Real-time solutions for busy season in your Life of And

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:00]:

Really paying attention to things, entering and exiting our calendars. They seem so mundane on the surface. Driving your kid to school, don't we all do that a thousand times? But really, sitting down and quantifying, what does it mean and where is that time going to come from? Because if you're not intentional about where it's going to come from, then it's going to likely come from places that are easy. And that usually comes from sleep, exercise, self-care, just time together as a family doing things that are unstructured. That is where that time comes from if you're not careful.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:00:33]:

I'm a small town kid, born with a big city spirit. I choose to play a lot of.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:00:38]:

Awesome roles in life.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:00:39]:

Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor, and mentor. Seventeen years ago, I founded a marketing consultancy. And ever since, my husband JR and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline. Yep, that means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life we love. When I discovered I could purposefully embrace all of these ands in my life, it unlocked my world. And I want that for you too. I'm Tiffany Souder and this is Scared.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:01:16]:

Hey everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Scared. So this episode is going to be dropping the week of Thanksgiving, and I feel like you have so many people probably wishing you a happy Thanksgiving. And I do wish you a delightful Thanksgiving with your family. But I was telling Samantha as I was prepping to record this, I was like, honestly, I'm like, not in the, I mean, a grateful place today, but just more like really focused on solving some really specific knots in like, knots. Knots in my life. I was like, that is really where my head is at right now. And so I just can't spend 20 minutes talking about being thankful.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:01:54]:

I have to spend 20 minutes talking about this because I actually think it's going to be more helpful. So that's what we're going to do. So Happy Thanksgiving. I don't know if you're driving to a family thing or what you're doing, but Happy Thanksgiving. But we're going to move on. Okay, so this is like a live from the actual sidelines of my life conversation. And I'm going to do my best just to export in real time what I'm trying to solve because this is like literally quintessentially what solving for the Life of And is and what I teach in the Life of And academy is exactly what I'm going to go through right now. So let me give you the Backdrop of the situation.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:02:32]:

Again, insert your own life and dynamics and things that are changing. But if you are going to live a Life of And you are going to get into seasons of change, either there's like big change, like somebody starts a new job or sort of these micro shifts as you move into new stages of the year with your kids. So here's what's going on for us. So we're going into the holidays which is already like kind of a lot more going on with all the parties, the gifts and all the fun stuff that comes with that. Plus my oldest Aubry. Our oldest Aubry, she's a swimmer and so the, I don't know what's it called, the team that she's on, they have to. She has to be at the high school by 6am four times a week in the morning. And then she also has two a days, three days a week and then also she's in show choir.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:03:18]:

So on top of her swim practice she also has show choir practice and she doesn't have her license. So shuttling and driving her in when she's in season is feels like a full time job. The other thing that's happening is next week, literally the same week that my our oldest starts swim practice like with the team, the season actually starts. Our second one who's in travel volleyball, they begin to start practicing with her team. I've shared that we were looking at changing clubs. We decided to do that. If you don't live in Indiana that's totally fine. But she is going to be going to Plainfield which is in the opposite direction of the rest of our lives.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:03:56]:

So where she was playing at before was like kind of on the way home from JR when he was coming home from work. It was like kind of on the way home from my office. It was like kind of close to my in laws. It was like close to the other things that we went to in town. But Plainfield is not kind of on the way to anything for us. So three times a week we are going to need to start driving her in the opposite direction. On top of that there's just some transition going on in my job and my responsibility as we're going into next year and planning some really exciting things for the Life of And and as a result I had the worst week last week. The worst week.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:04:31]:

I was grumpy the whole week. I fell behind. I felt like I was not a customer of my own life. I felt like just pissed at everybody and I got my minimums in but by the hair of my chinny chin chin did I get my minimums in? And I was like, this is insane. I am not going to be able to sustain this. What is going to be expected of us, really? I would say through April. That's when Aubrey gets her license. I think that will be a big relief valve.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:04:59]:

And then the club season goes until the end of June. So it's not like, hey, this is kind of a temporary thing. It's okay. The treadmill is just running a little faster. Like, I have to actually change the way that things are getting done and that who's doing what in the systems inside of the house, because this is not working for me. So after I got mad, then I started to get organized because that's sort of the order for me. First I'm like, oh, my word. And then I'm like, okay, I don't want to be a grumpy servant.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:05:27]:

That's not who I want to be. I'm mostly mad because I don't have hold of what I need for myself to feel like I'm doing a really good job in my job, to feel like I'm running towards my own priorities, the things I want to have happen in my life. Like, that is when I get crazy, is when I start to lose hold of myself. So here is what I have diagnosed. I'm still in the middle of solving this. So, like, some things might change, but this is what I have done so far. The first thing is I need consistency. I hate administrative things and I hate solving in a micro way.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:05:59]:

It takes thousands of ounces of energy for me. I hate it so much. And so when Aubrey has to go to school early four times a week, Junior and I are kind of each week kind of negotiating who's taking her, who's working out, who's going to get Ivy on the bus, what's happening, what time, what's leaving, like. And so no Monday's the same, no Tuesdays the same, no Wednesday's the same. And I'm just like, I can't. I can't do it. So I have decided I am going to take Aubrey every time. I am always going to take her to school or to.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:06:28]:

Yeah, to practice four times a week. That makes the morning consistent for me. And that is very helpful, even if it means I have to get up early. What do we get up early anyway, as a family? I just. I don't know how not to. So I need consistency. And So I told J.R. i'm going to drive Aubry to practice every time the Other thing I'm doing is right now, I work out at a gym that is 20 minutes from our house, and it is not on the way to swim practice.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:06:53]:

It's in the opposite direction. So I cannot do swim, drop off and work out on the same mornings in the way that things are structured right now. I have loved lifting there. I have loved working out there. It has been awesome for me, but it does not work in the season. And so I have decided I'm going to work out at a gym that is four, maybe five minutes from the high school. And what I'll do is I'll drop Aubrey off, I will go directly to the gym, I'll get 40 minutes of exercise in, and I can get back to our house in time to get Ivy on the bus every single morning. So we're no longer negotiating that between Junior and I.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:07:32]:

He would love to help. He doesn't mind doing it. But I need consistency, and this is going to force me to get to the gym four days a week, which is twice my minimum. My minimum is lifting twice a week for 50 weeks a year. So I've got to take Aubrey to practice. This makes the morning consistent for me. And then I'll have one morning a week that I can decide to get some work in. I can go for an extra long run if I want to, or I can sleep in.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:07:58]:

I have one morning a week. That can be variable, and that works well for me. So that is one thing that I solve for. I hated the inconsistency. It was making me crazy. I need consistency. And this can happen. This can work.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:08:11]:

Whether JR is home or he is traveling, this solution will work. So it's required me to make some new choices in my workout program. I'm going to need to get used to this new thing. I like working out with a group. I'll be working out alone. It's fine. This is what I need to do probably until April, maybe until the end of June, and then I can, like revisit. Maybe I can go back to it.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:08:33]:

Maybe it will work. But for right now, this is what needs to happen. So I have to shop for my time. This is one of the things I talk about in the Life of And Academy is if you want to not let go of your priorities and you don't want to renegotiate the things that you have committed to, then you have to go find more time somewhere. And so I estimate I'm going to get back about two and a half hours from this change of not driving to Carmel not driving to the gym. That's far away, not close here. And that way, I'm like, back home by 6:45, get IV on the bus. Like, it will all work great.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:09:12]:

650 maybe. So that's one thing I needed, consistency, and this is how I've created it. So, again, my very specific example is not the point of this conversation. It's that to fix something, which was, I need consistency. I needed to make new choices. I've made new choices, and now I have to execute those and make sure everybody in the family understands, hey, this is how this is going to go now. So Junior gets flexibility in the mornings. This gives him what he needs, too, which is whether he's home or he's away.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:09:41]:

He can kind of figure out, like, you know, how to do his morning. He just doesn't need consistency as much as I do. He's more naturally consistent, and so his schedule doesn't have to be consistent. Okay, I've said that we're consistent so many times, but you get the point. Okay, moving on. Okay, you guys know I have to always keep it real with you. So when I was recording this episode, the, like, Internet went out at my house, because sometimes just things have to be so hard. And so I'm jumping back on the microphone a couple days later to finish this episode out.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:10:08]:

And I just feel like I need to tell you because I think it's a reminder that you have to get. I don't know that some things are just. They're hard, and it's, like, just clumsy, and it's just how it comes together. So we're going to finish this episode together on a different day. And I know that we could edit this together in a way that you didn't know that, but I just feel like I need to let you in on it. So here we are in the last couple days, as I have been working on redesigning my time and redesigning the way that just the most normal things are done, like getting the kids to practice and picking them up. I actually sat down and counted how many minutes it is that it takes for JR and I or our nanny to get the kids to practice and to get them home. Between our first two, just our older two, we have four.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:10:58]:

This is just the older two. And for our oldest, it is three hours a week. Or if there's like four, three weeks per month on average, or 13 hours a month of driving to the high school, three hours a week of driving for that. I, like, said that to myself. I'm like, that's insane that it's three hours a week that it takes for us to drive to the high school. It's about 10 minutes away. And that does not include the time like sitting and waiting for her to come out of the locker room. So three hours a week.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:11:27]:

And then our second one as she's stepping into travel volleyball, that is about three and a half hours a week. And if I add these two things together, it's 28 hours a month that we are spending driving these two kids to practice. So I am not asking for you to feel sorry for me, and I am not asking for you to fix that for me. But what I think is so interesting is when we sit down and actually quantify the amount of time it takes from our family, from our lives, when we say yes to things. And this is extremely important practice as you begin to scale your time or scale your family and what you're invested in and what you're committed to and what your kids say yes to, and the boards that you sign up for and the small group Bible studies that you attend is to really sit down and say, how do I quantify for myself how much it's going to take for us to do this? And then to be really thoughtful about where is that time going to come from? Because the time required to drive the girls was beginning to come from my personal time, my ability to be able to do what I need, to be able to stay in the center for our family and to be able to get all the other stuff done, like making sure that we have healthy food in the house and those kinds of things that keep me centered, keep our house centered, keep our systems running, the requirement for us to drive the girls was beginning to push that stuff into an unsustainable zone. And so the discipline of sitting down, like, literally counting, how many minutes does it take to drive to the high school, how many times am I doing that? Add all those things up and really look at how much time you're spending. When Aubrey gets her license, at a minimum, we will get 13 hours of capacity back. That is insane.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:13:16]:

Think about that over the course. 13 hours of capacity per month. That is on the low side, like, for sure. But I'm just trying to be conservative in this. So really paying attention to these key things, entering and exiting our calendars, they seem so mundane on the surface. Driving your kid to school, don't we all do that a thousand times? But really, sitting down and quantifying, what does it mean and where is that time going to come from? Because if you're not intentional about where it's going to come from, then it's going to likely come from places that are easy and that usually comes from sleep, exercise, self care, time with friends, time with your spouse, just time together as a family doing things that are unstructured. That is where that time comes from if you're not careful. So that is the lesson of this.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:14:03]:

I am like one third feeling like I just need to apologize for taking you through all of these ridiculous details of my life, but I'm exporting it in a really long form way so that you understand all of these little details and getting it all to fit together and making sure that all the pieces fit. We're all wrestling with our own version and story of that and it can be solved for and in seasons where everything is shifting, you have to be able to look at the entire landscape of time where things are happening, what's the location, what's the proximity, who needs to go where and how do I design it so that it's sustainable and that even you are fed and your priorities are happening as part of that system and process. So that's the takeaway. Thank you for hanging with me on this episode. I know it's our Thanksgiving episode and I hope you are in this season not just focused on the gifting and the getting and the decorations and the expectations and the parties and the clothes and all of the external things that come with this holiday season. But you're really taking time to look around and be thankful for even the most normal things. And I look at my kids and I say boy, we are blessed with the best kind of busy, healthy kids who want to be involved. What else could I possibly wanting to do with my time? So anyway, love to you and yours in this season and I'll be back on next week.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:15:34]:

Thanks for listening.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:15:36]:

Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared Confident. Until next time, keep telling Fear. You will not decide what happens in my life.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:15:46]:

I will.