(Time for the annual question…are you Team Pumpkin or no? I like pumpkin bread and pumpkin muffins, but have not embraced the PSL lifestyle or, for that matter, pumpkin beer.)

We discuss our favorite fall products and such, and then pivot to the topic of energy. A listener wrote in that she thought we (as in me + SHU) seemed very energetic and wondered why she didn’t feel so energetic. First, we needed to stress that we tend to pep ourselves up for recording, but then also empathize that this listener’s situation (often solo parenting a toddler) is tough. We share some ideas for managing energy and finding life more doable.

Please give the episode a listen! We welcome ratings and reviews. Please also consider joining the BOBW Patreon community. Next week (on 10/22) we’ll be meeting up by Zoom to discuss all things meal-planning. I know I’m looking forward to getting some new ideas. Membership is $9/month.

Lately, however, some changes in the podcast industry have nudged me to try to shake things up. So I’m excited to announce that, starting today, Before Breakfast will feature one longer episode per week. These episodes will likely run on Wednesdays, and will usually feature an interview with a fascinating person sharing advice on how they take their days from great to awesome and how we can too.

I’m launching the series with none other than Sarah Hart-Unger! Not only is she very productive, she has lots of great tips. And, I’m pretty used to talking with her, which I figured would make me less nervous for producing this thing.

So if you’d like to hear her morning routine and life hacks, go check out today’s episode. And please consider subscribing to Before Breakfast. Each week features four new short episodes, plus the interview, and then on the weekend I rerun “classic” episodes from the past 5.5 years. We call those “Second Cup.” You know, morning coffee themed…

While I’m shaking things up…I also decided to add a video component to the Vanderhacks newsletter. Starting next Tuesday, I’ll do one video post a week, sharing a quick tip. You can go here to subscribe.

Thanks for reading, listening to, and watching my work! I really appreciate it.

And while you’re here, how about a September-themed sonnet, called “Remembering”…?

September blue is different, brighter, thin,
the sky a hue that August can’t quite match,
the trees aglow as light begins to bend.
A wisp of wind blows stronger, tries to catch

a twirling leaf, the first of many — scouts
the landscape, finds a spot on cooling ground.
I find myself nostalgic, hereabouts,
recall Septembers past, those days first bound

by early night, by waning heat, by gold
on sidewalks — I once walked these pathways, new.
I watched the city brace itself for cold,
I pondered dreams that only I then knew.

What can I catch? A leaf, a hope, I may —
but others, just like autumn, drift away.

Photo: Believe it or not, this was one of the promotional images I snapped for Before Breakfast back when it launched in 2019…

I was definitely noticing hints of fall color this morning as I was driving my little boys to school. I did a lot of work on a puzzle this morning (Friday is my very long not-really-amenable-to-work morning). I’m doing one of a map of the world, which has been fun for brushing up on geography. I mean, I know roughly where most countries are, but I can forget how close some places happen to be. In my mind, Pakistan is in Asia (because it’s right by India), and the Middle East is a separate region, but it would be a pretty quick flight from Karachi to, say, Dubai. Those puzzle pieces are right by each other!

I’ve been waking up before my alarm on my non-running days, which is kind of crazy. My bedtime all last year was 11 p.m., and I’m still going to bed around then most days. I set my alarm for 7 a.m., since that’s when kids have to start getting up, but if I go to sleep soon after 11, there’s no way I’m sleeping until 7 on an average day. I tend to wake up between 6:15 and 6:30. Longtime readers know my sleep set point is approximately 7.3-7.4 hours/day so…this tracks.

This week’s content: A lot of people enjoyed the “Would you rather…?” BOBW episode. Over at our Patreon page we’ve been talking margin, and how to boost our energy levels. We’ll be meeting by Zoom next week Thursday to talk about Jodi Wellman’s book, You Only Die Once. Find more membership info here.

The Before Breakfast podcast covered why you should “Plan each weekend twice.” I plan my upcoming weeks on Friday, meaning the next Monday to Sunday week. But then I also refine the plan for the immediately upcoming weekend. That means I plan each weekend twice. It’s a quirk of when I plan, but I think this has approach has some merits — plan lightly, then plan tightly! More becomes possible. I also suggested that you “Press the easy button when you can.” The pejorative phrase “taking the easy way out” is sometimes misplaced, because in many cases the easy way is not only perfectly fine, it may be preferable to something more complex. Even at a fancy dinner party, I found people were as happy with the ice cream sandwiches and fruit for dessert as they were with anything more complicated…

Next week, I’ll be launching an interview series for Before Breakfast on Wednesdays, so stay tuned for that.

Over at Vanderhacks (my Substack newsletter), I note that “Weekends are real days too.” Even if you do something “only” on the weekends, you’re doing it fairly frequently, and it counts. My post behind the paywall is called “I still haven’t watched Casablanca,” which is my musings on my 2010 (!) List of 100 Dreams, and what has happened and what hasn’t. Please consider a free or paid subscription to this every-weekday-morning newsletter.

Finally, my son is back to writing movie reviews…hopefully this will be the first in a series!

Stand by Me, reviewed by Jasper Conway

The moments worth remembering stick with us for life. That’s the theme of this movie based on a Stephen King novella — and the movie will stick with you as well.

The story follows four young boys — Gordie, Vern, Chris, and Teddy — through their journey to find the body of a local boy who died. The journey itself is simple but what this movie does well is crafting the boys’ personalities and their relationships with each other. Several times through the movie the boys engage in behavior that could be best described by the out-of-date saying, “Boys will be boys.” But underneath the jokes and fun this movie creates a profound sense of belonging.

The boys all come from different backgrounds with different family lives, yet they came together to form true and real friendships. When you grow older these natural friendships become harder to make, but when you’re a kid those outside things don’t matter as much. The movie also succeeds in showing realities for children in the 1950s (and unfortunately, now too). Teddy, for example, has his ear burnt by his father, a clear example of abuse. Chris struggles with being in a family that has a reputation for not turning out to be much. Vern struggles with his weight and feeling accepted by his new friends.

Gordie is the main character, and we quickly find out about his brother’s death and how it has affected him. Yet, as the journey goes on we see him go through the stages of grief, moving through his feelings in a way he hadn’t previously been able to process.

In all, this movie, while seemingly simple, is astoundingly rich. While I think it could be a universally loved film, it is rated R, so it might not be good for young kids (even if they are the same age as the kids in the film).

Overall I would give this movie a 9.5/10.

In this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I play a round! We each chose a handful of questions and posed them to each other. See if you can guess what our answers would be, and we’d love to hear your answers too.

(Would you rather be more attractive or more intelligent? Would you rather swim with sharks or sleep in a house you knew to be haunted?…that opened up a whole can of worms, as it were…)

In the Q&A section, a listener looks for advice on justifying outsourcing cleaning even if she’s not currently earning much. We give her some new ways to think about this issue.

Please give the episode a listen! And please consider joining our Patreon community. We have several lively discussion threads going each week about topics related to work and life. This week we’ve been discussing what low energy could represent, along with college admissions questions and memories. Next week we’ll have a zoom meet-up to discuss Jodi Wellman’s book You Only Die Once. Membership is $9/month. If you’d like to try it out you could join for a month and then quit any time — but we think you’ll enjoy it!

We got back from the beach Saturday afternoon. I decided to record five Before Breakfast podcast episodes that night. On Sunday I sent them in, got my various newsletters squared away, and did podcast prep for a massive recording session on Tuesday. That gave me space on Monday to work through the results from my recent Evening Hours Challenge, and to approve the various surveys that will be part of my upcoming Better Workday Challenge (a 3-week project where people test out three strategies designed to make any workweek better. You can sign up here if you’d like! The results will be used anonymously in my next book. You can still sign up if you did the Evening Hours Challenge too. As usual, my sign-ups tend to skew more female, so male readers are particularly encouraged to sign up – thank you!).

On Tuesday, Sarah and I recorded an episode of BOBW, two intro + Q&As for upcoming interview episodes, plus I interviewed Sarah for Before Breakfast. Yep, Before Breakfast will be launching a weekly longer show in mid-September — I’ll explain the reasoning in this weekend’s Week’s Worth newsletter, but suffice to say it’s a new project.

At noon we did the BOBW Patreon community’s monthly meet-up. Then I finished packing, dropped my 14-year-old off at the high school to take the bus to a cross-country meet and I drove to Newark Airport. I was flying to Austin, TX to give a speech, and American Airlines does very few flights there (they are always at bad times out of PHL, or else require a connection) so I tend to drive to Newark so I can fly direct. I practiced my speech in the car! Then I parked in the garage for Terminal C (an important point for later – the Newark flights flew out of C).

The upside of it being an afternoon event in Austin on Wednesday is that after having a long lovely night of sleep (10:30 CT-7:30 CT) I could work in my hotel room all morning. Even if the morning did not start that early! I had avocado toast for breakfast, worked until 11:30, went to the green room, met everyone and worked there and then gave my talk to the group in early afternoon. It was an all-women (well, 90%) audience as it was a women’s conference, which is always fun. I feel like my material is useful for all people but it tends to land best with people like me, which is probably true for humanity in general.

I was back at the Austin airport that afternoon, and on a 6:26 p.m. flight back to Newark. We landed early, but unfortunately, we landed in Terminal A. I have no idea why United and Newark do this. Flights to/from various destinations alternate between terminal A and C and they are no where close together. So I had to go wait for a shuttle bus to Terminal C. Given that it was 11 p.m., there was a certain amount of gallows humor among the folks waiting for this bus, though I got to talking with one of the Newark airport employees who was herding us around and she mentioned that she never wanted to fly because people were so grumpy when she was dealing with us at the airport, which I thought was kind of sad. Anyway, I made it to my car at something like 11:20, and onto the highway around 11:30, which put me home at 12:55 a.m.

I was in bed around 1:15 a.m. but my goal of sleeping in this morning was somewhat thwarted by the sheer volume of activity around this house. I made it to about 8:15 a.m. with a lot of in and out. Oh well — there’s more running around later today but for now I’m having my coffee and getting a bit less discombobulated…

Photo: Books available for conference attendees. 

Seven years later, we are still at it! Both of us have seen some changes. We’ve both moved houses (albeit locally). We both had another baby (well, we knew Sarah’s was on the way when we launched in 2017, but my late 2019 baby was just a glimmer in my eye then…). We’ve had some challenges with it, but we’ve also had a ton of fun.

This week’s episode is all about celebrating our 7th birthday. Feel free to let us know your favorite episode, or any topics you’d like to see covered. We’d really appreciate ratings/reviews (think of it as a birthday present!).

Also — the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community will be having our monthly meet-up today, August 27th, at noon eastern time. We’ll be talking all things time management. Membership is $9/month. If you join before noon you can get the Zoom link in the forum. If you join after, no worries, the session will be recorded. Hope to see you there!

In this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I provide a guide for surviving and possibly enjoying long weekends (like Labor Day weekend coming up soon). From making plans (and getting out of the house) to trading off, to having something to look forward to, there are lots of ways to make the most of this time, and maybe even have some fun too.

Please give the episode a listen! In the Q&A we address the topic of whether to get a minivan when kid #3 is on the way.

If you’d like to join a community that discusses these and other topics related to work and life, please consider joining our Patreon community. Currently we’ve been talking about how couples manage their finances (including joint vs. separate accounts, and expense tracking/budgeting software). Next week we’ll also be doing a time management seminar as our official August Zoom meet-up. Membership is $9/month. Hope to see you there!

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!

My monthly “Just a Minute” newsletter went out yesterday with an essay about getting the right vacation balance. Some are relaxing, some are adventurous. It’s good to have both! My weekly “Week’s worth” newsletter goes out tomorrow morning, and I have to say, I really enjoyed this week’s topic. You can sign up for my newsletters by filling in your email on my home page (for the free time makeover guide).

Over at Vanderhacks I did a kitchen + food theme for the week. I suggested “Don’t store produce in your produce drawers,” and that you can save time, money, and mental space when you “Pack a snack (and water).” The post behind the paywall was “Laura’s little list of kitchen hacks.”

The Before Breakfast podcast covered that you should “Make complete plans, even if they’re tentative,” and that it might be fun to “Run into people.”

Over at the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community page we had an 80-comment discussion on the idea that “Kids need time and money.” I feel like a lot of the discussion of mothers working for pay centers on potentially “losing” time with kids, but there are a lot of upsides to what gaining extra income can afford a family — as many people who grew up in more tight circumstances have commented on. Please come join us!

We are doing celebratory dinners this weekend for good grades in the spring (sometimes it takes a while to schedule things…) and there may be peach picking. Stay tuned…

Over at Vanderhacks I wrote that “No one wins a misery contest” and that “Smart categories create variety.” Being creative about how you make your lists can nudge you to make better choices. The post behind the paywall was about “3 ways to make any work day more enjoyable.” Not all work is the same by any means, but I think these three strategies can make the vast majority of work days better.

The Before Breakfast podcast suggested that life might be better if we “Cultivate a Saturday vibe.” I suggested that “If you can’t get out of it, get into it.” For those who are looking to spend more time with friends and boost focus I suggested people try to “Work side by side.”

The Best of Both Worlds podcast was about rest and trading off. Over at the BOBW Patreon community page we’re discussing strategies one member can use while her husband will be away for 3 days every week for the next 3 months. We’re also sharing lists of things that are fun for us…and NOT fun for us (even if they are for other people). Please come join us!

Also, I write a weekly newsletter that comes out on Saturday’s (“A Week’s Worth”) and one that comes out monthly (“Just a Minute”) — the latter will be published August 1st. You can sign up for either/both here.

Finally, I was just reminiscing that 15 years ago I was putting the finishing touches on the manuscript of what became 168 Hours. Let me know if you’ve read it (and when!)