2. years

Come on now.

Podcasting is huge, it’s a booming area and there are more and more being added each day. That may sound like the perfect wind up to a saturated market, but if you think about it (excuses aside) no everyone is listening to the same thing. My husband and I share a podcast library (because we aren’t 25) and when it came time to set up his iphone he piggy backed off my account.

What does he listen to? Podcasts I’ve never heard of about topics you couldn’t pay me to be interested in. No shade, we are different people with different interests. Just because we’ve been married for 17 years doesn’t mean we’re into matching sweaters and podcasts. If you and your person are, all the more power to you, it just doesn’t float my boat.

As of January 2023 Spotify reported having 4.7 million podcasts on its platform and apple having 2.5 million. When I say you can probably find a podcast on about any topic, there are millions to comb through on just those two platforms. Those numbers alone made me feel, initially, like the market must be saturated. Everyone’s talking about everything. Jacob’s media reported recently that the number of people listening to podcast grew 12% from 2019-2023, with people most commonly subscribing to 9 different podcasts. No surprise that the number of listeners grew when you put a global pandemic right smack in the middle of that period.

In my own experience, listening to podcasts over the last few years, has been a great way to feel connected to others through shared stories. During Covid our family was home, home home for 2.5 years. Before then I had wanted to start listening to podcasts but was always on the go. When you have kidzbop playing in the car, a baby sleeping at home, running around the house with kids, or trying to concentrate on your own work, it doesn’t leave much opportunity to pop in some earbuds. When our pace of life slowed dramatically, there was suddenly space in the day to tune in.

Listening to podcasts during the pandemic was a game changer. Everything -comedy, parenting, business building, feminism, authors and speakers were waiting each day in my library, depending on how I was feeling. Hearing others stories is inspiring in many ways. A mom that launched a business while home with twin newborns, people making career pivots midlife to follow their passion, people learning how to overcome trauma and break generational cycles. My inspiration cup runneth over.

The one area I wanted to focus on was the story I desperately wanted to hear for myself. Women honoring themselves as individuals after becoming mothers. Women who continued to stay true to themselves, their values, and their dreams, alongside the immense responsibility of motherhood. To show their children what is possible for them, for their daughters after they become mothers or their sons to support their partners.

When I launched Dovetail® I tried to bring that into the blogs, by talking about equity at home. Communication and collaboration. Being able to have two people carry out the responsibility of family through the use of tools designed for that purpose. But it’s hard to feel like it’s effectively transcribed into a two dimensional post when it’s a multidimensional problem. We also live in a time when people read less long form content and overwhelmingly prefer podcasts.

Launching the AND/BOTH podcast came about as an intersection of multiple lightbulb moments.

1. Wanting to have more depth to the explanation and interaction with the content relative to the audience.

2. Wanting to highlight and explore the experiences of modern motherhood and the relationship with ourselves after entering into it.

3. Having (in person) conversations and asking other mom friends about their exploration of individuality and wanting to share the connection we have in the struggle and strive for both ourselves and ourselves as mothers.

When I talked to friends and other moms about their experience, over and over I thought “this isn’t something that is happening to just me, other moms are going through the same thing.” Our stories are all different, but there are more similarities in our experiences. It didn’t fit into a blog format because these weren’t my stories to summarize or write about, they were their stories to tell. These stories need to be shared so that those feeling the same way don’t feel alone. Mothers that are prioritizing their individuality alongside motherhood are beacons for those in earlier ages and stages of motherhood that may feel lost, isolated, or struggling to reconcile motherhood and self.

So 2 years and dozens of conversations later, the AND/BOTH podcast is finally going out into the world. I connected with a producer (that I heard interview on another podcast!), recorded an initial episode and put a call for guests out on social media. In the first 3 days I had almost a dozen women sign up to appear as guests on the show. Women from all over the country with a huge variety of stories to tell. This is usually where they get categorized as the type of mother they are (SAHM, WFHM…..) but all moms are moms and I’ll stick with that until they start dishing out dad categories as well.

We are kicking off on Friday November 3rd. Each week you’ll hear from a mom, some weeks there will be solo episodes with just me, sharing their experience. Their story about what makes them tick outside of motherhood, how they are embracing that and adapting depending on the age and stage of parenting they are in. The goal is to create a community for everyone to be able to find shared experiences, no matter where you are on the motherhood continuum. To inspire other moms and be inspired to continue to pursue whatever it is you’ve got your mind set on- if it’s sleep or fortune 500 (and everything in between).

The AND/BOTH podcast can be found here. Join us each week on Fridays when new episodes are released. After you tune in, please follow the show to stay up to date with episodes and if you love what we’re doing, please rate the show so we can continue to bring stories to the forefront. I can’t wait for you to hear from these incredible women.

Planning, organization, and scheduling are all different. 

The terms are often used interchangeably in marketing and sales, one product to solve all those tricky problems. Except… They each require different tools and strategies, so the attraction of a one-size-fits-all approach is undeniable, but it won’t really address the issue. A solution only works when it matches the problem. Breakdowns in any of these three areas all lead to the same space: overwhelm. When a solution is proposed that will eliminate overwhelm (in general) it’s easy to think it’s a perfect fit. 

Let’s get some definitions out of the way

Planning- long term or short term planning is the ticker tape that plays in your head. The “don’t forgets” and the “how am I going to make this happens” that tug at our attention during many of the waking hours in the day. This is what people refer to when they say it feels like they have too many tabs open in their brain and are having trouble focusing. 

Organization- your physical space and the routines you go through at home/work/school. This is often grouped with the clutter in your house that drives you crazy. The school papers that get lost between the backpack and your hands at the end of the day. The not knowing where the other soccer sock is for the game on Wednesday. 

Scheduling- how your day runs. Who needs to be where, when and how they are going to arrive/leave. This includes rides, equipment, preparatory activities, or other things that have to be brought/bought as part of the activity.

Organization is about routine and not the absence of clutter

Have you ever heard (or said yourself) “I know it looks like a mess, but I have a system and I know where everything is?” I’m not doubting that for a second. There are decluttering programs promoted as organization, promising to make everything in your life simple and efficient. Yes, clearing out closets, pantries, and the basement will help you feel less overwhelmed. Decluttering is only the first step though.

Organization involves routines and systems for HOW things will be accomplished. Decluttering will help decrease the number of things you have to work with to make those routines easier, but it won’t put them in place. Routines are the spice of adult life. Automating the basics of our day frees up capacity for the bigger and more important decisions. There are plenty of research articles written about decision fatigue and how we can only make a certain number of decisions each day before we become less efficient. Multiple former US Presidents have pointed to the strategy of having A/B choices to make when it comes to wardrobe to simplify their morning routine. Many famous founders, like Jamie Kern Lima of IT Cosmetics, have written about owning multiple pairs of the same clothes so they didn’t have to make any clothing decisions in the morning. 

When you clear out the clutter, it creates space to put routines into place- getting ready for school in the morning, sports/activities equipment, snack drawers. If the overwhelm in your days is coming from shoes piled at the door, emails about missing assignments, or trouble getting out of the house on time for an event — this is where you’ll want to start. It doesn’t have to be a whole house makeover. I’m guessing that’s more overwhelming then the clutter in the first place and likely to keep you pushing it off and stuck where you are now. Start with one routine. One room. One space. Pick something small- put up a folder for homework assignments and permission slips. Build from there.

Scheduling and planning are siblings, not twins

This seems to be where the marketing message is the loudest in our day to day lives. They are similar, work better when both are working towards the same goal, and don’t quite get the job done if you ignore one. Dovetail® started with planning products. I was underwater and overwhelmed with keeping everything on track. Trying to get the whole family on the same page so we could move forward with all the activities a young family has coming at them, well, everything that was coming at me and having no clear way to get the plan in place. 

The paper Dovetail® products were designed to simplify planning- meals, groceries, weekly events, preparing for upcoming things. Plan. Plan. Plan. Putting a planning system into place is essential. Creating a collaborative space so two parents (in my case) could work together, equally, towards better communication and less “how did we miss this” was the light at the end of the planning tunnel.

But planning happens at home, scheduling is how we intersect with the real world. When the rubber hits the road (quite literally for all those after school activities), the on the ground logistics keep you moving in the right direction. Our mobile lives need a mobile app that can consolidate feeds, integrate with platforms that handle our home life, school activities, after school activities and everything that takes place on the go. 

One way to easily separate a planning from a scheduling task is to plan in analog and schedule in digital. If you have a task that requires time/date/location logistics, it’s scheduling. If there are steps along the way to complete it, it’s planning. 

Why is it important?

The tools and strategies you need to successfully carry out each are different. It’s easy to get swept up in the visual promise and ignore the functional need. Seeing a social media ad with  someone is sitting on the couch on a sunny morning relaxing and reading the paper looks like heaven, especially for a parent that’s trying to figure out how to get to soccer practice, grocery shop, and prepare for the big work trip this week. If the ad is selling you a decluttering course, you’re house is going to look great in the end- but where are you going to find the time to even take the course with everything else going on? Looking for peace in your social feed is tricky because it’s everyone’s highlight reel.

Before signing up for a course, buying a new product, or creating your vision board, identify which of these three lanes you’re in. A scheduling solution, while the ad may be slick and irresistible, is not going to solve your planning problem. Likewise, decluttering your house, while it will make it feel less overwhelming, probably won’t include the routines that are going to help you get the kids out of the house with everything they need for school/activities. If using the product has that “a ha” feeling, you’re on the right track. It will allow you to complete the task, check it off and move on to the next. When the solution matches the problem, you’ll make headway on decreasing overwhelm - isn’t that what we’re all after?

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The first day of this new schedule was hard- when you’re used to having a car with at least one kid in the back, an empty car feels like you’ve forgotten someone at home. The second day was a mad rush to try and cram in as many to-do list items as possible. You know what I learned last week? I learned that “doing it all” at the same time, is like walking up a downward traveling escalator- and that I’ve been doing that for years. 

You aren’t “doing it all,” you are burning mental, emotional and physical energy to try and make incremental progress. It’s hard to see that when you’re in the thick of it. Last week, instead of running up the escalator, I walked up the stairs. I made progress on projects at work and home that have been sitting in the queue for months. MONTHS. The realization that efficiency and progress were not going hand in hand is a tough one to admit. On the outside you look like the duck calmly floating on the water, while violently kicking below the surface. 

What I realized last week is that not doing it all is the standard we really need to strive for. Not trying to wedge another activity into our jammed calendar. Not trying to figure out how to be more productive. Instead, let’s figure out how to be optimally productive. Let’s aim for the “just right” fit for where we are in our life instead of some unattainable goal. 

In OT when we talk about “just right challenge” it’s about meeting people where they are and adjusting the activity to match their current level. If you’re a mom to a 2 week old baby the structure of your day is going to look light years different than that of a mom with all her kids in school. The amount you can and cannot do is going to shift over time. Your priorities are going to shift as the kids grow. Your capacity is going to change with childcare, with the ability to hire assistance, or with the opportunity to rely on family and friends to fill in the gaps. 

In order to figure out where your “just right” is, you first have to get everything out in the open- schedules, events, appointments, all of it. Putting everything in one place, the essential purpose inside Dovetail® Schedule Academy, so you can see exactly how full your calendar is. If you’ve got multiple calendars, sticky notes, and emails hobbled together as a scheduling system, it’s hard to know when you’ve hit your maximum productivity capacity. 

Once everything is laid out, being ruthless in your assessment of your capacity is the key to achieving optimal productivity. That sounds super philosophical but really- if you don’t have the time to do something, you don’t have the time to do something. Saying “yes” when you really need to say “no” is keeping you trapped in a cycle of feeling like you need to figure out how to be more productive instead of taking on less. As moms we take on so many things to try and help everyone that we end up carving into our own time and care. If you don’t have a huge support network or the option to hire assistance of any kind, advice like “just say no” sounds obnoxious.

If you can’t see where you’ve reached your capacity in a functional and visual way then there’s no way to know when your productivity is optimized. This is the essence of the Dovetail framework. Simply throwing another event on the calendar or activity on the pile and reasoning you’ll “just figure it out” later is putting off a hard conversation. I know it sounds easier said than done, especially coming from someone sitting on the other side of the computer. Figuring out where you’re at right now is the first step out of the stress spin cycle.

This isn’t your cue to shred your planner (ah!) and kick back- I wish I had the magic wand to make that happen for every mom out there. It’s the reminder that you are likely doing way more than you give yourself credit for, that you are downplaying your own accomplishments while playing up those of other moms around you. If there isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done, it’s likely time to get everything in one place and get a solid look at how full your plate really is before adding anything else to it. 

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Seriously though, does that ever really happen?

Last week I exhibited at my first trade show. I learned a lot. Sweat a lot. Swore a lot (during the setup and take down). It was a long week. I spent many weeks this summer creating packets and info sheets, learning how to order power to a booth in the middle of a show floor, and learning about what’s really “included” (hint: not much) in that hefty exhibitor fee. In the back of my mind I wondered if it was going to be worth it from a business perspective, jury is still out on that one. 

What I didn’t consider in the midst of my printing and packing is how I was going to feel going through the whole experience. As a mom there are countless examples of my own and those you read about online of moms not meeting their basic needs in service of those around us. Forgot to shower for 3 days- the baby was sick all week. Forgot to eat lunch- running to preschool for pickup and running errands. Haven’t seen your friends out in months- baby won’t take a bottle. The first place we carve time out to meet the needs of others is from our own personal time. There’s plenty of viral TikToks that show moms staying up late, scrolling their phones, and eating snacks as a way to have space in the day for downtime, when they are not responsible or listening out for kids.That eats into sleep and the cycle continues the next day. More coffee, right?

The 5 days I just spent in New York was the exact opposite. I had a long, hot, uninterrupted shower each day. I ate food when I was hungry, drank water like a human should. By all motherhood accounts it was glamorous. If your accounts are the low hanging fruit of self-care it was a the ultimate wellness package at a day spa. Going into the week I relied on my trusty “I can’t wait to get there” defense mechanism for not wanting to deal with the leaving part of the journey. 

When I tucked my kids into bed the night before I left (early in the morning), it hit me like an absolute truckload of bricks. It wasn’t guilt. I was going to do the thing I had prepared physically for, but not mentally. I had never been away from my kids for more than two nights… ever. The feeling was “do I really want to do THIS or do I just really need some time?” Heading towards the light, as in a multi day trip away, could have been for any reason. Instead of meeting a need for rest and an opportunity to recharge, I had to validate it for myself with a work trip.

The few days I spent in New York were the opposite of relaxing. Setting up a booth after hauling trunks of product through the city was brutal. Walking down the sidewalk like a combination of Mr. Bean and Jim Carrey with a loaded dolly isn’t “a break” from my day to day life. Telling myself over and over that this was what I wanted stopped when I almost dumped two trunks on the crosswalk at 10th avenue in Hudson Yards while scrambling to get another load to the booth before setup time ended. It looks and sounds like the beginning of a “look at me now” memoir, maybe it will be, but in that moment I would have happily hopped into an Uber for a 4 day stay in a hotel anywhere else. 

In all of this I realized that my view of my own motherhood was so rigid and the external reinforcements of what a “good mother” is are so harsh that I could not simply step away for a few days because I needed it. In the 10 years I’ve had kids I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been away without the kids, and this trip was the first time by myself. And it still had to be tied to something deemed “worthy or productive”, like a work trip? I know I’m not alone in this experience. 

It’s bubbled up in conversations with other moms over the years but we’ve never really hashed it out. There is a deep and overwhelming expectation that we, as mothers, pour all of ourselves into our role and take the scraps as our sustenance. Look at the emerging “girl dinner” crap. Let’s make viral content out of women and mothers eating toddler sized portions of random food in the house instead of sitting down to an actual meal. This content circling the internet reinforces the idea that we are expected to take the LITERAL scraps and expect that to be enough to fill us up. 

None of this is true. You deserve to eat a meal that would feed more than a toddler, or a rabbit. You deserve time away, only for the express purpose of rest. You do not need to validate meeting your needs with a socially accepted reason in order for it to be “worth it.” 

After a chaotic and stressful trip away (albeit good for the business) I was fortunate to record my first guest episode of my upcoming podcast. The topic? The AND/BOTH of motherhood. Caring and raising small humans while also being true to ourselves and our passions. Doing the things that fill our cup so that we aren’t trying to live our daily lives running on empty. It was EXACTLY what was needed to not feel alone in this work/motherhood/human being space that’s sometimes confusing and lots of times hard to explain to people that don’t walk in your shoes. 

It’s an important conversation. One that can call in as many different experiences and stories as possible. To hear from those who are in the thick of “it”- whatever that may be and still honoring themselves. Or not and what that experience is like as well. It’s the intersection of stereotypes that silo mothers when we really need to connect with those around us. Recording a podcast was not on my 5 year bingo sheet but the more moms I’ve connected with since starting my own business the more I believe this topic needs to reach as many mothers as possible. 

Going to New York wasn’t what I expected but it was exactly what I needed- a few hot showers, a broadway show, and a long overdue perspective shift.

*If the and/both of motherhood is something that you’ve wanted to chat about, I would love to have you on the show! No matter where you are on the journey of motherhood and self-actualization we all have a story to share. In my own experience with podcasts as a listener it’s a comfort to hear stories from others even if they aren’t exactly the same as your own to find common ground. You can find more info about the podcast here.

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The “end of summer” varies by state, in my area the kids go back to school right before labor day, whereas some kids are back in at the end of July/early August. No matter when they go, the last few weeks always feels like being in the middle of a washing machine spin cycle. The days are flying by and there’s an approaching drop off into fall- getting ready for school, going back to school, fall sports, fall activities, homework, packing lunches, and routines in complete upheaval. 

Rough.

For a long time I attributed the tumultuousness of the end of summer to a lack of organization. The story I told myself over and over was- if I could just organized I’d be able to get everything done and we would avoid the end of summer madness. Not true. Getting organized didn’t quell everything. Sure, it made the physical transition to school easier. Backpacks ready to go, supplies in hand and boxes checked. But it didn’t help one iota with the emotional piece, which is infinitely more stressful than school supplies, because it’s not a box that can simply be checked.

There’s no spreadsheet to follow to mentally and emotionally prepare for back to school, for you or for the kids. Helping them transition to a new school year can’t be streamlined because going back into the massive school machine is kid-specific. The mental gymnastics of making sure everyone is signed up for activities, sports, uniforms are ordered, and back to school paperwork is filled out, while also handling your own feelings about the transition is underestimated in stressfulness.

Physical preparation and mental/emotional preparation is the equivalent of burning both ends of the candle with a blow torch. 

In Frozen 2, yep I’ve got kids so many things relate back to Frozen, remember when Olaf says “this is called controlling things we can control” while kids are shoving icicles into him as the earth is crumbling around them? That sums up this time of year perfectly. Having an organized approach to getting ready to go back to school means all those things I can control- having school supplies, getting geared up with back to school clothes, filling out the forms, etc. When those to-do list items are part of a system it frees up the bandwidth to help my kids with the emotional and mental prep for going into a whole new year. 

It also creates opportunity for my husband to participate without having to be directed. Having a list for each kid means it doesn’t take up space in my brain, but it also means he can take them shoe shopping or to get new helmets because there’s a list. This year, with the Dovetail® Digital app now out, it’s become even easier to track lists since we share access to electronic lists so they are mobile. He keeps track of things that I don’t- ski gear, helmets, bikes and I keep track of snow clothes, jackets, clothes and shoes. We now have one central point to work off of. If they are out getting helmets and decide to get new cleats it’s only a list away. 

The lump-in-my-throat part of every summer is knowing that at the end of it they’ll go through another school year of changes. They will get taller, learn many new things, become more confident and independent and need me a little less along the way. At the end of the day the goal is to bring independent and competent people out into the world, the hard part is knowing each step forward is a closed door to yesterday. My oldest is going into her last year of elementary school and knowing the tidal wave of changes coming at her can knock the wind right out of me. Time is flying for her and her siblings and the end of summer feels abrupt and fleeting.

All that to say- this time of year is like drinking from a firehose when it comes to getting everything ready. If you’re feeling that way, you are definitely not alone. It would be wonderful to say I’ve got the answers to make it a simple transition but I’m not sure that exists. If a school supply list was all we needed it would be one thing, unfortunately, there are so many more layers to it. So if you’re feeling like the clock is moving like the one in Alice in Wonderland… it’s temporary. This time of year is hard for you and for the kids. Wishing you the best of luck and if you’re looking to take those lists mobile try Dovetail® Digital to keep everything in one place and simplify communication.

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But, our hyper-mobile society has made this less common in recent decades. It’s not unheard of for kids to move far away from home after school and begin families in different parts of the country (or the world). Living far away from relatives is a great option for people to be able to create their own independent lives, moving away from home and building a family in a place that is advantageous for work, weather, lifestyle, a whole variety of factors. Being able to hop on a plane and get home in a few hours makes the distance seem like less of a barrier- as long as everyone is healthy and living at home independently.

What happens when an aging family member, I’ll use a parent as an example to keep it simple, falls and ends up in the hospital? Hopping on a plane isn’t as simple when it’s an emergency situation. Over and over this came up during discharge planning for older adults when I worked as an inpatient OT- an older adult, who had spent a few weeks in rehab after a fall or surgery was getting ready to go home. They had children but they lived on the other side of the country, or they had their own young and busy family and the patient needed someone at home with them in order to be able to go home safely. How do you make it all work? Because it all falls in your lap, usually, as a direct relative.

The pandemic put a spotlight on the work of this generation, especially in the beginning. At the start of Covid, when mortality rates in assisted living facilities and nursing homes skyrocketed, adult children (that were able to) began pulling their family members out in droves and finding ways to take care of them while the world collectively shut down. In the beginning of 2020 I was still operating an OT consulting company that helped families plan to keep aging parents and family members home for as long as possible- my phone was ringing off the hook.

Caring for aging family members at home isn’t a new idea though. There’s a range, some help make appointments and manage transportation, while others are providing in home care full time. For generations elders aged at home with their family moving in to help or moved in with their adult children before the rise of assisted living facilities and nursing homes. What happens when you have a few siblings or people that ARE nearby and able to help out with appointments, driving, and managing at home? 

When everyone is helping to piece together a routine staying on top of who is helping with what and when is paramount. The pain points for those with young children- communication, appointments, events, meals, and supplies are not unlike the ones that come up caregiving for aging parents. It’s just the other end of the lifespan. In this case you’re managing your own family in addition to taking on the caregiver role for a parent. If one sibling takes a parent to a doctor’s appointment, the information from that appointment is often relayed via phone call, text message, or group conversation. If another sibling/caregiver takes them to the next appointment it becomes an ongoing game of telephone- and we all know how that works out. 

Huge potential for a communication nightmare.

What if you could go to an appointment, write a quick note about any important info (test results, followups needed, medication changes, treatment changes) and send it to a shared care calendar? The next person that goes to an appointment has an up to date record, in hand, instead of scrolling messages during the appointment trying to find information. The ability to control what information is shared from which calendar means you can all access the “parent” calendar while still having access your own separate calendars. No crossed wires and no jumbled schedules. 

What about a supply/grocery list for caregivers to be able to grab needed items while they are out shopping? Someone notices paper towels are running low so they add it to their parent’s shopping list for other siblings, while out shopping, can quickly check one list instead of searching messages or texting everyone while in the store. The real time updating makes it an efficient option for busy caregivers. 

The photo upload option in the notes feature of Dovetail® Digital can help create a central information storage area for caregivers making arrangements. Put business cards of healthcare providers, case managers, and equipment recommendations in one space. Communication across multiple channels gets messy quickly, which leads to frustration to varying degrees. If you’re in the position of living far from your parents and are arranging care with siblings, outside help or other friends and family, Dovetail® Digital is designed to effectively bridge the gap. If distance isn’t an issue but communication is, using the paper products like the Dovetail® wall calendar, creates a central hub for everyone to refer to in the home. 

In the years spent working in inpatient settings, watching the struggles in my own family around communication regarding caring for my aging grandparents, and seeing the toll it took on relationships- simple and effective communication strategies can save a lot of headache (and heartache) throughout the caregiving journey. If you’re in the caregiving position, try Dovetail® Digital and see the difference it can make. It’s free to download on the app store here!

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"Oh, but it's just me so I don't think I need a whole system"

The Dovetail® framework is first and foremost that, a framework. It’s a way to structure home management to make it simple and efficient. There is no minimum number of people required for it to work, it’s designed to accommodate one or many. The process of picking meals, checking the fridge/pantry, making a shopping list, shopping and cooking meals is essentially the same for my family as it was when it was just me. The only difference is the size of the bill (gulp!) and the amount of snacks.

The design of the Dovetail® products are utilitarian, you can set it up to make it work for you. The categories in the monthly layout may be used for individual kids when it’s set up for a family with kids. Those same color bands can be used for exercise, meals, events, tracking progress on an identified goal or personal project. It’s intended to fit your life, not the other way around.

The recipe binder houses your favorites, or greatest hits. The beauty of a binder for one is, it really is all YOUR favorites. Create your own cookbook. Store the potluck favorites. I made the first recipe binder after moving (solo) into my first one bedroom apartment in college, way back in 2003. The grocery notebook started around then too, albeit a different format, to simplify grocery shopping since I was the only one making sure the fridge was stocked. There are recipes in the binder I use for family recipes now that are from those early days. There is no expiration date on a sugar cookie recipe. 

An app for everyone

On Sunday mornings when I go to the grocery store, there are more people on their phones (with a shopping list) than using pen and paper. Our phones can do anything these days. Like a little computer in your pocket. Capitalizing on the strength of these devices with productivity apps can further simplify the burden of home management, for anyone.

Integrations with online retailers (Amazon, Target, Costco) and Wholefoods makes checking your to-do list off, a single app possibility. The ability to create private networks means only sharing what you want to share (party invitations, vacation arrangements, pet sitting instructions) with your family or non-family connections.The solutions and features available in the app were first designed for one person to be able to use and then incorporate people in, a layered approach, to creating networks. Dovetail® Digital was a one person platform before it grew to include a network.

No matter how many people you do or don’t share your home with isn’t an indicator of whether or you’re qualified to use a home management framework. A minimum requirement discounts the necessity for everyone to be able to make functional and independent decisions regarding how they spend their time and energy. The Dovetail® framework and products were designed to be used by different types of families. Yes, these products came about to solve a problem my family had, but they aren't a multi-person, family only, problem. Home management is an every person task. 

The idea of putting a framework into place for a large family is, admittedly, more complicated than an individual. There are more moving parts to consider at the same time. But, individual household or 6 people under one roof, every household needs to eat, grocery shop, meal plan, meal prep, do the dishes. We all make appointments, schedule events and count down the days to our next vacation time. Long story short, we can all benefit from having a system in place to help with home management.

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After describing how everything fits together to create a home and family management system for families juggling busy schedules, the woman said “this sounds amazing, but I don’t have kids. I’m helping take care of my aging parents and some of the things you’re talking about also come into play here. Do you think this would be able to help me?” Um, yes. Dovetail® has lots of other scenarios where it can be helpful- especially for coordinating care at the other end of the lifespan. I realized it would probably help others to hear about the different ways this framework can work, instead of only focusing on parents of young children.

The utilitarian design of the framework and products is for this exact reason- so it can be used by anyone. The current majority of Dovetail® users are families with young children, but there are other important opportunities that are absolutely worth talking about. Here’s how these products can be helpful for teens, individual adults, and those taking care of aging parents. I broke this down into a 3 part series so we can focus on one age range at a time (and so it’s a more digestible size). In the first part we’re going to talk about teenagers and two (of many) big developmental areas these products can help with.

How Dovetail® fits with teenage milestones

Calendar management

Our children at digital natives. They will never know a time without the internet, smartphones, apps for everything, and near instant digital download speeds. Their lives move at light speed compared to the elder millennial experience of the teenage years. While this has improved many areas of our life, there are essential skills kids need to acquire that require some trial and error- keeping track of a calendar is one of them. Being able to collaborate on a calendar can help transition from you being the one in charge and reminding them, to them taking on tasks.

Children and teens have calendars with many more events and activities than our generation, especially as they move towards high school graduation- college tours, job shadowing, volunteering, sports, extracurricular activities, clubs, events, and work schedules. In graduate school I worked in the Academic Resource Center and was able to see, first hand, the detriment in delaying turning over individual responsibility to teens as they prepare to leave home. The process of learning how to manage your calendar is more than simply handing someone a schedule, it’s understanding how long things take to effectively manage your time.

I prefer to use a paper planner for my own scheduling, but truth be told, there is a significant overlap with the number of electronic appointments and dates that I have to keep track of. This is the reason for the Dovetail® Digital app development- to have the best of both worlds. The key features for Digital that can help teens learn calendar management are shared notes, sending items to a shared calendar, and pulling notes from calendar events. Think of it as an onramp for them to take control of their schedule and an off ramp for you to transition away from making all their scheduling decisions. Sounds great right?

Exactly. Within Digital there is the ability to pull back as your teen begins to have more autonomy over their schedule. Think of it as bumpers using to prevent a bowling ball from ending up in the gutter at a bowling alley. Helping to keep your teen heading in the right direction empowers them to learn this major life skill that will help them in school, work, and management for decades beyond. 

Cooking

Remember home economics- that class you had to take in high school (or middle school) where you learned how to sew and some cooking skills? Our world looks very different for teenagers then it did when these classes were essential to the curriculum. The rising popularity of meal delivery kits, prepared meals, and the ability to have just about anything delivered to your door from any restaurant has changed the landscape. I love a good meal delivery but the practice of meal planning, grocery shopping, and meal preparation continue to be essential life skills.

The waning of traditional “life skills” classes has created a gap for teens to learn many necessary skills to help sustain them beyond their college meal plan. Learning how to cook is easier when done at home, with help from others with experience, than trying to figure it out at 6pm in your first apartment. Feeding yourself, or your family, is a multistep process- finding and selecting recipes, planning meal days, checking fridge and pantry for supplies on hand, making a grocery list, food shopping, meal prep, meal cleanup. Rinse and repeat until the end of time. 

Implementing the Dovetail® framework in your home, when your kids are still living at home, helps them to learn how a system works. It creates opportunity for them to step in at various points and learn skills along the way- so they aren’t showing up to their first apartment with hope and a frying pan. It’s impossible to imagine right now, but eventually my kids will move into their own apartments and when they do they’ll need to know how to do these things for themselves. Each kid will have a recipe binder of recipes they love and KNOW how to make, will be able to food shop and cook for themselves. We’re raising whole, independent, human beings over here. 

Check out the next posts talking about how the Dovetail® framework can work for individuals, then for adults taking care of their aging parents. 

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Being all the things to all the people in our lives reaches a new level of social conditioning when we cross over into motherhood. 

When things start piling on our plate the first hat we take off is our own. The one that honors our whole self, the things that we do just for us. Not the “self care” of a bubble bath and a massage (although they are fabulous), but what inspires us- whether it’s career, hobbies, activities, anything that we do solely for ourselves. It’s the thing that lights us up. It’s referred to as “being in the zone” or “getting lost” in an activity, or being in a flow state. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi introduced the concept of flow:

“a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

There are periods of my motherhood journey where taking care of the kids was a flow state. I love being a mom and I absolutely think the world of my children <- that’s the whole AND/BOTH point right there. We are confronted everyday with the idea that wanting to be a “good” mother means you can only be a mother for the years your children are home. Anything outside of that - work, leisure, self-directed activities, is taking time “away” from your children. It also places an unrealistic amount of pressure on your children to fill up parts of your life that are not their responsibility.

If my entire world is taking care of and raising my kids, then what is the life that waits for me when they’ve grown up and carried on with their lives? My responsibility as a parent is to help my children become self-sufficient in order to lead full and independent lives. The heavy lifting of raising children, juggling schedules, making all the ends meet and schedules connect isn’t a forever place. Those “you only have 18 summers with your kids” social media posts are prime examples. The lack of subtlety in reminding moms that we should feel responsible for making all the memories all the time is emotional shackling. What is waiting for you after those 18 summers?

When the kids were really little, pre-pandemic, I created time and opportunities to do things outside of parenting- with friends, travel, building a business, and taking time for myself. Everything was derailed by COVID. For years. At the beginning, when everyone was home, I was thankful for the opportunity to have all the kids home. In the weeks leading up to it (and the last few weeks of my pregnancy with #4) I was starting to panic about how I would juggle postpartum with three kids in activities. The pandemic felt like maternity leave (for the planet) for the first few months. No need to load and unload the car multiple times a day, everyone had centrally located activities and anything I needed was an arms length away because we were all under the same roof.

As the months blurred together, so did the separation between myself as a mom and myself as a person. The “since I was home” reasoning hit an all time high and, not so suddenly, I was living inside an ecosystem I had spent a decade working to avoid. It wasn’t until I started to carve out time to focus on building Dovetail® that I realized what had happened, my roles had shrunk to one- at my own expense. When my husband asked “wouldn’t it be easier if you just waited until the kids were a little older” I knew I immediately needed things to change. It was time to find my own hat again.

Reaching out to friends (between zoom school and online kids classes) I heard similar stories over and over. These dynamic and inspiring women had a story similar to my own and we were all trying to figure out how to create space to put ourselves back into the equation. These are stories that need to be told. Not by me, but by them. For other women to hear. For other mothers juggling their perspective as a parent with their individuality. The blessing of the pandemic, hopefully, is the notion that “having it all” was finally exposed for what it is- “doing it all” and how unsustainable that is. 

These stories and the common thread of wanting to stay true to oneself despite societal pressure led to the creation of the AND/BOTH podcast. Each week I’m going to speak with a mom, talk about what they do to stay true to themself as an individual alongside motherhood. The more of these stories we share the more common ground we’re going to find. The more we collectively push back against the “good mom” dynamic and showcase ourselves as whole people who also raise children, the better for our generation. In the long run, we can also help change the conversation for the next generation of mothers.

I can only speak for myself, but having something outside of motherhood helps me do a better job as a mother. I’m showing my daughters that they can still have and pursue goals while raising children. I’m showing my sons that a partner does not need to whittle their life down to one role as a requirement for raising a family. Becoming a mother is not equated with muting or losing oneself. The AND/BOTH podcast launches September 15th. If you would like to be a guest on the show click here and share a little bit about yourself!

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During the school year two are in full time school, one part time pre-school and the youngest is home with me. When summer comes, my childcare effectively goes on hiatus until September. In years past it hasn’t been as noticeable, but with my own work picking up, being able to commit to in person events and traveling again has led to a schedule crunch like no other time I can remember. 

When things start piling I usually bury my head in a to-do list (or a few) and outsource all those “can’t forgets” to the nearest sticky note. Recently I’ve noticed that getting to everything on the list isn’t happening as efficiently as it used to and this list has become overwhelming. So I’ve  tried a different approach and I have to say, it might be my go to from now on when it comes to tackling a to-do list. 

It’s the reverse to-do list or the “It’s done” list. 

Typically we make a to-do list to be able to check off things on it. Great idea. The problem with this method comes when you aren’t able to complete everything on the list and the list follows you around like a bad smell. You think about it over and over. New things get added. You can’t find the list so you start a new one, then find the old one and now you have two. Rinse and repeat until you have a pile of notes, a whole bunch of carryover between those notes and it feels like you’re never going to get through them.

Let’s try something different. 

Instead of starting with an “I should do this” style to-do list. Start listing all your accomplishments for the day. Think about it. When you create this enormous to-do list, stand there and stare at it wondering where to start, what’s usually your first step? Well, if you’re me- you write down something you’ve all ready done to be able to cross it off the list. Feels good right? Way better than hunting and pecking through a big list to start crossing things off. 

We know what we need to do. It circles around in our head like the blimp at a football game, same message on repeat. Instead of taking those ideas, putting them down on paper and effectively having to deal with it twice, let’s start giving ourselves credit for completing those activities. Cut out the middle man (the to-do list) and move straight to a “it’s done list.” 

At the end of the day, what’s going to feel better, a list of accomplishments or a list of all the things you didn’t finish? 

No brainer. 

Now, the big argument I had against this was, how am I supposed to keep track of what needs to get done if there’s a deadline attached to it? 

The long and short of it is you know the next step. It’s the thing you can’t stop thinking about. Give yourself credit for what you’ve done. Keep the dates on the calendar and use that as the guideposts along your productivity path. For example, you have a big project coming up that has several deadlines. Put those deadlines on the calendar and use your “It’s done” list to take the steps you’re need to make as you work towards the deadline. 

Give yourself the credit you deserve!

I’ll give you a real life example. I’m going to a wholesale market next month to launch the wholesale division of Dovetail®. There are A LOT of steps that have to happen to get ready for it- designing the booth, ordering products to take, creating forms, setting up the online store, working with event coordinators to cover details, it’s a long list. Instead of the “glass half empty” style to-do list, I’ve started making a “glass half full” style it’s done list. 

Reframing accomplishing these tasks as success instead of avoiding failure has shone a positive light on something that has the potential to be really stressful. Instead of looking at like it as a measure of how much I still have left to do to be ready, I’m reframing it as the progress I’m making in preparing for something really positive. Doesn’t that feel better?

Creating a to-do list is an attempt to get those “don’t forgets” out of your short term memory to decrease overwhelm and increase productivity. But those list items still effectively take up space in your day to day thinking until they are checked off. Try cutting out the middle (the to-do list) and skip right to recording accomplishments (the it’s done list). 

Another example that may hit closer to home is being home when the kids were really little. When I was in the thick of babies and it felt like the house looked the same in the morning as it did at the end of the day, this was a really helpful strategy. You’ve undoubtedly seen these posts online- a parent at home during the day spends all day running around the house picking up, cleaning the kitchen, running errands, working, playing, cooking and at the end of the day the house looks like the disaster they woke up to that morning and they are exhausted. Most of the time these posts come up because their partner has made some (not well thought out) comment along the lines of “what do you do all day” and they begin to list them out. In the thick of babies I would write out all the things I had done that day- not everyday, just the long and hard ones, to show myself all that I had accomplished even though it looked like nothing happened. It was a game changer. Call it the adult version of a sticker chart- it instantly showed me the day as half full and not half empty when it came to a list of things to do. 

Choose how detailed you want to make it. Some days it may be the big projects and other days it may be the smallest detail. The beauty of it is- it’s your list. There’s no right or wrong way to be proud of yourself. 

Do me a favor? Try it and tag us @dovetaildesigns.co to let us know what you think!

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Let that sit for a minute- 60% is a failing grade in almost any high school or college class. 

You can’t log on to a business podcast, especially if it’s hosted by a woman, and not be advised at least once an episode to start before you feel 100% ready. Social media posts on business building and creating content tell you to push record, publish, or launch, regardless of wanting to crawl back into bed and stay there forever. These episodes and posts are usually geared towards women, and as a woman building a business that has a social media component to it, I appreciate this reminder as often as I get it.

Let’s be honest. My preferred space is curled up on the couch with the kids watching cartoons on a Saturday, or in front of the fire during a cold winter storm, or sitting at the computer writing. Under no circumstances am I comfortable pushing “record” on Instagram or episodes of my upcoming podcast. I could happily hermit my life away. Case in point, while most of the world was having a collective panic attack about having to stay home, I was living my best life. Seriously. All four kids in the same place, coffee I can actually finish while it’s still hot and no need to change out of pj’s (especially during that postpartum period)? Sign me up.

Creating these products was easy compared to the marketing process, all I was doing was designing a solution to my own problem. It all made sense to me- now I had to explain it. Putting that out into the world meant not only putting my products out, but myself as well. But if I waited until I was 100% ready I’d probably still be in the “planning phase” 5 years later. Building a website and putting a few pictures up on the internet was not going to move these products out of my office. As much as I would prefer to drag my feet and blame it on something arbitrary, like a pandemic, not feeling 100% ready is my own problem and only serves to hold the business back. 

I have to show up in all the places I am skilled at avoiding- particularly social media. As an “elder millennial” I have t-shirts from the time before the internet existed. The idea of influencers is the same a learning a foreign language, and being able to truly connect with people online without paying the algorithm seems like an impossible mountain to climb. Social media is a crowded highway these days, posting a picture of your dinner isn’t going to grow a following anymore. Yes, you can do it from the comfort of your home, but that’s about the end of the line on comfort. 

The other place to show up, which I did put a pause on initially, was connecting with retail stores about carrying Dovetail® products. The pandemic put a pause on that for a few years for me- it’s not really ideal to go into stores to pitch your line with your 4 kids in tow. I can do a lot of things, but keeping an eye on 4 kids and doing something with the professional side of my brain at the same time is definitely not one of them. Waiting on retail and wholesale ended up providing a sweet spot to hone the message, create some more products, and improve packaging. 

In a retail/wholesale combination move I decided to get the ball rolling and book my first in person event. This spring I signed up to take Dovetail® to it’s first wholesale market at the NY Now Summer Market taking place August 13-16th this year in New York City.

Did I feel ready when the contract came through to my inbox? Nope. 

Did I sign it and send it back? Yep

Is it pushing me to the next level, doing all the things I said I would when I decided to start this business? Oh yeah

For a long time I relied on advice from “experts” regarding how to move the business forward. I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned, it’s easy to get stuck in that cycle of believing the person you’re paying to help you is the one that’s going to make all the difference. It’s not about them, they can have the best strategy out there- it’s you that has to step out in front of the camera in order for this to work. You are the one that’s going to make a difference in your business.

If what you’re being asked to do, say, record, or write about doesn’t align with you or your brand, it’s going to come across that way. My favorite accounts to follow on social media are people that are unpolished and authentic, out launching their businesses. These people aren’t 100% ready but here they are, doing the things that need to get done. Learning how to record videos, share the human side of figuring it out. It’s exactly why people like Elyse Myers have millions of followers, the taco story to end all taco stories, a woman talking about her life in an authentic and relatable way. 

Don’t wait until your 100% ready. I’m not a business expert. I’m someone somewhere between 0-100% depending on the day or the task, but I believe so strongly in the products I’m creating and putting out into the market. It started as a solution to my own problem. A problem that is not specific to me, it’s universal for parents of young kids- how do you effectively communicate about scheduling and family management when the tools to do so don’t exist? Well, build them. Then tell everyone you can about them. Over and over, from as many directions as you can think until someone resonates, long before you’re 100% ready.

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Well, I’m a list lover in general, so long as they are set up to work for me. Creating an effective to-do list involves some simple strategy, and a little bit of preparation, to make a huge impact on your productivity. It’s time to move away from list building that haunts you like pre-pregnancy high heels, they look great but no way you’re going anywhere with them.

The key to a good to-do list is knowing how to make one that helps you progress without getting stuck spinning your wheels. There is plenty of, well-intentioned, advice out there telling you to dump everything out onto a piece of paper and use that as your to-do list. That is a “brain dump” not a to-do list and it’s an important distinction. A brain dump is exactly what it sounds like, an unloading of ALL the unedited and unfiltered things that are running like a ticker tape in the back of your mind. This takes literal bandwidth to deal with- to keep the tape running and refreshing all those “don’t forget” items on your list.

There’s a significant difference between a “brain dump” and a “to-do” list. Dumping it out moves the pile from inside your head onto paper, but does nothing to help you work towards checking those items off. It’s the first step. A to-do list is the roadmap you create from the dumped items, to get you out of feeling overwhelmed and stuck. The next step after getting the unedited version on to paper is to apply some strategy. Here are the first three steps to take with your brain dump list:

1. Organize- Having a list that looks like something Jackson Pollack created is a great way to stay overwhelmed by the sheer look of it. After you’ve dumped that list out on to paper, it’s time to come up with categories for all the information. Categorizing is important for our brain, it simplifies a huge pile into more manageable buckets. Less random items = less overwhelmed feeling. It’s the basis for every home organization video or blog. The acrylic bin industry is forever indebted to the human brain. There is no right way to categorize your list, unlike those preprinted bin labels. If it makes sense to order by store, by child, by event, it’s up to you- make it work for your needs.

2. Filter out non-action items-These are most often related to something that needs to be scheduled on the calendar instead of a box that can be checked. For example, “ballet at 3:30pm on Mondays” or “team tryouts Sunday and Tuesday” may be notes to remind you of upcoming calendar events. If they are scheduling notes, they need to go on the calendar, not your to-do list. Putting all your non-action items where they belong, not on your to-do list means you are only left with a list of ACTIONABLE steps to complete. Bouncing back and forth between your calendar and to-do list will slow you down and increase the opportunity to get sidetracked. When organizing your to-do list, making a category for calendar items will make scheduling simpler as well. If you’re looking for a great way to be able to do both- add items to your calendar from your to-do list, try the Dovetail® Digital app. It’s the first of its kind, workable digital to-do list that allows you to complete tasks without switching between apps.

3. Break down tasks- Team tryouts, in the previous example, can also be used as a category to hold to-do list items- check cleat sizes, wash practice jersey, fill out waiver and health form, leave at ___pm for tryouts. If you just leave “team tryouts on Sunday and Tuesday” on the list, all the tasks that are part of completing don’t have a place on the list and will continue taking up bandwidth in the “don’t forget” space. Have a few huge things on your list and it becomes paralyzing to productivity. Smaller, bite size, items are easier to check off, helping you build momentum by running through the list faster.

Organizing your to-do list in a way that works for you is the crux of list building and management. Your to-do list is meant to function as a productivity roadmap- if you can’t check a box to finish a task it doesn’t belong on the list. Instead of looking at the brain dump list you made last week and not finding any “quick wins” to check off, get out another piece of paper and create an actionable list. Break down those big tasks into bite size chunks and start crossing things off!

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It’s our normal.

During the pandemic, when people were posting online about not having childcare or the opportunity for a “break” I couldn’t relate. I’m not out to martyr myself on the alter of parenthood, believe me, I wish there was a rolodex of people I could call to step in but there isn’t. Staying home with my daughter was always the goal, and for work to work around it. That meant not lining up daycare months in advance, not something I could change my mind on and find care overnight. Going back into work from full time to per diem was a bandaid solution. 

Launching my own business to have full control over my schedule was the next step. The dual entrepreneur parent dynamic led to the development of the Dovetail® framework and products for the schedule to make sense for our family. When it comes to coordinating schedules for the kids and making sure everyone is where they need to be I have literally no back up plan. You’ve got to be on your game 100% of the time when the other end of the bat phone is- you. 

My work has to work with our family’s schedule, because there is no other option. So when I was newly pregnant, in the summer of 2019, we decided to bring an au pair into our home to help with our impending “four kids under 7” situation. As two self-employed people things like maternity leave and paid vacation were foreign concepts to us. I had also just started to convert the Dovetail® products from hand drawn mockups to digital files in preparation for printing, my “side hustle” that would soon become so much more. We interviewed many potential au pairs, scared a few away with the sheer number of kids in our family, and found one that we thought was a great match. We signed a contract in December of 2019 (paid a significant deposit) and set September 2020 as her arrival date. 

You can guess how that went. 

March of 2020, with a brand new baby, the first edition of the Dovetail® Collection of products in shipment to my house, and two kids starting remote school- all international travel and visas were halted. After many zoom calls between the au pair and the agency we were working with we decided to push out the arrival date to a hopeful January 2021. When that came and went we ended up with a September 2021 final date. After a two week detour to Curacao so she could fly in from an approved arrival country and a one week stay in a hotel to quarantine and test before coming into our home, our au pair arrived. 

I thought that some relief was finally on the way. More than a year of kids in remote and virtual school, remote preschool and working in the nooks and crannies of the days were about to come to an end- right? In anticipation of her arrival I signed a contract to begin developing Dovetail® Digital, the fifth and final piece of the Dovetail® family management collection, created a master list of retail stores to approach and made plans beyond to build the business beyond my home office. 

Our au pair came and went within a week. 

Once she arrived in country, to our house, it became clear that this was not going to work for our family. There was a significant disconnect between what our family needed to keep our kids safe and what she wanted her experience in America to be. No, it was not related to a language barrier. After months of discussion and agreement around quarantine and our specific needs (a medical high risk child) we were given an ultimatum- change the terms we had agreed on or she would consider leaving. 

As a mom, there was no choice. Negotiating the health of our kids was not going to happen. The agency came and picked her up two days later and she began the process of rematching with another family. As a business owner that had just doubled down in anticipation of childcare- I was screwed. The bottom had fallen out so hard it looked like the Flintstone’s car. I was yaba-daba screwed.

For the umpteenth (that’s metric) time we had to pivot. The kids went into virtual school because our school abruptly dropped the remote option with no alternative. I cut back on hours per week to be able extend my contract and paused all upcoming projects including this blog to focus on getting the products online. I won’t lie and say I “stiff upper lipped” it and carried on. There was wallowing, a fair amount of wallowing. But knowing that there wasn’t a single person out there coming to rescue me, meant making the best out of a junk situation. 

The kids were healthy, doing well in school, the baby was now a toddler sleeping through the night and my daughter learned how to count and write letters sitting with her older siblings at the dining room table. The trajectory of Dovetail® changed because there wasn’t as much time to devote to it and time is not something I have control over (unfortunately). I have different parameters to work with, which means I have to be more creative and intentional with my time.

When everything hinges on childcare, there is a different set of parameters to work with. When the agency arrived to pick up our au pair I thought my business was dead in the water. Building a business with four young children sounded impossible. Since that week in September of 2021, I’ve created and launched two digital courses, developed and printed two new products in addition to the Dovetail® lineup, and will be launching the AND/BOTH podcast this summer. Everyday isn’t smooth sailing, but taking it one step at a time, starting with a long term plan makes the end goal not seem unattainable.

Steps, no matter how small, will get you from one point to another, it may just take a little longer- and that’s ok. 

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Sorry, high fashion. 

It kind of is, but in a really helpful way.

Anyone burned by the phase of Marie Kondo swooping in and making them feel like they had to throw out all their belongings, only to have her hop out as soon as she had her own kids, is probably feeling a little crispy on the term “minimalism.”

Digital minimalism is about having the least number of apps or interactions with your phone as necessary to get everything done before getting sucked down the rabbit hole. It’s about looking at your phone as a tool and not losing track of time in the entertainment space (here’s look at you social media). 

There are approximately 1.96 million apps available for download on the app store and 8.93 million available worldwide (so far in 2023), according to buildfire.com. They also report the average smartphone owner uses 10 apps per day and 30 apps per month (with 49% of people opening one app more than 11 times per day).

That’s a lot of time spent on the phone. As a mom, I know the struggle to have your phone in hand for all those “can’t miss” photos, or looking something up quickly only to get distracted by an incoming email or text message. Our lives are so connected and so mobile driven. We’re walking around with a piece of technology more powerful than our home computer from childhood right in our pocket.

The apps we’re using help to make our lives easier- we can order school supplies on the go, add to the target list while standing in the bathroom throwing out the empty shampoo bottle and order more baby food pouches when our baby finally finds one they don’t turn their nose up to. The balance of productivity vs. distraction can be hard to achieve when those tasks require multiple apps. Instead of using three separate ones for those tasks, what if you could do all those tasks in the same app? Less opening, less switching between and a quicker return to life off screen. Sounds fabulous right? Well, I thought so too. Having my head stuck in the phone all day, missing out on time with the kids and time doing the things that need to be done, was not in my plans. So I went on the hunt for an app that could do all the things I needed in one space.

I learned quickly that there aren’t many apps for family productivity. There are apps for workplace productivity and group work but those are designed for corporate settings. Yes, there are tutorials on how to modify these platforms to work for home but there’s a big difference between work and family management- the tasks involved with family management are cyclical whereas work is based around completing projects. There’s an ending to a work project, like a presentation or product launch. At home going to the grocery store happens every week (or multiple times a week if your kids eat fruit like mine do) and there’s a consistent list of supplies that need replenishing. Using a work productivity app is a good-ish fit, like those sweatpants you’ve had for 15 years, they’re great-but could be better.

There are a few family management apps on the market, ones that help with groceries, meal planning, lists and calendar management. The part that was missing in these apps was the “action” component of being able to check off items within the to-do list. I can make lists all day long, but having to go to another app to check off an item doesn’t meet the “one app” requirement. Being able to stand in one place and access the utility of multiple apps did not exist for home management- so we created Dovetail® Digital to do just that. 

Dovetail® Digital wasn’t created in a boardroom. I noticed over and over that when I went to create a list or check off a list, there were too many things in too many places. A grocery list in my notes, but there was also something that I had to remember to grab at Target- start a new list. Getting the details for an upcoming event on the calendar hanging in my kitchen meant a sticky note- but where do I put that? Stick it on the calendar? That doesn’t work. Lists and notes are great, but lists and notes for the sake of not forgetting without being able to check them off, not great.

Completing tasks without switching between apps saves you time and aggravation. As a parent with little kids, there are undoubtedly dozens of distractions throughout the day that have me half finishing tasks before being called away to help or rescue someone. Those windows of time, when you’re half done a task but have to walk aways, stays as an open tab in your head. Having that happen a few times in a day means there are multiple open tabs that you’re responsible for remembering or circling back to try and figure out where you left off.

Digital minimalism- having more utility with fewer tools, makes it possible to handle family logistics in a more streamlined way. The fewer tabs you have open in your head (and on your phone) helps reduce the feeling of overwhelm and stress that come with juggling the invisible load. Eliminating the need to switch between apps to complete items keeps you moving in the direction of action and task completion. Open one app and tackle items at multiple stores, share notes, and manage your calendar items without switching. Less switching equals less opportunity for distraction and that makes getting back to your life easier and quicker. 

The workplace productivity platforms understand that business is logistics. 

Family management is also logistics, with a different endpoint. 

Being able to perform multiple functions within one app cuts down on the number of apps we need to use during the day and in turn cuts down on the time spent in those apps. Less time spent using apps means less time on the phone and more time away from the phone. More time living your life.

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There’s a missing element in these posts, blogs, and videos, for good reason. A discussion about attenuation is the elephant in the motivational room. There are multiple definitions, one is- attenuation is the reduction in force, effect, or value in something. Another definition relates to signal strength across a medium (think signal traveling down a line)- the farther you travel down the line the more the signal strength diminishes. The reason it gets left out, is because attenuation works in direct opposition to motivation. If we don’t talk about it, then it doesn’t exist right?

First, let’s talk about how attenuation impacts our goals. Well, the attenuation process goes something like this: we start out strong (lots of motivation, energy, and effort) working towards a goal, but as time passes we start losing steam because it’s taking a long time to reach the goal. That protracted time negatively impacts motivation, energy and effort, keeping you further and further away from reaching your goal. It’s motivational quicksand. If working towards a goal takes longer than expected, and they usually do, the drive that you have to finish it has less and less oomph behind it. The more time it takes to achieve a goal, the greater the chance it won’t happen if this is your strategy.

When we talk about attenuation as a signal traveling along a wire, the longer the wire, the longer the signal has to travel and it will decrease over distance. The signal has to be strong in the beginning to last over the distance or time it has to travel. Now, instead of thinking about a “signal” in the second definition, replace it with your “why” instead. Why do you want to work towards this goal? Why is it important to you? Your “why” is the core belief about what accomplishing that goal will mean to you. 

Think about the last project you started. In the beginning everything is so exciting and fresh. You’ve got ideas coming out like a firehose and there’s no shortage of energy as momentum builds towards bringing that dream to life.

Then time starts to tick along. 

You are making progress, things are happening, but it’s not as quickly as you’d like. You start moving away from the “why” and begin to think more about “when” the longer it takes. This applies to anything- cleaning out closets, implementing a home management system, looking for a new job, building a business, it's all the same. You start out strong and then there comes a point at which, usually in the middle of it all, you’re looking around going “who’s idea was this?” 

I follow a woman online, a teacher and content creator for parents, named Susie Allison (@busytoddler) who has coined the term MPRS- mid project regret syndrome. It’s the halfway, “how do I make this be done” conundrum that can derail the whole plan. That’s a “when” question for a “why” problem. MPRS is an example of attenuation when it comes to home management and any of those overhauling projects you’ve been wanting to do but have been putting off. 

Somewhere along the the line the message about “why” got muddled with motivation and it became a marketing opportunity. Taking longer to accomplish a goal must mean that you aren’t motivated to get it done, right? If you can get to the finish line faster, you’ve achieved your “why” before it’s attenuated. The “when” and “why” are confused though- taking longer to get to the end goal may be due to outside circumstances, not a lack motivation to reach the goal. This is why posts and ads about “hacks,” “shortcuts” or promises of quick turnaround are so effective when it comes to selling products, courses, and solutions. We replace “why” as the goal with “when” to mark achievement. Check the box and move on to the next thing. 

Let’s add an example here- cleaning out your playroom. Your “why” may be so that your kids have a clean, safe play space that’s filled with age appropriate activities and toys. It’s a big job- if your playroom is anything like mine, it doesn’t have to be huge to be a big undertaking to overhaul. The best way to clean out a playroom is to empty out the shelves, drawers, storage and only put back what your kids play with. Simple? Yes. Easy? No. 

What do you do? Search Pinterest for playroom organizing hacks? You scroll Instagram for pictures of neat and tidy playrooms. You look at pictures of other playrooms and notice color coordinated bins and it seems you just need to add some storage options to clear everything up. Quick and easy. Now you’re on your way to target to buy more bins, hanging storage, and containers because sorting is quicker than dumping everything out and filtering. You want a clean playroom, one that your kids can use- bins will get you there faster, so you buy the bins. In the end though, even if the playroom looks great, what about all the toys and activities the kids don’t play with that are still in there (but now in a beautiful bin)? You got to the end result, a clean playroom, faster- but what was the original goal?

It doesn’t matter, you’re on to the next project. Trying to outrun attenuation becomes the strategy. 

Staying on track, keeping momentum and motivation up (trying to boost the signal down the line) comes from a strong connection to why you’re doing something. It’s also why marking your progress along the way helps keep you moving forward. Enter the checklist. If you cross things off along the way it’s easier to look back at how far you’ve come. If you simply erase things off the list, there’s no marking time, you’re only left with things that still need to be done. Starting with a big list challenges you to get after as many parts as you can. 

Having multiple checklist options and plan outline spaces inside the Dovetail® planner and the working checklist inside of Dovetail® Digital are designed to help you fend off attenuation as you work towards your goals. When there’s only a few things left, it’s easy to put them off as only a bit left to go, but it discounts how far you’ve come. It’s the .2 of the 26.2 mile marathon. Not finishing those last few things is due to attenuation, not lack of motivation.

There is no pace horse when it comes to goals and motivation. A strong start is an indication of passion and motivation to move towards a goal. Over time, the best way to keep the signal strong is to stay connected to your “why,” and have checkpoints of achievements along the way. Having that same goal for a long period of time will wear you down without making recorded incremental progress. You haven’t lost motivation, you’ve lost track of “why” and circling back will boost the signal (why) and fend off attenuation. A way to measure progress, a checklist or five year plan (depending on the timeline for the goal) will keep your “why” front and center, even when it’s easier to think in terms of “when.”

I’ve said it a million times- moms are not short of motivation, we’re short on time. Keeping all the plates spinning without taking a look back at how far you’ve come makes it feel never ending. Give yourself a boost and look back at that checklist to see your progress (or if it’s one of those days write something on there you’ve done to start the ball rolling- more on that in another blog). Don’t let “when” be the answer to your “why.”

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Moms.

There are no shortage of paid or targeted adds out there telling you what’s wrong with you or what you’re doing in order to sell you their solution. Think of any makeup, supplement, subscription box, meal package, clothing company that didn’t model the “you’re a mess and the only way not to be is to buy our product” sales approach. After having kids, it seems the message has umbrellaed to not only what you as an individual are doing wrong but also as a parent. It’s how the “hot mess” mom term came to be, thoughts and opinions on that can be found here.

Motherhood is a profession of second guessing. Whether we want to admit it outright or not, that’s what the hamster on the wheel repeats as we’re trying to fall asleep at night. For me, laying down to go to sleep meant the long lists of “don’t forgets” ran wild, keeping me up way later than I already should have been. It was also followed by the next morning of trying to remember everything running 100mph through my ears the night before. Cue the sticky notes. Followed by a day of trying to manage all the notes, events, changes, and new things, it felt like being stuck at the wrong end of the wave pool with no lifeguard in sight.

Having a lot on your plate isn’t the problem.

How you’re managing it isn’t the problem.

It’s not having a place to put everything.

A lack of tools is the problem.

When I was in middle school we learned about computers. Yes, I’m old enough to remember a world before the internet and a time when your phone didn’t do everything your laptop can. It’s probably why my ankles sound like Pop Rocks when I get out of bed in the morning. I remember learning about the difference between the hard drive and the desktop. All the desktop files and folders can clog up your computers processing capacity, and at the time there was much less available speed (this is coming from someone that literally ordered a computer from a Dell catalog) for desktop processing. Your hard drive storage could be huge, but the desktop ran slowly.

That’s similar to our ability to sort and store info. Our short term memory is our desktop. If everything lives on our computer desktop it’s hard to find things, hard to know where you saved a file and the whole thing becomes overwhelming pretty quickly. Now, if you organize your hard drive and create spaces for those pieces to live, everything runs much smoother. Right? When you’re trying to fall asleep at night, the hamster is the desktop- trying to keep the wheel spinning so you don’t forget.

Trying to do that by writing down information from your desktop isn’t the solution. Traditional planning products, a planner or calendar, is marketed as the solution you need to fix this desktop/hard drive conundrum. But that can’t be true. There’s not one single product that’s going to work for every family- every single one is different. Instead of arming ourselves with more products, expecting a quick solution, it’s time to bring in tools to help us do the work to create long lasting changes.

Incorporating a framework is the same as organizing a hard drive. Utilizing the Dovetail® framework, to organize and systematize family management is the bookshelf to organize your files. Here’s a list of some of the things I traded in when I incorporated the Dovetail® framework to manage our family.

1. Being able to recycle envelopes since they were no longer needed for notes and grocery lists

2. Multiple notebooks with scribbled recipes and papers falling out into dinner cooking on the stove

3. A stack of papers that I couldn’t throw out because they had dates I had to remember on them- a stack in the office, kitchen, by the door, and in the car

4. A planner I used for 3 months before realizing it didn’t fit and that I couldn’t change my life to fit a planner

5. Throwing out food bought at the grocery store when I was making up dinner plans on the fly but didn’t get the rest of the ingredients because, again, making it up on the fly

6. Running out of necessary things (milk, bread, etc) and having to go to the store 3+ times a week and buying many extra items

7. Having to be the walking calendar because I was the only one that was able to keep track of the plans for that day/week/month

8. Trying to figure out how I was going to teach my kids to use a planner for themselves if I was using a singular system when I really needed a family plan.

Adopting a framework to tackle what you need to manage is the scaffolding to help you move forward. There’s nothing wrong with how you’re handling everything coming in right now. The events, tasks, appointments, and minutiae that comes with family life can’t be right or wrong, it is what it is.

After creating the paper products, the answer to the digital-paper dilemma was still hanging out in the air. It’s hard to be strictly paper or digital nowadays, there’s crossover with communication and great opportunities for collaboration. It also acts as the lynchpin holding the digital and paper worlds together. The answer to this, hard to define, problem of effective family management is to create tools instead of “shoulds.”

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Let’s rewind. 

From the beginning of our journey as parents, my husband and I tried to share as many tasks as possible. In the beginning it was great. We both participated in meal planning, grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, and taking care of our one (at the time) new baby. I really thought I had it all figured out. I worked on the weekends at the hospital and he worked during the week building his business. 

We shared tasks because we had to, we didn’t have family involved with childcare, so it was just the two of us. During our work days I couldn’t be reached (easily) inside the hospital and he was all over the place traveling for work. It was a lot of “figure it out” in both corners that helped us both to learn how to parent separate of the other’s input. Neither of us needed to be micromanaged (nor can we stand it in general) and both had our routines with our daughter. 

Ah bliss. 

Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to last for the long term. 

There was no abruptness, no light switch moment, to the slide towards traditionally gendered roles. I didn’t wake up one morning to a pile of laundry and a mop bucket with my husband cutting the grass before heading out to golf with his friends.

It was gradual. So gradual, I didn’t even notice.

I left my job (after a few per diem years) at the hospital when my oldest was five and had a three year old and six month old at home. Instead of working opposite schedules and time off requests being at the whim of another person, I decided to start a private OT consulting business. This meant I was home 7 days a week and the borders around my work time disappeared completely.

Having 3 kids under 5 meant there was more of everything- laundry, dishes, toys, dog hair, everything. It made sense to divide the whole task instead of continuing to share parts. We settled into our tasks and less “hot potato” of our to-do lists went on. Since I was home more and my business was still brand new I thought I could help by taking some tasks off my husbands list. I mean I was home, right? Well, what started as a “I can do that to help out” penciled onto my to-do list became written in ink. The gradual slide turned into one of those “geronimo”slides that leaves you with water jammed up your nose and a wedgie you can’t effortlessly wiggle out of.

Being home during the week meant the other people I hung out with were also home with their kids. From our playground meetups to dinners out, it sounded like many were going through similar experiences, to varying degrees. If you hang out in a group of “oh, that’s what it’s like for me too” long enough, you start to believe that it’s the norm. You believe this is the part of motherhood that happens, like a gift with purchase you never asked for. 

No thanks.

The hard part about all this is that it doesn’t happen abruptly. If I woke up one morning and was told that it was my responsibility to adopt the 1950’s cook, clean, plan, martyr for everyone in my family I would have a strong reaction. It’s the trickle effect of taking on tasks leading to the point you’d never thought you’d be without even realizing it. Things like:

• getting the first school email and talking to your partner about it, then realizing after your 10th school email that you’re the only one receiving info. OR. They don’t open the school email because you’ve taken the lead on everything that has come in so far

• knowing snack and meal preferences for each kid because you are there for 2/3rds of their daily meals (plus snacks). Being “in charge” of nap schedules, doctors appointments, and playdates because those all happen during the week.

• When the “hey, do you know where ____ is?” start to include kids things, and the routines around them.

The slide is gradual, but the sides are greased if you’re not careful. My husband is a great partner, a great parent, and one of the biggest supporters of collaborative family management. Many of the friction points along our journey of trying to parent in a more balanced way have come up because he’s pointed things out. For example, no email communication about one of our kids directed at the father, or when there was no simple way to hand off a task because many parts of it were held in my head- having no place to put them on paper. Our need for an app to bridge the digital/paper problem came about from many of these conversations.

If the general consensus is that this is the way things should be, moms take on the majority of tasks, then what impetus is there to change the way families manage? It’s hard to see where the line is to give everyone their own spaces when it’s been rubbed off. That’s why there isn’t a push for collaborative family products. If you don’t think it’s an option, why search for it?

In the last few years, the conversation has started to change about families sharing and balancing roles. It’s a start. When we’re socialized as women to take it all on ourselves and not complain because “it’s part of the job,” feeling differently is isolating. More and more women are calling out these issues online- awareness is a huge part of the movement towards change. If you follow me online (and if you don’t, please do), I post a lot in my stories about the invisible load of motherhood and the struggle to collaborate as a parent.

We need the tools in place to help make those changes and continue to move in a collaborative and positive direction. As someone who always said “I will never” to many of the stereotyped parts of motherhood, standing in my kitchen that day thinking about the list of tasks I had to do “because it was easier since I was home” was an incredible wakeup call. Hearing similar stories that ended with “isn’t this part of the deal” as a way of bargaining with your socialization solidified the need to design and create products to move generations of women away from the same thoughts. 

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You can categorize and organize the supplies in your house. You can have your groceries delivered. Your pre-portioned meals are waiting in a box on the porch for you to cook dinner. You can clear out your inbox and get to zero.

All of those are end points though.

Checked boxes.

How do you know when you need to get more bathroom cleaner? What groceries do you need to order? Which nights are you going to be home early enough from practice to actually cook those meals? What do you do with all those emails from the school, coaches, summer signups, and your own appointments?

You are the one keeping track of all that. You’re the home management system. It’s time to take all that and put it somewhere other than the front of your mind (or on repeat as you try and fall asleep at night).

You need a home management system- you’re own HMS.

Think of an HMS as the bridge between the beginning and end of each one of those tasks (plus the hundreds of other things that roll into your world throughout the week) to get it to completion. The reason HMS’s don’t exist in a mass market kind of way, is that traditionally one person is managing all those tasks- moms.

Moms have, historically, been the backbone of the HMS.

If you don’t have defined pieces and spaces then the responsibility for successful functioning of that home management system relies on one person. The one that keeps track of the email list, the groceries, school events, vacation plans, packing, summer camp, everything.

You.

Traditional planners and calendars are designed for one person to record, track, update and execute tasks in order to keep the family going. Because women are typically the ones that manage these tasks, and it’s seen as “their role,” in a family. There’s been no impetus to create tools to help. Imagine that, the expectation of responsibility with no actual help…

There are workplace productivity tools coming out everyday, because paid employment is seen as the holy grail of necessity. Whereas the unpaid and invisible tasks of managing everything behind the scenes hasn’t garnered a mass movement to create a collaborative system. The invisible work of inventory, schedule, and adjustments has long been a forgone conclusion as a task of motherhood- part of the job description we didn’t write. A job that requires an ongoing amount of focus to not “drop the ball” for everyone.

Because no one is coming to pick it up.

This is the invisible workload of parenting, not motherhood, and it doesn’t belong solely in the lap of mothers. It’s tacked on as a “gift with purchase” that has detrimental effects on the progress of women after having children and the division of labor within families. The assumption that moms “are good at this stuff” has been debunked for years, yet the responsibility continues to follow a similar trend- things related to the children or family function are handled by mom.

It doesn’t end there though. The initial “I’ll take care of xyz while they’re young” with a new baby turns into toddler activities, school activities, and sports/after school programs. Eventually you’ve held everything for so long it’s become the norm. No one wants to take over the task. And honestly- if you’ve been doing it for so long there are going to be balls dropped in the transition. When those balls are dropped, no one is going to assume that anyone other than you is responsible. The notion of it not being a seamless transition is what keeps the calendar and all its entrapments in our lap long after we are ready to stop being its keeper. The big machine of a family schedule feels impossible to change, as poorly as it’s running and as hard on moms as it is to maintain. When you’ve reached this point it becomes “go ask mom” territory and the stage has been set for everyone to continue to rely on you to run the show.

So how do we get out of this pattern?

When you run everything and it’s “the way it’s always been,” it’s hard to pass things off. There are few simple tasks when it comes to parenting and running a house, most are often a serious of interconnected steps. Since tools, historically have not been created for collaboration, it’s an uphill climb to figure out how to get out of it.

It happened in my own family.

Our family calendar used to be my “domain,” as the organizer and planner in our family. The problem was, what I wrote on there was my own shorthand requiring me to decipher or translate (the who, what, when, where, etc of plans) to my husband. That, on its own, was enough of a speed bump to passing things off and effective communication in our family. If my husband wasn’t sure what the calendar said, he would ask and I’d give the explanation- with all the notes for the event to happen.

That means he wasn’t able to really take over that task if I still had some part of it.

That wasn’t going to work for us in the long term.

We were in desperate need of our own HMS, but I couldn’t find anything on the market because I didn’t know what I was looking for. Taking the calendar off the pantry door years ago was about trying to find a solution for my entire family to participate in. For a number of reasons:

1. I didn’t want to be in charge of the calendar forever just because I was the mom (last time I checked, time management and calendars aren’t gender specific)

2. We needed a way for my husband and I to both have the opportunity to take on parts of our family schedule independently

3. At some point my kids were going to be old enough to start to manage their own lives and there was no on ramp for them to start young- and I was not going to wait until high school for them to start doing it.

The Dovetail® products (wall calendar, planner, recipe binder, and grocery notebook) are the core pieces of our home management system. They create collaborative spaces, increase communication and allow each member of our family (in an age appropriate way) the opportunity to participate. Since implementing an HMS in my house we have eliminated a pile of frustration in the areas of meal planning, grocery shopping, after school activities/sports, carpooling, appointments, and work schedules.

The final piece of our HMS puzzle was Dovetail® Digital, set to launch on the app store June 1st, 2023. It is the fully sync’d love child of your calendar and sticky notes to end the communication about communication that allows two people to work on a task or project from one collaborative space. Think about birthday parties, sports events, carpool, drop-off, and more- simplified. The paper based products in the Dovetail® collection are great for planning at home and setting schedules, but the on the go nature of our days necessitated a digital bridge to keep everyone on the same (digital) page. It’s the skeleton key for all the pieces that don’t quite fit as either solely calendar or notes.

Outside of Dovtail® Digital there are a number of options available to match with where you’re at on the home management continuum.

1. The Dovetail® products alone can be dropped into your daily life for effective change right away.

2. If creating an HMS sounds overwhelming, Dovetail® Schedule Academy is a 5 module course that walks you through the process of setting up a system using the Dovetail® framework specifically for your family.

3. We have a “done for you” fully custom option available here.

Building an HMS for my own family created a space for things that didn’t belong on my list to be passed on. Having an ongoing system has helped my kids start to take over some of the responsibility for their own schedules (preparing for, getting homework done, knowing what’s coming without an update from me). Being able to bring others into the operations and management of the day to day aspects of our family life has created space for me to use for work (to create courses, finish the app, and develop new products) and to not carry the entire invisible load alone.

Above all, I haven’t heard “go ask mom” for a long time.

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To be honest, my cup has been feeling bone dry for a while. Our family has been running full speed since the start of the school year and up until last week it felt like we were all running on fumes. Between sports schedules, school activities and work- we’ve been grinding through weeks with not much variety for a long time. We needed some variety.

I knew it was time for a change, something to shake things up for everyone and we finally got to do it last week. It was spring break in New Hampshire so we packed up the kids, hired someone to watch the plethora of animals at home, and headed NORTH! It was our first family trip in 3+ years, and the first time I was able to introduce my youngest to some of the Canadian side of his family.

We stayed at my Aunt’s house, the same one I stayed at as a kid and have so many amazing memories from. After both sets of Grandparents passed away, their houses were both sold. These are the places I had many many childhood memories from and so my Aunt’s house is the last one that I can look on the trim in the dining room to see how tall I was in 1991. It was a full circle moment to see my own kids come down the same stairs with their sleepy eyes and bedhead, that I did at their age. My Aunt has this infamous blue bathtub, straight out of the 70’s. There are pictures of me, as an infant, in the tub and this weekend the kids all climbed in so I could take a picture of another generation in there- same tub toys and all!

Aside from the walk down memory lane, this weekend was an amazing reminder that slowing down is an essential part of productivity. In the last 6 weeks I’ve been working on launching two courses at the same time, something I’ll never do again, and working on Dovetail® Digital (more on that here). My time and attention outside of the kids activities has been dominated by work with all these big projects. If I had a theme song it would be “running on empty” on repeat.

Putting the departure date on the calendar felt stressful, to put it gently. As we got closer and closer to the trip I was feeling completely panicked about making these looming deadlines. I knew that going to Canada meant I couldn’t sit on the computer all weekend and work. But, the bags were packed and the car was leaving the driveway. I was able to work on the way up (and back) but 95% of the time away had zero minutes of work.

The same thing has been happening in the day to day of my life. The work projects have taken precedence over house projects- like dealing with spaces that need to be cleaned out and organized. When you aren’t in your own home though, there’s no “I should do….” because you can’t. Not being able to think about the clothes in the basement that need to be sorted through, the closets that need to be switched for spring/summer and the pile of donations/consignment clothing that’s staring at me in the hallway are out of sight and definitely out of mind.

We haven’t gone on a vacation in years, since travel was off limits for us. Part of our family to do list over the years has been to get back to going to new places so this was a great step back in that direction. A few hours to ourselves for my husband and I. A few days of eating too much candy and staying up too late for the kids and one long, movie fueled, ride back home to our beds and animals.

Getting your nose off the grindstone

My grandparents owned a paving company and when their kids were little they both were consumed with the business and their six kids. I once asked my grandfather what that was like- having a successful business and having all those kids going in different directions. He told me that “it’s hard to look around when your nose is glued to the grindstone”- just put one foot in front of the other was his advice. It’s a big part of that generation, having big families and working constantly. They did still go on trips though- not a big Disney vacation, but camping, going to the beach for the weekend or visiting family nearby.

I read recently that 75% of the time we spend with our children in our lifetime happens by the time they turn 12. My oldest daughter is 10. The balance of entrepreneurship is that, yes, you can work when you want, but how do you keep yourself from working all the time and not taking advantage of the benefits of deciding your own schedule? Have you heard the quote “entrepreneurship is working 80 hours a week for yourself so you don’t work 40 hours for someone else?” The pressure to hustle can wreak havoc on your personal life. Having scheduled breaks to come up for air and get some perspective is the best medicine for that indoctrination.

Entrepreneurship is hard, there’s no way around it. But part of working for yourself means you have full control over how that time is spent. For now my schedule is after the kids go to bed and a few hours on the weekend, but it won’t always be that way. Getting to go back to Canada for a few days was an important reminder that stepping completely away can recharge your batteries and help you return refreshed and reinvigorated.

Even though this week has been hectic after coming back, I’ve been more productive than usual, because of the time away. All of the time not sitting 2 feet from a computer screen was restorative. Unplugging meant looking up and enjoying some of the benefits for both my husband and I as self employed people. We had 4 days off of work, no one to ask if we could go, and the opportunity to spend time with our kids as a family away from home.

A breath of fresh inspiration

While we were on the go, playing with cousins, hitting up the trampoline park, and touring around the city- I was still thinking about work. In a different way though. See other families out and about, going to the grocery store that isn’t down the street and making real time schedule changes as a family sparked new ideas and new ways to incorporate the products I’ve created (and am creating) into our daily lives and those of others.

Switching up the routine helped inject some fresh ideas into this growing business. There are a lot of things coming out in the next few months- new products, Dovetail® Digital launching, the podcast and running on fumes meant not putting my best self out there. The excitement about these products doesn’t come through when the idea of posting your exhausted self on social media makes you want to crawl under your desk.

Taking the time away from work is hard, especially when you’re an entrepreneur. I could easily let that be an excuse for pushing on instead of taking a break. When you are used to doing things for yourself and by yourself the assumption is that’s the only way it will work. Building a brand and business over the last few years has been a solo endeavor- many late nights and weekend days putting the pieces into place to get to this point. But this isn’t the forever goal. The assumption that you have to work 80 hours for yourself in order for your business to be successful is why so many entrepreneurs burn out.

So take it from me- don’t wait until you’re on fumes before pouring back into your own cup. It’s only going to help in the end.

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When we talk about equity at home I’m not talking about financial equity- this is about home management. If you google “home management,” the search results talk about homeschooling and “how to keep a home” in a traditional 1950’s sense. For the purpose of this discussion, home management refers to the management of- cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, home maintenance, bills, schedules, kids activities, school work, tracking clothing/shoe sizes, playdates and social events. It’s a long list, but the lists under each category make the whole thing an even bigger animal.

Looking at the categories above you’ve probably identified a few, or more, that you take sole responsibility for. If it’s everything on the list, this is the space for you. All of these categories and accompanying lists take an enormous amount of time and focus to execute. 

There are endless studies that have been conducted around the issue of equity in home management and childcare. Many studies show that women without access to childcare (affordable or available) are unable to pursue higher paying jobs and work lower wage or temporary work to offset their childcare needs. The cycle continues if they are unable to secure childcare, then the responsibility continues to fall on them, limiting opportunity for advancement and higher wages.  

If there was any doubt about the lack of balance between partners in their roles we only have to look back a few years. During the beginning of the pandemic, when the world was shut down and schools and businesses were closed, the curtain dropped around the balance of responsibility at home. In my own home, even with a supportive partner, it was a process to ensure our responsibilities when it came to childcare, home management, and work were divided equitably so that our efforts and opportunities were balanced.

There was a pseudo reckoning when we were all home about the balance of tasks at home. The past few years added fuel to the longstanding movement towards gender equity and equality, and it appeared as though we were moving in the right direction while the world was closed down. When we were all able to be home together the split evened out for many, but after returning to offices and schools that progress has slowly migrated back to pre-pandemic levels.  

The change we want to see in the world

Women continue to fight for equity in many areas- pay, access to childcare, decisions regarding their bodies, c-suite positions, access to capital, and the progress is incredibly slow. We (collectively) are not going to get to a place where we achieve equity in home management and childcare by only lobbying for change and trying to develop large scale programs to address this issue. 

I’m not saying women are not going to achieve equity at home, we most certainly are. The speed of that change is hampered by the dilution of effort towards large scale policy change. My generation has had the opportunity to see women before us put their careers and aspirations on hold to raise their families and be completely dependent on their spouse. We know that we want different for ourselves. These women have told us to “go out and chase your dream” while putting theirs aside- because you can’t chase that dream and still be shackled to the stove. 

Supermoms and why that holds us back

Previous generations living their either/or life while telling us we could have it all is conflicting. The “have it all” message led to the rise of the “supermom” mentality. These are the women that tell you that you can have it all- a successful and financially profitable career, happy marriage, children in matching outfits and every hair in place, be physically fit, emotionally healthy and get 8 hours of sleep at night- if you just work harder. 

Sounds great right? Like hitting up a buffet with a platter, where you don’t have to make choices because you can simply have some of everything. In real life though, you only have a salad plate. In order to try and stack that little plate higher we skip out on things that are essential to our own health, like rest, because taking your foot off the gas means you “don’t want it enough” and that’s just not the case. I’m sure we, as moms, want all those things for the people we care about, it’s just not possible to pour out 1000% all the time and still be healthy ourselves.

Inevitably something falls through the cracks. After all, one person cannot do it all, all the time, until the end of time. Then comes the shame and guilt. The “hot mess” mom degradation and the self flagellation that we should have just pushed past our own exhaustion for one more thing. But there will always be “one more thing” behind that.  

Moms are in a cycle that benefits everyone else. When we’re at the end of the line, we’re instructed to practice self care- get a message, have a hot shower, go out for dinner with friends, scroll your phone late into the night, get yourself some CBD and a glass of wine, you’ll be back in the game tomorrow morning.

Rinse and repeat.

We’re so buried in trying to keep everyone else afloat in their own lives that we don’t have the time, energy, or bandwidth to be able to try to find solutions for today. Yes. We do need policy change- maternity and paternity leave. Equal pay for equal work. Inclusive feeding programs to support nursing/pumping mothers. Access to affordable and safe childcare. On site childcare, like Patagonia, has led to a 100% retention rate for mothers returning to work following maternity leave over the last five years. We need to overhaul so many systems relating to work and childcare, that the policy revisions on their own are lifetimes worth of work- and slow progressing.

What we need to do and why it’s important

While these large scale changes move at a glacial pace, changes at home are more agile and will lead to quicker results. The three things we need to create meaningful change are:

1. Tools to foster collaboration and communication in our roles- products, like Dovetail®, designed for the entire family to have more active participation in many aspects of home management.

2. Commitment from all parties (partners) to move forward in a different direction when it comes to home management and childcare, in order for true change to occur.

3. Follow through to maintain these changes over time, especially during stressful periods- the measure of progress is when change is subjected to stress. Reverting back to “the old ways” instead of forging on with new patterns of behavior and function at home is exactly what happened over the last year or so, because it is always easier if mom continues to take on the lion share of these tasks. 

Creating equitable ways for childcare and home management to occur in our own homes increases the time, energy and bandwidth women have available to pursue their own goals. If you aren’t responsible for all the details, large and small, that energy can go towards personal or professional development. 

In Occupational Therapy we use the term “client centered” to describe goal setting. As OTs we ask clients to identify their own goals because research has shown over and over that pursuit of self-identified goals leads to increased motivation, participation and self-confidence. As a society we’ve long since identified the goals and are motivated for change. Once we’ve created balance with shared responsibilities at home we’ll have created the opportunity to start to chip away at large scale policy change.

The greatest immediate impact can be achieved with changes inside our own homes to free up time and energy to pursue our own goals and then move to work on larger policies. Equitable division of responsibilities in our own homes could lead to impactful change for this generation of mothers. We have come a long way and still have a long way to go. If we watched the women before us take steps to create a more equitable relationship and life for themselves, then it is our responsibility to continue to make progress for the next generation of mothers. 

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