But the metaphor is problematic. Work/life balance implies that work and life are on opposite sides of a scale. For one to go up, the other has to go down. It’s by its nature adversarial.

Anyway, that said, I was intrigued by a phrase that our Best of Both Worlds guest Laurie Weingart used in this week’s episode. She talked about people’s “work/work balance.”

Given her expertise, this was about breaking down your work into promotable and non-promotable tasks, and making sure that you weren’t spending inordinate amounts of time on the latter. But really, this concept could be used for many things. Any job consists of many different activities. There’s the core “stuff” of the job (which might be further broken down into various projects people do). There’s often learning and professional development. There’s network and relationship building. There’s planning and prospecting. There’s administration. There’s probably stuff that’s hard to categorize.

One reason to track working hours is to figure out what proportion is spent on each of these things. There’s no right answer, though certain categories (learning, networking) tend to get shoved to the side when things get busy. If a given category (perhaps non-promotable tasks) seems very heavy, then the balance is off and it’s time to figure out ways to change this.

I would imagine that work/work balance often influences work/life balance. I know when work feels tedious — too many tasks I don’t want to do — than I feel like I’m working too much. When I’m excited about work, I don’t feel that same way. In terms of numbers, my work/life balance might be the same either way, but it feels entirely different.

In other news: The Next Big Idea Club ran my “book bite” on Tranquility by Tuesday recently. You can check out the printed form here. And you can check out the audio version on the app here!

Photo: The old office. It’s been almost a year since I’ve been in there! 

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…

One manifestation of this is, of course, doing some work on vacation (hence the August news hook). This tends to get frowned upon, and I’m certainly not a fan of required work — though for certain sorts of jobs, my sense is that doing a little work on vacation can enable more vacation time. Another manifestation is doing work at nights or on weekends — but sometimes this enables mini-vacations during the work day, or at least family flexibility during work hours. Or at least it should. I think if folks are on the phone with a team from Asia at 9 p.m. it makes a lot of sense to sometimes not be working at 9 a.m. if you don’t need to.

Anyway, if you are working very flexibly, moving time around — doing work things at not-work hours and not-work things during work hours and want to talk about it, please let me know! Especially if you have more of a “conventional” job. As always, you can reach me at laura at lauravanderkam dot com. Thank you!

There are always the usual stunners. People sleep a reasonable amount. In 2021, the average person slept 8.95 hours per day. Since the ATUS covers people over age 15, that number includes teens and retirees. However, even very busy folks do sleep. The average employed woman with kids under age 6 slept 8.61 hours/day, with employed fathers of young kids sleeping 8.42 hours. How is this possible? While there is probably some time spent falling asleep or being up in the middle of the night, that’s not going to be 2 hours per day for most people (and long stretches of time awake would be picked up in the way the survey is done). Instead, to think about this, it might help to multiply these numbers by 7 to obtain a weekly tally — probably people don’t sleep 8.61 hours on a Tuesday, but add in weekend sleep, holiday sleep, naps, crashing on the couch, sleeping through an alarm or hitting snooze, etc., and the number will be higher than the general mental picture of a typical day.

The ATUS picks up big societal shifts — and one of the biggest in the past few years is the rise of remote work. In 2021, on the days they worked, 38 percent of employed people did some or all of their work at home, and 68 percent did some or all of their work at their workplace. In 2019, these numbers were 24 percent and 82 percent, respectively. That’s a 14 percentage point shift in people completely leaving the office on whatever workday they were surveyed.

Now maybe 14 percentage points doesn’t sound so huge, but keep in mind that some jobs need to be done at a workplace. It is hard to drive a truck from home, or be a waitress from home. Since those categories of work couldn’t see a huge shift, the shift is concentrated in other categories. And sure enough, this has been an uneven revolution. The ATUS reports that on the days they worked, 59 percent of those in management, business and financial operations occupations, and 57 percent of those in professional and related occupations did some or all of their work at home. Among people with an advanced degree, 67 percent did some or all of their work at home, vs. 19 percent of those with a high school diploma.

There’s lots to unpack in the data, which looks at how men and women spend their time, and how people who have kids at home and do not have kids at home spend their time, and how being employed affects how people spend their time. The American Time Use Survey is one of the big things that drove my initial interest in time. At first, I wanted to write about various shifts in time use for various demographics, but the wiser marketing advice was to write about time management. Still…I find the numbers fascinating!

(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!

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…

However, beautiful as everything will be, there are still ways to make more memories from this fleeting season.

A few weeks ago, there was a question in the comments of how my family finds local events and activities to do. Some of this is just a function of living in a place for a long time. People tell you about places. You read about them. A kid goes to a birthday party somewhere. If you find two new activities you like each year, after ten years, this is 20 things — quite a lot to choose from!

So for instance in 2021 I learned about the downtown ice skating rink, Hawk Mountain (with its River of Rocks hike), and I learned about Holland Ridge Farms. All of those are now in the rotation. In 2020, I learned about the Philadelphia Auto Show (going just a few weeks before the world shut down…) and about Weaver’s Orchard. Certainly pick-your-own farms have been on my radar for a while, but we’ve explored a number and I tend to like the Weaver’s vibe.

We are or have been members at a lot of local institutions/museums, and as a result we’re on a lot of mailing lists. So when a place has an event or festival coming up, we hear about it. If it sounds good, my inclination is to try it. Some things are better than others (see the animatronic dinosaurs…probably not my favorite, though it was fine for 20 minutes). But you get out of the house in any case, and if it’s great it can go on the long-term list. This inclination to try stuff is nudged along by my “One big adventure, one little adventure” rule. It doesn’t happen every week, but the goal is more weeks than not!

With that in mind, here are this year’s Spring Fun List ideas:

See the cherry blossoms. The intention is going to Washington DC, which we did in 2019 and really enjoyed. If that doesn’t work (tricky timing with weekends and weather and such) there is a row of cherry trees in my new yard! They bloom later in the spring (closer to May) but are going to make me feel like I’m living in a wedding magazine photo spread for a few days.

See the tulips at Holland Ridge Farms. I bought the “anytime” tickets for the family so we can choose our day for nice weather and peak blooms. This year they apparently expanded their fields and their parking, so if we aren’t going to the Netherlands (truly lovely, by the way), this might be the next best thing.

Take an adventurous spring break trip. For superstitious reasons, I tend not to talk about my travel until it’s over, so this list entry is a bit vague. But fingers crossed this trip is going to happen.

Visit NYC. I have an overnight trip planned in late April, which should be during peak blooms. I’m looking forward to doing some walking around.

Listen to spring music. I really enjoyed doing this last year, listening to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, and so forth. This will upgrade my in-the-car music experience.

Go on a family bike ride.

Take photos of flowers and print some up. I really like botanical art in general, so this is a nudge to create some myself.

Read a spring-themed book. I welcome suggestions. Could be non-fiction or fiction, as long as it’s not depressing or intense fiction (I just…can’t right now).

Go outside after dinner. Since none of my children sleep anyway, we may as well go ride bikes and pogo sticks and dig in the dirt. There may be a new swing set coming too…

Turn my Instagram feed into a flower show. I had a lot of fun last night following copious flower farm accounts. If I’m going to scroll mindlessly, may as well make it a lovely experience!

What’s on your spring fun list?

Photo: I no longer live at the house with this magnolia tree, though I might drive by to pay it a visit. I’m hoping to find a new favorite tree in the new yard this spring. 

The weekend was reasonably full but still featured some downtime. As in, people zoned out on screens for plenty of hours. Gobs of hours.

Yet still, everyone got to do something not-on-a-personal-device that they enjoyed. My husband and the 14-year-old went to see Batman (that is a screen, to be sure, but is a somewhat different experience). My husband went to the gym and went skiing with the 7-year-old, who also got to go to a birthday party. The 12-year-old did tech crew for 3 productions of his musical and went to the cast party. My daughter went to see the 12-year-old’s show twice (she likes musicals!). She had been somewhat reluctant about going to the Brandywine River Museum of Art to see the Wayne Thiebaud exhibit, and to Longwood Gardens for the orchids, but she decided to go with me (and the toddler) and she had a really good time. Plus she said she enjoyed the Philadelphia Auto Show, which we all went to on Sunday, and the stop at Rita’s after. Yep, Rita’s Water Ice is now open for the season! Plus it was 65 degrees. I played outside with the toddler for an hour or so late Sunday afternoon and it really felt like spring. And next weekend we’ll get an hour more of light into the evening!

There were plenty of frustrations as well. It is somewhat insane how much children can fight in a car. Anything can and will become a weapon. The 7-year-old wanders off in crowded places like the Auto Show with a confidence I wish I could copy. I guess he just assumes someone will follow? Also, the 2-year-old is in a fun phase when he doesn’t want his diaper changed. It’s like, trust me child, I don’t really want to change it either, so it’s not helping matters to kick me simultaneously. Of course, he has his sweet moments. I’m still nursing and he reported to me the other night that “I like mommy milk. It’s beautiful.” Then he gave me a little motivational pat.

Now on to figure out which muffins to make…

Photo: From the Wayne Thiebaud exhibit. Now that I have an oven I could bake such pies…

I ran the Frostbite 5-miler, and while my time was not spectacular (10:57 min/miles) it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was in the middle. I also went (by myself!) to a chamber orchestra concert in downtown Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon. Some other combinations of people went to a movie on Friday night. We had some friends over at one point, there was night skiing, the 14-year-old got to meet up with friends at the mall AND he cashed in his Christmas present to go see Wicked in NYC. He and I got tickets, and then my husband and two other older children came in to go see the American Museum of Natural History. We ate lunch at the Carnegie Diner and did a lot of reminiscing as we walked through Central Park. Wicked was pretty fun — a good Broadway musical to bring kids to. I forget how close the city is (1 hour and 50 minutes with no traffic, which there really wasn’t on the way there). Now that some of the kids are older we should probably go in more often.

But perhaps not with the toddler. My most vivid memory of the weekend may be taking my 2-year-old to the grocery store on Saturday. I have five kids, so I’ve had a reasonable number of grocery-store-with-toddler experiences, but this one was one for the books. I’m talking throwing bottles of mustard off the shelves, lying down in the middle of the aisle and screaming. Wow! I just had to laugh because it was so ridiculous.

Photo: From lunch at the Carnegie Diner & Cafe