In the Q&A, a listener writes in asking about activities for teens and tweens — what are some things this age group will be excited to do with the family? This definitely gets challenging as the kids get older! (Though Starbucks probably features prominently…)

Please give the episode a listen! And please consider joining our Patreon community. Next week Thursday (12/19) we’ll be hosting our annual goal-setting workshop. Sarah will lead us in various exercises to figure out the upcoming year. Membership is $9/month (and you can quit at any point).

In today’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah interviews Laura Mae Martin about her new book, Uptime, and about her work as Google’s in-house productivity expert. She shares tips and strategies for staying productive. They chat meetings, setting priorities, task and calendar management, family life, and more.

In the Q&A we tackle a tricky question from a listener who wonders how to balance vacations with nuclear family vs. extended family requests. If you’ve only got limited PTO, how should you split it between regular family vacations and trips to visit relatives?

Please give the episode a listen. As always we welcome ratings and reviews! You can also come join our Patreon community where we discuss topics related to work and life more at length. Recent threads have included one on career change and one on marathon training. We’re having a lot of fun and would love to see you there! Membership is $9/month.

In this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I discuss all things summer. We discuss our own plans, and our usual planning tools (yep, the Camp Spreadsheet is back!). We talk travel, Summer Fun Lists, summer fashion, favorite treats, and more.

In the Q&A, we advise a listener who is trying to choose the best after-care option for her soon-to-be kindergartner. Please give the episode a listen and let us know what you are excited for this summer!

In other news: Did you know that Best of Both Worlds has a Patreon community? Lately, we’ve been discussing snacks, teen summer plans, where we shop for clothes, and more in our discussion forum. We’ll also be gathering (virtually) next Thursday May 25 for the next installment in our book club, discussing Gretchen Rubin’s Life in Five Senses. Please join us!

(Side note: Not so many mom-son pairs in the audience! We joked that they really needed to re-purpose some of the men’s rooms in that football stadium for the evening!)

It was a gorgeous night (75 degrees) and a great show. It was also incredibly long — about 3.5 hours, and 44 songs. It struck me that in an era when you can get individual songs whenever you want, and watch the music videos for those songs whenever you want, one thing live entertainment can provide is to be a real experience. Requiring some serious stamina of the audience could be part of that.

To say nothing of the stamina of the performer. Whoa. She did that show three nights in a row after doing it three nights in a row the previous weekend, and so forth. I really appreciated that Swift acted happy to be there, and you didn’t get the sense that this was just another day on the job, which one could imagine happening somewhere in the middle of dozens of shows. She seemed very aware that some people had waited hours to log on to score their $99 Verified Fan tickets, and others had no doubt spent insane amounts on the secondary market. At one point she said something to the effect of “whatever effort you went through tonight to get here, please know that it is very appreciated.”

As for my effort — it wasn’t that bad on the ticket obtaining front. I bought my tickets on Stubhub six months ago and paid what I felt was a very reasonable price considering what I saw tickets going for later.

The logistics of getting to and from Lincoln Financial Field, on the other hand, felt more intense. We took off at about 4:40 p.m. from my house. In light traffic, you can get there in less than 30 minutes. We didn’t pull into the far parking lot until about 6:10 p.m. (to be fair, this turned out to be more Friday rush hour traffic than Taylor traffic). Then we hiked about 15 minutes to the stadium. And that was better than the departure! We stayed until the end of the concert, because, well, we wanted to hear the Midnights songs. But after arriving at our car at 11:55 p.m., I didn’t even bother starting the car until 12:55 a.m., because no one had left our parking lot in that time. I finally got onto the highway (about a mile away) around 1:15 a.m., at which point it was the 30 minutes home it should be.

So, into bed a little after 2, then up at 6:50 with the toddler, but back to bed a little after 8 and I slept until 11! And now it is a memory that I think will stick with me — more so than many Friday nights. I imagine that is so for lots of people who were in the stadium — something that live entertainment can do that you don’t necessarily get from just listening to an album.

In other news: As for a little adventure…my husband and I wanted to go to a party one of his colleagues was hosting Saturday night. We didn’t manage to get a babysitter, but then I had a realization that some of the young women posting on the babysitter list where I look are 17-year-old students at my son’s high school. (Note: when we hire sitters, they are not generally charged with supervising the older three kids, who tend to hang out in their rooms or watching movies. They are there to watch and entertain the 8- and 3-year-old.)

So I put my two older boys in charge, each splitting the time, an hour and 15 minutes apiece at what I felt was a reasonable rate. And then I left the party early (my husband stayed) to make sure all was good. And it was. When I got home, my 13-year-old was playing a game with his little brothers wherein he dressed up in the inflatable dinosaur costume and chased them and they shot at him with Nerf guns. Good times.

I will be careful not to abuse this (and I pay!) but the prospect of not having to hunt for a sitter for “peak” times when it’s hard to land one really has me giddy…

Of course there is more to fall than simply peak October leaves. In my part of Pennsylvania, September is something of a bridge month, technically late summer most of the time, but feeling different, with the light slanting and the overgrown green mottling around the edges. November is one of my favorite months of the year. It starts with blazing red maples, travels through the harvest themes of Thanksgiving, and ends with the coming coziness of the holidays.

Anyway, all that is to say that fall deserves its own seasonal fun list. So here it is — the things I want to do to really appreciate this season!

Go to Maine. A work trip to Portland – one of the cutest cities ever. Lobster must be consumed at some point. In September in Maine, there’s already a nip of fall in the evening and early morning air.

Run a half marathon. Fall is for distance running and I have a race coming up soon. I’m not as trained as I’d like. I never am. But I have done two 10-milers and two 8-milers and so it could be worse.

See the bird migration. We could visit either Cape May or Hawk Mountain — both have some fantastic bird watching in early fall.

Take a leaf peeping trip. We’re planning to go visit my brother in upstate New York for a weekend. We went for his wedding last year and had such a wonderful time. In future years I’d like to make a Vermont/New Hampshire type trip during the peak foliage season. There are some road routes that are known for being fabulous.

Go on a fall hike. Closer to home perhaps, but I want to get the kids out for some long walks in pretty leaves.

Go to a Halloween-themed event. We will go to at least one “Boo at the Zoo” type extravaganza — maybe that or a theme park Halloween fest. My 12-year-old wore his inflatable T-rex costume to the zoo last year and the cheetahs were totally tracking him and eyeing him as a threat!

Drink apple cider/go apple picking. So we already went apple picking once (to get Honeycrisps while they are ripe!) but I’m happy to go again. I’m sure I can find some sort of Cider Fest around here and make a day of it.

Listen to fall-themed music. Listening to Appalachian Spring was such a cool part of that season this year and so I’d like to pick a seasonally appropriate classical work and get to know it well. But what should that be? Other than Vivaldi’s Four Seasons I’m not sure!

Take family photos. This isn’t always “fun” per se in the moment, but I’m happy to have them, and peak fall leaves is a good time (they make pretty Christmas cards).

Celebrate the launch of Tranquility by Tuesday! I just started my official pre-order campaign. Order before October 11 and you’ll get an early excerpt, a TBT Scorecard so you can track how you’re doing on the rules, an invite to a Zoom book discussion in October and early access to my TBT In Real Life videos. If you pre-order just fill out the forms on this page to get the bonuses. Thank you!

What’s on your fall fun list?

Here’s what was on my list, and how it went! Mostly pretty good. It was a good summer. A little exhausting at times, but pretty good.

Go fruit picking. I wanted to get strawberries, peaches, and apples. I’m happy to report that in three rounds of fruit picking, all of this happened. Strawberries in June (they weren’t great though — not sure if it was the place or the weather), peaches in July (quite yummy even if Linvilla is sometimes a zoo), and then Honeycrisp apples at Indian Orchards. The last was a Labor Day weekend event — while people often think of apples as a fall fruit, my favorite varieties (Honeycrisp, Gala) actually ripen in late summer. I’ve missed out on them a few years so now I make sure to go early. We never made it to Maple Acres, which I mentioned in the original post. I like them, but their hours and fruit availability didn’t quite match up for us this summer.

Visit a farmers market. I went twice to our local Bryn Mawr Farmers Market, which happens every Saturday morning. We got some fun fruits and breads and various whimsical finds. This will definitely be a good thing to do any future summer Saturday mornings when we happen to be around.

Go tubing on a river. In July, I took two of my kids up to Easton to tube down the Delaware River. I enjoyed this, though I think they found it a little dull to float along a river for two hours. Oh well. I guess either I go tubing by myself next summer or I organize a big group to go (more people probably makes the floating more exciting).

Relax and enjoy our June family vacation. My goal was to have “at least a few truly enjoyable moments,” and that happened. I liked snorkeling along an underwater signed trail at one of St. John’s most famous beaches, and my husband and I had a great dinner at a secluded restaurant along the water. I also had fun night kayaking with my oldest kid.

Visit Ocean Grove, NJ. I did this three times — two day trips, including one this past weekend, and our week long vacation there in August. We hit most of the big places, including the Silverball Arcade and Days Ice Cream, where I enjoyed my frozen concoctions, even if they were made from oats. (I try not to think about that too much). New additions this year include brunch at Toast in Asbury, and getting lobster rolls from Cousins Maine Lobster, which has a location on the boardwalk in Asbury. I’m now obsessed with their blueberry soda. Hopefully we’ve got the house for 2 weeks next summer — fingers crossed! It is my happy place.

Do Mommy Days with the kids. I wrote that my 12-year-old mentioned camping. We did not do that, though he is going with his boy scout troop in two weeks. I managed to do five one-on-one excursions with five kids. I was not sure this was going to happen given the various childcare complications we had this summer but I set it as a goal for August and did it. The Mommy Days included NYC for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child + the World Trade Center Observatory (15-year-old), lobster from the food truck + Dave and Busters (12-year-old), Panera + a Mommy-and-Me spa visit (10-year-old), Chuck E. Cheese (7-year-old), and Sesame Place (2 year old). Phew!

See Mary Chapin Carpenter at Longwood Gardens. Yep – this was a lot of fun, and though the concert was delayed for rain, it wound up being a perfect night. I’ve been humming Halley Came to Jackson all week.

Do morning runs. I often run during the morning on weekends (such as this past weekend, when I did a 10 miler to prep for an upcoming half marathon…), but weekdays need to be a summer thing with the school schedule. I woke up early several weekday mornings this summer and went for runs before the rest of the house was stirring. It was great to get it done and I’m glad I made this happen. I’m not inspired to wake up at 5:30 to make it happen during the school year but I’m glad it happened in the summer!

Enjoy my new hammock. I’m off to go do that after I finish writing a draft of this… The pool (also mentioned in this item) is half-renovated. We went in a few times, though something went wrong again and it’s a little green at the moment…

Unpack. Not the whole house but I do want to give myself credit here. The teenager’s room got unpacked because my mother-in-law moved in there for three weeks. I got the guest room cleared out and bought a new mattress and bedding for it AND got the junk truck to come remove the old mattress. We also set up a futon in there so it’s great for visitors or sleep overs. Theoretically 4 people could sleep in there now. Alas, that was the signal for the two third floor bathrooms to start leaking and thus not be usable until they are renovated (they are the only bathrooms we didn’t renovate originally…of course…).

Plan something fun for Labor Day. I loved going to Maine at the end of last summer but I’m doing that for work soon! Plus we traveled a lot already this summer. So Labor Day weekend has been slightly more local. We did manage to have a good weekend though — with a day trip to the beach, and apple picking, and then my husband and I going out for an anniversary dinner with our 15-year-old serving as the babysitter. It was a moment — like we have finally arrived at that stage as parents…

There were a few other great memories that happened that weren’t on the original list!

Las Vegas. I went in late June to speak at a conference, and due to the timing of my two talks, I was there for three nights. It was a blast. I took advantage of the restaurants and shows and even went on the lazy river at my resort all by myself.

Dutch Wonderland. During a week of very limited childcare I took the kids to this little theme park as part of Camp Mommy. It wasn’t particularly grand, but my 2-year-old got to go on a kiddie roller coaster and he loved it so much. So we will probably go back this fall.

The Wolf Sanctuary of PA. I took my three older kids here last week. My 12-year-old had been supposed to go a few years ago. The trip got canceled and he had been sad about that at the time. So we said we would go back, but they were closed with Covid for quite a while, and then now have been selling out on tours fairly quickly. But I managed to snag a private tour for us when a date opened up. It was really cool seeing wolves up close, and listening to the howling. It did not make me think well of humanity, hearing the stories of how many wolves wound up in a rescue sanctuary, but the animals were amazing.

Recording the TBT In Real Life videos. I am so excited to show these soon! Recording for two days in various locations was an adventure and something I hadn’t done much before.

Massachusetts over the Fourth of July. I enjoyed fireworks and a small town Independence Day parade.

Biking with my husband. We went on a 10-mile bike ride together along the Schuylkill River Trail a few weeks ago and it was a different sort of date that was quite fun.

So that’s 2022! I’ll write a Fall Fun List soon, and am already thinking ahead to summer 2023…

(Side note: My pre-2016 blog photos look quite grainy…But there are definitely things that seem to be on the list each year!)

This will be our first summer in the new house. It’s also shaping up to be quite a full season, which is the reality of having 5 active kids who all have their own interests. Nonetheless, I’m sure there will still be downtime, as there always is. Several nights this week some of us spent time playing outside on the new play set, lounging on the hammock, watering plants, and so forth. We have a lot of camps, but much of August is camp-free so that might be the part of the summer where the children go feral.

Here’s what I’m planning this summer to make summer feel like summer to me:

Go fruit picking. I am just combining this as one entry. Strawberry picking always kicks off the season. Then it’s peach and blueberry picking in late July. Honeycrisp apples ripen in late August. For any other Philadelphia-area folks, we like Maple Acres Farm for strawberries and Weaver’s Orchard for the rest (other varieties of apples trend into fall, so that’s a different fun list!).

Visit a farmers’ market. We visit the farm stands at the orchards/farms we visit, but I’d like to check out a multi-vendor type place. Suggestions welcome! There’s a local one that happens on Saturdays that would be easy to try but I could go solo on a weekday somewhere more far flung.

Go tubing on a river. We did this for the first time last summer and it was a lot of fun!

Relax and enjoy our June family vacation. The hotel and flights are booked, but traveling with all of us can be an ordeal. My goal is to have at least a few truly enjoyable moments. How’s that for a low bar? I want my remembering self to be glad we did it AND to enjoy parts during the vacation itself.

Visit Ocean Grove, NJ. We’ll take our annual trip in August. I’ll run along the boardwalk, visit the beer garden, eat breakfast on the rental house’s big porch (same house as always), take the kids to the pinball arcade, and make nightly pilgrimages to Day’s Ice Cream. Sadly, I will probably be eating the non-dairy ice cream instead of the chocolate peanut butter ice cream I love but I am slowly making my peace with that.

Do Mommy Days with the kids. These one-on-one days doing something each child chooses have been requested and so I will do my best. The 12-year-old mentioned camping, so maybe he and I will be pitching a tent somewhere! (I’m wondering if the backyard counts…)

See Mary Chapin Carpenter at Longwood Gardens. Outdoor music in summer is always great. I have tickets for this. I’m also taking some of the kids to see a live taping of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me in Philly.

Do morning runs. The camp schedule starts later than the school schedule, so this could definitely happen. Maybe once a week or so? And maybe I could do some evening runs along the river too.

Enjoy my hammock. And balcony. The new house has a lot of ways to experience the outside. The pool is under renovation so that may or may not be part of the summer.

Unpack. So this isn’t necessarily fun, but I’m putting it on the list to hold myself accountable. I am going to take a few days this summer to make solid progress on getting rid of the remaining boxes. Most of the kids’ rooms are box free but the teenager’s room is not. I also need to get the guest room cleared out and set up (buy a mattress, etc.) so that can be used for overnight guests. I’ve been putting them in the 12-year-old’s room and kicking him out.

Plan something fun for Labor Day. Last year we went to Maine, which I loved, but I’ll be going to Maine the week after Labor Day for work, so I’ll get my fix then. Most likely we’ll do something else. But it’s nice to end the summer with one last hurrah.

What’s on your summer fun list? If you post on your own website, feel free to link!

(I did a study in which 150 people learned and implemented these rules over nine weeks, and their levels of time satisfaction did rise by statistically significant amounts!)

Anyway, in anticipation of the book, I’m going to start doing the occasional Tranquility by Tuesday (TBT) Scorecard here on the blog. I track my time, so I can look back on a week and see…how did I do? How many rules did I follow? What was the effect on my life?

My first rule is to “Give yourself a bedtime.” Since I have to wake up at 6:30 a.m. on weekday mornings (for kid getting ready/shuttling) and I need 7.4 hours of sleep/day, my bedtime has become 11 p.m. It used to be earlier, but in the new house the baby and I are both sleeping better…sometimes it helps to be a little farther away…. Over the past week (April 18-24), I was in my bedroom by 11 every night, and asleep at 11 every weekday night. I did stay up until 11:15 p.m. on Friday and Saturday night (horrors!). As a result of observing my bedtime, I was up a few minutes before my alarm 5 out of 7 days last week (the alarm was set for 7:30 on Sat/Sun and I was up before then, plus three of the weekdays I was up closer to 6:15). I really hate being sleep deprived and so I’ve become pretty fundamentalist about this rule, though I should note that getting in bed by 11 p.m. isn’t that challenging. We’ve also made some family choices (like driving the high schooler to school) so no one has to get up before 6:30.

My second rule is to “Plan on Fridays.” I plan my upcoming weeks on Fridays no matter what (well, unless I plan on Thursdays because I’m gone on Friday or something…), so I anticipate this being a boring entry in my scorecards…

Next up is “Move by 3 p.m.” This means to get some form of physical activity before 3 p.m. each day. I went for walks outside M, T, W, and F, and did a morning run on Saturday. On Sunday the time that worked for a run was 5 p.m. Thursday I did not do any particular physical activity. My life in general tends to feature a lot of running around, but I’m sure I can aim for 7 days in the future.

Rule #4 is “Three times a week is a habit.” Things don’t have to happen daily to count in our lives. For many fun/meaningful things, three times a week can make something part of our identities. In general these days I’m aiming to run three times a week, though I only did twice last week — I’m dealing with some IT band issues and so I had taken 2 weeks off of running. I would like to practice the piano three times a week, and I did that twice last week. I could put singing in this category, though that’s structurally built in twice (rehearsal + church service). I suppose I could combine piano + singing and pat myself on the back for doing music four times per week, but I actually want to aim to do each of those three times (adding in a singing practice session and another piano one) so that’s a goal for the future.

Rule #5 is to “Create a back-up slot.” I tend to leave Fridays as open as possible in order to use this time as a back-up slot for anything important. I didn’t really wind up needing it though I did wind up having a back-up slot for a kid activity. The 7-year-old was supposed to go to karate on Tuesday and somehow that did not happen. I took him on Thursday instead, so it was good that Thursday was fairly light for activities.

Rule #6 is “One big adventure, one little adventure.” This week’s big adventure was a Saturday trip to Hawk Mountain. (For 6/7 of us — the middle schooler was on a Boy Scout backpacking trip.) I saw that they were showing documentaries in their outdoor amphitheater so we went up in the afternoon to do a 1-hour hike, watched the documentary (well, some of it…some of the little ones had to go off and play in the woods) and then we ate at Olive Garden on the drive back toward home. My little adventure could be one of a few things — I went for a short walk on Friday at Stoneleigh, a historic grounds/garden a few miles from my house. It’s open to the public and free, but it always takes an extra nudge to do something like that. I put it on the list for the week and did it! But I could also have chosen the happy hour I went to Wednesday night – I hadn’t done something like that in a while so it was a different sort of adventure.

Rule #7 is “Take one night for you.” My weekly choir practice fits this nicely. Whatever is happening with work or with the family on Thursday, it’s nice to know that in the evening I will be focusing on something else entirely. It’s like a mental cleanse.

Rule #8 is “Batch the little things.” I make a “Friday punch list” during the week of things that are not terribly important but do need to get done. So on Friday I was a busy bee hanging curtains, repairing a mug, mailing checks and change-of-address notes, paying for field trips online, filling out forms for a fundraiser, etc. It doesn’t take that long, and it’s nice to not have these things cluttering up my mental landscape the rest of the week.

Finally, rule #9 is “Effortful before effortless.” The idea is to do some form of “effortful” leisure (reading, hobbies, etc.) before screen time. And here I pretty much failed miserably. What can I say. I’m having trouble finding books I want to read right now on my Kindle app in small bits of time. On one level my reading life looks really good this year, as I’m reading through all the works of Shakespeare. I’m currently on Act IV of Hamlet. But that takes 10-15 minutes at the pace I am reading, and then there are a lot of spots to fill during the day. I did listen to Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring in the car, so I guess that was something.

Anyway, stay tuned for more of these over the next few months!

Then…I got a call yesterday from the district letting me know that they’ve decided to cancel all the in-person summer school classes. (Not for Covid reasons — they are just undersubscribed.) He’s taking a virtual health class to fulfill that requirement but I wanted him to have some structure, so I don’t think doing two virtual classes is the answer. But this basically means, for the structured part of his summer, that we’re back to square one.

So…regrouping. I’m hoping he can do a CIT stint at one of the camps where another child is going for a bit. And he wants to do a creative writing camp if I can find that (I asked him to look too). And maybe tennis lessons twice per week. I guess that plus the virtual class should mostly fill the time but we shall see. I wish I had a better sense of the “good” creative writing camps but I honestly don’t. He is not bullish on going away to camp, which is interesting to me, since the summer after my 9th grade year I was thrilled to be going, for the third year, to a 3-week summer camp at Northwestern University (I studied Modern World Literature that summer…).

Plans do not always stay planned. That’s life of course but the more moving pieces there are, the more complicated changing one thing becomes. I guess the upside is theoretically we could switch the vacation week to the July 4 week (when no one else will be in camp) but sometimes it’s better to just stick with something once it’s decided.

How is your summer planning going?

Photo: Random summer shot

So, for instance, Monday morning I drove the teenager to school with the 2-year-old in tow. I woke up the 12- and 10-year-old before leaving. They were in charge, and needed to get themselves ready. I came home, woke up the 7-year-old, and then loaded all of them in the car to drop the 12-year-old at school and the 10-year-old at a before school activity. Then I came home for 20 minutes before driving the 7-year-old to school (with the toddler). Then the toddler and I hung out together until he could go to his care. In the afternoon I picked the 10- and 7-year-old up at school, brought them home, left 30 minutes later with the 12-year-old for fencing (leaving the 14-year-old in charge), dropped him off, drove to get the toddler from his care, drove back to fencing, picked the 12-year-old up and drove home. I put on the Dinosaur Train “Classic in the Jurassic” in the minivan DVD player and we managed to get through the entire DVD on Monday.

The big kids have helped out. For instance, I was able to leave the toddler with the 14-year-old for about 50 minutes so he didn’t have to go to the 10-year-old’s karate belt testing. But the poor little guy has had to go to a lot. He came to the 7-year-old’s parkour class last night (7:15 to 8:15 p.m., a great time for a toddler!) and we colored the picture that is accompanying this post. Drawing each circle and then letting him color it in (I did some of the coloring too, as you can probably guess…) took about 30 seconds apiece, and enough of them fills an hour…

On the work front, I managed to get done what I needed to get done in the compressed hours — but it was very much an intense push. I guess there are just some days where hours need to give whatever you ask of them. I was glad for little things, like that my daughter’s karate class got out early last night, so I was home at 6:20 instead of 6:30, which made cranking out grilled cheese sandwiches for the whole crew a slightly less rushed enterprise before I was back in the car at 6:55.

There’s no real larger point to this post. Potentially we need some more driving and logistical support, but given that the older 2 kids can stay home with younger siblings, it is doable. I did get about 5.75 focused hours each day to do things. And theoretically there shouldn’t be too many days like these. They just aren’t so fun while they’re happening…