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SMNTY Classics: Unbalancing Work-Life Balance · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and don't come to
0:07
Speaker 1: stuff I've never told you production of I Heart Radio.
0:18
Speaker 1: And as we record this, we just had labor Day
0:21
Speaker 1: here in the United States, and that made me start
0:25
Speaker 1: to ponder about, um, some stuff around work and unions
0:28
Speaker 1: and labor and our job is not, by any means
0:32
Speaker 1: the only one. But our job is when it's hard
0:33
Speaker 1: to turn off that back of the brain because you're
0:36
Speaker 1: always kind of like, yeah, oh, here's a new story,
0:38
Speaker 1: we should talk about our here's it's just always back
0:41
Speaker 1: there working. I know I've talked about this before. I
0:46
Speaker 1: do use work to distract myself from stress, which is
0:50
Speaker 1: not necessarily the best thing. Um. So it's one of
0:53
Speaker 1: those things I've I've struggled with where I'm like just
0:57
Speaker 1: always working, but it's because I'm stressed, but because I
1:01
Speaker 1: also love fan fiction so much, I can distract myself
1:05
Speaker 1: with that instead of working. But it is hard for
1:08
Speaker 1: me and especially like I get all caught up in uh.
1:12
Speaker 1: I feel good when I'm productive, and for me, productive
1:15
Speaker 1: is tied to work. So there's just not like a
1:18
Speaker 1: lot of things that it's hard to unravel. And the
1:21
Speaker 1: pandemic has shown a lot of light on some of
1:23
Speaker 1: them for me, and I know for a lot of people.
1:26
Speaker 1: So I also I have that app where I try
1:29
Speaker 1: to keep track of like how much I'm working. I'll
1:31
Speaker 1: just like kind of especially on the weekends or something like, oh,
1:36
Speaker 1: you're working right now, let me log in, and so
1:38
Speaker 1: I can get a better view of how much time
1:40
Speaker 1: I'm spending. But I know it is a big point
1:44
Speaker 1: of conversation right now. So we want to bring back
1:47
Speaker 1: this classic episode on work life balance. Uh So, please
1:50
Speaker 1: enjoy Stuff Mom Never Told You From Hello, and welcome
2:04
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Kristin and I'm Caroline and this
2:07
Speaker 1: is part three of our Stuff Mom Never Told You
2:10
Speaker 1: plus lean In series, and today we are kind of
2:15
Speaker 1: stepping outside of the workplace to look at life surrounding
2:22
Speaker 1: and intertwining work and debunking this idea of work life balance. Yeah,
2:31
Speaker 1: Sandbird focuses a lot in her book on just the
2:34
Speaker 1: fact that there really is no such thing you. There
2:37
Speaker 1: really is in in this day and age, with our
2:41
Speaker 1: smartphones and whatnot, there really is kind of a blurred
2:45
Speaker 1: line now between our personal lives and our work lives,
2:48
Speaker 1: and we kind of shouldn't be expected and maybe can't
2:52
Speaker 1: be expected to be too completely separate people. Yeah, and
2:56
Speaker 1: there's this idea that I hadn't thought about before of
3:00
Speaker 1: where I read lean in that really framing it as
3:04
Speaker 1: a work life balance and trying to achieve some perfect
3:08
Speaker 1: balance between the two often is an exercise and futility
3:13
Speaker 1: that we may be wasting a lot of energy on
3:16
Speaker 1: instead of just embracing the fact that the two collide
3:20
Speaker 1: and they're going to collide and intersect all of the time.
3:23
Speaker 1: And the chapters that were focusing on for this discussion
3:27
Speaker 1: come from chapter eight, making your partner a real partner
3:30
Speaker 1: in chapter nine, which is the myth of doing it all. Um, So,
3:35
Speaker 1: just to kick things off, we are working a bunch,
3:39
Speaker 1: especially if you are married with kids. For instance, in
3:44
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, married middle income parents worked eight and
3:48
Speaker 1: a half more hours per week compared to parents in
3:52
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. But you're still expected to go home
3:55
Speaker 1: and do all of the things that parents did in
3:58
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, on top of probably more work from home. Right. Yeah,
4:05
Speaker 1: survey found that of working adults work after leaving the office.
4:10
Speaker 1: I mean, how many times do you get emails after hours? Like?
4:12
Speaker 1: I mean, it happens all the time because people are
4:14
Speaker 1: still plugged in, and they're expected to be plugged in exactly,
4:17
Speaker 1: and especially for moms out there, this is something that
4:21
Speaker 1: we've talked about a lot and stuff mom never told you,
4:23
Speaker 1: motherhood and career and work and how all of those
4:27
Speaker 1: things tied together. Um. And the fact of the matter is,
4:31
Speaker 1: it's so much work out there for moms because one
4:35
Speaker 1: analysis found that among working parents, moms do forty more
4:40
Speaker 1: childcare and thirty percent more housework compared to working dad's
4:46
Speaker 1: and that leads to a lot of unequal leisure time.
4:48
Speaker 1: I mean, I I know I would be resentful. Um.
4:53
Speaker 1: So a two thousand nine survey found that only nine
4:56
Speaker 1: percent of people in dual earner marriages say they share housework,
4:59
Speaker 1: child care, and breadwinning evenly. But this isn't to place
5:03
Speaker 1: blame immediately on husband's and dad's shoulders, saying, you know what,
5:08
Speaker 1: if you would just do the dishes more than everything
5:10
Speaker 1: would be fine. No, there might be first a need
5:16
Speaker 1: for us to look at ourselves. What are we doing.
5:18
Speaker 1: Are we maybe kind of claiming that housework in childcare
5:23
Speaker 1: as our own rather than taking a more collaborative approach, because,
5:27
Speaker 1: for instance, wives to engage in gate keeping behaviors do
5:32
Speaker 1: five more hours of family work per week than wives
5:36
Speaker 1: who take a more collaborative approach. If you're sitting there
5:40
Speaker 1: like looking over your husband's shoulders when he's loading the
5:43
Speaker 1: dishwasher and saying, actually, that's not gonna fit there now.
5:45
Speaker 1: And I'm saying this as a very anal retentive dishwasher loader.
5:50
Speaker 1: For sure, me too. You gotta you gotta let go sometimes,
5:54
Speaker 1: or you know, do what you're good at. Kristen is
5:57
Speaker 1: good at letting the dishwasher. I, for one rear, I
6:00
Speaker 1: go behind my my dude roommate and rearrange the dishwasher
6:03
Speaker 1: completely because I'm like, why why would you just put
6:05
Speaker 1: a glass in the middle like that? Exactly, You've got
6:08
Speaker 1: to line it up on the sides. That's my strength. Vacuuming,
6:12
Speaker 1: Oh god, just can someone else do the vacuuming? Like
6:15
Speaker 1: I don't mind doing it, but I don't want to
6:17
Speaker 1: do it all the time, and I don't our apartment
6:19
Speaker 1: living room it's so big, So it would probably save
6:22
Speaker 1: you and dude roommate time if you just do the dishes.
6:27
Speaker 1: Do that dishwasher to your heart's content. He does the floors. Right, Yeah,
6:32
Speaker 1: he is much better and and actually chooses to pick
6:35
Speaker 1: up things off the floor. You know, he might throw
6:38
Speaker 1: my shoes in my room. That's fine. I don't take
6:41
Speaker 1: that as passive aggressive or anything. But that's his strength.
6:45
Speaker 1: So it's it's better to work to your strength and
6:48
Speaker 1: allow your partner, spouse, roommate, whoever, to do what they're
6:52
Speaker 1: good at, to allow them to take some of that
6:54
Speaker 1: responsibility off your shoulders instead of being like, well, no,
6:58
Speaker 1: but I want to change all the diapers, and I'm
7:00
Speaker 1: better at putting the trash bag in the trash can,
7:02
Speaker 1: and well know, but I vacuum better, like instead of
7:05
Speaker 1: cleaning all of that, give some of it up, exactly,
7:08
Speaker 1: and also find a partner who is cool with accepting
7:14
Speaker 1: the stuff that you want to give up. This was
7:16
Speaker 1: something that I really appreciated Sandberg bringing up in the book,
7:20
Speaker 1: which is the importance of choosing a partner Wisely, she writes,
7:26
Speaker 1: I truly believe that the single most important career decision
7:30
Speaker 1: that a woman makes is whether she will have a
7:32
Speaker 1: life partner and who that partner is right, And she
7:37
Speaker 1: even urges people to date all of the wrong people.
7:41
Speaker 1: I mean, she says that her advice is to date
7:44
Speaker 1: the bad boys, the cool boys, the condeven phobic boys,
7:47
Speaker 1: the crazy boys, but don't marry them. The things that
7:50
Speaker 1: make the bad boys sexy don't make them good husbands.
7:54
Speaker 1: And I can totally see what she's saying, because it's
7:57
Speaker 1: not so much Okay, well, you can't marry somebody who's
7:59
Speaker 1: cool or whatever, but like, you just want somebody who
8:02
Speaker 1: will support you in your decisions, whether that's to work
8:06
Speaker 1: seventy hours a week or whether that's to work from home. Yeah,
8:09
Speaker 1: and that's such a crucial starting point because I feel
8:12
Speaker 1: like a lot of the research focuses on where women
8:16
Speaker 1: are by middle age. They're probably married, they probably have kids,
8:20
Speaker 1: and talking about the whole juggling act of all of
8:25
Speaker 1: those things. But it's so important and worthwhile to take
8:31
Speaker 1: it a few steps back and say, Okay, why don't
8:34
Speaker 1: we start from square one, which is all right, if
8:36
Speaker 1: we want to partner up with somebody, let's think more
8:40
Speaker 1: about who we partner up with. Is that some someone
8:43
Speaker 1: going to be able to support our ambition in our career? Right?
8:47
Speaker 1: And then once you've gotten to that point, she stresses
8:50
Speaker 1: how important communication is. Yeah, actively communicating with your partner
8:55
Speaker 1: about going fifty fifty is obviously a really good thing
8:59
Speaker 1: to do of saying, you know what, you do this,
9:02
Speaker 1: I'll do that. Let's play to our strengths. And that's
9:05
Speaker 1: one way that you can practice the consciousness that Glorious
9:09
Speaker 1: Sinum talks about when she says it's not about biology
9:13
Speaker 1: but about consciousness. Right, going ahead, like I was saying earlier,
9:31
Speaker 1: like establishing what your strengths are and what your partner
9:34
Speaker 1: strengths are and working from there, instead of going ahead
9:38
Speaker 1: and establishing early in the relationship or early in the
9:41
Speaker 1: marriage that you are gonna be the one shouldering both
9:44
Speaker 1: work and all of the home life. Yeah, because if
9:47
Speaker 1: you adopt the roles of say cook and caregiver first thing,
9:52
Speaker 1: whether you have you know, a prince or a toad,
9:57
Speaker 1: he's probably just gonna be okay with it, you know,
9:59
Speaker 1: and by no fault of his own and be like, oh, okay, well,
10:02
Speaker 1: sure you can cook dinner. That's totally fine. And when
10:06
Speaker 1: I was reading this, it totally resonated with me because
10:13
Speaker 1: I have had to take a step back from cooking
10:19
Speaker 1: all of the time, doing grocery shopping all the time,
10:22
Speaker 1: doing Although my boyfriend is very adamant that he does
10:25
Speaker 1: his own laundry, which I'm fine about. But but I realized,
10:30
Speaker 1: and it wasn't before I read this, to be honest,
10:33
Speaker 1: I realized that I had just taken on all of
10:38
Speaker 1: these roles. I was doing everything, and it wasn't that
10:41
Speaker 1: he didn't want to, it was that I wasn't giving
10:44
Speaker 1: him a chance to. Yeah. I mean, it was the
10:47
Speaker 1: same thing with dude roommate, Like I was feeling so
10:50
Speaker 1: resentful because I was doing everything to clean up this
10:53
Speaker 1: freaking apartment. And finally I just told him. I was like,
10:56
Speaker 1: you're driving. You're driving me crazy, Like I'm gonna end up,
10:59
Speaker 1: like I don't know, setting all your shoes on fire
11:02
Speaker 1: or something. And he finally was like Okay. He finally
11:05
Speaker 1: chipped in and started doing some of the counter wiping
11:08
Speaker 1: down and some of the vacuuming. Yeah. And and that's
11:12
Speaker 1: why Sandburgy talks about how if you want fifty, you
11:16
Speaker 1: gotta ask for it first of all, and then crucially
11:21
Speaker 1: step back enough to let it actually happen. And I
11:25
Speaker 1: still have to stop myself, and it especially comes up
11:28
Speaker 1: with the dishwashing things, which makes me once I realized
11:31
Speaker 1: that I'm doing it I feel a little bit crazy
11:35
Speaker 1: because you know, like thinking about like, oh, I'm not
11:40
Speaker 1: one of those women who stands over boyfriend's shoulder tissing
11:43
Speaker 1: while he incorrectly you know, washes the tupper where but
11:47
Speaker 1: I totally do it. I totally do it. So I
11:49
Speaker 1: just have to step back, just like no, actually, you're
11:54
Speaker 1: I'm going to go in the other room and I'm
11:56
Speaker 1: gonna read and relax. And it's totally fine. But it's
12:00
Speaker 1: all about just raising some awareness with yourself to begin with,
12:05
Speaker 1: but also recognizing like what your psychosis are. For instance,
12:09
Speaker 1: like my my roommate, and I've mentioned this before on
12:11
Speaker 1: the podcast, like he is super psychotic about stuff. He
12:17
Speaker 1: isn't so much like a clean freak as he is
12:19
Speaker 1: a neat freak. I'm the other way around. I don't
12:22
Speaker 1: care if stuff is spread out all over the apartment
12:23
Speaker 1: as long as it's not grimy, and so, like, you know,
12:28
Speaker 1: I will come out of my room or you know,
12:30
Speaker 1: come home and he will have cleaned and like things
12:32
Speaker 1: are stacked in like a really weird place and he's
12:35
Speaker 1: like moved all of my personal belongings in front of
12:37
Speaker 1: my door. And it's like, okay, let go. You wouldn't
12:41
Speaker 1: clean like this, but this is how he cleans. And
12:43
Speaker 1: he just sees these things as like interlopers in the
12:46
Speaker 1: living room space and they need to be removed. So
12:49
Speaker 1: that's how he does it. I've got to let it go. Yeah, yeah,
12:52
Speaker 1: I've had to relinquish some of my neat freakness as well.
12:57
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, okay, cleanliness often resides on a spectrum.
13:02
Speaker 1: I'm more of the high end of the spectrum, and
13:05
Speaker 1: my boyfriend is more middling. He's not low, but middling,
13:09
Speaker 1: and he can at least It's not that he wants
13:12
Speaker 1: to live in a pig sty, but it's that dishes
13:15
Speaker 1: can sit in the sink for a while or the
13:17
Speaker 1: floor can look a little bit dirty for a while,
13:19
Speaker 1: and it's not going to be the end of the world.
13:22
Speaker 1: I want to clean when I come home. Well, you
13:24
Speaker 1: have a lot of floor space in your apartment. I
13:26
Speaker 1: do have a lot of floor space, so hashtag bless Well, No,
13:31
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about the amount of sweeping. Yeah, it's
13:35
Speaker 1: a lot of sweeping. And I know that these kinds
13:36
Speaker 1: of things, talking about dishes and cleaning, et cetera, seems
13:40
Speaker 1: so negligible and maybe seem like minor points if we're
13:43
Speaker 1: talking about career in capital C career, but it's time,
13:48
Speaker 1: and it's time that either takes away from our work
13:51
Speaker 1: or contributes to stress all around. And I do think
13:55
Speaker 1: that it makes a major difference for sure. I mean, yeah,
13:58
Speaker 1: if you feel like you have to work eight, nine,
14:01
Speaker 1: ten hours a day and then come home and continue working,
14:04
Speaker 1: but that work is sweeping and doing dishes like it's
14:07
Speaker 1: crazy making, Yeah, and it just gives you. It gives
14:09
Speaker 1: you no extra time. And the benefits of fifty fifty partnerships,
14:16
Speaker 1: not just at home but also in the workplace, have
14:20
Speaker 1: very real results. There was a finding that Sandberg talks
14:24
Speaker 1: about in the book, which is that the risk of
14:26
Speaker 1: divorce reduces by about half when a wife earns half
14:31
Speaker 1: the income and a husband does half the housework. Yeah,
14:35
Speaker 1: that would be that would be nice to I know
14:39
Speaker 1: my mother, Well, I just like, look at my parents,
14:42
Speaker 1: you know, they've been married for so long, and my
14:43
Speaker 1: mother's like, I would just really love it if he
14:45
Speaker 1: would chip in. I'm like, how long have you been married?
14:48
Speaker 1: You know? And my dad does he If you look
14:50
Speaker 1: at it more objectively, my dad does do a lot.
14:54
Speaker 1: He does everything outside. He does all the bill, paying
14:56
Speaker 1: all the financial stuff. My mom is the one who
14:59
Speaker 1: does more of the like cooking and cleaning and laundry
15:01
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. So it's like, as an
15:03
Speaker 1: outsider who lives thirty minutes away from them. Thankfully, UM,
15:09
Speaker 1: I can I can see that they do a lot
15:12
Speaker 1: of equal work. It's just that when you feel like
15:14
Speaker 1: you're the one who's putting in all of the time
15:17
Speaker 1: doing something, you know that can put a strain on
15:19
Speaker 1: things absolutely, um And. One thing that we might want
15:23
Speaker 1: to liberate ourselves from two that can put a strain
15:27
Speaker 1: on us mentally and make those differences feel even bigger
15:31
Speaker 1: than they are, is just abandoning this notion of having
15:38
Speaker 1: it all. This is a phrase I feel like it's
15:40
Speaker 1: been coming up ad nauseam in magazine articles focused on women.
15:46
Speaker 1: It's always focused on women. It's blog posts, it's tweets,
15:49
Speaker 1: it's everything talking about can we have it all? Oh,
15:51
Speaker 1: we can't have it all? No, maybe we should. You
15:53
Speaker 1: know what I'm gonna say, Let's just forget about those words. Yeah,
15:59
Speaker 1: pere you yeah, forget about them. I mean. Samberg calls
16:02
Speaker 1: it the trap, the biggest trap ever set for women.
16:06
Speaker 1: Um and I would. I mean, I would kind of agree.
16:08
Speaker 1: I think it's more important to this is gonna sound
16:11
Speaker 1: totally hippy dippy. I think it's more important to find
16:14
Speaker 1: your happiness and your happy spot in your sweet spot
16:17
Speaker 1: in life in general, more than it is to try
16:19
Speaker 1: to have some like magazine created ideal of having it all. Yeah,
16:23
Speaker 1: because then the question is, well, what is all that's
16:26
Speaker 1: going to be different to everybody? Right? When I when
16:28
Speaker 1: I hear the phrase having it all, I picture a
16:32
Speaker 1: stock shot online of a woman in a business suit
16:36
Speaker 1: with a briefcase and a baby and a cell phone,
16:40
Speaker 1: and she's very slim. I guess she's very slim and
16:42
Speaker 1: has impeccable hair somehow. Yeah, I would love impeccable hair,
16:46
Speaker 1: but I can't have it all, that's right. Uh Yeah.
16:50
Speaker 1: There was a quote from the book. He says long
16:52
Speaker 1: term success at work often depends on not trying to
16:55
Speaker 1: meet every demand placed on us. The best way and
16:59
Speaker 1: I highlighted those million times. The best way to make
17:02
Speaker 1: room for both life and career is to make choices deliberately,
17:06
Speaker 1: to set limits and stick to them, which sounds radically
17:10
Speaker 1: different and also radically more manageable than some idea of
17:14
Speaker 1: having it all. Well, not only the idea of having
17:17
Speaker 1: it all, but the idea of I'm going to feel
17:19
Speaker 1: guilty if I don't take it all on, you know,
17:22
Speaker 1: that idea of relinquishing that guilt of like, now, I'm
17:25
Speaker 1: human and I need to set these boundaries for myself
17:28
Speaker 1: and for you, as the person who's depending on me.
17:30
Speaker 1: If I tell you I can deliver X y Z,
17:33
Speaker 1: whether you're my partner or my co worker, you know,
17:37
Speaker 1: if I tell you that I can do all of
17:38
Speaker 1: this stuff and then I have a nervous breakdown, You're
17:40
Speaker 1: gonna be like, where's that TPS report? And I'm like,
17:42
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it right. And and that this resonates
17:47
Speaker 1: not just with our TPS reports metaphorically speaking, but also
17:52
Speaker 1: with those things at home, of the cooking, including and
17:56
Speaker 1: all of the unpaid work of maybe relinquishing some of
17:59
Speaker 1: the uh, letting it get a little messy every now
18:02
Speaker 1: and then, and not worrying about it, because the idea
18:07
Speaker 1: of striving for having it all is just chasing some
18:13
Speaker 1: made up construct exactly, and a lot of other women
18:17
Speaker 1: have realized these kinds of things. Um Tina Fey, one
18:21
Speaker 1: of our favorites in her book Bossy Pants, she talks
18:24
Speaker 1: about this idea of having it all and the fact
18:26
Speaker 1: that you are as a woman so judged for whether
18:31
Speaker 1: you have it all and how you got there. She says,
18:34
Speaker 1: what is the rudest question you can ask a woman
18:36
Speaker 1: is how do you juggle it all? People constantly ask
18:40
Speaker 1: me with an accusatory look in their eye. And again
18:43
Speaker 1: that image that you talked about of the well dressed,
18:46
Speaker 1: pants suited woman with the briefcase and the baby looking
18:51
Speaker 1: harried but also put together at the same time, I
18:54
Speaker 1: feel like sums all of that up. But yeah, that
18:57
Speaker 1: idea of having it all unless we get like twelve
19:00
Speaker 1: more hours in each day somehow, I you know, I mean,
19:03
Speaker 1: but then I would just use it to sleep. Let's
19:05
Speaker 1: be honest. Um. Samberg also cided Dr Lorie glimpse Er,
19:10
Speaker 1: who's the dean of the wheel Cornell Medical College, who
19:13
Speaker 1: was talking more about balancing career and child care. But
19:18
Speaker 1: I feel like her advice really resonated to women like
19:21
Speaker 1: us who might not be married with children. She said,
19:25
Speaker 1: I had to decide what mattered and what didn't, and
19:28
Speaker 1: I learned to be a perfectionist only in the things
19:32
Speaker 1: that mattered. Oh, This is something I struggle with all
19:34
Speaker 1: the time because I want I want to do my best.
19:37
Speaker 1: And this goes back to our whole self doubting issue
19:40
Speaker 1: that we talked about before, Our whole like feeling like
19:42
Speaker 1: a fraud and I'm not good enough and I have
19:43
Speaker 1: to put in a thousand percent or people are going
19:45
Speaker 1: to think I'm, like, you know, terrible at my job
19:48
Speaker 1: or or my life or whatever. Um I mean. I
19:51
Speaker 1: I also struggle with Noe. Pick the things that matter,
19:54
Speaker 1: like the things that are really important at work, but
19:56
Speaker 1: also the things in life that really make you happy.
19:58
Speaker 1: Pick those things, put your energies into him. Don't try
20:01
Speaker 1: to be everything to everybody. That is a recipe for
20:04
Speaker 1: anxiety city, for sure. No trust me, it is um.
20:22
Speaker 1: There's also the great Nora Ephron, who in her Wellesley
20:25
Speaker 1: commencement speech said, it will be a little messy, but
20:29
Speaker 1: embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in
20:32
Speaker 1: the complications. It will not be anything like what you
20:36
Speaker 1: think it will be like, but surprises are good for you,
20:39
Speaker 1: and don't be frightened. You can always change your mind.
20:42
Speaker 1: I know, I've had four careers and three husbands. I
20:47
Speaker 1: think she's totally right. You're looking at a girl who
20:49
Speaker 1: went to three colleges and four years like I don't.
20:52
Speaker 1: I try to pursue the things that make me the happiest.
20:55
Speaker 1: And if that means getting a little messy and transferring
20:58
Speaker 1: a lot of times, uh, then you've got to do
21:01
Speaker 1: what you've got to do exactly. And Sandberg herself says,
21:05
Speaker 1: if I had to embrace a definition of success, it
21:08
Speaker 1: would be that success is making the best choices we
21:11
Speaker 1: can and accepting and to me, part of that is unbalancing.
21:17
Speaker 1: This whole work life balance notion that we hear over
21:21
Speaker 1: and over and over again. And I understand why because
21:25
Speaker 1: thinking about it, yeah, like it makes sense, but sort
21:29
Speaker 1: of in the same way that having it all. Maybe
21:32
Speaker 1: he's leading us astray. Focusing on work life balance makes
21:36
Speaker 1: it sound like we can neatly discriminate between Oh, well
21:41
Speaker 1: this is this is my work self, now this is
21:44
Speaker 1: my life self. Well, I have a great real life example.
21:48
Speaker 1: This is not my example, but my friend Brandon Um
21:51
Speaker 1: does Humans of New York on Facebook. Maybe you've seen it.
21:54
Speaker 1: He post a lot of pictures from New York, obviously,
21:57
Speaker 1: and he took this picture of this older gentleman in
21:59
Speaker 1: a part and he starts talking to him and they
22:02
Speaker 1: have this conversation that Brandon writes about where he's like,
22:05
Speaker 1: you know, what is your greatest achievement or what advice
22:07
Speaker 1: would you give to a large group of people, And
22:09
Speaker 1: the man starts talking about how, you know, he's proud
22:13
Speaker 1: that his children grew up to be the great people
22:15
Speaker 1: that they are, the successful people that they are, but
22:18
Speaker 1: how filled with regret he is that he was so focused,
22:22
Speaker 1: laser focused on, you know, climbing the ladder in his career,
22:26
Speaker 1: that that was his focus. He was glad he could
22:28
Speaker 1: provide for his children, and he was glad they turned
22:30
Speaker 1: out okay. So when Brandon said, you know, would you
22:33
Speaker 1: regret it if you had given up a few rungs
22:35
Speaker 1: on the ladder to have been home more often? And
22:38
Speaker 1: the man said, no, you know, like that's that's a person,
22:42
Speaker 1: that's a real life person who didn't have whatever balance
22:47
Speaker 1: we are seeking, whatever your version of balance is. He
22:50
Speaker 1: and he regretted it. But you know, so I I
22:54
Speaker 1: take that that man that Brandon spoke with as a
22:57
Speaker 1: great example of like, find what makes you happy and
23:00
Speaker 1: hind it before it's too late. Yeah, And I think
23:02
Speaker 1: one of the first steps along the way to doing
23:04
Speaker 1: that is dismissing this idea that it's even possible to
23:09
Speaker 1: have it all, that that even that that even makes
23:12
Speaker 1: sense in any way whatsoever, and that it's not going
23:16
Speaker 1: to get a little messy sometimes along the way. Now,
23:19
Speaker 1: that's totally fine, and I feel like, you know, the
23:22
Speaker 1: more we can kind of accept that, then that can
23:27
Speaker 1: possibly lead into i don't know, opening up some breathing
23:30
Speaker 1: room in the workplace day to day as well. So
23:35
Speaker 1: I'm sure that listeners have lots of experience with this
23:38
Speaker 1: as well. So I'm curious to hear from folks about
23:41
Speaker 1: what they think about that idea of work life balance.
23:45
Speaker 1: Do we need to unbalance the work life balance? Do
23:47
Speaker 1: we need better language or just get rid of it
23:51
Speaker 1: and start fresh. I don't know what what do we
23:55
Speaker 1: do about this? I want to I do want to
23:57
Speaker 1: hear how people do achieve any out of balance or
24:01
Speaker 1: you know, are you in a super corporate environment and
24:04
Speaker 1: you're working with maybe your superiors to help achieve some
24:08
Speaker 1: sort of flexibility, or you know, do you feel like
24:10
Speaker 1: you're slaving away in a in a little box all
24:13
Speaker 1: the time. Let us know your thoughts. Mom stuff at
24:15
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com is where you can email us. We
24:18
Speaker 1: also highly encourage you to check out what is going
24:20
Speaker 1: on with lean In. It's not just a book, it
24:22
Speaker 1: is also a movement, so head over to lean in
24:26
Speaker 1: dot org. They also have a great Facebook network, not
24:30
Speaker 1: surprisingly since CEO of Facebook Cheryl Sandberg is at the
24:34
Speaker 1: helm of this. There at Facebook dot com slash lean in,
24:38
Speaker 1: and there you can find a lot of women who
24:40
Speaker 1: are sharing their experiences and you can share there as well.
24:45
Speaker 1: And next week we're gonna tie up our series. It's
24:49
Speaker 1: gonna be over Caroline. What are we gonna talk about? Uh,
24:53
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the word bossy and why
24:56
Speaker 1: that is a quarrel lot of word. So this series
24:58
Speaker 1: we will have started one with negotiation. We're gonna end
25:02
Speaker 1: things at the top of the ladder when we're hopefully
25:05
Speaker 1: the boss Caroline. That's right. So tune in next Friday
25:09
Speaker 1: for the conclusion of our four part series and partnership
25:12
Speaker 1: with Maine end for more onness and thousands of other topics.
25:18
Speaker 1: What does it housetop works dot com