January 21, 2025 • 37 mins
In today's episode, Sarah and Laura conquer a common January conundrum: task management! Sarah came up with the term "airtight task management" to describe a system that allows for you to effectively corral all of your tasks and also ensure they bubble up at the right times! In general, this involves capturing all of the necessary inputs and prioritizing them in places you know you will look, but there are nuances and variations, too. Laura and Sarah discuss their systems, practices for handling undone tasks, thoughts on digital vs paper systems, and more!
In the Q&A, a listener writes in asking how they track the questions that come in! (very meta)!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
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 to late January of
twenty twenty five. We are going to be talking airtight
task management, which is a phrase that Sarah came up
with and refers to how we deal with all the
incoming to dos that we are often experiencing in life
life and making sure that things do not fall through
the cracks or I guess float out of our air
(01:06):
tight container, whatever the metaphor is implying here. So Sarah,
before we get to that, though, this is actually the
first episode we are recording in twenty twenty five because
we had to get ahead on a few things to
make sure that people could be off over the holidays,
So why don't you give us a quick life update.
What's been going on for you.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yeah, so it's been a great start to twenty twenty
five over all. I've already started back at work. I
will say I had a little bit of existential dread
about the backlog because I did take a full two
weeks off from clinical work, and then it turned out
to be like, not that bad. We had some people
that were kind of helping weed in boxes, which is
(01:47):
not actually typical for our practice, but they're starting to
do that, so a nurse practitioner was super helpful for me.
So anyway, got back rolling, felt pretty good. We had
a great trip to Montana. All three kids can now
go to Hill's like real greens with lifts unassisted. I mean,
the other ditch big kids could do that for a while,
but Genevieve is new to being able to do that
(02:08):
without a lot of stress from the rest of us,
so that was super exciting. And then I was about
to head to Vegas, so this was supposed to be
Laura and I record and then I jump on a
plane for my first big adventure of twenty twenty five,
which was going to be Annabel's first gymnastics meet, which
happened to be like a fun travel meet in Vegas.
This is not like national level competition. This is just like, oh,
the whole team goes like whoever wants to go. But
(02:30):
then she broke her finger, as one does. So yeah,
first pivot of the year happened so soon.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
But I'm cool, So she's not going to Vegas.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Then she is not going. I am not going. She's
not too disappointed. We have a lot of other fun
activities lined up for the weekend instead. And it turns
out she might only be out for three weeks. It
could be a little bit longer. But I mean, honestly,
for a fracture, to me, that's like shockingly shorts. Oh
maybe a best case scenario injury.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
If a bone is getting broken, that's the way you
want it to go, right exactly. Yeah, Now it's been
kind of Christmas vacation was a lot of stuff. We
went to Barbados for a few days, left early on
the twenty six we were in the card about five
forty five ams, so Christmas morning we had opened everything,
(03:27):
had a relaxing few hours, and then I was frantically
packing everyone for our departure, but we made it to
Barbados without incident.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
We stayed there for a couple of days.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I left on the twenty ninth and came back on
my own because I was singing in a performance of
the bach B Minor Mass, which was a longtime listeners
know on my bucket list for many, many years, and
I wanted to sing this piece. So the performance was
on the thirty first, but we had the dress rehearsal
on the thirtieth, and I didn't really think it would
(04:00):
be a good idea to miss that.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So I came back early.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Mike came back with all five children on his own
from Barbados, so great he was able to do that
with a minimal craziness as far as I know, you know.
And then we celebrated Henry's birthday. We had kind of
done that in Barbados a little bit, but you know,
we had to bring presents that would fit in the
(04:23):
carry on. So we had a birthday party at Chuck
E Cheese on the first weekend of January, as one does,
and it brought back memories because so it was Henry's
fifth birthday and Alex's fifth birthday was also at Chuck
E Cheese, albeit not that one. The one we went
to then was closer, but it later closed, so Henry
(04:48):
had actually been there.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
For that one. He was not supposed to be.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
We had scheduled Alex's birthday party for about January five
or so, which is enough before his birthday, and Henry
was due January twent second that I was like, Okay, well,
it'll be fine, we'll get this party done before he's
gonna arrive. And then Henry showed up at the end
of December. So we had a one week old for
this party in Chuck E Cheese five years ago. But
(05:13):
he's obviously grown and now is his own little five
year old.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Self who had a lot of fun. So yeah, lots
of it.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
It comes full circle. I have to ask, was the
B Minor Mass all that you dreamed it would be.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
It was really cool.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, we're pivoting here from Chuck E Cheese to the
Bach B Minor Mass life is vast and contains multitudes. Yeah,
it was a lot of fun and the group is
amazing singers. It was just a wonderful thing to be
part of. I really enjoyed it. I was trying to
sort of savor the experience because I knew it was
gonna be over in two hours, and it's kind of
(05:46):
hard to do that because I'm of course still trying
to sing the piece, like making sure I'm not missing
any notes while I'm enjoying this experience.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
But yeah, it was. It was great, and I'm so
glad that I did it.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
That is so cool, especially because I knew it was
on your list for such a long time.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
It's like, yes, yes, Zack.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah. As we've talked about with this, I mean a
list of one hundred dreams bucket list items. Some are
more doable on your own, like if you want to
go to Italy, it turns out that there are several
airlines who will sell you a ticket to get to Italy.
Like that you can do, whereas arranging to sing with
a choir and an orchestra in a performance venue is
(06:22):
a little bit harder to pull off on your own.
So I had to kind of plug into somebody else
that was making this happen, and I'm very glad.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
That I did with Coral Arts Philadelphia. So that was
a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yay, I'm glad you did it all right? Well on
that I know this episode is not airing January first,
so maybe people aren't feeling as much New Year energy anymore.
But I'm hoping that many people have it lasting through
January a little bit. And that's I think what inspired
us to do kind of a systems focused episode, because
I've noticed that Laura and I have a few things
(06:54):
going on in our lives, but we're pretty good about
a not dropping the ball but B not Typically I
don't really ever see Laura giving me a lot of
stress about like, oh my god, I just feel like
I have so much and not like can't I can't
get my head around it or something like I don't
get that energy from you really ever.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Maybe I'm just ignoring things.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Well, that could be a thing, right as like plan
ignoring careless that is our first, our first tip.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Oh my gosh, this New Year episode well, and.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
There may be something to waiting to care about things
until you truly need to. That I think both of
us are reasonably good at. But that I think links
back to understanding like priorities and what is actually time
sensitive and having a very clear understanding of what is
kind of on our plate overall, both in the short
term and the long term, and so that's kind of
(07:46):
what we're going to talk about today. And I'm kind
of proud of my term airtight task management. It's a
little tongue in cheek. I mean, nobody is going to
be perfect with any system that they have. I'm not
going to like share details, but Laura may have not
seen an adverquest come in that I had to.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
It is possible to be fair.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
It was like it in like December twenty three, all right,
So that was non optimal in terms of like which
advertiser was actually working on December twenty three.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I'm trying to figure this one out when I.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Had name names and I have on occasion had my
own lapses as well. So again, like nobody is perfect,
but we're aiming for something where we feel really confident
in our lists and it's not a source of stress
that we don't know what's going on, because I actually
think for many people this like vague unrest that there's
all this stuff out there but they don't actually know
how to categorize it or like what's urgent, and like
(08:39):
you know, like what's really there is sometimes more stressful
than the things themselves. And so if you build a
system where you feel like things are pretty darn air tight,
then you not only might actually get more done because
you kind of know the order in which to do
things and can put out fires, but the whole thing
feels a little bit better. So yeah, air tight task management.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I really like that phrase, thank you, because I think
being on top of things or not dropping balls. I mean,
these are all states that we are striving to achieve.
But this gets at the idea of how do you
know that things are not escaping your grasp that you
may decide not to deal with them, but it's not
(09:20):
that you didn't even know that they existed, and those
are different matters. So yeah, I love this phrase and
I'm going to use it widely and reference you.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Sarah.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yay, okay, good. Actually, before we even dive into airtight
task management, we were going to do a brief mention
of any new systems that we're trying out in the
new year. Let's take a quick break before we do that,
and then we will share a couple of things we're
trying out. All right, we are back and we're going
(09:59):
to talk about tight task management today. But first, just
because it is a new year, I'm curious to see
if Laura has anything new that she is trying. I'm
not doing a lot of things that are new. I
feel like I have my system pretty much down. The
one thing that I'm doing that I so far is
working out really nicely is that I have a paper
monthly planner. It's pretty small, kind of paperback, so it
(10:20):
kind of could slip into my regular planner or just
fits easily in a bag where I am putting all
of my kind of content related calendar stuff. So it
just has monthly calendar layouts for each month, and then
there's also blank pages between each of them, which works
perfectly because I'll put like which best of both worlds
is coming out, of which best laid plans are coming out,
and I've even put like ideas for blog posts and
stuff like that. But also as Laura and I brainstorm
(10:43):
and come up with ideas, I can put them in
the pages between the months so that we don't lose
those things. Because I had been using Apple Notes for
a lot of that stuff, but it was sort of
like haphazard, like I'd start this note in that note,
or I'd have a note that said spring and realized
we were using it in October and it's like not
spring anymore. And so by having it sort of link
to the months of the calendar and being able to
visually see the topics, I just thought that would be
a fun way to do it. So, I mean, I'm
(11:05):
only like ten days in three days in well, no,
but I've actually planned out pretty much all of January's
podcast content on it and I like it.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Good. Good.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I mean, I'm not really using any new systems this year.
I have my plum paper planner, which is what I
do my weekly planning in each week, usually on Thursday
or Friday. I look to the next week and outline
what are my major professional priorities for the upcoming week,
what are my major personal priorities. I will flip through
(11:36):
a week or two ahead just to make sure, But
most things in life can be dealt with within a
two to three week period, unless it's you know, huge
that you know is coming up, but that gives you
enough looking forward runway on that each day. My daily
to do list is in this little notebook. I do
not keep it in the plump paper for whatever reasons.
(11:58):
It's the plum papers too big, so to keep it open.
It's on the other side of the page. One might ask,
why don't you have a smaller planner than it is,
because I like having that big space for my weekly plan.
So anyway, I have a tiny notebook that I then
use for my daily to do list and any notes
that are coming up in the course of the day.
So if I was just talking with somebody on the phone,
I would probably actually keep my notes in that. And
(12:21):
you know, I have my calendar is as always the
weekly at a glance pocket sized calendar, and that is
where I put any time specific tasks or commitments that
are going on in my life. And that of course
is for the next twelve months, and I buy the
new one in July, so then I have the next
(12:43):
eighteen months starting in July, so that tends to be
enough to capture any thing that is coming up. I do, not,
in fact, have many time specific commitments for twenty twenty
seven yet.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
So I don't need to worry about that. So yeah,
that's my system.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
I like it, and I like the eighteen months does
make sense if you're going to be paper on calendar,
because I do get frustrated towards the end of every
calendar year when I'm like carrying around two books and
by having eighteen months and buying one every year, so
that you kind of love like a little overlap. That
would solve that problem very nicely. All right, So not
a lot of new tools from Laura. Not a ton
of new stuff for me either, but the content planner
(13:20):
is fun. And now we're going to pivot back to
our airtight task management discussion. So to me, we're going
to kind of like go back and forth in different
ways that we capture our tasks. But to me, air
type means number one, I've captured my tasks into a
system that I know I will look at regularly. So
(13:40):
it's a trusted system that has routines around it. That
I have captured all time sensitive items in a way
where I know I will see them with time to
get them done. So I haven't put like write a
book on like December thirtieth, where it's due on December
thirty first. That wouldn't work very well. I know where
all my tasks live, so like I have some kind
(14:01):
of systematic way of clearing out life's various inboxes. Because
the truth is tasks come to us. They're actually numerous channels.
A lot of them come through email. Sometimes they come
through a phone calls. Sometimes they come through a What's
Up chat, Sometimes they come from your random sports team apps,
sometimes they come from someone just asking you a favorite work.
So you have to kind of be conscious of where
they may be accumulating without your saying okay, and have
(14:26):
systems for looking at those things regularly. So to me,
that's sort of like the trifecta. You've captured them all
in the system. You know you'll look at you have
some way of dealing with time sensitive, and then you
have systems for clearing things out. And I know that
this does like stress people out a lot, because I
think in Best La Plans Academy, like that's the number
one thing people kind of fixate on their inbox or
(14:49):
like feeling like they don't know what to do first,
or like how to select their activities for the day.
And I think a lot of that comes down to
these systems. How about you, Like, how do you think
about making sure that you're very clear on what you
have going on?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Well, the weekly priority list is kind of the bread
and butter of this, and when I am making that
for the upcoming week, I tend to look at what
I know is going on sort of an ongoing list
of projects. If I look at my calendar for the
next two weeks and if there's anything time sensitive and
a time commitment, I would have written it on there
(15:24):
when it came in, I guess, because these are all
interlocking things. I mean, so I'm trying to figure out,
like what is the order of it, so I could
make a list for it, because it's just ongoing, right.
But if tasks are coming in via email, I process
to current every couple of days. If something we're truly urgent,
like this book review is running in the Wall Street
(15:47):
Journal tomorrow, we need.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
You to answer that question, I would do it right then.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
But if it's that we need this in seventy two hours,
that would probably go on my daily to do list
or on my weekly priority list. Update that as it's
going on. A lot of stuff does come in and email,
and I try to convert anything that has not come
in as email into email by emailing to myself. Right,
(16:11):
So this is a very simple way if you are
the sort of person who processes your primary inbox to current,
which I'm guessing that probably ninety percent of the people
listening to this are otherwise you would not be into
this podcast at all.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
You would see it.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So I'm out and about and a friends, you know,
one of my kids friends mom says, can we do
a play date next week?
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And I'm like, I think so, let me just check
the calendar. I'll get back to you.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
I'm going to email that to myself, right and so
then the next time I'm sitting down at my desk
and processing email to Current, I will see it, I.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Will act on it, and it will wind up on
the calendar.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yes, I love that, I think, especially if you know
that you kind of do your weekly review at its
email center. Then funneling stuff to email works really well.
I do that with text requests sometimes too, or as
you said, like an on the fly thing that just
comes up. I know I'm not gonna remember it, and
it is stressful to try to hold that kind of
thing in your head. So you got to put it
somewhere that you know you will see it. And then
it sounds like as you are processing your emails a
(17:09):
Current and you don't delete it, but like it's almost
like you might as well be archiving.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
You just don't.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
You're like going through each thing. Then your stuff makes
its way onto various task lists.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, and if I'm not going to do anything with it,
I either delete it or leave it right. And I'm
not saying because you don't actually have to deal with
everything that comes to you if some things are completely unsolicited.
So that's something for people to keep in mind as well.
But yeah, if it is something that I do feel
(17:43):
some obligation to act on, then I will process it
during that time.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
That makes sense. Yeah, I feel like my triage is like,
if it's totally urgent, then yes, deal with it immediately.
And I actually think one thing to lower your stress
is to make sure you don't look at in boxes
during times where you wouldn't be able to do anything
like don't check your email between patients or something like that.
If you're like gonna get some oh my god, you
(18:06):
have to fix this at Like I mean, especially me,
who kind of like operates in two worlds, I just
sort of need to like not look at it until
I'm sitting down and ready to deal with it. That
doesn't mean I'm not looking at it every day or
multiple times a day. But I think a lot of
us who are like dopamine seekers, we just like especially
I've gotten rid of social media, so like what's left
to check on my phone? It's email, so I have
to like resist the urds to check it if I
won't be able to.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Deal with it.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
So that means that hopefully when I'm checking it, if
it's urgent, I can deal with it immediately. And then
I think you're similar with this. I either assign it
to a specific day, so I'll go on my planner
and I'll be like, looks like that needs to be
that ads due on Friday and I'm free on Wednesday, whatever,
I'm going to sign it right then and there. Or
if it's like okay, that's a bigger task and like
(18:48):
it's this week or it's next week, I'll assign it
to a specific week. For me, that's very easy to
do on paper because I just use my the like
weekly layout in my planner and on the left there
is a column for tasks. This is a little harder
to do digitally, but it could also be done because
you could have like a list in Google's task that's
this week, and then a list that's next week and
(19:08):
maybe weeklus two and kind of change those dates around
if you wanted to put the specific dates on there.
But so I'll assign stuff to a specific week. And
the key is that I know every single day I'm
going to look at both of those places. Like I'm
always going to look at the day in the morning,
that's just part of my routine, and as I plan
my day, I'm always looking at the list for the week.
So that's where the air type comes in, Like I'm
(19:30):
writting it down and I'm not going to not see it.
I'm always going to be pinned in time to deal
with it. And then well we can talk about more
like vague later types of tasks. But yeah, is that
kind of similar to how you would deal with anything
urgent or sort of time sensitive.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, well so long term, longer term stuff. Yeah, I
think this is where people get. I mean, obviously, something
you have to do today, you have a hopefully system
for dealing with that today. But if something's like, okay,
you know this is going to be due February twelve,
I would of course write it on my calendar for
February twenty eight, but I tend to write it also
(20:07):
just on the top of the calendar for the week before,
and that's just to remind myself that it will be
coming up, so I don't only see it if it's
bigger on the Thursday or Friday before it is happening.
And that is especially important if the date that it
is going to be needing to be dealt with is
a Monday or Tuesday, because if I'm planning on Thursday
(20:27):
or Friday, I will not see it until a couple
days before. And if it's something that's going to require
more than two work days to deal with, that would
be a problem. So I will tend to give myself
a nudge the week before so it's in my active
mental space to deal with it.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Now.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
For stuff that does not have a times obvious deadline,
but it is something I don't want to lose from
my mental space, I will just write it for a
random week in the future on the calendar, and then
when I get there and get close, I will see
(21:05):
it and I will be like, oh, yes, I should
think about that, and I will either do it or
not do it right, Like you know, future Laura has
agency over whether she acts on whatever past Laura decided
to assign her. But that's where I put stuff like
early October professional Christmas lights right, because it turns out
(21:26):
that if you call them in late November when you
see other people's lights, they are booked. So if you
would like to book them, you need to book it
earlier than that. But of course you're not thinking about
Christmas lights in early October, so you have to do
something in order to think about Christmas lights in early October,
which is to put in this nudge. And there's some
(21:47):
funny things with this system, because there's like this book
I want to read, and I only know of it
because I saw that there was a deal done for
this book to exist. So I have no idea how
long this writer is going to take to write it,
but it's going to get published. So I just put
like a date a year forward to look and see
if it was out. It was not out, so I
had to put it again another like six months forward
(22:08):
to see if it was out. Like, who knows how
long this thing was going to get kicked down the road,
but I haven't forgotten it.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
That's aout.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
You're probably the only one who's like, hey, this person's
taking longer than they should to write this work.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Maybe no better than this editor.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
How long it has taken for this writer to get
this stupid book in that is awesome.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Yeah, I love that. And again, the key is that
you know you're going to look at that like it's
not in some random paper notebook on the shelf that
like you might feel like pulling out every once in
a while. It's like in your calendar that you look
at every single day. I think that's key because people
feel time.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I mean, I'm not looking at that thing every single
day like that. That thing only comes up every six
to twelve months, right, but cued it down the road, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
That tool you're looking at every day, so you know that,
like when August twenty four, twenty five comes up, like
you're going to see it.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
So I'll see it perfect unless I lose the calendar.
But I tend to be careful with that, which is
a problem with Patroreak. Yeah, I mean that is with
there is as we're going for airtight task management. Obviously,
paper is not in and of itself air tight. I
try not to lose things. I have lost things. I
am human what I tend to do though, if I
(23:14):
am traveling, and so therefore there is a higher risk
that I might lose my paper calendar that I'm taking
with me.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
I take photos of the next six weeks. So I
have that.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Oh my gosh, I like it. Planner insurance.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, planner insurance.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I don't forget about the thing that happened six months
from now. But I figure, you know, if I did
lose it in six weeks, I could try to recreate
a lot of the stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
That's impressive. I have not lost a planner yet. No,
I'm finxing myself. I just feel like I'm like, I
use it so often. Yeah, it's like your phone, Like
it's a little bit hard to lose.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I did once, so I had, you know, but back
in the day, and it's literally like thirteen fourteen years
ago now, but I something went wrong in the course
of getting in a bus to get to Lax.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
And it was gone.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
It was gone, and I had to reconstruct everything. And
so I've just been more careful about it since.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
That makes sense, all right, So that's where you put
your some of your long term goals. We'll talk about
other long term goals in a second. But yeah, like
so like I guess, yeah, nebulous goals that you're like,
this could be fun. Do they always go to a
specific date or do you have you have a hundred
dreams list. For me, I have like a Sunday maybe
list that's good for those really one off like and
it's filled with really random stuff now because it's just
(24:30):
sort of like stuff that I truly don't really know,
but I don't want to forget about, and then I
weed through it every once in a while, which I
think is key. You don't want to just build up forever.
I mean, at some point you might just decide that ideas.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Not needed anymore.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
But having some kind of catch all for totally time
like not ready to schedule in any concrete way types
of things I think can be useful. Do you have
your equivalent or do you use your hundred dreams list
for that?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah, I don't really use the hundred dream because the
hundred dreams list is more sort of aspirational stuff like okay,
more fun thing, I guess, And a lot of the
to do's that I'm not ready to schedule yet or
commit to a time to doing them, but I do
need to think about them in the next few weeks.
I will just I do sometimes maintain a running list
of those tasks. And actually, here's another thing which I'm
(25:17):
not sure if where this fits in, but in the
course of a week, as random tasks come up, because
I don't want them necessarily to pollute all my time,
like thinking that I need to deal with them. I
maintain what I call a Friday punch list, which is
all those little tasks that I need to get to,
but I'm going to do them in like a two
(25:37):
hour sprint on Friday. So I'm not pulling myself away
from say, writing a chapter in a book because I'm like,
I have all these permission slips to fill out.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
It's like, no, no, no, I'm going to do those on Friday.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
I like it. So you corral the kind of like
little annoying things. I don't have a practice like that.
I would have all of mine on my weekly list.
I just wouldn't do them in like I wouldn't pull
them off until Friday. But I can see the comp
in kind of being like, we don't do this today,
we do this during our Friday time.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
I think mental space is valuable, but sort of the
longer list it has stuff like schedule all the kids
pediatrician appointments, right, like this is going to be a
painful thing to do, and I don't really want to
do it, but I do need to do it at
some point in the next couple weeks, so it's on
the list things like that.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Okay, yeah, I don't even have one like that. I
don't know how I get on. Everything's on the week,
everything's to a week. Okay, yeah, I probably will not
do it next week, but yes, I can see the
comfort in like feeling you have it carrolled somewhere. So
as you hear there's variations on their theme, there is
not one way to be airtight. I think the key
again is like having these rituals, defining them to yourself,
(26:40):
and using like tools that you're going to look at.
Often those are the mean recurring themes, even though you
can hear that Laura and I do it differently. We're
going to take one more break and then a little
bit more on tasks and our quani. All right, we
(27:05):
are back, and I guess I just wanted to have
a brief discussion of digital versus paper. So we already
talked about the downside of paper being that you can
lose it, which is tough. I also think sometimes people
are at tempted to swap paper tools often and I
do with that sometimes if you have a master calendar
type tool, you just had to be very careful if
(27:26):
and when you are going to swap it. Because any
kind of like daily notebook you can swap no problem.
But something that's got long term running stuff, it's a process,
so do it with care. And then I have to
say digital can be great. I have friends that are
everything's in Google or everything's in Microsoft. There's also some
beautiful planner like apps out there, like Artful Agenda, which
(27:48):
will pull your Google calendar into a planner looking spread
that you can use on your laptop or your iPad.
That's super cool. But if you find the digital stuff overwhelming,
don't feel like you need to go digital, because I yes,
I just feel like there's this trope that like people
with real busy lives can only plan through apps, and
we're really busy, you guys like we don't and we
(28:08):
don't use them. And again not saying they're bad. I
actually think there's some really wonderful things about them and
some great tools. I just don't think they're mandatory.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, I mean, the one thing that I think gets
people tripped up with that is that if you're part
of a corporate or larger organization. Your calendar is digital,
and I don't have to do that because Vanderkam Inc.
Can exist on paper, and you know, everyone else who
deals with me then just knows to deal with that.
But sometimes I get meeting requests and I'm like, that's funny.
(28:36):
I wonder where that went. Somewhere. There's a digital calendar
for Laura somewhere that I never look at because I
have it written on my paper calendar. But anyway, you know,
if you have that, then people are like, well, but
then I would keep paper. But how do I know
that I didn't have this at work at this time
that I'm also trying to schedule a kid's thing, you know,
(28:57):
And I get it. That's really hard, and so then
people wind up with bad systems sometimes because they don't
want to put all their personal stuff on their work
calendar because then their colleagues can see it. But they
don't want to try to maintain two air tight calendars.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I understand. It's hard. It's hard.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
It's hard. I feel like some people get around it
by at least just blocking the hours that they work
either on paper or on another digital calendar that they
use kind of as their own even if they can't
import their actual work calendar due to security stuff. Yeah,
or they put all their home stuff on their work
but they're vague, but yeah, it is tough if others
can see that and they don't want it seeing. Or
(29:39):
there's some people that do some interesting hybrids, like if
their their work is digital, but they print their calendar
out every week and actually like jot down their own
stuff that's going to fit around the work stuff. So
there are sort of like different hacks you can use.
But yeah, that can be challenging if your work generally
tends to always be like eight thirty to six or
something like that. Though, then from a calendar standpoint, you
(30:02):
could kind of be in two different worlds. Like you
just if you have a working method's outside of those hours, fine,
it goes into you make some representation of it on
your personal calendar, and then otherwise you assume that during
those hours you look at your outlook and then of
the rest of the time you can look at your
other tools. Yeah. Yeah, all right, well that's I think
that's most of what I had. Not going crazy with
(30:22):
overly detailed scheduling of task. I think as a trap
people get into like they get excited about their systems,
so they're going to have a task at every every
fifteen minute interval or like be like overly granular about
how they'll do things. I don't think either of us
tend to map out our entire day task by task
most days, correct, Yeah, if.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
It's a really busy day, I will because I want
to make sure that I am using any chunk of
time that is not spoken for for something that needs
geet done, as opposed to just kind of losing it
into inbox management or something like that. But I just
want to add one more thing with the weekly priority list,
because what also makes this airtight is that if it
goes on the priority list, it is getting done or
(31:04):
it is actively being assigned to another spot.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Like we don't put anything on.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
The priority list that I don't intend to do or
that you know, it's like maybe this will happen, maybe
it won't. If it's on the priority list, it's I've
decided to do it that week, and if for some reason,
which is rare, it isn't happening, then it will be
actively assigned to another time. And the same with the
daily to do list. Actually for me to do means today.
(31:31):
So the process of creating the to do list is
actually a choice over these.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Are the things I'm going to do today.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Now, you know, people are like, well, life happens, stuff
comes up absolutely, which is why they're always short, right, Like,
you don't want to over assign yourself stuff. So that's
one reason to keep a list or future count of
other things you want to deal with eventually. Because if
it is a great week and nobody gets sick and
you know, there's no snow days and like you were
cranking along on stuff and got it all done, you
can go pick other stuff and pull that from the
(32:01):
future and get it done this week. But if life,
you know, has the normal amount of ridiculousness that happens,
like at least you know that everything did get done.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
It's kind of a contract with yourself.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yeah. I have a philosophical difference, but a practical sameness
to what you just said, which is that on my
weekly list on that left, I don't expect to do
everything in most weeks, I expect to do like a
lot of stuff. But what you mentioned is key. I
don't just leave the unchecked task there to like whither
away and like never happen. Part of my planning process
for the next week is always to either migrate or
(32:31):
purposefully abandoned. So I'm either I actually have a symbol
that I use. Instead of checking it off or exing
it off, I put a horizontal line through it. That
means I've migrated it to somewhere else. If I'm not
doing it at all, I put it X through the
A line through the whole thing. But so if I've migrated,
then great, I've already assigned it to the next week.
I'm not losing that thing. And that goes for the
day as well. That's like the first step in my
(32:52):
daily planning is look at the day before. What didn't happen?
Do I need to migrate it to today? Or am
I letting it go? So you're absolutely right. I think
you can decide whether or not you want to feel
like everything needs to get done in a timeframe or
whether you have more of a okay, this would be
nice to get done during this week kind of a mindset. Again,
addressing that flexibility that like this might be a crazy week,
(33:13):
this might not be. I can't necessarily predict it. But
the key is that you cannot let yourself leave things there, Yeah,
like they.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Will need to me.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
It's also about not over committing yourself for the week, right,
And I think if people have a sort of you know,
have these ongoing like there's all sorts of to do list,
ten sends I see and people you know they're to
do list, They're like a by to do list is
forty three pages long.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
I'm like, that's not a to do list. That might
be a life list.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Of any ideas anything you want to do.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
But that has you can't use that like a to
do list. Again, that's why we say to do means today.
So of that forty three pages, what are you actually
committing to get done by the time you fall asleep tonight?
And knowing that that is only x number of hours,
the tasks that you choose have to fit within those
number of hours, given that life will happen. And so
(34:02):
I think that winnowing process is incredibly important for people
to build into their lives and.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
It helps you prioritize, right, because if you have forty
three things and you're like, oh, it's fine, I'll get
two percent on my list done, which is not my philosophy.
Mine's more like, okay, eighty percent is great, then you're
always going to pick the two easiest things and you're
never going to move forward on the tough things. So
by choosing fewer items, you are also consciously persolutely.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
All right, Well, let's pivot now to our Q and A.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
So, Sarah, this is somewhat related about our airtight task
management such as it is. How do you, guys keep
track of the questions that come in? Do you always
answer them the month they arrive? If questions come into
Best of Both Worlds, which, by the way, just a reminder,
you can always email me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com,
or you post them on either of our blogs.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
So, Sarah, what do we do with them? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (34:52):
So I dump them into Apple Notes, which is my
kind of like second brain for various podcasting things, as
I talked about. Sometimes we'll start a table for the
spring episodes and it goes all the way to a fall.
But either way, it's a useful tool. It's searchable, it's
easy to clean up at archives. So I will make
a page that's like, right now, there's a page. I
think it says like Q one BOBW questions and as
(35:12):
they come in or as even if Laura fords to me,
I just copy and paste him in there and that way,
when it's time for us to do episodes, I just
see what we have collecting, which means that sometimes we
get a little behind and we are answering questions a
few months in or maybe like a question sits there
until we're like, ooh, that goes really well with that
episode and we're going to use it. So we love
your questions. You should send them to us. And Laura's
(35:34):
really good at responding in a timely manner. I'm good
at responding eventually, and yeah, you will hear from us,
and we might answer your question on the show. We
probably will. It just might not be like that month.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
All right, sounds good?
Speaker 2 (35:48):
All right, So, Sarah Love of the Week, what are
you excited about right now?
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Since I complain all summer, I feel like I just
need to say we're having like the best cold snap
it's like, and I think it's affecting other areas of
country too, which might not be such a positive, but
here that means there have been like I went running
this morning and I had to wear jacket like it
was in the forties South Florida, like that's a special experience.
(36:13):
So I feel really lucky that we get to enjoy
nice weather for several months during winter.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Well, i'll do weather related in general. Our weather in Winterest.
It's like, it's so cold right now. I have that
same cold snap that's forty degrees there, it's like seven
degrees here. It's not very fun. That said, we had
snow earlier this week and it was pretty. It was
not enough to really well, the kids were out of school,
but it was somewhat ridiculous, like I'm pretty sure they
(36:42):
could have gone to school. But the good news of
that is that our nanny could actually get here quite
easily because it was only like an inch or two
and so the roads were clear by like eight am.
But you know, so they could just play in it
a little bit and it was pretty to look at.
But it wasn't so terrible that nobody could go anywhere,
and you know, you have to hunker down and can't
(37:04):
go outside for days or anything like that. So a
light dusting of snow is my love of the week.
It sounds so pretty.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Yeah, well, this has been best of both worlds. We've
been talking airtight task management. We will be back next
week with more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram,
and you.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
has been the best of both worlds podcasts.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Please join us next time for more on making work
and life work together.
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
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 to late January of
twenty twenty five. We are going to be talking airtight
task management, which is a phrase that Sarah came up
with and refers to how we deal with all the
incoming to dos that we are often experiencing in life
life and making sure that things do not fall through
the cracks or I guess float out of our air
(01:06):
tight container, whatever the metaphor is implying here. So Sarah,
before we get to that, though, this is actually the
first episode we are recording in twenty twenty five because
we had to get ahead on a few things to
make sure that people could be off over the holidays,
So why don't you give us a quick life update.
What's been going on for you.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yeah, so it's been a great start to twenty twenty
five over all. I've already started back at work. I
will say I had a little bit of existential dread
about the backlog because I did take a full two
weeks off from clinical work, and then it turned out
to be like, not that bad. We had some people
that were kind of helping weed in boxes, which is
(01:47):
not actually typical for our practice, but they're starting to
do that, so a nurse practitioner was super helpful for me.
So anyway, got back rolling, felt pretty good. We had
a great trip to Montana. All three kids can now
go to Hill's like real greens with lifts unassisted. I mean,
the other ditch big kids could do that for a while,
but Genevieve is new to being able to do that
(02:08):
without a lot of stress from the rest of us,
so that was super exciting. And then I was about
to head to Vegas, so this was supposed to be
Laura and I record and then I jump on a
plane for my first big adventure of twenty twenty five,
which was going to be Annabel's first gymnastics meet, which
happened to be like a fun travel meet in Vegas.
This is not like national level competition. This is just like, oh,
the whole team goes like whoever wants to go. But
(02:30):
then she broke her finger, as one does. So yeah,
first pivot of the year happened so soon.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
But I'm cool, So she's not going to Vegas.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Then she is not going. I am not going. She's
not too disappointed. We have a lot of other fun
activities lined up for the weekend instead. And it turns
out she might only be out for three weeks. It
could be a little bit longer. But I mean, honestly,
for a fracture, to me, that's like shockingly shorts. Oh
maybe a best case scenario injury.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
If a bone is getting broken, that's the way you
want it to go, right exactly. Yeah, Now it's been
kind of Christmas vacation was a lot of stuff. We
went to Barbados for a few days, left early on
the twenty six we were in the card about five
forty five ams, so Christmas morning we had opened everything,
(03:27):
had a relaxing few hours, and then I was frantically
packing everyone for our departure, but we made it to
Barbados without incident.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
We stayed there for a couple of days.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I left on the twenty ninth and came back on
my own because I was singing in a performance of
the bach B Minor Mass, which was a longtime listeners
know on my bucket list for many, many years, and
I wanted to sing this piece. So the performance was
on the thirty first, but we had the dress rehearsal
on the thirtieth, and I didn't really think it would
(04:00):
be a good idea to miss that.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So I came back early.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Mike came back with all five children on his own
from Barbados, so great he was able to do that
with a minimal craziness as far as I know, you know.
And then we celebrated Henry's birthday. We had kind of
done that in Barbados a little bit, but you know,
we had to bring presents that would fit in the
(04:23):
carry on. So we had a birthday party at Chuck
E Cheese on the first weekend of January, as one does,
and it brought back memories because so it was Henry's
fifth birthday and Alex's fifth birthday was also at Chuck
E Cheese, albeit not that one. The one we went
to then was closer, but it later closed, so Henry
(04:48):
had actually been there.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
For that one. He was not supposed to be.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
We had scheduled Alex's birthday party for about January five
or so, which is enough before his birthday, and Henry
was due January twent second that I was like, Okay, well,
it'll be fine, we'll get this party done before he's
gonna arrive. And then Henry showed up at the end
of December. So we had a one week old for
this party in Chuck E Cheese five years ago. But
(05:13):
he's obviously grown and now is his own little five
year old.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Self who had a lot of fun. So yeah, lots
of it.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
It comes full circle. I have to ask, was the
B Minor Mass all that you dreamed it would be.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
It was really cool.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, we're pivoting here from Chuck E Cheese to the
Bach B Minor Mass life is vast and contains multitudes. Yeah,
it was a lot of fun and the group is
amazing singers. It was just a wonderful thing to be
part of. I really enjoyed it. I was trying to
sort of savor the experience because I knew it was
gonna be over in two hours, and it's kind of
(05:46):
hard to do that because I'm of course still trying
to sing the piece, like making sure I'm not missing
any notes while I'm enjoying this experience.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
But yeah, it was. It was great, and I'm so
glad that I did it.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
That is so cool, especially because I knew it was
on your list for such a long time.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
It's like, yes, yes, Zack.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah. As we've talked about with this, I mean a
list of one hundred dreams bucket list items. Some are
more doable on your own, like if you want to
go to Italy, it turns out that there are several
airlines who will sell you a ticket to get to Italy.
Like that you can do, whereas arranging to sing with
a choir and an orchestra in a performance venue is
(06:22):
a little bit harder to pull off on your own.
So I had to kind of plug into somebody else
that was making this happen, and I'm very glad.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
That I did with Coral Arts Philadelphia. So that was
a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yay, I'm glad you did it all right? Well on
that I know this episode is not airing January first,
so maybe people aren't feeling as much New Year energy anymore.
But I'm hoping that many people have it lasting through
January a little bit. And that's I think what inspired
us to do kind of a systems focused episode, because
I've noticed that Laura and I have a few things
(06:54):
going on in our lives, but we're pretty good about
a not dropping the ball but B not Typically I
don't really ever see Laura giving me a lot of
stress about like, oh my god, I just feel like
I have so much and not like can't I can't
get my head around it or something like I don't
get that energy from you really ever.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Maybe I'm just ignoring things.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Well, that could be a thing, right as like plan
ignoring careless that is our first, our first tip.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Oh my gosh, this New Year episode well, and.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
There may be something to waiting to care about things
until you truly need to. That I think both of
us are reasonably good at. But that I think links
back to understanding like priorities and what is actually time
sensitive and having a very clear understanding of what is
kind of on our plate overall, both in the short
term and the long term, and so that's kind of
(07:46):
what we're going to talk about today. And I'm kind
of proud of my term airtight task management. It's a
little tongue in cheek. I mean, nobody is going to
be perfect with any system that they have. I'm not
going to like share details, but Laura may have not
seen an adverquest come in that I had to.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
It is possible to be fair.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
It was like it in like December twenty three, all right,
So that was non optimal in terms of like which
advertiser was actually working on December twenty three.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I'm trying to figure this one out when I.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Had name names and I have on occasion had my
own lapses as well. So again, like nobody is perfect,
but we're aiming for something where we feel really confident
in our lists and it's not a source of stress
that we don't know what's going on, because I actually
think for many people this like vague unrest that there's
all this stuff out there but they don't actually know
how to categorize it or like what's urgent, and like
(08:39):
you know, like what's really there is sometimes more stressful
than the things themselves. And so if you build a
system where you feel like things are pretty darn air tight,
then you not only might actually get more done because
you kind of know the order in which to do
things and can put out fires, but the whole thing
feels a little bit better. So yeah, air tight task management.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I really like that phrase, thank you, because I think
being on top of things or not dropping balls. I mean,
these are all states that we are striving to achieve.
But this gets at the idea of how do you
know that things are not escaping your grasp that you
may decide not to deal with them, but it's not
(09:20):
that you didn't even know that they existed, and those
are different matters. So yeah, I love this phrase and
I'm going to use it widely and reference you.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Sarah.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yay, okay, good. Actually, before we even dive into airtight
task management, we were going to do a brief mention
of any new systems that we're trying out in the
new year. Let's take a quick break before we do that,
and then we will share a couple of things we're
trying out. All right, we are back and we're going
(09:59):
to talk about tight task management today. But first, just
because it is a new year, I'm curious to see
if Laura has anything new that she is trying. I'm
not doing a lot of things that are new. I
feel like I have my system pretty much down. The
one thing that I'm doing that I so far is
working out really nicely is that I have a paper
monthly planner. It's pretty small, kind of paperback, so it
(10:20):
kind of could slip into my regular planner or just
fits easily in a bag where I am putting all
of my kind of content related calendar stuff. So it
just has monthly calendar layouts for each month, and then
there's also blank pages between each of them, which works
perfectly because I'll put like which best of both worlds
is coming out, of which best laid plans are coming out,
and I've even put like ideas for blog posts and
stuff like that. But also as Laura and I brainstorm
(10:43):
and come up with ideas, I can put them in
the pages between the months so that we don't lose
those things. Because I had been using Apple Notes for
a lot of that stuff, but it was sort of
like haphazard, like I'd start this note in that note,
or I'd have a note that said spring and realized
we were using it in October and it's like not
spring anymore. And so by having it sort of link
to the months of the calendar and being able to
visually see the topics, I just thought that would be
a fun way to do it. So, I mean, I'm
(11:05):
only like ten days in three days in well, no,
but I've actually planned out pretty much all of January's
podcast content on it and I like it.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Good. Good.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I mean, I'm not really using any new systems this year.
I have my plum paper planner, which is what I
do my weekly planning in each week, usually on Thursday
or Friday. I look to the next week and outline
what are my major professional priorities for the upcoming week,
what are my major personal priorities. I will flip through
(11:36):
a week or two ahead just to make sure, But
most things in life can be dealt with within a
two to three week period, unless it's you know, huge
that you know is coming up, but that gives you
enough looking forward runway on that each day. My daily
to do list is in this little notebook. I do
not keep it in the plump paper for whatever reasons.
(11:58):
It's the plum papers too big, so to keep it open.
It's on the other side of the page. One might ask,
why don't you have a smaller planner than it is,
because I like having that big space for my weekly plan.
So anyway, I have a tiny notebook that I then
use for my daily to do list and any notes
that are coming up in the course of the day.
So if I was just talking with somebody on the phone,
I would probably actually keep my notes in that. And
(12:21):
you know, I have my calendar is as always the
weekly at a glance pocket sized calendar, and that is
where I put any time specific tasks or commitments that
are going on in my life. And that of course
is for the next twelve months, and I buy the
new one in July, so then I have the next
(12:43):
eighteen months starting in July, so that tends to be
enough to capture any thing that is coming up. I do, not,
in fact, have many time specific commitments for twenty twenty
seven yet.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
So I don't need to worry about that. So yeah,
that's my system.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
I like it, and I like the eighteen months does
make sense if you're going to be paper on calendar,
because I do get frustrated towards the end of every
calendar year when I'm like carrying around two books and
by having eighteen months and buying one every year, so
that you kind of love like a little overlap. That
would solve that problem very nicely. All right, So not
a lot of new tools from Laura. Not a ton
of new stuff for me either, but the content planner
(13:20):
is fun. And now we're going to pivot back to
our airtight task management discussion. So to me, we're going
to kind of like go back and forth in different
ways that we capture our tasks. But to me, air
type means number one, I've captured my tasks into a
system that I know I will look at regularly. So
(13:40):
it's a trusted system that has routines around it. That
I have captured all time sensitive items in a way
where I know I will see them with time to
get them done. So I haven't put like write a
book on like December thirtieth, where it's due on December
thirty first. That wouldn't work very well. I know where
all my tasks live, so like I have some kind
(14:01):
of systematic way of clearing out life's various inboxes. Because
the truth is tasks come to us. They're actually numerous channels.
A lot of them come through email. Sometimes they come
through a phone calls. Sometimes they come through a What's
Up chat, Sometimes they come from your random sports team apps,
sometimes they come from someone just asking you a favorite work.
So you have to kind of be conscious of where
they may be accumulating without your saying okay, and have
(14:26):
systems for looking at those things regularly. So to me,
that's sort of like the trifecta. You've captured them all
in the system. You know you'll look at you have
some way of dealing with time sensitive, and then you
have systems for clearing things out. And I know that
this does like stress people out a lot, because I
think in Best La Plans Academy, like that's the number
one thing people kind of fixate on their inbox or
(14:49):
like feeling like they don't know what to do first,
or like how to select their activities for the day.
And I think a lot of that comes down to
these systems. How about you, Like, how do you think
about making sure that you're very clear on what you
have going on?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Well, the weekly priority list is kind of the bread
and butter of this, and when I am making that
for the upcoming week, I tend to look at what
I know is going on sort of an ongoing list
of projects. If I look at my calendar for the
next two weeks and if there's anything time sensitive and
a time commitment, I would have written it on there
(15:24):
when it came in, I guess, because these are all
interlocking things. I mean, so I'm trying to figure out,
like what is the order of it, so I could
make a list for it, because it's just ongoing, right.
But if tasks are coming in via email, I process
to current every couple of days. If something we're truly urgent,
like this book review is running in the Wall Street
(15:47):
Journal tomorrow, we need.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
You to answer that question, I would do it right then.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
But if it's that we need this in seventy two hours,
that would probably go on my daily to do list
or on my weekly priority list. Update that as it's
going on. A lot of stuff does come in and email,
and I try to convert anything that has not come
in as email into email by emailing to myself. Right,
(16:11):
So this is a very simple way if you are
the sort of person who processes your primary inbox to current,
which I'm guessing that probably ninety percent of the people
listening to this are otherwise you would not be into
this podcast at all.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
You would see it.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So I'm out and about and a friends, you know,
one of my kids friends mom says, can we do
a play date next week?
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And I'm like, I think so, let me just check
the calendar. I'll get back to you.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
I'm going to email that to myself, right and so
then the next time I'm sitting down at my desk
and processing email to Current, I will see it, I.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Will act on it, and it will wind up on
the calendar.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yes, I love that, I think, especially if you know
that you kind of do your weekly review at its
email center. Then funneling stuff to email works really well.
I do that with text requests sometimes too, or as
you said, like an on the fly thing that just
comes up. I know I'm not gonna remember it, and
it is stressful to try to hold that kind of
thing in your head. So you got to put it
somewhere that you know you will see it. And then
it sounds like as you are processing your emails a
(17:09):
Current and you don't delete it, but like it's almost
like you might as well be archiving.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
You just don't.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
You're like going through each thing. Then your stuff makes
its way onto various task lists.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, and if I'm not going to do anything with it,
I either delete it or leave it right. And I'm
not saying because you don't actually have to deal with
everything that comes to you if some things are completely unsolicited.
So that's something for people to keep in mind as well.
But yeah, if it is something that I do feel
(17:43):
some obligation to act on, then I will process it
during that time.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
That makes sense. Yeah, I feel like my triage is like,
if it's totally urgent, then yes, deal with it immediately.
And I actually think one thing to lower your stress
is to make sure you don't look at in boxes
during times where you wouldn't be able to do anything
like don't check your email between patients or something like that.
If you're like gonna get some oh my god, you
(18:06):
have to fix this at Like I mean, especially me,
who kind of like operates in two worlds, I just
sort of need to like not look at it until
I'm sitting down and ready to deal with it. That
doesn't mean I'm not looking at it every day or
multiple times a day. But I think a lot of
us who are like dopamine seekers, we just like especially
I've gotten rid of social media, so like what's left
to check on my phone? It's email, so I have
to like resist the urds to check it if I
won't be able to.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Deal with it.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
So that means that hopefully when I'm checking it, if
it's urgent, I can deal with it immediately. And then
I think you're similar with this. I either assign it
to a specific day, so I'll go on my planner
and I'll be like, looks like that needs to be
that ads due on Friday and I'm free on Wednesday, whatever,
I'm going to sign it right then and there. Or
if it's like okay, that's a bigger task and like
(18:48):
it's this week or it's next week, I'll assign it
to a specific week. For me, that's very easy to
do on paper because I just use my the like
weekly layout in my planner and on the left there
is a column for tasks. This is a little harder
to do digitally, but it could also be done because
you could have like a list in Google's task that's
this week, and then a list that's next week and
(19:08):
maybe weeklus two and kind of change those dates around
if you wanted to put the specific dates on there.
But so I'll assign stuff to a specific week. And
the key is that I know every single day I'm
going to look at both of those places. Like I'm
always going to look at the day in the morning,
that's just part of my routine, and as I plan
my day, I'm always looking at the list for the week.
So that's where the air type comes in, Like I'm
(19:30):
writting it down and I'm not going to not see it.
I'm always going to be pinned in time to deal
with it. And then well we can talk about more
like vague later types of tasks. But yeah, is that
kind of similar to how you would deal with anything
urgent or sort of time sensitive.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, well so long term, longer term stuff. Yeah, I
think this is where people get. I mean, obviously, something
you have to do today, you have a hopefully system
for dealing with that today. But if something's like, okay,
you know this is going to be due February twelve,
I would of course write it on my calendar for
February twenty eight, but I tend to write it also
(20:07):
just on the top of the calendar for the week before,
and that's just to remind myself that it will be
coming up, so I don't only see it if it's
bigger on the Thursday or Friday before it is happening.
And that is especially important if the date that it
is going to be needing to be dealt with is
a Monday or Tuesday, because if I'm planning on Thursday
(20:27):
or Friday, I will not see it until a couple
days before. And if it's something that's going to require
more than two work days to deal with, that would
be a problem. So I will tend to give myself
a nudge the week before so it's in my active
mental space to deal with it.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Now.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
For stuff that does not have a times obvious deadline,
but it is something I don't want to lose from
my mental space, I will just write it for a
random week in the future on the calendar, and then
when I get there and get close, I will see
(21:05):
it and I will be like, oh, yes, I should
think about that, and I will either do it or
not do it right, Like you know, future Laura has
agency over whether she acts on whatever past Laura decided
to assign her. But that's where I put stuff like
early October professional Christmas lights right, because it turns out
(21:26):
that if you call them in late November when you
see other people's lights, they are booked. So if you
would like to book them, you need to book it
earlier than that. But of course you're not thinking about
Christmas lights in early October, so you have to do
something in order to think about Christmas lights in early October,
which is to put in this nudge. And there's some
(21:47):
funny things with this system, because there's like this book
I want to read, and I only know of it
because I saw that there was a deal done for
this book to exist. So I have no idea how
long this writer is going to take to write it,
but it's going to get published. So I just put
like a date a year forward to look and see
if it was out. It was not out, so I
had to put it again another like six months forward
(22:08):
to see if it was out. Like, who knows how
long this thing was going to get kicked down the road,
but I haven't forgotten it.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
That's aout.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
You're probably the only one who's like, hey, this person's
taking longer than they should to write this work.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Maybe no better than this editor.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
How long it has taken for this writer to get
this stupid book in that is awesome.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Yeah, I love that. And again, the key is that
you know you're going to look at that like it's
not in some random paper notebook on the shelf that
like you might feel like pulling out every once in
a while. It's like in your calendar that you look
at every single day. I think that's key because people
feel time.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I mean, I'm not looking at that thing every single
day like that. That thing only comes up every six
to twelve months, right, but cued it down the road, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
That tool you're looking at every day, so you know that,
like when August twenty four, twenty five comes up, like
you're going to see it.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
So I'll see it perfect unless I lose the calendar.
But I tend to be careful with that, which is
a problem with Patroreak. Yeah, I mean that is with
there is as we're going for airtight task management. Obviously,
paper is not in and of itself air tight. I
try not to lose things. I have lost things. I
am human what I tend to do though, if I
(23:14):
am traveling, and so therefore there is a higher risk
that I might lose my paper calendar that I'm taking
with me.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
I take photos of the next six weeks. So I
have that.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Oh my gosh, I like it. Planner insurance.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, planner insurance.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I don't forget about the thing that happened six months
from now. But I figure, you know, if I did
lose it in six weeks, I could try to recreate
a lot of the stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
That's impressive. I have not lost a planner yet. No,
I'm finxing myself. I just feel like I'm like, I
use it so often. Yeah, it's like your phone, Like
it's a little bit hard to lose.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I did once, so I had, you know, but back
in the day, and it's literally like thirteen fourteen years
ago now, but I something went wrong in the course
of getting in a bus to get to Lax.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
And it was gone.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
It was gone, and I had to reconstruct everything. And
so I've just been more careful about it since.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
That makes sense, all right, So that's where you put
your some of your long term goals. We'll talk about
other long term goals in a second. But yeah, like
so like I guess, yeah, nebulous goals that you're like,
this could be fun. Do they always go to a
specific date or do you have you have a hundred
dreams list. For me, I have like a Sunday maybe
list that's good for those really one off like and
it's filled with really random stuff now because it's just
(24:30):
sort of like stuff that I truly don't really know,
but I don't want to forget about, and then I
weed through it every once in a while, which I
think is key. You don't want to just build up forever.
I mean, at some point you might just decide that ideas.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Not needed anymore.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
But having some kind of catch all for totally time
like not ready to schedule in any concrete way types
of things I think can be useful. Do you have
your equivalent or do you use your hundred dreams list
for that?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah, I don't really use the hundred dream because the
hundred dreams list is more sort of aspirational stuff like okay,
more fun thing, I guess, And a lot of the
to do's that I'm not ready to schedule yet or
commit to a time to doing them, but I do
need to think about them in the next few weeks.
I will just I do sometimes maintain a running list
of those tasks. And actually, here's another thing which I'm
(25:17):
not sure if where this fits in, but in the
course of a week, as random tasks come up, because
I don't want them necessarily to pollute all my time,
like thinking that I need to deal with them. I
maintain what I call a Friday punch list, which is
all those little tasks that I need to get to,
but I'm going to do them in like a two
(25:37):
hour sprint on Friday. So I'm not pulling myself away
from say, writing a chapter in a book because I'm like,
I have all these permission slips to fill out.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
It's like, no, no, no, I'm going to do those on Friday.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
I like it. So you corral the kind of like
little annoying things. I don't have a practice like that.
I would have all of mine on my weekly list.
I just wouldn't do them in like I wouldn't pull
them off until Friday. But I can see the comp
in kind of being like, we don't do this today,
we do this during our Friday time.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
I think mental space is valuable, but sort of the
longer list it has stuff like schedule all the kids
pediatrician appointments, right, like this is going to be a
painful thing to do, and I don't really want to
do it, but I do need to do it at
some point in the next couple weeks, so it's on
the list things like that.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Okay, yeah, I don't even have one like that. I
don't know how I get on. Everything's on the week,
everything's to a week. Okay, yeah, I probably will not
do it next week, but yes, I can see the
comfort in like feeling you have it carrolled somewhere. So
as you hear there's variations on their theme, there is
not one way to be airtight. I think the key
again is like having these rituals, defining them to yourself,
(26:40):
and using like tools that you're going to look at.
Often those are the mean recurring themes, even though you
can hear that Laura and I do it differently. We're
going to take one more break and then a little
bit more on tasks and our quani. All right, we
(27:05):
are back, and I guess I just wanted to have
a brief discussion of digital versus paper. So we already
talked about the downside of paper being that you can
lose it, which is tough. I also think sometimes people
are at tempted to swap paper tools often and I
do with that sometimes if you have a master calendar
type tool, you just had to be very careful if
(27:26):
and when you are going to swap it. Because any
kind of like daily notebook you can swap no problem.
But something that's got long term running stuff, it's a process,
so do it with care. And then I have to
say digital can be great. I have friends that are
everything's in Google or everything's in Microsoft. There's also some
beautiful planner like apps out there, like Artful Agenda, which
(27:48):
will pull your Google calendar into a planner looking spread
that you can use on your laptop or your iPad.
That's super cool. But if you find the digital stuff overwhelming,
don't feel like you need to go digital, because I yes,
I just feel like there's this trope that like people
with real busy lives can only plan through apps, and
we're really busy, you guys like we don't and we
(28:08):
don't use them. And again not saying they're bad. I
actually think there's some really wonderful things about them and
some great tools. I just don't think they're mandatory.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, I mean, the one thing that I think gets
people tripped up with that is that if you're part
of a corporate or larger organization. Your calendar is digital,
and I don't have to do that because Vanderkam Inc.
Can exist on paper, and you know, everyone else who
deals with me then just knows to deal with that.
But sometimes I get meeting requests and I'm like, that's funny.
(28:36):
I wonder where that went. Somewhere. There's a digital calendar
for Laura somewhere that I never look at because I
have it written on my paper calendar. But anyway, you know,
if you have that, then people are like, well, but
then I would keep paper. But how do I know
that I didn't have this at work at this time
that I'm also trying to schedule a kid's thing, you know,
(28:57):
And I get it. That's really hard, and so then
people wind up with bad systems sometimes because they don't
want to put all their personal stuff on their work
calendar because then their colleagues can see it. But they
don't want to try to maintain two air tight calendars.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I understand. It's hard. It's hard.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
It's hard. I feel like some people get around it
by at least just blocking the hours that they work
either on paper or on another digital calendar that they
use kind of as their own even if they can't
import their actual work calendar due to security stuff. Yeah,
or they put all their home stuff on their work
but they're vague, but yeah, it is tough if others
can see that and they don't want it seeing. Or
(29:39):
there's some people that do some interesting hybrids, like if
their their work is digital, but they print their calendar
out every week and actually like jot down their own
stuff that's going to fit around the work stuff. So
there are sort of like different hacks you can use.
But yeah, that can be challenging if your work generally
tends to always be like eight thirty to six or
something like that. Though, then from a calendar standpoint, you
(30:02):
could kind of be in two different worlds. Like you
just if you have a working method's outside of those hours, fine,
it goes into you make some representation of it on
your personal calendar, and then otherwise you assume that during
those hours you look at your outlook and then of
the rest of the time you can look at your
other tools. Yeah. Yeah, all right, well that's I think
that's most of what I had. Not going crazy with
(30:22):
overly detailed scheduling of task. I think as a trap
people get into like they get excited about their systems,
so they're going to have a task at every every
fifteen minute interval or like be like overly granular about
how they'll do things. I don't think either of us
tend to map out our entire day task by task
most days, correct, Yeah, if.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
It's a really busy day, I will because I want
to make sure that I am using any chunk of
time that is not spoken for for something that needs
geet done, as opposed to just kind of losing it
into inbox management or something like that. But I just
want to add one more thing with the weekly priority list,
because what also makes this airtight is that if it
goes on the priority list, it is getting done or
(31:04):
it is actively being assigned to another spot.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Like we don't put anything on.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
The priority list that I don't intend to do or
that you know, it's like maybe this will happen, maybe
it won't. If it's on the priority list, it's I've
decided to do it that week, and if for some reason,
which is rare, it isn't happening, then it will be
actively assigned to another time. And the same with the
daily to do list. Actually for me to do means today.
(31:31):
So the process of creating the to do list is
actually a choice over these.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Are the things I'm going to do today.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Now, you know, people are like, well, life happens, stuff
comes up absolutely, which is why they're always short, right, Like,
you don't want to over assign yourself stuff. So that's
one reason to keep a list or future count of
other things you want to deal with eventually. Because if
it is a great week and nobody gets sick and
you know, there's no snow days and like you were
cranking along on stuff and got it all done, you
can go pick other stuff and pull that from the
(32:01):
future and get it done this week. But if life,
you know, has the normal amount of ridiculousness that happens,
like at least you know that everything did get done.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
It's kind of a contract with yourself.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yeah. I have a philosophical difference, but a practical sameness
to what you just said, which is that on my
weekly list on that left, I don't expect to do
everything in most weeks, I expect to do like a
lot of stuff. But what you mentioned is key. I
don't just leave the unchecked task there to like whither
away and like never happen. Part of my planning process
for the next week is always to either migrate or
(32:31):
purposefully abandoned. So I'm either I actually have a symbol
that I use. Instead of checking it off or exing
it off, I put a horizontal line through it. That
means I've migrated it to somewhere else. If I'm not
doing it at all, I put it X through the
A line through the whole thing. But so if I've migrated,
then great, I've already assigned it to the next week.
I'm not losing that thing. And that goes for the
day as well. That's like the first step in my
(32:52):
daily planning is look at the day before. What didn't happen?
Do I need to migrate it to today? Or am
I letting it go? So you're absolutely right. I think
you can decide whether or not you want to feel
like everything needs to get done in a timeframe or
whether you have more of a okay, this would be
nice to get done during this week kind of a mindset. Again,
addressing that flexibility that like this might be a crazy week,
(33:13):
this might not be. I can't necessarily predict it. But
the key is that you cannot let yourself leave things there, Yeah,
like they.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Will need to me.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
It's also about not over committing yourself for the week, right,
And I think if people have a sort of you know,
have these ongoing like there's all sorts of to do list,
ten sends I see and people you know they're to
do list, They're like a by to do list is
forty three pages long.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
I'm like, that's not a to do list. That might
be a life list.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Of any ideas anything you want to do.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
But that has you can't use that like a to
do list. Again, that's why we say to do means today.
So of that forty three pages, what are you actually
committing to get done by the time you fall asleep tonight?
And knowing that that is only x number of hours,
the tasks that you choose have to fit within those
number of hours, given that life will happen. And so
(34:02):
I think that winnowing process is incredibly important for people
to build into their lives and.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
It helps you prioritize, right, because if you have forty
three things and you're like, oh, it's fine, I'll get
two percent on my list done, which is not my philosophy.
Mine's more like, okay, eighty percent is great, then you're
always going to pick the two easiest things and you're
never going to move forward on the tough things. So
by choosing fewer items, you are also consciously persolutely.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
All right, Well, let's pivot now to our Q and A.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
So, Sarah, this is somewhat related about our airtight task
management such as it is. How do you, guys keep
track of the questions that come in? Do you always
answer them the month they arrive? If questions come into
Best of Both Worlds, which, by the way, just a reminder,
you can always email me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com,
or you post them on either of our blogs.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
So, Sarah, what do we do with them? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (34:52):
So I dump them into Apple Notes, which is my
kind of like second brain for various podcasting things, as
I talked about. Sometimes we'll start a table for the
spring episodes and it goes all the way to a fall.
But either way, it's a useful tool. It's searchable, it's
easy to clean up at archives. So I will make
a page that's like, right now, there's a page. I
think it says like Q one BOBW questions and as
(35:12):
they come in or as even if Laura fords to me,
I just copy and paste him in there and that way,
when it's time for us to do episodes, I just
see what we have collecting, which means that sometimes we
get a little behind and we are answering questions a
few months in or maybe like a question sits there
until we're like, ooh, that goes really well with that
episode and we're going to use it. So we love
your questions. You should send them to us. And Laura's
(35:34):
really good at responding in a timely manner. I'm good
at responding eventually, and yeah, you will hear from us,
and we might answer your question on the show. We
probably will. It just might not be like that month.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
All right, sounds good?
Speaker 2 (35:48):
All right, So, Sarah Love of the Week, what are
you excited about right now?
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Since I complain all summer, I feel like I just
need to say we're having like the best cold snap
it's like, and I think it's affecting other areas of
country too, which might not be such a positive, but
here that means there have been like I went running
this morning and I had to wear jacket like it
was in the forties South Florida, like that's a special experience.
(36:13):
So I feel really lucky that we get to enjoy
nice weather for several months during winter.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Well, i'll do weather related in general. Our weather in Winterest.
It's like, it's so cold right now. I have that
same cold snap that's forty degrees there, it's like seven
degrees here. It's not very fun. That said, we had
snow earlier this week and it was pretty. It was
not enough to really well, the kids were out of school,
but it was somewhat ridiculous, like I'm pretty sure they
(36:42):
could have gone to school. But the good news of
that is that our nanny could actually get here quite
easily because it was only like an inch or two
and so the roads were clear by like eight am.
But you know, so they could just play in it
a little bit and it was pretty to look at.
But it wasn't so terrible that nobody could go anywhere,
and you know, you have to hunker down and can't
(37:04):
go outside for days or anything like that. So a
light dusting of snow is my love of the week.
It sounds so pretty.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Yeah, well, this has been best of both worlds. We've
been talking airtight task management. We will be back next
week with more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram,
and you.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
has been the best of both worlds podcasts.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Please join us next time for more on making work
and life work together.
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