Latest / WOI Unfiltered / Working & Parenting in Today's Society - Epi. 13
Transcript
- speaker-0: Alright, I just hit record. speaker-1: Wait a second, wait a second, let me grab coffee. speaker-0: you speaker-1: Welcome back, I missed you yesterday. speaker-0: I know, I know! I feel like I haven't spoken to you all week. I cannot believe it's already Friday. speaker-1: I can't either. We made it, we made it. speaker-0: I tried calling you on my commute and when you were tied up, was sitting there thinking, what am gonna do for an hour in the car? I can't talk to Emily in debrief. speaker-1: I always laugh at that because you're almost so offended when the person doesn't answer because you're like, I have the time now. Where's the other person? Best time to have a phone chat. short. Well, I missed you yesterday because you were out and about. speaker-0: I was at a conference. I was at the Boston Working Mothers Conference. And it was excellent. It was a great, you know, sometimes you go into something with expectations. Always. or bad. I went in with no expectations. I honestly didn't even have time to think about the conference beforehand. And it was nice. I didn't have any expectations. And so I walked away feeling... So pleased with the event and what the experience was. It was wonderful. speaker-1: That is great. And it was downtown Boston? Was it sponsored by someone specific? Yeah, just tell me more about the setup. speaker-0: Yeah, so it was at the Seaport, at the Omni Hotel in the Seaport, which I love. I stayed there recently. It's a great spot. And it's a Boston Globe event. So this was their second year doing it. And I think they made some adjustments and optimizations, but it was a really great opportunity to hear from other female leaders, other mothers too. They had a great lineup. I am not going to try and go through it and list every name, but we can put a link to the agenda. But it was just... It was refreshing and it was informative. It was a place for all of the attending women to feel heard and seen by these other powerful leaders. I mean, these were women who are commanding their industry. One of them was a NASA astronaut. She had gone to space twice and I was sitting there just in, that I got to hear her speak. The videos and the images she showed were amazing, but it was really great. What I walked away with, what stuck with me, and there are some different nuggets that we can talk through, was just that we as humans actually, not just women and not just mothers, but as people are in a very tricky time with where things sit with the government, with people around our age, that millennial age range. being the sandwich generation and dealing with aging parents as well as kids. And so there's that, that applies to us and our husbands, right? And then if you take it a step further as females and as mothers, we're dealing with things like perimenopause, which just is a part of my French, but a mindfuck. We're dealing with kids' needs, whether your kids are teenagers or little ones. We're dealing with that and that sometimes can feel like the most urgent thing in the world, even if it's not. And then we're trying to uphold our own standards for ourselves when it comes to work and our own ambitions and wanting to continue to be ambitious. And again, it was so wonderful being surrounded by a room full of ambitious and successful women who are also saying, yes, there are these other facets of my life that sometimes can take over and it's really hard and really tricky. but it's also so worth it because of the rewards at the end of the day. So it was a great experience. I loved it. speaker-1: That is amazing. I can imagine just how empowering that would feel and seen, like you said. I think it is about giving yourself grace in times of higher anxious moments or stressful moments and trying to fill your life with more things that make you happy and make your heart happy as much as you can. speaker-0: You know, I have to say, one of the women up there, the first lady of Massachusetts, was kind of laughing and joking around. And she said, is it the hormones or the headlines making me go crazy today? I could not relate more. And then even as I translated to my husband, who's, you know, he's in the thick of parenting with me. And he's obviously in the thick of all the headlines and the politics and everything going on. And I could see him sitting there being like, Is it the lack of sleep from my crazy children or is it the headlines these days? Like we all can say something like that. And I guess laughing about it a little bit is a nice relief. Comedy, you know, is a nice relief and a nice way to just let's commiserate, but then let's laugh about it. Cause what else are we going to do? speaker-1: Yeah. And it's amazing how much headlines are impacting day-to-day life right now, whether or not you're a consumer or in professional avenues, it's all over the place in terms of how something grave or seemingly simple can completely shake an industry and demand pivots that you wouldn't even foresee. know, it's a funny time. But back to yesterday. Talk to us a little bit about some key themes and takeaways, maybe a great presentation that you sat in on. When you think about the flow of your day and the people that you interacted with, people that you shook hands with, engaged with on a deeper level, what are a few things that really stuck out? speaker-0: I mean, one of them was the fact that anxiety is everywhere and ever-present. And I mean that broadly for working parents, for people that are not parents, for kids. It's everywhere. One of the things that somebody brought up on a panel that I thought was really interesting is anxiety can be a great fuel for productivity. Sometimes, It is okay to use that anxiety to spur bursts of work that you need to get done and this like creative thinking that needs to happen. So it's not always a negative, but, and I'm kind of combining a couple of different talks because while they weren't intended to necessarily go together, they really did. They played off each other a little bit. So you have this. plus side of anxiety, but then there's also burnout. you know, looking at the amount of people who are talking about burnout these days, I mean, we've seen it, the headlines are crazy, right? They're everywhere. And the idea of saying, okay, is this crazy phase of work right now going to be one week? In which case, let's buckle down and use my anxiety to fuel my productivity and get things done. hit the max, right? And just say, I'm gonna do this, even if it's a little bit crazy for a week. Or is this phase going to be nine months? In which case, it's time to take a minute and figure out what's your backup plan? What's your support plan? Do you need to lean on your community of friends and neighbors to support you with your kids? Do you need a little more from your spouse in that timeframe? What does that kind of look like? And I will say, the speakers that they had there, they were a variety of medical doctors who were talking about this as well as authors and podcasters. So Maura, ⁓ Maura Aaron's Melee, I think I'm saying her last name right, I'm not positive, is an author of The Anxious Achiever. And she was the one who was really talking about using anxiety in the positive sometimes, but also being aware. But then there, I, absolutely cannot pronounce her name. Dr. Aditi Nairukkar, she's a physician from Harvard University. She was phenomenal. She was talking a little bit more about burnout and how to avoid it. So that was one of the big takeaways. The ways in which we can avoid burnout and kind of come back to ourselves and take a minute were really interesting. So in that same conversation, there was discussion about the scroll. which I think that we've all done the scroll, right? Where you get, and it's called, it's actually scientifically called something. I forget what it is, bedtime procrastination, something else. ⁓ But the idea is, right, you got the kitchen in the house kind of cleaned or whatever you need to get done for the day, the kids are asleep and you're sitting in bed and it's 9.30, you're trying to go to bed by 10 o'clock and you end up scrolling for three hours. And then you're like, ⁓ my God, I'm going be exhausted tomorrow. I think we've all done that. So what I hadn't thought about and what was discussed is that there is actually a scientific reason for doing that, right? There's a need to decompress and spend some self time, right? And just re-center. And so it's not just all negative. It's not fully unhealthy to do that. unhealthy is that three hours or two hours or even an hour of scrolling, right? Yeah. So that was part of the discussion is like, do you pause it? How do you do it for a little bit and then step away so that you can get good sleep and all the other things. speaker-1: Well, I find myself first of all, really containing it over the past few years in terms of things I just don't do anymore from even a personal standpoint that that would be Facebook unless it interacts with work. And then Instagram is my happy place, but I've really paid intentional attention to not doing it. And I won't even do it for more than 45 minutes. I find that even when I do. It ends in a negative space, even if it starts in a positive space. So that data alone helps me keep this in check. And it's always first thing in the morning. So it's going to make me late or last thing at night. And it's kind of missed key minutes of sleep. I do think it's interesting. We're talking about this, Jenna, because Meta lost a pretty big case this week and owes 3 million in damages to a woman here in the U S they're going to appeal, of course. But I do think. And there's multiple sides to every story, of course. I'm sure Zuckerberg will have words on this, of course. But I think it is an interesting thing where we're in this moment of reconciliation, kind of, on this media that came out like gangbusters, you know, 15 years ago. And now there is a bit of a reckoning. But that's great. I mean, I think it sounds like yesterday was news you can use, very applicable, very practical learnings. that the audience is able to implement in their lives and harness some of these negative emotions maybe into positive or at least contain them so that they don't run away with them. speaker-0: Yeah, was, you one of the things that was discussed is the idea of grayscaling your phone, which I had never heard of. I actually need to play around with this this weekend. But I think from what I gather, the idea is that it actually changes kind of the colors and the vibrancy on your phone. It's not a permanent thing. You can turn it on and off. But scientifically, what they were discussing was the fact that you tend to get bored faster looking through these images if you've grayscale. So. You do your 20, 30 minutes of scrolling and then you're kind of like, okay, I'm done. So that was really, really cool and interesting. Different. Yeah. The other thing that Joanna Lidgate, so she is the first lady of Massachusetts and she's also the CEO of States United. Her life is obviously heavily influenced by politics, being with Maura Healey and in her career. And so... She was the one who was really saying that her social media feed is heavily curated to mostly puppies and comedy. And that's what she lets herself look at at night is just puppies and comedy because her work day is infiltrated with the more serious and the politics and what's happening and those headlines that can be heavy and weigh on you. And so letting herself end her day with that much more light contents has really helped her as well. speaker-1: That's what I want my algorithm to change. speaker-0: Puppies in Comedy. Yes. Yes. So many other quick hits that I loved. So I mentioned, I got to listen to an actual NASA astronaut, Katie Coleman. Nuts. And I was just so inspired. This woman has gone to space twice. She spoke about one of her experiences in going to space when her child, when her youngest child was 10 and kind of how she coped with that. ⁓ But she really leaned into the idea of each of us being multifaceted and embracing that. And speaking openly to our families and our children about that and about our ambition and about the things we want to do. And Joanna did this as well. I think it's just refreshing to be able to say, you know, next phase of my life, like for me, when my kids were little. I did take a little bit of a step back from work and I did kind of reassess my priorities and my children and my family are still my number one priority. But I'm also in a phase now where I feel like I can be a little bit more selfish with my ambition. And if I want to work late one night and have my husband take my kids out for dinner and handle all of that, I don't feel guilty about that because I want to do cool things in my job and I love my job. And so. Again, it was refreshing to hear these powerful women talk about that and talk about the ebb and the flow. And one decision doesn't need to mean that, you know, you've always prioritized work over family, but you can do that sometimes and it can be okay. speaker-1: Yeah. And I think the big thing for me there is too, and I think we're a little probably fortunate, Jenna, because we have this business that we can steer. And in my burnout days, I didn't feel in that position where I could harness it. And sometimes you would truly have these moments like you're drinking out of a fire hose and things felt heavy and crushing in one area of your life. And that could be professional. And therefore you felt as though you completely had to abandon something in another part of your life. And I think that attempt at balance is where it gets really sticky. But I do, when I reflect on those years, especially when I had really young kids and went back to full time, you just wish you could tell yourself or tell that generation of humanity that you need to do you and give yourself the space. and time to deal with the very real issues that come up in your personal life that should demand attention. Right? hearing other women especially say that is sometimes exactly what we need to feel as though the sisterhood is saying yes. Right? It is true. speaker-0: Emily Oster was there. She is the founder of Parent Data. She's an economist and a professor. That is her background. That is her training. And it was interesting to hear her talk about, she was saying, I think her daughter is in ninth grade now. And she was mentioning that last year her daughter had done a project where she asked, her daughter asked Emily about how her profession has changed since having kids. Emily kind of flippantly said, well, I rejiggered my entire profession and now solely focus on parenting and the data for parenting. So it's completely changed it. ⁓ you know, she did it in a way where she's still equally, if not more ambitious, she's still driving that industry. And so that was really cool. I could kind of go on and on about her for a while. I really respect the work she does and how she tries to ground. women and parents in data-driven decisions and how she tries to, don't want to say, simplify is the wrong word, because I don't think she's simplifying any data, but she is expressing it in a way that the layman, you and I, can understand it to make informed decisions. And one of the things she talked about that really struck me was the fact that sometimes We as humans and as a country are maybe not as driven by data as she had originally thought. And what struck me about that is our job. We've had a couple of conversations recently about getting some media placements for clients and really needing and wanting some data nuggets to do that because the media tend to kind of hook onto data. ⁓ And it was interesting to hear her say that, that she doesn't necessarily feel like we as a population are always driven by that. personally am. But it was a reality of like, people are driven by emotion and sometimes emotion and data don't match up. speaker-1: Give an example, Jenna, of that. I mean, I think I'm probably very driven by emotion, but there are certain places in my life where I need to be driven by data, of course. Or when I'm trying to solve a problem that's new to me, frankly. Even if it's something that has to do with family or children, right? That's where I seek the data. speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, her specific example she was talking about was actually back in the COVID days, right? When all the schools shut down and everybody went and worked from home and kids did school from home, she came out with some studies and an opinion that kids should go back to school. Now, this was before everyone started to go back to school masked. Right. And she got hammered for it. I mean, people left and right just disagreed with her. Now, I was a more cautious person. had little babies, all of that. I did send my kids back to school. My daughter at the age of three went to preschool masked for a year. So I sat kind of in her camp, but not everybody did. And her argument was the data supported her making that recommendation. The data showed that kids weren't getting sick, that they weren't spreading illness. And I don't want to go too far into it because I haven't refreshed myself on that in a very long time. But her point was just at that time in America and in the world, decisions were being made on a more emotional basis. And it was an awakening for her that sometimes even if the data shows something, people aren't necessarily going to take that advice. speaker-1: Yeah, and frankly the social-emotional learning, being around people was very important for children of all ages anyway, which was the other side of that data. How can we look Emily Oster up? speaker-0: So she is the founder of Parent Data or Data. Sorry, I'm having a little side chuckle because my husband works for a data company and he argues that it is pronounced data and I say data and this is a complete side note, but we looked it up recently. I swear and I was like, how do you pronounce this? speaker-1: Data or data? Stop. speaker-0: You know, of course Google comes up with these results and it was like, data is more often used in the UK, whereas data is more used in the US. And my husband was like, it's not data. speaker-1: Dang it, it's data data potato potato root route, I believe. speaker-0: I don't even, yeah, I don't know. Emily's easy to find though. Parent data, parent data. She's got a newsletter. I think she might have a podcast, although I can't recall. I know we're tight on time, but the two things I wanted to mention. Yes. One thing that really stuck with me, so Marina Middleton from Create and Cultivate came on. She did a quick five minute talk. Okay. And the big thing that Marina said is best known beats best. speaker-1: Unpack that because you texted it to me this morning. I need a little background. speaker-0: It essentially means you can be the best in your industry. We can be the best PR agency there is out there. We can do the best work, get the best placements, know, be amazing, which by the way, I think we are. But if people don't know who you are and they don't know that you're the best at that, you're not going to grow. You're not going to get the business you want. You're not going get the clients you need. You are not going to be successful. And for me personally, that could not resonate more because we are not boastful humans. We don't love to talk about ourselves and, and, you know, shout from the rooftops. And her message was you can be humble, but if you are not letting people know that you are great at your job, they don't know to hire you. Yeah. And so I took that as, kind of a personal action item. How do we start to become as WLY communications best known? while remaining authentic to who we are. And I think that's a big task for us to figure out. speaker-1: Light work brief for us. Yeah. Yeah. And you know my personal struggles with shouting from the rooftops, but Jenna, you understand the importance and I think that's where you always drive from. Quick question. What's your impact, my friend? speaker-0: So I'm going to flip this and say that this conference had impact on me this week in any setting where we need to be focused. ⁓ And I think it will allow me to have greater impact on our company as well as on myself personally, allowing me to sometimes take the mom guilt away and the handcuffs off and just say, just go for it. Keep doing the work you love. Keep, you know, reaching for the things that you want to. ⁓ There was one remark, somebody from the Russian school of math came on and she was talking about a little girl and a math problem. And what stuck with me was her talking about this little girl saying, let me try. And I think that that is an impact I want to leave on my kids. through us leading by example. like, let me try. Let me see if I can get this right. Let me just try to do this one thing. speaker-1: love that. That is so good. It's beautiful, actually, and simple. speaker-0: All right, well, I know this was a quick one, but thank you so much. It was good to catch up. speaker-1: Yes, you're new, All right, I'm inspired.