A few years ago, when we first had children, my husband talked to his workplace about parental leave. He knew that while he’d like to be home during the first few weeks during and after the birth, he was also interested in being able to be around with his kids while they grew up. So, the summer after our first kid was born, he shifted his schedule to work from 8am to 4pm. From there, he advocated for taking a four-week leave every summer to spend time with his kids. We’re not taking a full sabbatical this year because of the pandemic, but we will still push pause on a few things where we can.
WORK SMARTER.
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Don’t Forget To Sleep
Anxiety and worry can wear down on you and your nervous system. It makes sense that you will feel exhausted through it all. It’s likely that you all will be hit by waves of exhaustion. Navigating children at home, caretaking, designing new strategies for work, going into overdrive with your businesses, taking care of employees, sprinting on strategies, and everything you’ve got going on is hard. Here’s permission to sleep (or at least take a tiny cat nap).
I Only Have 4 Hours of Childcare—Am I Doing Enough On My Business?
It’s hard enough being a working mom—or a working parent—by the end of the day I’m usually hiding in an unmade bed somewhere, scarfing cookies while watching terribly trashy television like The Bachelor or The Voice and trying to find a quiet moment to myself. After 14 hours on non-stop duty from 5:00am until 7:30pm, my resilience and my willpower are depleted. But here’s why it’s important to not compare yourself to others around you as a new parent or a working mom.
3 Ways To Grow Rich (It’s Not Always About Money)
There’s more to life than money. Yes, money is an important metric and a useful tool—but it’s just a tool. Here are three things to grow rich in throughout your life, and they aren’t necessarily about money at all.
Make Space, Opportunities Fill — Episode #129
For our fall podcast hiatus, Sarah’s on a break so she can focus on writing. In this first update, she shares how much changed even in the first week of making a decision to pause—and why making space was so important. (Plus, a huge piece of hers was published in Harvard Business Review the week she decided to pause—coincidence? You decide!)
Here’s the System I Used to Cut 50% of My Workload This Year
Most of us are taking on an insane amount of work, and we’re stressed, burned out, and over-tired from it. This year, I decided to plan ahead and find a way to do WAY less, but do it strategically. But what would I leave off the plate, and what would I keep? Here’s the three-part strategy I used to evaluate my time and my energy, and the surprising insights that came as a result of the exercise. Also: heads up, this is a lengthy post (4,500 words and counting).
Achieve More by Doing Less — Episode #008 With Kate Northrup of the Origin Collective
Kate Northrup always knew she wanted to be a mother, and she pursued entrepreneurship partly because of the freedom it could afford her to be there for her kids. What Kate wasn’t counting on was the way pregnancy would change her drive and refocus her energy when it came to the business. She admits that it took her a long time to “get back in the game,” and that her husband and business partner, Mike, picked up the slack. But Kate credits having her daughter, Penelope, with initiating a personal evolution that allowed her to clarify her desires and ultimately renew her interest in the business and the way she thought about showing up for work in the first place. Perhaps there was something revolutionary here: because, as she shares in this episode, she found that she was able to achieve more even while doing less. And that some of her most productive weeks happened when she was working only 20 hours a week on the business. Today Kate shares her “shocking and awesome” birth experience, explaining how parenthood impacted her business as well as her marriage.
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