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June 25, 2024 • 42 mins

In their traditional midyear episode, Laura and Sarah share progress (or lack thereof, as it may apply!) on 2024 goals, halfway in. They discuss goals in the domains off work, relationships/family, and personal/self, as well as provide updates on daily habits + long term goals.

In the Q&A, they address a common question as to where they KEEP all of these goals!

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
and course creator. We are two working parents who love
our careers and our families.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun,
from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
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 (00:44):
This episode is airing in late June of twenty twenty four.
We're going to be doing our annual at this point
midyear goal check in, So in December of most years,
Sarah and I share our goals for the upcoming year,
and halfway through the year it's time to check in.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
And we do this for a few reasons. I mean,
basically to keep ourselves honest.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Because on some level, there's not a huge point in
setting goals and then completely forgetting about them, and it
gives us an idea, a chance to celebrate what's worked
or maybe pivot on what hasn't right.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
Sarah, Yes, and we hope that if you're anything like us,
I think, especially me, you enjoy hearing how other people
approach their goals and either celebrate wins or bemoaned struggles,
et cetera. So we find the process really valuable. I mean,
I personally do this five times a year, but Laura

(01:40):
will not let me have five Best of Both Worlds
episodes dedicated to this.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
So I think we've come like a good compromise. Yeah,
maybe your check in two a year is good.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
And you can also go listen to Best Laid Plans
and hear a few more about Sarah's various goals and
how she executes on them.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Because you know, it's it's been a pretty good year
so far. I mean, Sarah, would you say it's been
a good year?

Speaker 1 (02:03):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
We'll find out, and those sections coming up, we will
discuss what has worked and what has not.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Got to leave some mystery. Le's leave some mystery.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
All right, Well, we'll start with our career goals, I guess,
I mean we could go into any order here, but
I Sarah, I'll ask you about yours. So you had
a couple work goals for both clinical work and creative work,
so maybe you can share what happened.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
And what hasn't.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Okay, So we will start with a clinical work category,
and my goal was to keep working on my efficiency
of checkout, meaning like the work I do kind of
between when I'm done with the patient and when they
leave the office to make sure they have everything they need.
And I've kind of come like a really long way
where I used to like run around printing everything out.
Then I moved to this checkout sheet and then I'm like,

(02:50):
you know what, I can just train the front desk.
I'm going to like work on the people that can
just do this without me having to micromanage, and that's
actually worked pretty well. I also tend to kind of
say to my patient as they're walking from there to
the front desk, I'm like, your three things are to
get your labs, make sure you get your printed instructions,
and make your appointment. Like I'll say, I'll kind of

(03:11):
reinforce and then I am done, Like I don't run
around collecting things. So I will say that's been really
helpful and definitely has saved time, and thus far, it
has not to my knowledge, resulted in any like bad
communication or missed instructions. I had a goal to provide
some kind of seasonal fun for our staff. And I
did get cookies from Crumble for Valentine's and I passed

(03:32):
them around. That was really fun. So I'm going to
do something for summer, maybe some kind of like little
sunscreen sample, I don't know something, and definitely some kind
of school supply for fall, like I'm going to walk
around with like fun pens. And then our Friday lunch
tradition is going full swing, and I think it really
does help to build communities. So I mean, not everybody
comes every time, but I at least kind of do

(03:54):
a little bit of socializing most Fridays with colleagues at lunch.
So that's my clinical side. And then on the creative
slash business side, my goals were to successfully run Planning
by season, and I will say, yes, we are three
out of five sessions in and I feel like they're
going well. They're nicely attended, people participate, and I'm finding
out one of the most fun programs to run, Like,

(04:16):
so yeah, I really like it. Write my book proposal
during the summer, so I went back to my yearly
goals and I was kind of beating myself up for
not making progress on this, but I didn't actually notice it.
When I wrote in the annual list it said during
the summer, so I'm not actually behind you signed it
a time I did, and I think there was a
reason for that, and I'm kind of happy about it.
So I have made no progress. But now it's the

(04:37):
summer and now I have some time blocked off and
I'm getting started and kind of having a less perfectionistic
thing about it, like just get something down and then
you can play with it and that's fine. And so yeah,
that's definitely in progress. I would not be able to
give myself any credit for doing it, but I wasn't
planning on it yet. I had a goal to pitch
two podcasts per month. Totally fell off the wagon on that.
I think I probably did it a couple months, but

(04:59):
then I forgot. I mean, it sucks to get rejections,
but also too is probably not enough because if you're
aiming high, you're going to get more rejections then you
get acceptances. And so if I'm going to do that
in any meaningful way, there probably needs to be a.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Higher number there. So I have to rethink about that.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
I had a goal to do best laid plans Live
twenty twenty four, and that is happening, and Laura is
co hosting, and we're sold out and it's going to
be awesome, and we're actually about to get into some
of the kind of nitty gritty planning details coming up.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
But I feel like I'm on track with that.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
And then finally plan content creation schedule in advance and
prioritize to reduce deadline stress and overload. Sometimes I'm really
good with this, and sometimes I'm really not. I still
struggle around like vacations and call weeks. I think I'm
more aware of that struggle and sort of prepare myself
for it better. And I think some of my show
notes and stuff have been done more in advance.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
But then again, these.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Were done like yesterday. As I said to Laura, I
thought we were recording like a week from now. So
Laura likes a little bit even more buffer than I do,
which is actually good and probably one of the reasons
we have not missed a week yet. So I will
say that one is in progress. I'd give myself like
a C plus. Yeah, seven years and every Tuesday, and

(06:10):
there's a process for that, and it's why I'm like, no, no, no, Sarah,
we will not be recording on this date in June.
We'll be recording a week earlier. So something goes wrong,
which you know is partly just hard one experience. We've
had many things go wrong. We've had to.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Toss a number of episodes, or sometimes we book a
guest who then can't make it, or you know, topics
have kind of been passed by by events, and you know, but.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
The best is when we recorded Dead Air. That was
our dead Air, was certainly in our podcasting career. The
Dead Air did not make it out into the distribution channels.
Don't worry, but we did in fact record about forty
minutes of dead Air, so that obviously had to be
redone as well.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
All right, so your work goals, let's hear it. Yes,
I mean I have.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
A goal to finish the book proposal for my next book,
my next time management book, and sell it and start
working on it. And I did in fact sell it,
and in a kind of cool way, we went out
broadly to a lot of different publishers.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
I had a lot of meetings with me.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
We wound up getting multiple bits, which was cool, and
I am now doing a two books.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
My next two books with Norton, which is very exciting.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
So Golden Hours is well, that's the second one that'll
be out in like twenty twenty seven, and Big Time
is the next one, which will be out in early
twenty twenty six, so working on both of them. It's
really exciting to start a new book project. I love
writing books. I don't know how much people want to
read books anymore in the modern world, but there's always

(07:49):
some people who do, and hopefully I will find more
of those people by twenty twenty six and twenty twenty
seven and create books that I'd like to read and
find helpful.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Hopefully everyone else will too.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
I am very excited for both of those topics, both
of those titles, and.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
I'm sure a lot of our listeners are too. So
we're excited. We'll stay tuned, we'll be hearing more about that.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Twenty twenty six and twenty twenty seven, I wanted to
launch vander Hacks, and at the time we recorded our
Goals episode, I had not really done that yet, but
I was sort of about too. And this for anyone
who is listening and as curious, is an every weekday
morning newsletter through substack and if you want to subscribe.

(08:33):
It's just called vander Hacks and it's my tips on
making life better, taking your day from great to awesome.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
There are four.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Free posts a week, so feel free to just go
ahead and sign on up if you want that. And
then there is one post that is behind a paywall
each week, so if you would like to have that
as well, you're welcome to get a paid subscription.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
I would appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
But yeah, I've been doing it first six plus months
now and it's been good. It's you know, I'm playing
around with it, errementing with what makes a good post.
But it's just one more place that I can connect
with people and get some of my ideas out there,
and so that's been fun.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
I like today's post. It was like how to create
a kit to stay organized? I love that.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Yes, so lots of ideas there. I had a goal
to speak internationally and that has not happened yet, and
again we put constraints on it in the goal episode.
It's not like can I find some book club in
the UK that would like me to come speak to
them about it? I mean, as part of my speaking

(09:35):
business to be hired through my normal channels. With my
normal fees to come speak internationally and ideally outside I
mean not Canada, Mexico, I've done those places. I'm talking
sort of broader internationals. But we'll keep working on it.
So somebody listening to this and has a business somewhere

(09:55):
else in the world that is looking for time management speakers,
feel free to reach out and we will connect. And
then I was also managing the best of both worlds
transition over to iHeartMedia.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
That was just happening.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
We were trying to figure out the timeline of that
when we recorded our Goals episode toward the end of
the year.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
It happened on January first.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
We can tell from our numbers that we have a
few new listeners, so welcome to everyone who found us
through the various iHeartMedia ads and through just.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Seeing it on their app.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
We're glad to have you, so that will be something
we're continuing to enjoy and use our new home to
find new audience members and continue building this podcast.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
And I'm impressed that technically the transition went well, Like
I don't think our feed got lost.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
I don't think it looked different or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (10:46):
So if you didn't notice that that's also great, totally cool.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yes, bonus woo.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
All right, well, we're going to take a short ad
break and we'll be back talking with more of our
goals for the year.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
How they are going. Well, we are back doing our
mid year goal check.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
In the next category, we just did career of various
sorts of work that both of us do. Our next
category is relationships and family goals as well. So, Sarah,
you had some goals that you set for the year.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
How are those going?

Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, So, going through my list, I had date night
one to two times a month. I think it's been
more on the one time, but I feel like we've
had some nice, memorable date nights as the year has
gone on, so I'd give myself credit for that. I
wanted to do two getaways with me and Josh this year.
We didn't do two last year, and I felt it
wasn't enough, so I'm happy to say we're on track.
We went to Michigan together. I mean, we ran a

(11:49):
marathon while we were there, but it was also a
couples getaway and it was really fun. I wanted to
have some kid one on one time monthly. So I
don't know if I've met monthly, but I've done two
rounds of just doing dinner with each kid solo. I
just put it on the calendar. I let them pick
the place. I keep it really low key, our nanny stays.
If my husband's not home. I try to do it
on tonight. We don't have a lot of late sports

(12:10):
and stuff, and they love it. They've already asked when
we're going to do it again. So I think this
is probably going to replace full on mommy days for
this summer, just because I'm just not sure that's as realistic.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
I mean, I could probably do it.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
We'll see, but certainly the dinners are going to stay
because they are a nice way to get some one
on one time and with a little bit of structure
family meetings. I wanted to work on our family meeting game.
I feel like the kids are old enough to just
do a better prep at the start of the week,
and then even at the start of the season, we
do it informally. We have these conversations. They're kind of

(12:43):
like usually I'm like filling out the board as we're
cleaning up Sunday dinner. But I still want to make
them more of a like fun event, so I would
say that one is still in progress and kind of
going to work on it over the summer. I wanted
to cultivate more family reading. This has gone like in
ways I didn't expect. So Cameron is now like the
reader of the family, which I did not see coming,

(13:05):
and I kind of love it. He will read whatever
it used to be just graphic novels. Now he was
branched onto like anything, especially if there's kind of sci
fi element or a sports element, He's into it. Annabel
will read with the right book, and I feel like
there are times at night when all of us are
reading and I love that. But Genevieve cannot read on
her own yet, so that has been the imagery that

(13:27):
I had is just not quite there. I'm trying to
think about how I can get her set up like
with an audiobook during some of these times, but work
in progress and may fit a little bit more naturally
once she can actually read like on her own fluently,
not just sounding out words declutter the house.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
F Nope, I'm reading a book about it. I mean
that you're reading a book about it. That's great.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
It's like taking the goal before and adding it into
this one.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah, we're going to talk about like self goals, and
I think I just didn't have the physical energy to
declutter my house the last few month. So it is
what it is. I still want to do it. I'm
not ready to outsource it. I know everyone keeps saying
that and saying it, but it's not happening right now.
And then finally I have really really positive news because
I have gotten I would say any topic, like a

(14:14):
lot of listener feedback on this. People are like actually,
people are lovely. They tell me stories as to why
this is very important, a lot of times very personal stories.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
But estate planning, we had.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
That as a goal, and our drafts are done, like
Lauryers just said it, we need to go to their
office to sign everything or do something complicated with notaries,
so we'll probably just go to their office because it's
not that far away. And we have to do a
couple of like ill defined things with our bank accounts
that I need to get clarity on. But we're mostly done.
And that's super exciting because that had been on my
list for a very very long time. So I'm gonna

(14:47):
give myself credit for that one. And I think the
outlook for being completely done with it by the end
of the year is very good.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
So yay, yay, Well that's good.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
I mean, you had a list of long term projects
and that was certainly one of them, and and I
know it's been on the list many years, and so
the fact that significant progress has happened is you know,
testament to sometimes you have to keep trying with goals
before they actually happen. Yeah, my relationship and family goals.
I specifically wanted to do time with my big kids.

(15:20):
So my older kids are seventeen, fourteen, and twelve. Sort
of the nature of having younger kids, having a nine
year old and four year old is they can monopolize
your time and attention just by being needier. And so
the older kids can kind of drift off to their
rooms and you don't see them except for meals, and
I don't know, sometimes they managed to avoid that even

(15:41):
if you so it's harder to spend time with older kids.
So we've had some extra childcare for Henry, for instance,
so we can have time with the older kids to
do things. But I've actually thought up taking some really
cool trips with the older kids. So I went to
Space with my two older boys over spring break, and

(16:04):
as part of that got some time with each of them,
you know, I think about doing like a cooking class
with Sam, for instance, and chatting with Jasper at various points.
I then took Ruth to Paris in May, and we
had a great time there and spent a lot of
time with each other and really enjoyed that. And when

(16:28):
this airs, I will have taken another short trip with Jasper,
sort of figuring out he had asked for a trip
for Christmas, and so that will have happened by the
time this aired. Sam asked for a diving trip and
he and Michael took that together. So getting parental time
with the older kids doesn't always have to be me.
I certainly enjoy it when it can be me, but

(16:48):
it's also good to have my husband do some of
this too.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
But it's also just.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Like the mindset of if I am in the kitchen
and I am about to leave and some of my
older kids are there and they are kind of talking
with me, I don't have to leave, like I don't
have to go do whatever it was I was about
to do, probably for another few minutes, so just linger

(17:14):
and have the conversation and see what else is going on,
and I think it's just trying to do that as
much as possible and prioritize it.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
I also wanted.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
To see friends, like spend time with friends, and recognize
that I could travel if I needed to to make
this happen.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
I had a.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
Fun trip in early April to New York City with
a couple of people. We went to the Botanical Garden
and went to a museum. The Paris trip was with
some friends from college, so I got to see them.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, just just.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Good to connect with people. I was seeing Sarah in
March in Florida, and she'll be in Philadelphia at some
point this so that's great. And just been doing more
regular runs and walks with local friends. I had a
small dinner party in April that was also a lot
of fun.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
I hadn't really done that since moving here, so glad
I have.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
As for Michael and my twentieth wedding anniversary, nothing has
been planned.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
And is it soon?

Speaker 2 (18:26):
It's in September, Okay, September fourth. We got married September fourth,
two thousand and four, so this will be twenty years.
So maybe we'll try to do something small that first,
like not Labor Day weekend, but the next weekend in September.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Maybe we can do something then, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
I mean I've planned a lot of elaborate family stuff,
and I just get like, I don't know. It's the
thing that probably doesn't get planned, but maybe somebody else
will plan it.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
Surprise.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Mepul se, Well, be exciting. I hope you do something.
Twenty is big, that's exciting. We have joshed his fiftieth birthday,
so kind of similar, like, got to do something I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, well, we recently got Michael and I went into
New York for the celebrate his brother's fiftieth birthday.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
And Michael went in for two nights. I went in
for one.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
We saw a show, we went out to dinner, hung
out with his all his siblings and some of their
spouses and his mom and so, yeah, it was a
fun trip. So that could be the kind of thing
one could do for a fiftieth birthday.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
Awesome.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
So you would say your relationships category is going mostly
pretty good and you need to figure out the anniversary.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Well I need to figure Yeah, I don't know. I'm
that guy. I don't have a grade for it.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
I mean, because it's all long ongoing stuff, right, Like
every day it's an opportunity to at least think about
how I would spend time with the big kids. So
just continuing to remind myself to have that mindset for
the rest of the year.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Awesome.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
All right, well we have our self category and fitness category.
I know you're going to talk about your year long projects,
so let's hear about that.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah, So my goal for the year was to listen
to all the works of Bach.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
And this is because I've been doing a year long
project every year for the past few years. So one
year I read all the works of Shakespeare, you know,
another year I read all the works of Jane Austen.
So this year I am listening to all the works
of Bach. I am a big Bach fan, and this
has been quite doable. I am, in fact about halfway

(20:35):
through when this is airing. I've created a calendar so
for anyone who follows Bach, there's a catalog of BWV
numbers representing there are one thousand and eighty works of
the original BWV.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
And then people find more, or they realize ones that.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Were in the original or not, or there's works that
are possibly attributed to him or not.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
There's like another one hundred.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Works that will probably get through in the course of
the year as well, But anyway, I'm on track. I've
been sharing the calendar with a couple of other people
who are doing this project with me, which is awesome,
And yeah, every day I just listen to a couple
of them. Usually most days it's three or four of
the BWV. I decided to start with a cantata and

(21:20):
then starting in the middle of the BWV. So the
cantatas are the first two hundred and twenty or so,
and they're all about twenty minutes. So if you are
only working through chronologically, you'd just be listening to all
cantatas all the time for the first few months. So
we split it up and started with the organ works,
which are like five twenty five. So you do BWV

(21:40):
one and BWV five twenty five on January first and
so on. And yeah, about thirty to forty minutes of
listening a day. I do it in the car a
lot of the time, or while I'm doing sort of
low key work answering emails or doing something that doesn't
require a whole lot of thinking. I can have it
on in the back and it's awesome.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Do you feel like you now could hear Bach and
be like, oh, that sounds like it's from like this era,
Like I don't know.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
I do.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
I mean, there's been some really cool historical matchups. He
was very prolific in the year seventeen twenty four. Curiously enough,
a lot of the kantatas are from then, and so
it's fun to sort of match them up. I didn't
match them up. That would have been a great way
to do this calendar, but whatever. Sometimes it happens and
I'm like, oh, that was the kantata for two weeks
after Easter, and we're shortly after Easter, and so you

(22:30):
sort of have this connection with Bach three hundred years
ago doing this music in Leipzig and elsewhere. I can
definitely see themes. I've been to a couple of Bach concerts.
I went to one that had works from all over
the bwv's so different things like a two harpsichord thing,
a cantata. I went to an all kantata performance in

(22:52):
downtown Philly with a small chamber group that was doing that,
and you definitely start to hear his themes and you
know his structure, and then I went to the Backchoir
of Bethlehem annually does the B Minor Mass, which is
of course the ultimate Bach work that he composed not
long before his death. And having heard so many of

(23:12):
the cantatas, now I know when I'm hearing those cantatas
and I'm hearing a theme that was then in the
B Minor Mass, I know he was experimenting with in
the cantatas and then he pulled it into the B
Minor Mass because it's something he just liked, and so
then he would use it again for that great work
toward the end of his life.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
So yeah, it's been awesome. That's cool.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
I like the idea of becoming like a more nuanced
expert or like to like understand things at a level
that you know, if I heard Bach, I would just
be like, oh that sounds Baroke and you can say
so much more.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
About Nako and work. So cool, all right, What else
was on your personal list? Oh?

Speaker 2 (23:50):
Gosh, Well, I wanted to do more strength training. It
was going to be the year of Bach and my back.
I was trying to work on my back, and then
long time listeners know I had a rather huge setback
in January where had like shooting nerve pain down my
legs from some back issue and I couldn't walk for

(24:13):
over a week. Wound up on steroids and painkillers and
doing physical therapy and such, and I'm aware of it.
Still there's nothing really that can be done. I mean,
I just I do need to keep strengthening my back
and my abs and I live with it. But the
good news is it doesn't keep me from living life.

(24:35):
Like I stood at the Taylor Swift concert for five
hours with my horrible back. I walked all over Disney
World with my horrible back.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
You know, you live, you have to live life. And
I guess I have a reasonable pain tolerance and maybe
it will improve.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
I mean, you don't have to assume this is like
where it's going to be forever.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, but partly from my own psychologic like not. I
need to set my expectations low.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
Got it right, Like I need to learn how to
live with this because it might. It might, And I
don't want to feel like my life is over if
I have back pain, because it's not like I can
deal with it.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
I will live with it. But you know, obviously it'd
be great if it would have improve So I'd have
to hold those two thoughts in mind that I can
live my life with it. I can also do things
that maybe over time will improve it, or maybe just
on my own, my body will start to heal itself.
And you know, it's been fun going through the world
of specialist doctors and MRIs and all that great stuff

(25:37):
that I never would have experienced.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
Otherwise, you definitely would not have experienced it because that
is not your favorite genre.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
No, and I would like to stay as much away
from it as possible in the future. But I will
do more strength training because I I've been doing more
of that. I kept working out with my trainer and
now I've decided I put it on my to do list.
And then two other times a week I do at
least ten minutes of the stuff that he gave me
during our time together. And then the last thing with

(26:08):
self is that I'm doing my sonnets. I wrote two
lines in a sonnet every day in twenty twenty three,
so ended the year with fifty two sonnets because each
one is fourteen lines, so you can write one a
week at that pace. And I found it was actually
a really good practice for me, and I liked some
of the poems I was creating by the end, and
so I decided to keep going with it.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
So I now I have what like seventy eight.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
I guess that's a fifty two plus twenty six seventy
eight poems. By the end of the year, I'll have
one hundred and four more or less, maybe one hundred
and five, depending on how the weeks work.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
And yeah, awesome, And sometimes you publish them on your blog.
I do, so if you want to see them, come
check them out.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
We're going to take one more quick ad break and
we'll be back to hear about Sarah's amazing personal accomplishments
this year. All right, Well, we are back doing our

(27:09):
mid year goal check in. So, Sarah, you had some
big personal goals that you kind of knocked out of
the park, so let's hear about that.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
Yes, the first goal on my personal list was to
train to try to qualify for the Boston Marathon, and
I did that last month. Yay, it was awesome. I
mean I had definitely had this on my like one
hundred dreams lifeless for almost two decades at this point.
It's been something I've wanted to do not for you know,
it's one of those things like I'm not curing anything,

(27:39):
I'm not achieving anything that's necessarily adding to the world's canon.
But I just wanted to do it for me to
like see if I could work towards something and achieve it.
And it was just the right level of hard that
it just took a lot and was really.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
Really gratifying to make it come true. So I did
continue to work with my coach.

Speaker 3 (27:57):
I think I don't know if I could have done
this with it because I really needed the guidance to
achieve the level of my ledge that I did, and
my husband and I actually fun fact, so the way
Boston works is you have to qualify, but then you
also have to get a certain amount under the qualifying
time to actually run the race. Most years, and my
time ended up being three hours and thirty five minutes

(28:20):
and one second, just like an eight to twelve pace,
which is four minutes and fifty nine seconds below the cutoff.
And then for him, he ran like three nineteen fifty one,
which ended up being five minutes and nine seconds below
the cutoff.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
So the fun part about that.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
Is that like unless the cutoff were to fall at
like five minutes and five seconds, which it could, but
like probably what we would either both make it or not.
And so that was actually kind of like a really
sweet ending for us to both like kind of have
the same awesome result. The funny part is that it
took me about twice as much work as it took him.
But you know, hey, that means you can compensate for
lack of talent by trying hard.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Because what was in his marathon time? I was like
three nineteen or something.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
Was that?

Speaker 3 (29:01):
Yes, I mean, but that part, I mean, men are
going to be expected to run faster than women on average,
but the cutoff for him is faster than me. So
like for a forty nine year old man, I think
the cutoff was like three twenty five, Yeah, through twenty five,
and he ran just under three twenty and mine was
three forty and I ran just over three thirty five. Well,

(29:23):
it's so funny because the BQ time is then not
really the BQ time. It's like the the official BQ time,
but then not. Yeah, historically it used to be, and
then they started to have to add cutoffs in there.
And then the other funny part is that Queen of
All planners. I had booked a Disney cruise that was
during twenty twenty five Boston Marathon already. Not only did

(29:45):
I book this, but I booked it like with friends,
so I actually and I knew this going in. So
I am not actually planning on submitting our times for
twenty twenty five, but I feel really really confident that
it will work out for twenty twenty six. Well, can
you use your time from this year? You can't, so
you're gonna have to do it again. Yes, but I
get ten more minutes.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
So oh well, because when you're forty five, Yeah, okay,
that makes sense. Well wow, I mean that seems like
you should be able to do that.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
Yes, I feel really confident at this time. I mean,
obviously anything could happen. It can happen, and I really
feel like I achieved my aim. My aim was to qualify.
My ame was not actually specifically to run. I wanted
to meet that BEKU standard and now I can say
I did so yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
I also had on my personal that was the biggest thing,
and it was the most time consuming thing. So everything
else you'll hear. But I wanted to go to a
yoga class and that did not happen yet, probably because
I was too busy marathon training, So that's fine, that's
going to be for later. I wanted to read every
day and record the pages read, and I kind of did.
I kept it on this little calendar. In May, I

(30:43):
slacked off, but I was still writing it all my
daily planner. So there's something cool for me about being like, Okay,
I got through thirty pages or I read one hundred
and fifty pages because I finished the book. And it
does help me to know when it's timed. I don't
abandon books often, but I will once in a while,
and if I'm like, oh my god, I'm making zero progress,
it's been like ten days, I've read three pages, like
it's time, and I will let something go. So that
has been helpful. I didn't have any goal about like

(31:07):
number of books to get through. I've done that in
the past, but I didn't this year, and I'm kind
of glad. I prefer it this way. I almost always
read the same number of books anyway, like right around
fifty and I think I'm it as we're recording this,
like low twenties and it's not the end of June yet,
so I'm exactly on track for myself. I wanted to
improve my wardrobe, the only wardrobe improve with my running wardrobe.

(31:27):
I have a complete race day which looks great now
I have really pricey race shoes. But the thing is,
you know, we have this allowance system, and I don't
have the money to buy like two hundred and fifty
dollars shoes multiple players and then also upgrade my actual clothing.
So that was the choice I made, and I'm fine.
I wanted to try to get regular manny petties and
massage when I can, and I've gotten some. I've gotten enough.

(31:51):
I feel like, I would say enough for me to
use screens thoughtfully, okay, fair good, sometimes not as good
to other times.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
To write daily in my experience journal.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
So I had this really cute little planner that I
was going to write an experience every day, and I
did for about five months, and I would be still
doing it except that I also have this five year journal,
and I just was finding day after day that I
was like writing the same thing in both of them.
And the five year journal is awesome, Like it is
so cool. I love looking at it right now and
has four years filled out, and like it's such a
keepsake and I know I'm going to want to keep it,
and I wasn't planning on keeping the other ones, so

(32:24):
I was like, well, I don't really need both, so
I'm abandoning that.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
I'm crossing it off my list.

Speaker 3 (32:29):
I'm just going to use my five year journal as
I have been and make sure to try to include
an experience every day and I will achieve the same aim.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
And then finally, I just wanted to quote.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
Say yes and save our experiences, and I think I've
done pretty well with that so far. I have a
lot of experiences. I'm also excited about to come this year.
But we've had some really fun ones, from travel to
skiing to seeing some concerts and things like that. So yeah, yeah,
And then I say both of us have hit a
major goal that we had stepped the year with this

(33:02):
check in. I was like, well, it's our December episode.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
Gonna be really boring. But I guess more stuff will
either happen.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
Or not happen in the course of the year and
we can check in on that, you know, if we've
stuck with the longer term ones and how that's gone.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
I still have enough on here that I mean, people
are going to want to know if I decluttered my house.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
That's true, that's true, just kidding. And if you've written
your book proposal.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
Exactly, and I'm sure, I don't know, maybe you'll have
to come up with some other big goal.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Well, there are things, I mean, there's certainly things I'm
gonna have to happen and the rest of the year.
But I probably didn't set quite as many goals as
you did because I'm wary of setting ones that I'm
not going to hit, and I put a few that
were uncertain, and so it's like, you know, put all
your effort into the uncertain ones.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
Versus I don't know. I guess it's a different mindset
about it. Do you feel like you achieved anything like
serendif it is, or anything that wasn't on your list
that you're excited about.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
I don't know that there was.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
I mean, obviously, like coming back from a back injury
was a big thing that had to happen. This is
a big spring and took time and a lot of
sort of adjustment in life and how I do stuff.
But people listening to this, I still cannot empty the
dishwasher without like pain, and like I have to do

(34:23):
it in a certain way.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
Anyway, long story, we don't need to get into this,
so still in progress. You came back in progress.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
So it's more like I didn't have a goal to
like try to live my life without daily pain, but
that is kind of a goal that will have to
be worked on. But you had a big goal with
like your kids schooling, right, I mean.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
That, Yeah, Like it wasn't a goal just like you said,
Like it certainly wasn't when I set out to do
all this stuff.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
I wasn't like.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
I'm gonna have to pull out one contract and help
a kid apply to schools and like start all over again.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
But we ended up doing that and it.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
Worked itself out, and I'm super happy, and I feel
like it did take a ton of my bandwidth during
the spring, and so I want to give myself credit
for that because it was just an undertaking.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, applying to schools is always challenging, and that's something
I mean, it's not my project, it's one of my
children's projects. But in the second half of this year,
Jasper is going to be doing all of his college applications.
I mean some Arede earlier, but a lot of them
are due January first, which means that that is going
to be a twenty twenty four project for him, again,

(35:29):
not for me, but I will be assisting him with
making sure it happens and helping him do as best
as he can on it. And so yeah, that's I mean,
I guess that'll be something. But that's not like an
outcome goal for me. The goal is that I hope
he feels happy with how it's going, that it's a
non stressful part of family life. I don't have any

(35:52):
particular goal about where he would get in because that's
not me.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
It's not my life.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
Your goal could be like support him peacefully the application season. Exactly, Yeah, exactly,
that is the personal goal that's actually big.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
I mean, I'm sure, yeah, that's gonna take a lot.
So yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
So Sarah, the question for this week is related to goals,
which you get this a lot, like where do you
actually keep your goals and all your beautiful and amazing
paper products which is the official goal keeping place.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
Well, unfortunately we're not on video, but I am holding
this up. So I have this leather discbound planner that
I actually got from cloth and paper. They send it
to me, and I was kind of like, what am
I going to do with this? I don't use a
lot of diskbound in my normal planning, but I was like,
this might be really nice to keep, like kind of
like things I just want to file and have handy,
and their stuff happens to be like incredibly aesthetically pleasing,
like their paper is beautiful. And so I've been using

(36:48):
this all year and it's awesome, like we can hear
the sound effects to be turning the pages. But I
have like all my PTO in here, and one of
the first things in here is my annual goals from
twenty twenty four, and every time I seasonally set out
to create my goals for the season, I know exactly
where to find that annual goals list. I have taken
pictures of that and put it in Apple Notes in
case I ever want to refer to it on the go.

(37:08):
So it's kind of a funny hybrid tech, you know,
handwritten thing, but I like to actually do the writing
on paper. And because it's in this book that I
kind of refer to all year, it's just nice. And
I put my seasonal goals and my monthly goals in
there as well. I also track my reading in there,
kind of have things like yeah, I mentioned like all
my paid time off for the year kind of figured out,

(37:30):
and then even things like reminding myself what I like
to do during various planning sessions. I have like guidelines
in there, so it's like a reference binder. But it's
been super helpful.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
Yeah, mine is not that fancy, but I do have
it's a slightly nicer notebook, and that the cover is
hard versus fancy.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
Tell us about that fancy. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
I don't know if I bought this one or not,
if somebody gave me this notebook. That's about the level
of thought I put into it. But in advance of
Sarah was Best Laid Plans Live last year. I knew
coming in and because we would have this goal setting
episode in November we would record it. I had to
get organized on what my goals were for the year,
so I sort of brainstormed in there, and then when
I went to her retreat, I sort of refined them

(38:15):
a bit more and wrote like a real list of
them and some of the stuff that she gave me,
so it was all there and yeah, I mean, if
anyone is, I'll put in a plug here. Obviously, Best
Laid Plans Live is sold out for twenty twenty four,
but if you would like some more of a goal
setting annual experience, keep that in mind for twenty five.

(38:40):
And I suspect Sarah may teach a course of goal
setting that is available for people who can't make the
live in person event. She'll do an online one that
you could probably sign up for in November to somewhere
somewhere in there.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Yeah, something like that.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
We did that last year and it was great, and
it was I think people found it really helpful. So
you use that, But then let's get to the notebook.
So then you did you transfer everything to the notebook
and then you just know where to refer to it,
like as the year's gone on.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Yeah, well, I mean when you reminded we were doing
this episode, I had to go back and look.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
But most of them I remember because they're so I mean,
they're either so big, like I knew that I was
professionally aiming for the book contract for much of the spring,
or it's daily like the Sonnets and box. So I'm
not gonna forget that. I wanted to do sonnets and box,
so you know, I had to remind myself of a
few things, like the twentieth anniversary, although I sort of
have that in the back of my brain that it's

(39:32):
gonna happen, but something will happen, Something will happen.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
Awesome.

Speaker 3 (39:37):
But yeah, there's no right answer as to where you
keep them, except that you have them somewhere where you're
gonna remember and be able to find later. For some people,
digital works better for that. For other people, some kind
of physical item works better. But there's no one right answer.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
There, all right, Sarah, I love of the Week.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
I love these episodes. They're so fun, they're fun to do,
they're fun to listen to. I hope other podcasts are
doing midyear check ins. I feel like Happier usually does one.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
People, let me know if you've heard a good midyear
check in episode. Please send me an email Sarah dot
Heart dot Hunger at gmail dot com alert me to
where I can find these episodes because I enjoy listening
to them.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yeah, no, I mean I enjoy them too, and it's
good that we do them because it reminds me to
check in on my annual goals and that level of
accountability is good for all of us. But if you
don't have that built into your life, take this as
the opportunity to think back. Did you set any New
Year's resolutions? Did you make any goals for the year?

(40:40):
Did you have to sort of set anything as professional
goals at work, like when you were doing a check
in with your manager at the beginning of the year.
Do you have any that you set personally apart from that,
did you and your partner discuss anything that you would
like your family to look like. See if you can
kind of retrace these if you wrote them in one place, awesome,
But if you didn't, I don't know, maybe sort of

(41:01):
think back and look at what you were doing at
the time or anything that you thought was important to
you then. But you can also set new goals now,
like even if you didn't set goals at the beginning
of the year. There is nothing magical about January first.
I mean sometimes it feels a little magical, but there's
nothing actually magical about it. You can absolutely set goals
that start July first, right in the middle of the year.

(41:24):
They could be annual goals, like to see how you
do at the end of fiscal year of going through
in the summer, or just check in in December again,
or you can set quarterly goals right or quintile goals,
whatever you want, but starting July first to September thirty,
that would be a great length of time to set
some goals for and see how you do with that.

(41:45):
So we always think it's worthwhile to at least try yes,
love it all right, Well, this has been best of
both worlds with our mid year goal check in. We
will be back next week with more on making work
and life fit together.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Thanks for listening.

Speaker 3 (42:01):
You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com
or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join
us next time for more on making work and life
work together.
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