In today’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I share 7 strategies for lightening the “mental load,” defined as the cognitive and emotional effort it takes to manage life. From writing things down to batching, automation, embracing vertical ownership, encouraging kid independence, and spending out, we’ve got lots of ideas. And of course our favorite: care less. It’s not always possible, but when it is, it can definitely help!

In the Q&A we address a listener question about the best jobs that are high paying and also flexible. It’s not a question with a straightforward answer. Lots of jobs can be made more flexible once you’ve built up seniority and experience. Even “flexible” jobs usually aren’t 100 percent flexible once time has been spoken for. But we give some ideas for thinking through this question.

Please give the episode a listen, and as always we welcome ratings and reviews. Our Patreon community will be meeting next Tuesday (Nov 26th) to discuss all things holidays, so if you’re interested in that Zoom discussion, you can join us here. Membership is $9/month.

In this episode we discuss the planners that we are both using (and have used). A planner on its own won’t change everything, but if a pretty planner nudges you to plan more regularly and thoughtfully…that’s not a bad thing!

In the Q&A a listener asks what the highest costs are in raising teens. There are the obvious ones (college? Or private school for folks who go that route…) but there are also things to consider in terms of lessons/contests/trips/etc. These are all optional, to be sure, but we’ve also realized over the years that we want to be able to provide a lot of these things. That’s something to think about when making financial choices (to the extent that people are able to do so).

Please give the episode a listen. And please consider joining our Patreon community. We have a great discussion going this week of jobs that are both flexible and high-paying. Membership is $9/month, and includes access to monthly online meet-ups where we discuss all things work and life.

We were supposed to pick him up and go rafting but the rafting trip was canceled because the river is completely flooded (the rafting was supposed to have light rapids, but now the rapids might be a bit more serious…). Given that the 9-year-old might not be feeling great I guess it’s just as well. So, the weekend gets reworked.

Last night we hosted several of the 14-year-old’s friends for a sleepover. They decided they still wanted to go in the pool despite the rain, so I spent a rainy hour outside watching them. Lifeguard duty with an umbrella! Then I spent the rest of the evening on the couch watching the Olympics.

On the agenda today: Watching the 17-year-old perform in a vocal recital, and then I think my husband and I will aim to visit the art museum tonight. That’s a good rainy day activity.

In the meantime, this week’s content:

First, I was a guest on Michael Hyatt and Megan Hyatt Miller’s podcast, The Double Win! It was a lot of fun to talk with them about all things time management and managing work and life. Please give that episode a listen.

Best of Both Worlds covered digital organization, and over at our Patreon community we’re discussing naps and school-based fundraising.

The Before Breakfast podcast covered ways to “Waste time better” and that “Time solves many problems.” I also suggested the life hack that one “Buy a box of birthday cards” so you always have the option to send one.

Over at Vanderhacks I lauded the benefits of “Exercising with a purpose” and told people to “Watch out for the Big Ben problem.” Behind the paywall I suggested ways to “Make your own retreat.” I also suggested at least trying a new habit because, hey, “It might be easy.”

Have a great weekend!

That is the topic of this week’s Best of Both Worlds episode. Sarah was given some leeway to choose her clinic days next year, so this sparked a whole discussion of what the ideal part-time schedule would be. If you’re going to work 3 days a week, which should they be? Or if you’re going to work 20-30 hours in a job, when would it be best to log those? A lot of organizations have landed on a hybrid schedule of being in the office three days a week and working at home 2 days. If you have a choice, which days should you choose to work from home?

There’s no one right answer for everyone, but we suggest some things to think about. We also suggest creating a “realistic ideal week” template for thinking this through.

Please give the episode a listen. And please consider joining our Patreon community where we discuss this and other topics!

My current working schedule tends to be mostly 8:15-4:15 or so, with some days ending a little earlier and some a little later based on the driving schedule. Add in breaks and various other responsibilities and it tends to come out around 35 hours a week.

In this week’s episode, Sarah and I open with a discussion of time tracking. Then we talk about everything from sleep and exercise (they make time, they don’t take time) to acceptable forms of multi-tasking to getting adequate help.

In the Q&A we tackle a common question: If you know you want kids, when’s the “right” time to have them? (With my putting “right” in quotes, I think you might get a hint at my thoughts on this…).

Please give the episode a listen, and please share your favorite time management tips as well!

In this week’s episode, Sarah and I revisit the goals we set at the end of 2022 for 2023 (you can listen to that episode here). Many things have happened. A few things have not, for various reasons. We talk about what we plan to continue for the rest of the year, and what we plan to pivot on.

Please give the episode a listen! And let us know: How are you doing on your 2023 goals? If you made a list, but haven’t revisited it since January, now is a great time to do so. This isn’t about feeling “bad” if something hasn’t happened — there are lots of reasons things change. It’s more about reminding ourselves of what we thought we’d like to prioritize or plan, and seeing if that still works with life now. And hey, if there’s something new you’d like to do, feel free to set Mid-year resolutions!

If you can just take the time off and be gentle to yourself, great. But if that’s not going to happen, here’s another idea. If you can’t work, plan. Using low-energy time to think about what Future You could do can turn what might feel like wasted time into something more fruitful.

This realization is how Friday became my weekly planning day (see Tranquility by Tuesday Rule #2: Plan on Fridays). Many of us who work a Monday to Friday week are pretty much sliding into the weekend by Friday. It can be hard to start anything new, particularly after lunch. But I realized that I might be willing to think about what Future Me should be doing. It takes less effort to write “revise book proposal” on a planner page than it does to actually, you know, revise that book proposal. So I began creating the next week’s plans on Friday, trusting that Monday Morning Me would have more vim and vigor for these things than whatever I’d morphed into by Friday afternoon.

This insight can work for all kinds of planning. If you’re spinning your wheels on Thursday afternoon you could take a stab at a weekend plan. If you’re feeling like you’re banging your head against the wall you could regroup and write a Summer Fun List, or a List of 100 Dreams, or do something random like plan next year’s holiday vacation. Or plan something completely unrelated to your current slump… like next November’s podcast episode topics?

Perhaps the sense of devising a plan will feel energizing. That energy might help you get going on something else. But even if not, now you’ve got a plan for next weekend. Or a Summer Fun List. Or next November’s podcast line-up. Those are things that didn’t exist before, and probably should happen at some point. Productivity is all mental anyway. If you feel like you should be getting something done, and then you do get something done, whatever that something happens to be, that tends to register as a win.

By far the most common form of “effortful fun” people choose is reading. This is wise, because reading can pretty easily fit into patches of leisure that are unplanned, uncertain in duration, or that happen at low energy times — the factors that lead people to reach for their phones (or binge Netflix all night). For people who spend 2 hours of leisure time on various screens per day (not that unusual — much of it unnoticed in 10 minute scrolling bits), devoting half of this to reading means an extra hour a day, or seven hours a week. If you read 40 pages per hour, that gets you an extra book a week right there. Not that there’s anything particularly virtuous about posting an impressive book tally BUT reading 50 more books a year would definitely open up a lot of reading possibilities.

Making this switch — and hence reading quite a bit more — involves doing a few things.

Make it easy to read. Some people always have a print book with them, but for most of us this means making peace with ebooks, and (sorry!) even ebooks read on a phone. Is it ideal? No. But putting the Kindle or Nook app, or Apple’s Books app on your phone means that you can read a book anytime you have your phone with you. Which is probably all the time.

Always have books available. For those of us whose libraries have entered the digital age, an easy way to do this is to use the Libby app and borrow lots of ebooks from your local library. You can put holds on popular books the same way you would with physical books, but lots of back list titles will probably be available immediately. Or…

Put money into it. Price wise, ebooks are the new paperbacks. If you want to read more, you want to have appealing books available. You can download an ebook to an app instantly for usually less than $20. Buying a new ebook every other week or so just might make reading more appealing. Pro tip: If you’re unsure whether you’ll like a book, download the free sample first. I have been saved a few times from buying a real dud this way!

Go with what you like. We’ve talked in the past here about how few more books any of us are going to read in life. Even if you read 100 books a year and live for 50 more years, that’s only 5000 more titles you will read. And to be honest, both of those numbers are optimistic estimates for many of us. You will never make it through thousands of books you’d love. So don’t waste your time on things you aren’t really drawn to. If a friend or reviewer whose taste you trust recommends something outside your normal tastes, absolutely try it out BUT if you know you hate false accusation stories…just don’t bother.

Feel free to lower the energy level. For really low-energy times you might have some more accessible reading available. I like magazines, and sometimes I’ve read books of very short essays, or joke books or comic books because I can’t deal with a full page of text. Pro tip: You can borrow magazines through the Libby app. So you don’t even need to subscribe or visit a news stand! And finally…

Read first, but it doesn’t have to be forever. The point of the “effortful before effortless” fun rule is not to banish all effortless fun. It’s to change the balance, so busy people don’t spend all their precious leisure time on things that aren’t necessarily as rejuvenating as they might have hoped. So if you find it hard to get going on reading, tell yourself you only have to read for two minutes. Two minutes feels like nothing! Then you can binge Netflix or go on an Instagram bender all night if you want. Most of the time you’ll likely read longer, but if not, oh well. Reading for two minutes five times a day during those little spots of time that pop up still means reading for another ten minutes a day…which isn’t nothing. That’s probably about how much time it’s taking me to read through all the works of Jane Austen this year.

How do you make time to read?

In other news: This rule to do “Effortful before effortless” fun comes from Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters. If you haven’t read a copy of the book yet, please do! You can request it from your library or download the ebook from major retailers immediately and make it your effortful fun today

Even the busiest people have some leisure time. The problem is that it is often unpredictable, short in duration, or happens at low-energy times (like at night after the kids go to bed). Screen time fits these constraints incredibly well. Most people have their phones with them at all times, and you can scroll online for 2 minutes or 2 hours. You don’t have to plan ahead to watch Netflix.

The result is that screen time winds up consuming the bulk of people’s leisure time. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a little online or TV-style fun. But many busy people also lament that they have too little time to read, do hobbies, etc. So there needs to be some way to repurpose low-quality leisure time for these higher quality pursuits.

The answer is Rule #9: Effortful before effortless. Commit to doing just a minute or two of “effortful fun” (reading, hobbies, crafts, connecting) before switching over to “effortless fun” (generally social media, scrolling, TV, etc.).

A few minutes doesn’t seem like a huge ask, so this strategy can feel pretty doable. But one of two things winds up happening. Often times, people get so into their effortful fun that they never switch over. You want to find out what happens in that mystery novel and you never wind up over at Facebook. Oh well! It will still be there next time.

But even if you do read for ten minutes and then go binge watch something the rest of the night, at least you’ve gotten to do both kinds of fun, and that can make leisure time feel far more balanced.

So, this week, think about what sorts of “effortful” fun you like to do. I enjoy puzzles, reading magazines, and reading books (not all great books…plenty of mindless fodder in there too). I try to keep ebooks on my phone so I can read those in little bits of time. I’ve set up my dining room table to be a puzzle station and generally have a 1000-piece puzzle going at any point.

Figure out how you can make your fun accessible, and then, when a spot of time opens up, challenge yourself to do one of these effortful forms of fun for just a little bit. This seems simple, but it can have a huge effect. In the Tranquility by Tuesday project (the subject of my most recent book), agreement scores with the statement “Yesterday I didn’t waste time on things that weren’t important to me” rose 32 percent over the course of the study. Not bad — especially for people whose lives didn’t suggest a lot of wasted time in the first place!

In other news: Wondering why the TBT week starts on Friday? It’s because of Rule #2: Plan on Friday. You can read more about that here.

Check out this TBT In Real Life video of how one busy woman decided to spend more time on effortful fun, rather than the effortless variety.

Here are some questions to help you reflect on the past week:

• Think back over the past week. What times did you designate for little tasks during your workdays?
• What windows did you designate for household tasks and chores?
• What effect did you see in your life from batching the little things?
• What challenges did you face in trying to batch the little things? How did you address these challenges?
• If you modified this rule, how did you do so?
• How likely are you to continue batching the little things in your life?

As we hurtle toward the last week of this Tranquility by Tuesday Challenge, it’s also worth reflecting on the previous rules:

• Did you observe a bedtime this past week?
• Did you plan on Friday? (And is planning on your to-do list for tomorrow?)
• Did you move by 3 p.m. most days?
• Did you do your chosen activity three times per week?
• Did you create a back-up slot, or build more open space generally into your schedule?
• Did you have one big adventure and one little adventure this past week?
• Did you take one night for you?

I’ll be back with the final rule from Tranquility by Tuesday tomorrow!

In other news: Sarah and I talked a bit about batching the little things in order to reduce transition time in our most recent episode of the Best of Both Worlds podcast. If you haven’t listened to it yet, please do!