your life. And there's many great outcomes from tracking your time, so I encourage everyone to do it. If you are listening to this, you should go to my website, Laura vandercam dot com. By the time this airs, there will be a big box on the front of it that says sign up for the time tracking Challenge, and you could just do that. But if for some reason you're listening to this at an entirely different time, just check my blog.
I will have posted the links several times.
If you get my newsletters, they will have been in there lots of ways you will be able to sign up. Strongly encourage people to do it because you get daily motivational emails from me.
I'm excited.
Yay, it'll be fun. It'll be fun, all right. So this week's question a timely one. Our listener writes, really do I need to start planning for summer camp. Now, what if I am exhausted from the holidays, Like, are they looking for I don't know, Sarah.
Maybe this person is looking for permission to not do it. I don't know. What do you think?
I mean, that's what I'm seeing. Well, I mean I can give you my answer, which is that it certainly depends on your area. If you will live worse somewhere that everything gets snapped up, then like kind of yeah, unless you want to just be okay with having fewer choices, because there's gonna be something open later on, but it may not be what your kids want. And I know that my kids, well they're going to that Monday through Friday sleep away camp again. That's three weeks. And one of them was like, I want this specific like you know they have different like specialties because my friends are in it, and like if you don't put me in that one, it's gonna sell out and I won't be with my friends and it won't be me fun. So you can bet. Like I was December fifth or whatever the day that it was, it was open. Okay, done, signed up, check, We're done. Like you know, it's one less thing to worry about later. A lot of the camps don't require all the payment in advance. If that's, you know, a concern, you can like spread that part out. But I kind of think that you're gonna have to do eventually, and it is easier to do when there's lots of options open versus when you're now like playing patchwork with what's actually available. And when do I want my kids? I guess with the only risk that like in case you have kids that changed their mind a lot.
Well, but even with that, if you are willing to lose a tiny bit of money, like I said, some of the camps will allow you to just put a fifty or one hundred dollars deposit down, and you know, if your kid is prone to changing their mind, you might just decide, well, you know, so I have the coverage, I'm going to put that in. I might lose my fifty dollars, but that wouldn't be the end of the world in order to have that guarantee. So that is a mindset that one can take on that I signed Henry up for a particular day camp during a week that I know we don't have other childcare coverage, and he was whining that he didn't want to do it, but he was whining about everything that morning, so I have no idea if he wants to do it or not. He probably will think something entirely different by July. So I'm like, I'm just going to put in the deposit and have it because I know this is a camp that does sell out, and I didn't have to fill out any of the forms, and because kids have gone to this camp or done programs to this organization in the past, they actually had all my information anyway. So this is one of the brilliant ones where I just could use the platform and it was like already recognized me and had my phone number and had like our backup contacts names and phone numbers.
So I was like, whoo, well, all I had to do is like basically say take my fifty dollars.
Yes, yeah, so we're sorry, we think you should consider getting on that.
But again, if you're in a place where there is stuff available in April or May, then.
Fine, then fine.
You know you then don't have to or you could decide that most of the time this summer you're going to if this is an option for you, have like a summer babysitter. Like if you think you'd be able to hire a summer nanny for twelve weeks or something, somebody who's maybe home from college and looking for a job, then no, you don't have to worry about it too much. I mean, mostly that person would do stuff, and then you could sign up for like half day camps here and there that was something related to your kid's interest. But if you didn't have it on any given day, it wouldn't be the end of the world. It's more how much are you going to absolutely need coverage? And if you absolutely need coverage, then you, as the parent of school age children, you need to recognize that school is not childcare. So this is just about figuring out your childcare same as you would like you did when your kid was one. Yes, for better or for worse, For better or for worse. Yeah, no, Well I'm sorry because I know I'm annoyed about it too. Like I don't want to do my summer spreadsheet, but that is on the list for the month.
Yeah I don't either. It doesn't feel I'm more doing them, like as the upper you may have just taken. Like if you're on enough lists, you can have the attitude of like, as the opportunities arrive, I can take them one by one rather than I'm going to figure out the entire summer right now, because even I I'm not in the mood to do that.
No, no, And I'm definitely not planning my older children's summers. That's like absolutely not. They're on it theirselves. Like can apply for a job if you want to go to camp some nerd, that's great, but you're the one figuring that out, not me.
That that makes sense. I put in my time.
For all of you, all right. So, Sarah, love of the week. What do you have this week?
I have a clean car, so yay. This doesn't happen very often, but we try to do it once a year and Josh actually took both cars. He took charge, did one after the other, and it is just, oh my gosh, like it's amazing, Like the seats are clean, the outside is clean. I should probably maybe think about upgrading to two times next year because of how happy it makes me. But yeah, clean cars.
Clean cars, excellent, excellent.
Well, my love of the week is hot hands, those little things you put in your pocket and keep you hot. I've mentioned this before, but you know, it's really nice to have a portable heat source if you are out and about with winter. So if you're looking to make winter a little more fun, not being freezing is one way to do that. All right, Well, this has been of both worlds. We've been talking winter fun and then the time tracking challenge.
Go sign up for that. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.
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.
