Lighten Your Mental Load EP 381
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Hi, i'm lot of the cam and a mother of five, an author, journalist and speaker.

and i'm Sarah heart under a mother of three practicing position writer and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals, we want you to get the most out of life.

Welcome the best of both worlds. This is Laura. This episode is earring in midd, november twenty twenty four. And I are going to be discussing how to lighten your mental load, which is a hot topic for many people. I am sure we all want strategies for creating more calm and more mental space.

I know a lot of our listeners are Carrying a lot of mental load in their lives as they manage work, family, everything else that they have going on. Just a real quick definition. So we are all working from the same page. Mental load is the cognitive and emotional effort that IT takes to manage life. So Sarah, do you have any cognitive and emotional effort managing your life going on these days?

Of course. So we all, I mean, I am very envious of anybody who can actually answer this and say no. But yeah, I mean, if I had to kind of think about with the biggest things that are driving my mental load, I would say i'm doing a lot of spinning about like next academic year, which seems crazy because we're like only few months into this academic year.

But I just feel like there might be changes and it's like a whole logistical world wind of that happens. And so that is wearing on me even though it's not really close. I feel like my mental load is taken up by how I am fitting in my writing, amongst many other life activities.

And then the third thing I would say this a little bit extra right now is that Cameron is on two soccer teams, which this was the case last year as well. But there is a season which he has at school, but then he still has his club soccer. So that leads to a schedule that is pretty much nuts, with many days him going almost straight from soccer to soccer.

He chose to do this again. He wanted to play with his friends. He really enjoys IT. But it's flight a crazy season.

Yeah, I don't know. I ve just been feeling like there's a lot going on as well. And and we have a pretty good schedule that's tightly orchestrated.

People know at this point their activity is what they're going to and all that. It's just that five kids generate a lot of details. And even though some of the basics of is that there is always something that is going to be different every week.

I mean, just right before we were recording this, I was setting up the schedule for the next week when i'm taking roof to her. Especial disappointed is far away. So we have together there that day, but that meant so I needed to ressort dule something else that was going on that day.

Figure out the car situation, or, you know, when some kids like music lesson moves, all of sudden everything else needs to switch around IT. There's just a lot of contingent parts. And I feel with some evidence that I am the only person who has all this in my head or even on paper.

So IT is a lot to keep track of. IT is just the thing that we you know, the topic here that IT is real work. And I can feel overwhelming if you are the person in your family managing most of the homefront. On the other hand, IT doesn't have to feel quite so overwhelming.

There are obviously larger issues of who handles what amount of mental load in any given household, which is an interesting topic in and of itself, but is not the topic of this episode, which is that however much mental load you happen to be Carrying, there are ways to make that burden more manageable. And maybe even see some of the upsides where if you are the one who controls the schedule, you have a certain power associated with that. But yeah, so one of the key things that makes IT feel like there's a lot spinning is what you are talking about. Sorry, you're just persevering on something right? Like there's a lot in your head.

yes. And you I want to let you keep going, but I wonder if you're right. That's kind of adding to the stress. And I haven't fixed IT because IT seems to nebulous to like make concrete at this point. Yeah.

I mean, so the spinning adds up to something. But in general, with mental load, I don't keep IT in your head. Heads are very bad places for any sort of detail that needs to be remembered.

Because, you know, humans don't have exceptional memories. We get tired, we ve forget things. Details may slip us by. We may remember the wrong thing. So long time readers know. I advocate our listeners, whatever we have here, advocate a weekly planning session where you figure out your priorities for the upcoming week.

But a key reason to do this is that if you know there is a time for planning, then you don't have to keep worrying about IT the rest of the time. I like, well, how i'm gonna figure out that tRicky ride situation that is happening in a week and a half as like, well, maybe you don't actually have to figure out right this minute. If you have a dedicated weekly planning time, you can sort IT through at that moment and give yourself permission not to do IT at every other point.

Yeah, I think that's actually huge. I think people don't recognize that side of planning. You know when I hear a lot of people talking about oh you know White plan because know you're just in that like hostile mindset or something like no a lot of the times I am planning so that I can like not stress about IT later or like just kind of have my mind be done with the planning portion and then move on to the doing portion without being polluted by all these thoughts that are going to come, whether or not I am trying to create some then lifestyle or not. So yeah, I think that's a great point.

And then there's something to be said for a little bit of group planning to I mean, I know a lot of our listeners have some sort of family meeting where you discuss logistics, especially if you need somebody else's input or you need to compare calendars or anything like that. Sarah, are you guys doing any sort of family meeting at this point?

It's pretty informal. IT generally happens around sunday dinner, which is one of the few meals as we tend to all sit down together. And by then I usually have completed my Whiteboard action, which is getting in writing basically where everyone is supposed to be.

For the next week, we've started putting a couple of like shared family tasks on that board as well that sort of unfolded to organically. It's not something I sort of set out to do, but I I kind of like the idea that josh and and the kids can see like the two maybe most pressing priorities that kind of relate to everyone in addition to everything that's happening. And so our meeting is generally just everybody like kind of checking that out and be commencing on anything that is weird like, oh, there is no school on thursday for two hundred and three kids or something else an .

appointment yeah I mean, I basically construct a calendar for the upcoming week for the family on fridays. People are supposed to get me any information that I would be pregnant to this. Some people are Better about IT than others.

And there's always just the reality that teen social life changes quickly at last minute. Sometimes they have new things come up, but I can accommodate that is just that I have the structure of the week set. Then we can all work from the same document.

But, you know, so you have a weekly planning session to get all this down, but then stuff is going to occur to you at other. And the quickest way to get you out of your head is to capture IT somewhere that you know you will be able to act on. So there are you email yourself all the time, right? Yes.

I find that a really easy and effective way to make sure I capture things on the fly. And I think the thing that makes IT work is that I always know going to be processing my inbox at some point. So this is a pretty full proof way of making me sure I keep things on my radar. Of course, sometimes I might happen to have my paper planner with me, and I can put stuff directly in there when that's not the case. Super, super easy way to just not have to keep in in my head.

excEllent. Less we keep in our heads, the Better. All right. We're going to take a quick ad break, and we will be back talking about more ways to lighten our mental load.

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Well, we are back talking about ways to lighten the mental load. Whatever you think about how mental load should be split in households, in society, and that are there are always with to lessen the burden on yourself. So you have mental space for other things, and you have any more calm and controlled life.

One of the key ways can do this is too batch process things. So one of the reasons people feel like they're always dealing with the small details of life is because they are always dealing with the small details of life is always an option. So you're trying to squeak a man here and there, Oliver, your schedule and that can be pretty inefficient.

It's Better to save them all up all these sort of not urgent tasks and do them in one fell soop possible at a lower energy time. So you know, you're not consistently filling out permission slips. You're doing permission slips on friday afternoon at one o'clock when you are also ordering that birthday party for your knees, answering those three invitations for events from H R. You are reordering X, Y, N, Z.

That you need? Are you do something like this on your lunch break, right? Yes.

friday afternoon would not work because I am already starting to see patients at one. But twelve to one is actually a good amount of time to get lot of these little things done. I just remembered at reaching urban, I think called to a power hour where you just like designated sixty minute period of time to get a lot of stuff done. And over the course of a week, this can add up to a lot. So I guess it's not one big batch, but it's still Better than doing a little one off ten minute increments randomly.

Ly, yeah, yeah. no. Getting through as much as you can, I call IT like my friday punch list, and I sort of keep a running list during the week.

And as these things occur to me, and as i'm trying to be like go to go fill out all these permission subway, like, no, no, no, Laura, there is a time to do this. Now is not that time you can also automate things. So one way that you can listen your mental load is to not need to constantly make decisions.

You can make a decision once and then roll with IT until IT needs to change. So an example of this is taco tuesday, right? You know, on tuesday, you I always know you are having tackers.

You don't have to think about IT. You don't have to plan what's my tuesday night meal? Everyone expects IT.

Every time somebody goes to the grocery store, they get the stuff that you know you're going to be using on taco tuesdays. And that's one last thing anyone has to consider. So are you do subscribe and save right as a way to automate thing?

Yes, we automate our household goods by using that feature from amazon, and i'm sure other companies have in as well. But this is just such an easy way for me to not even you know, I have an automatic trigger to ask me, do you need paper tells essentially? And then I just take a couple minutes, and then they get automatically shift to me.

Now I do tend to I like to maximized my savings with this particular program, which means I keep more subscriptions on there than I actually use. So the danger is that if you do not answer the call to tell them what you need, you will get more things. However, there are all things that are non partial, and we use eventually. So the worst case scenario, as we build up a little bit of a stockpile and the best case, nario, is that I just get paint gently to decide what we need for the household in the given month. And then IT comes without having anything about IT.

yeah. And then you had a pretty good hack for scheduling stuff as well.

Yes, I mean, this isn't like automatic, but I ve made an automatic to do item for myself, which is that any appointment that I leave, I try really hard to schedule the next appointment while i'm still there. This does mean I bring my physical planner to various appointments, like my hair appointment, dental, kids, dog. It's seta, but IT feels automatic to me.

Like up. This is just what you do at the end. And then hey, it's already booked under calendar when the next time rolls around and it's not to do item that you have to give yourself to do later. I love that.

Yeah, love IT, love IT. Another way to light your mental load is to embrace vertical ownership, meaning that somebody else takes on a task, but then they also take IT on completely. And the reason for this is that if you're still managing exactly how things are done, you're not really lightning your mental load that much because you're still telling the other person like, okay, now it's your night to go to the dishes as opposed to simply having somebody own the night for cleaning the kitchen or whatever IT happens to be.

Now the one cavy out with this, I will say, is if you have a family where, for whatever is that, one person sort of knows the schedule Better than others, which may be what is happening in my house, sometimes it's kind of hard even to totally delegate something, like make the kid's didn't sap pointless. Because of the other person does not truly have the lay of the land. They may not understand that three is a total disaster, but three, thirty is not, and would need to come back.

You like, OK can I book IT at this point? Can I book IT at this point? Which by that partly I could be on the phone with ten is as myself doing there is a lot more quickly. So you might need to assign a whole project that isn't as contingent on other things, like you don't need to know everyone's daily scheduled to book the vacation, to buy all the plane tickets, to make the hotel reservations, to figure out of this trips that need to be taken in the middle of IT or whatever else needs to do so. That could be the kind of thing that you could .

have sign right there. yes. Or in our case, we have a really not my favorite thing to do project that is due monthly for anyone who is in the grades through one three, which we happen to have a first greater again in our house.

And um I have no ownership of that, that is vertically owned by josh and IT seems small, but like it's a huge mental load relief. And IT also is like laws that like not very you don't really need to have a complete grasp the whole picture if you're just like i'm getting this particular project done. We also have judged to a lot of the gift buying for certain holidays, which is a sizable task. But you're right, you also don't need necessarily to understand the whole big machine to make that done effectively.

Yeah and you can even split up gift buying tools. We have two fall birthdays in our household, and my husband took the fifteen year old boy. I took the thirteen year old girl.

We each just bought whatever presence were desired or we thought would be good for those people. And that was probably the right way to split IT because i'm a little bit more unsure of what a fifty year old boy might find exciting. And I think my husband is definitely more unsure of what a thirty year old girl would find exciting.

So that was a good way to split IT. But yeah older kids can take on things somebody who works with your household, maybe you can completely assign something to them, but um that is certainly a way to get some stuff off your plate as is encouraging kid independence. So the more things that your kids can do on their own and without your input, obviously, the less stuff you have to deal with.

So with my older children, I don't want them coming to be being like, I need socks like that's not a good way to approach this conversation. I say, well, the Better way is that here's a link to the socks I want and then I can go purchase them. Or even Better, for those who have shopping cart privileges on our amazon count, i've put the socks I want in the car and then I can either go do IT or I just tell them to order IT and it's A A lot more. So are equipment quite giving people access to the the purchasing privileges yet? Yeah.

i'm fine to get them the hard part. yes. So they do have access and I guess they could hit. But but I tell them not to do that yet. I'm not coy ready to be linux ish.

That plus I think it'll mess up my my budgeting because anyway, long story sure its can be hard to track. Amazon expenditures is as i'm sure is a strategic decision on their part anyway, but i'm happy to have them put in their car that makes IT easier. And then I can veit and make sure that we wanted be forward with whatever purchase.

I also just think being really clear about getting them to do their own thing, for example, in the morning, like let's talk about what you need for school because i'm not going to manage IT. You need your glasses, you your soccer is you need whatever and just if you know, making sure to reinforce that. So that is not something that continually stays on my list.

E and then trying to hopefully like not be micromanaging school or helps for this as well. Now of course, there's a time in a place having to get more involved when things aren't going on. But when they arent going reasonably well, I think this can be one where we give ourselves more responsibility than we even need to. And you can like everyone's mental load to make sure the kids are taking ownership of what they should be.

Yeah, I don't necessarily react all that well when someone says to me like, help me remember my trumpet the morning like, okay, mommy has a million things in her brain. It's more likely that you are going to remember IT. But what I will do is circling back to one of her earlier tips, email myself, and often I will at least be glencore at emails in the morning as people are getting out the door.

And so there's a reasonable chance that I will have seen IT. But people can also put instruments like right in front of the door. That's also a good idea by your backpack.

Something else. It's hard to miss IT. But yes, some I love when kids do start taking ownership of things we recently had with the halloween costumes.

My fifteen year old, I started talking about halloween customer, like, I guess i'm going to have to order something and these well, i'm going as a group with my friends and like, okay, and that do we need to get something? Like, no, no, actually just we're giving money to a kid who is ordering IT for everyone and I go, okay. And he's already given him the money.

So as well that I know I really didn't have to do anything. So I was very excited about that. Another idea for listing in the mental ode is don't be cheap.

So sometimes for things you either pay in time or you pay in money. And I know for many of our listeners, you might be in a stage of life where time is more strictly limited than money. So I might be worth paying for a more comprehensive solution. That means less things that you have to keep track of.

And where we often see this is, let's say, somebody y's kid is starting pro and they've ve had a full time and any and they might think, well, my kids in high school for fifteen hours a week, so I should have the me in pressure for fifteen hours and do a part time care solution outside of that. But the problem is, when things are part time, sometimes people aren't as invested in the long term. They might not stay around as long.

They may be doing other things with their life because they are only working part time. And so there are other job winds up taking precedents and they have to stop something. It's just or you're keeping track of mutio things like, oh, well, I can bring them to early care and then we have somebody else picking them up within. You're managing multiple different things and then the days off that they know you have to get covered for like what maybe would have been Better off keeping the full time and just accepting that some weeks you are paying for fifteen hours .

that you didn't actually need yeah and you write the mental load costs of managing a whole bunch of moving parts verses one general person that you have employed full time IT does make a big difference and that's not the reason that we did IT.

There are many reasons that we did IT, but we've definitely paid for more hours of childcare than we have used for many years, really in part because it's just a piece of mind thing and IT is a mental little thing because, you know, when your kid is sick, I don't have to do backflips trying to figure out coverage. If I have someone that is going to be available because they're actually released working those hours, whether there physically present on a given day or not. So I am absolutely for that.

We've also kind of paid cash for various specialists in different fields when IT might not be the most cost effective option, but IT was just the most expeditious option. And the one that required less like work on our part and like maybe we ve got a recommendation that was just easier to go with, let's say a psychiatrist to is not in network but you know, is reasonably affordable and pay cash verses go to the many, many steps of figuring out who's there and then do they have limited availability and who's actually good and going through multiple people. Like at the end of the day, I kind of hate that this is a thing in health care, like we shouldn't have multiple tears of health care. And also sometimes you got to do what you got ta do. And so this has been what's worked for us for certain things yeah I mean.

in your professional life too. I mean, I would say if you work for a corporation, you sort have the support team that you have or don't have, but if you're more on your own, more entrepreneurial, you don't even have to hire like a full time assistant. But having a virtual assistant for a few hours a week might be something that could reduce some of your mental low. Now we see you handle this well because if I was gonna be more mental load for you in order to manage the person, then that might not be worth IT. But ideally, you come up with a situation where there's at least some front loading of training the person, and then your life becomes easier afterwards.

I always like wondering what I would do with such a person. What is your person?

Do a lot of different things that we related to, like formatting newsletters and doing S C O on the website and social media person things like that. So i'm pretty sure you could come up with something if you wanted to there, but we can discuss you're probably right.

And we also do kind of do that with the podcasts. Is the do the audio processing or really any the tech parts of IT? Yeah none whatsoever.

We're going to take one more quick ad break and then they'll be back with a little bit more on listening your mental lude.

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Well, we are back talking how to reduce your mental load, to lighten mental load, as that were the biggest way. I think in many cases, to have less on your brain is simply too careless, because the more things that you require to be a certain way, the more things you're going to have to think about. And obviously, there are many things that are hard to get out of. There are some things we do, even if they are hard because they matter for closely held values.

But I think it's important to ask when you're thinking a lot about something, does IT fall in that category or does IT not? So for instance, I don't keep track of screen time telling for my kids, like I don't have some ellora ate system for figure out how many hours y're doing X, Y and z if they played too many games but on youtube too much or whatever, we just set certain hours that they cannot have their devices and keep them pretty busy and let the chips fall where they may. So that's the topic.

I'm not really thinking about all that much. I don't want to think about who's made their beds on any given day. If they're doing that, you know they have to clean up their rooms before the flours get vacuum every two eggs. But other than that, i'm just not going around looking into IT. You know .

there's no ten P M inspection with a White love at your .

house server is no ten P M home inspection. I would like to point out for everyone who has trouble like relaxing when their home is A H like there's no eleven P M home inspection at your house either like nobody is coming around to give you demerits, if there are toys on the floor, if there are still papers on the counter. I like a clean house as much as everyone, but I think you just want to be careful about putting a lot of time and effort into repeatedly getting IT reset at a certain time, because then that can mean you never have time to relaxed.

Oh my gosh, this was last weekend. Our house was, we had just come back from a soccer ornament. Everything was everywhere.

People have various two cases. And I was like, i'm taking a nap and I did. The house was messy and you know what, I woke up with more energy to clean IT up. If I had been like, I can't rest until this is done, I might have been on a puddle on the floor crying, which I feel like I have put myself in that position before, but now I ve learned to just be like, that mess will still be there. The kids can play some games and I am going to sleep.

Yeah, yeah. And there are all sorts of things you have just decided to care less about. I've been think home decor.

Yeah I mean, definitely if you come to our house, you will know that home decor does not take up much of our time. We don't replace things unless they are like not usable, like we did have a couch foot on the had a few too many children jump on IT and at some point IT basically was like not suitable on but like even then, we actually haven't even replaced that yet.

We're like do we need to sit that area eventually? We will, but I will batch IT with a bunch of others. And just like we buy the same like I K A stuff is just like we keep IT very easy because we don't have stronger values about that. And what you know, again, you always making choices and we just are choosing other stuff.

Yeah, you don't want to put the effort into IT, which is good. So the more things you can care less about, the later your mental load will be. And I think sort of as a wrap up to this concept, you also want to pay attention to when there is less to think about because I think we can come up with the story that, you know, we've got all these details all the time.

I had a spending all the time. I get no time to relax, whatever. And some weeks may have a seemingly overwhelming number of details, but others might have last. I know I was well aware last summer, like I always make a weekly schedule and fridays for the upcoming week and some of them during the week.

Are these like page documents by the time we're figuring out where everyone is going in the riots and all that? But then summer IT would be like, well, we only have three kids at home and these two are in camp. And that's all IT is like they go to camp in the morning.

They come home in the afternoon, camp in the morning, the next day home in the afternoon. Don't even have to print this up, but I don't have to send IT around like we can all keep that in our heads basically, you know. And and so just appreciate when that is happening that the seasons are very different.

definitely like being aware when there are it's never going to be like a completely clear calendar. But when you have weeks without anomalies and complex and that kind of stuff, I can make sense to notice that and be like, right, we're sAiling and common waters right now and I do love summers for that. I mean, I don't love summer, but I love that of about summers .

or just taking a chill vacation, right, where you're not managing a ton of mental load for that either.

I do not manage a lot of mental load on vacation and I I prefer IT that way.

Yeah yeah. So there's different kinds of vacations that the one really goes somewhere and just chill. There's others where you're trying to see all of a country in a week, which should have there's going to be be more mental load with that, but maybe in a mental life you kind of have right?

So moving on to our question, this listening rights in hi Laura and sera. I love kids. I also love my income. Based on what you've seen, what are the best six figure jobs for parents who want the flexibility to attend quit school events? And so we don't really know whatever live stage this particular listener may be in if they have listened your kids, if they don't have kids. But we were sort of approaching this question from the perspective of if you are Younger and you're kind of planning out your life, so not forty five in need to switch careers, what sorts of jobs might you be looking into if you were interested in trying to earn a lot and also having a reasonable amount of flexibility? And I think we both realize this is a tRicky question.

I check your question and please don't be matter us for the question itself because I think there were people that were like, how can anyone like ask something like that and this is so entitled or something like that .

like what we posted at our our patron community. We post this question to get other people s feedback like, I know magical job where you earn a lot of money and have a complete flexibility and we just don't know about IT. So we wanted to Better answer to crowd source but yes, some people are like, well, you shouldn't be looking for flexibility and optimizing that early in your career.

Like if you are twenty four years old just out of school, you don't have anyone depending on you for care than you might be Better off emphasizing where can I learn a lot of skills? Where can I grow my network? How can I move quickly up and get more in oral? Because when you build that career capital, then you can trade that in later for flexibility. When you do have people, depending on you and I might be more needed. But you know, I think people have different opinions on that.

Yes, what do I good at? What do I enjoy? What at the end of the day, can I be successful at culture in that career capital? I think that's the best question to ask.

I mean, I think in many feels there's some flexibility available that might come in different forms. You can do more shift like work, but that still isn't going to necessarily give you like in the moment, flexibility. Like if you're an E R doctor and you decide to work sixty percent times, you're going to be super flexible sometimes, but they're still going to be totally inflexible on other times.

And actually, I was doing some reflection when we were talking about this question. And I don't feel very flexible even in my quote, flexible job. Like I somehow had this vision that when I was working more entrepreneurial and for myself and pancakes, I doing all this stuff that i'd have very freely flowing calendar and I would just get my test on.

And yet IT seems like especially maybe, yes, I have freedom like six months out, but that's through my clinical job too. I can move days or take time off, but if you look like a week or two ahead, I can just in prompt to throw some all day school filter be on there like, I got interview schedule. I got this.

Do I I got best way plans live like the more you do something and probably the more successful you are at IT, the more your calendars going to be crowded ded with the obligations related to IT. Probably no matter what that thing is. Think about Taylor swift. T she's busy. I mean.

he calls the shots. But yes, once she's decided to do something, she's not gonna randomly do the miami concert because IT was the next day and he felt like doing other .

things exactly. So I think flexibility is really complicated.

Well, it's so because what do we mean? Do we mean that if you found out two days from now that your kid was having a party, a special person's tea at their school at eleven eight, would you be able to go? And I think some jobs, the answers is absolutely not.

You wouldn't be able to some jobs. You probably would, but maybe not. I mean, there's a few jobs where total of sure, whatever, but once you have kind of anything on the schedule becomes a little bit more complicated with stuff like that amine. I think of what I do is being very flexible and IT is on some level.

But if I agreed to fight a florida to give a speech, i'm not gonna not do that just because there was an event at the school, because that's something i've committed to doing yeah or even I mean, like you time you know things like medicine, I mean medicine is a high played profession and that you can have some flexibility. There's a lot of people who do work part time in IT. But part time is not the same as flexibility, right? Because part time, you know, if you always are seeing patients on monday wednesay friday, you can't sudenly decide two days before I did not work wednesday.

I mean, I would need to be a real like you're definite ill for you to cancel all those patients. so. Yeah, it's a tRicky question. But I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with like hoping to have a high paid job.

I mean, certainly maybe the way to go about this is to aim for a high paid job and then be really good at IT and turn that into flexibility. And we've said we've talked to people who have done that. I mean, we know our previous guess, you've talked about this. They're Laura Martin persons dule.

SHE is a google executive who also was an author and has a lot of passionate feelings about various time management things. But when we interviewed her for the show was really remarkable to hear how he had really crafted her day. And I think IT was her level of seniors and her a kind of specialist nitch that he had carved for herself within the company that allowed her to call a lot of the shots and SHE like, have lunch with her kids every day and you know, all these things that SHE seem to want.

So it's not a generic, but it's like be really, really good at what you do so that you can then leverage that for the things that you want specifics in your career and there's going to be careers where that's less likely to happen. I mean, like I don't know, like even just thinking about like A C T. Surgeon that at the top of his game is still probably going to be showing surgeries most days.

And so he's back going to be able to have lunch with the kids or she's not going able to have lunch with the kids. Most likely if you're doing a surgery that super long, I don't know. So there are party careers that are more likely to have that kind of thing than others.

Yeah, but an interesting question. If people have feelings about that, let us know what you would recommend. If somebody was looking to earn a lot of money and have some flexibility, what would you tell them to go into and be like the graduate plastics go into plastics.

Don't the same thing I did. Don't get your plastic. You are, I don't know.

All right, it's there at love of the week, I will go with mine. New nice notebooks. I like spiral bound. I like the cover to be hard. I like them to be narrow ruled.

I've already specifications, but the promise, once I buy them, I often don't want to write in them like they looks so nice and need and perfect. I don't want to solve them with my half ked thoughts. Although one way i've gotten around this is just by enough of them that I feel such a sense of abundance that I can leave a few untouched and write in salmon.

And you know, at this point I would say that my supply of little notebooks for capturing my great thoughts exceeds my supply of actual great thoughts. So that's probably a good place to be. But I I do like my note box.

Yes, you should not be afraid to use them. Use them with glee.

glee, vim and vigor.

exactly. yes. My love of the week is ordering concert merch online. okay.

So second, Taylors with reference of the show, but I did just recently go and IT was amazing. I did not wait in the like three other long march line. And IT was great. And I was able to get everything I wanted anyway. And IT all came. And just like I think if you're at a concert and you see a very, very long line, check out whether you could just get the same things, ship to your house with much less effort and waiting yeah I .

think in general, waiting in line is and think how bad that would be the most part of the actual concert, because you are waiting in the merchant. I don't know. I just feel like that would be totally backward of how the experience should go.

You know, totally. I mean, I realized it's a way to remember the experience, but you want to have the actual experience itself in order to remember IT. You know, just a little thing.

All right. Well, this has been best of both worlds. We have been talking about how to lighten your mental load. Lots of different strategies we can use to make life feel a little bit more calm. We will be back next week with more and making work and life fit together.

Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the underscores shoebox on instagram.

And you can find me Lauren at Laura ander camp dutt com. This has been the best of both world's podcast. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.

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