5 hot tips for a memory-filled summer

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In this week's podcast episode, I'm sharing five hot tips for a balanced and fun summer that every working mom needs to hear!

From handling big emotions to mastering unplugged vacations, these strategies will help you enjoy a fulfilling season with your family without sacrificing your professional goals.

Tune in to discover how to make this summer your best one yet!

Topics in this episode:

  • Navigating big emotions 

  • Setting realistic expectations 

  • The importance of fully disconnecting during vacation 

  • How to maintain balance and prevent burnout 

  • Explore ways to inject fun into everyday tasks

Show Notes & References:

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Transcript

Intro

Working moms Summer is about having fun. It's about creating everyday memories with your kids. About taking vacations, finding moments of rest, and basking in the sun. But I know that for so many working moms, it can also feel extra challenging with changes in schedule, summer camp drop offs, vacations and unusual rhythms. 

And so, on today's podcast, I want to help you out by offering five hot tips to to having a balanced and fun summer. 

Everything from dealing with your kids big feelings during these transitions to planning for unplugged vacations. And a single question that is sure to bring more fun into your everyday life. 

I'm diving right in right here, five hot tips to having a balanced and fun summer. You ready? Let's get to it. 

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it. 

Hello, working moms. Happy summer. So I was walking my kids to school this morning -  that's our usual rhythm. And the kids were trying to negotiate if they could come home after school, instead of go to their aftercare program. 

And that's kind of something we've been doing for the last couple of months where I let each of them come home at least like once during the week by themselves, to play by themselves at the house while I'm working and so forth. 

“Summer is supposed to be fun.”

So they were trying to negotiate this time with me today, and I was like, look, kids, I just got back from a trip and I took a couple of days off from work. Like, I really have to get to work this week because we also have another vacation coming up, so I don't know if it's going to work out this week. And my daughter responded with, why do you work during the summer anyway? Like, summer's supposed to be fun. 

Of course, I reminded her that, you know, money doesn't just happen, we have to actually put effort into earning it. And I reminded her that in two and a half weeks, we were going to be taking another vacation together and I'd be taking more time off. So it was really important that I got my work done over the next couple of weeks. 

But it really got me thinking about how different the summer is. And not just for our kids, but for us as well, right? 

There are vacations that we take which has an impact on our workload. And then a crunch of time because we try to get things done before the vacation. And then there's this overwhelm that we feel when we get back from the vacation. 

For your kids, if you have at least elementary age kids, there are summer camps, there's childcare that's different rhythms that are completely different than school. Which means, you know, if you're anything like me, there could be multiple drop offs, pickups, different locations, different times for different kids, right? 

More pressure during the summer.

There's a host of different things going on childcare wise. There's more pressure to entertain our kids and make sure they have a fun summer, which usually means more activities, more day trips, more things that we don't do during our kind of regular school calendar. 

Conflicting priorities. 

And then the last thing I was thinking about was how heightened our conflicting priorities are during the summer. There's this desire to be really present and to make memories and be unplugged with our family. But then, of course, there's still the priority of work and getting our job done and maintaining productivity over the summer as well. 

So there's all this different stuff going on. And I wanted to spend today's podcast offering to you five hot tips to creating a more balanced and fun summer. 

Just a side note, before I even jump into these tips, I hope that acknowledging that summer is different helps you sort of relax a little bit, right? 

Shifting our thoughts on summer.

You don't have to maintain the way things are right now. There's actually a shift that is required when things shift, right? A change is required when things change. 

And so now, more than ever, is the opportunity for you at the beginning of summer to jumpstart into kind of new rhythms and into that change with a lot more ease, right? And that's what this podcast is all about. So let's dive into hot tip number one. 

Emotions are going to be high, and you need to expect that. 

That is your first tip. Kids do not thrive and change. Right? Think about how challenging it is for a toddler to transition from playtime to mealtime, or from bath time to bedtime, or from in the house to in a car seat, right. Or from in a car to home. Right? Toddlers kick and they scream and they have meltdowns at various times during a normal day just because transitions are hard. 

Transitions are hard for all humans.

It's really no different for us as adults. We've just adopted some coping mechanisms to make sure that those transitions don't end in a whole bunch of emotions like they do for our kids. 

So this first hot tip is to expect big emotions from our kids and from yourself. Right. I mentioned it a few minutes ago, but I just want to highlight it again. When our kids have big feelings and big emotions, it triggers big feelings within us. Right. This is completely normal and it's to be expected. 

And the reason this is a hot tip is because I want you to anticipate these feelings, because when you anticipate the feelings, then it's going to help you bring perspective. Your kid isn't a bad kid. Your kid isn't challenging. Your kid isn't a hot mess. Right. Your kid is just transitioning. And with transitions come emotions. 

And when you have that perspective, it allows for you, for us to connect with our kids through those emotions in a very different way because we're not judging them or even kind of resisting those emotions that are within our kids. 

Giving you an example, between my two kids, my son is going to have a much harder time transitioning out of the school year and into the summer. He's going to put up a fight every day, going to school, guaranteed. 

He's not going to want to go to school. 

He's not going to want to get dressed. 

He's not going to want to put his shoes on. 

He's going to want to be his hand to be held through the entire process because he's not going to want to go. 

And he's definitely not going to want to go to after school because he doesn't really like after school to begin with. And he's going to have meltdowns at the idea of even having to go to after school. 

And so we're probably going to struggle at bedtime as well because he's going to be anticipating the next day when he's going to have to go to school. And he's going to have to go to his after school program. Two things that he doesn't want to do. 

And so bedtime is already going to have a bunch of emotion to it. I can tell you that. This is how my son is going to handle it all because of just this normal transition that we go through from school time to summertime. 

Being prepared for big emotions, allows us to handle it better. 

Because I already know that when those emotions and when that resistance and when he needs that extra bit of help comes up, I'm going to be much more calm and much more caring, much more connected to him through that process. 

It's not going to trigger me as much because I already know ahead of time that the transition is going to bring a lot of emotion for him. And I could plan for a little bit of extra time that we might need in the morning. I can plan for a little bit of extra time that I might need after I drop them off at school and after we've gone through all of these big emotions.

I might need a little bit of time before I jump right into my work because I'm going to have all these feelings. So I'm going to need to kind of re-regulate my own body and my own emotional self before I even head into work. So I can plan for that as well. 

And just to be clear, these big transitional emotions might not just be out of school and into the summer. It could also be transitioning in and out of a vacation maybe multiple times throughout the summer, right? Or in and out of different summer camps. 

If you have your kids in different summer camps, any transition that your kids are going through is going to cause bigger feelings, and that's going to cause bigger feelings within you too. 

Okay, so hot tip number one, expect those big emotions and plan for it. 

Set realistic expectations.

Number two, I want you to set realistic expectations of what you can achieve each day. If your normal rhythms are off, then you cannot expect to achieve a normal amount of productivity, right? 

For example, there are multiple weeks during the summer where my kids are going to be going to different camps, and there's going to be two different drop offs that I'm going to be required to do two different times, two different locations, and so forth. 

Adjust your expectations.

I'm not going to get back to my house at a usual time that I normally would during a normal school day or a school rhythm. Right? I'm going to be coming in later, and so I can't expect to achieve the same amount within that timeframe. I actually need to adjust my expectations. 

If you are someone that has different rhythms, different drop offs, different childcare situations, different vacation times over the summer, then adjusting your work expectations is going to be key as well. 

And you do this by simply looking at your day or your week, whenever you sort of do your kind of planning out of your tasks, and you think, what can I actually achieve during this time? And then after you make your list of whatever it is you're planning to achieve, whether that's for the day or the week or whatever it is you say, is that reasonable? Is it reasonable for me to think that I can achieve that within that timeframe? 

Now, here's a little caveat, because I know all you out there are ambitious women, which means that you have a high capacity to achieve, and you always think you could achieve more than you actually can achieve. So you need to be realistic. 

Add in buffer time.

You need to add in a little buffer time. You can't have meeting a meeting a meeting to meeting a meeting, that sort of thing. Your schedule cannot be like fully booked or blocked and think that you're going to be, you know, uber productive within that time. There needs to be a little bit of space. 

If you think something's going to take you an hour, give yourself an hour and 20 minutes to achieve it. All right? So this is going to help build up realistic thinking for what you can actually accomplish this summer and not set yourself up for failure. 

Be clear when you will work and not work.

Hot tip number three is to be clear on when you are not working. This kind of goes along with this last tip, right? Because many of us, if we have to shift our schedule in order to accommodate more drop offs, and we're not going to get back to our desk until later than we usually would, and our work time is going to be cut. Hours will be cut out of our work time. 

I mean, for me, our quote, all day summer camp is really just nine to three. That's only 6 hours. Nine to three. They think that's all day for a working mom. Don't get me started on it. But it's only nine to three. That's 2 hours less than what I normally work. Right? So I'm going to potentially have to make up that time in other ways. Right? 

I either have to decide I'm not going to be as productive as I usually am and just not expect that, or I'm going to have to work at a different time to make up those hours. And I know that's going to be the case for a lot of you now. That's not a problem, right? 

I don't subscribe to this idea that in order to really feel balanced, you have to be completely off at the end of your work day. Or work should be between eight and five or whatever it is. I believe that work needs to be proactively decided ahead of time instead of reactively decided. 

So what I mean by that is proactive decision making or proactive working time is when you look at your calendar and you say, you know what? I'm only going to work 6 hours today. I still have to do another 2 hours of work. Here's when I'm going to do that. You know, I'm going to tuck in my kid and then I'm going to log back on or I'm going to work a half a day on Saturday to make up for it, whatever it might be. 

Making decisions ahead of time.

It is a decision you've made ahead of time, because you can see that you're not going to accomplish all the things that you need to accomplish. Reactive working is when you set out to achieve something for whatever reason, whether your expectations were too high and unrealistic, or your day just got sidetracked with a bunch of meetings and lots of people like meeting you and pinging you, and you weren't able to kind of navigate that very well. And so you don't accomplish what you had planned to accomplish that day. 

What is reactive working.

And so you're like, well, I guess tonight I'm going to have to work to make up for it. That's reactive working. That's you deciding that the solution to getting more done is working more hours. 

Working more hours does not necessarily make you more productive. 

And this is something that I teach all of my clients that, like, we unwire this out of their mind. Working more hours does not necessarily make you more productive. Working more hours certainly does not make you feel more balanced, right. 

Ultimately, if you want to learn how to be more productive, if you want to learn to achieve more in less time, that's what essentially it means to be productive. If you want to learn how to do that, you actually have to give yourself less time to work. You have to give yourself less time to be productive. 

You have to learn how to do something in less time. 

And the only way you're ever going to learn how to do that is if you give yourself less time to do it. 

So for my clients, it's a no go. I teach them that the solution is never to work more hours to, quote, make up for something you didn't do during the day. 

I want you to learn how to fit everything you need to fit in within the period of time that you've decided to work. And then if we have to adjust expectations and so forth, we do that. 

So you can actually learn how to overcome all of those emotions that come up and all of the discomfort that comes up when you actually learn how to stick to your own work schedule, your own priorities, say no to last minute ad hoc meetings and so forth in order for you to focus on your priorities. That's what's required. 

Set realistic expectations on what you can achieve.

It's what I help all of my clients learn how to do. It's the only way to learn how to be more productive in less time. So with things being out of rhythm and your work schedule likely not being normal, right. You need to be setting realistic expectations on what you can achieve, but you also need to be proactive about when you are going to be working and when you are not going to be working, particularly that last one. 

I want you to know when you're going to be off. 

In order to create an ambitious and balanced life. There is a period of time in every single day when you are off. Off which means that you are off your computer, you are like, off. You are off the active working, and you are off being available, right? 

The only way in order to create an ambitious and balanced life…

You're off your availability, you are off teams messages, you are off your email, you are off off during a period of the day. It's the only way in order to create an ambitious and balanced life. 

Otherwise, you just have an ambitious life, not a balanced life. you're just working all of the time. You're not life’ing as much as you want to life, if you will. I know it's kind of a funny thing to say. So hot tip for you is to make sure that you are very clear when you're off - off time is when you are not in front of your computer and you are not passively working on your phone or in the background in some way. 

Be completely unplugged for vacations.

Hot tip number four is to plan on being completely unplugged for your vacations. Now, that means that you are not available. I've done several episodes on what it takes exactly to achieve this, but in the simplest of ways, this is a decision. 

It's a decision to be off and to tell your team and your boss that you are going to be off. 

Now, of course, there might be emergencies that come up where people need to contact you, and that's totally okay. Life happens. You are likely at a mid level in your career, which means likely you hold the key to a couple of really important things. That's okay. 

I want you to be clear on exactly what it is that constitutes an emergency to you. Right. And then you need to communicate that out because what is an emergency to your colleague or to your client for sure is probably not an emergency to you. 

So everybody needs to be on the same page on what is an emergency and when is someone actually allowed to contact you when you are on vacation. 

Now whatever that is, let's just be clear. It should be an emergency. It should be like the one in, you know, hundred things that happens that okay, they actually need you, Rebecca. 

So you're going to have to log back on. You're going to need to take a call or whatever it is. The point is to be proactive in deciding what that emergency is so that you can plan on having a completely unplugged vacation and your mind can rest knowing that everyone's decided and is on the same page on when they could reach out and connect with you, right. 

There's no, “I’m available if you need me”.

So in an unplugged vacation, just to be clear, there's no, I'm available if you need me. You don't get to say that when you're taking a, completely unplugged vacation. There's also no checking of your email, just on occasion because, you know, just simply because you want to. 

I hear this from my clients on occasion when they're trying to take unplugged vacations, they'll be like, well, I checked my email a few times because I really wanted to. 

And I go, why did you want to? 

Well, it's easier when I get home from the vacation. Then I'm just a little bit more prepared for what's going on and there's less stress and there's less overwhelm. 

And I'm like, no, hold on. In ambitious and balanced life, there are times in your life that, you are completely not working, that you are just life’ing, which means that if you have piled up work, that's going to happen when you get back. 

I would rather you learn how to be completely off during your vacation. And then we'll make a plan for how to deal with all of the stacked, if you will, like, the stacked tasks and emails that come in. 

And we'll make a plan for how to deal with the overwhelming, that stress that comes with that time. But I would rather you learn how to be off off and us make a plan for dealing with that in a more effective and productive way than it is for you to just feel like you always have to work in order to, you know, not feel so stressed and so overwhelmed. 

Your brain needs that opportunity to rest, and summer is the perfect time to do it. 

The last hot tip I have for you working moms is to have fun. Summer means more daylight, it means more adventure, it means more time off. It means more vacation time. It means more relaxing on beaches. It means getting out in the sun more. 

The summer is meant to be fun. 

Do you remember what that was like as a kid? To just have sunlight later and to be on your bike cruise in the neighborhood, you know, until dusk? There's just this sense of fun that comes with the summer. 

Just like my daughter was telling me this morning when she was like, mom, isn't summer supposed to be fun and not all about work? No, my summer's not going to be all about work. I definitely have several scheduled, planned time off. I have summer hours that I'm going to be taking this summer to accommodate more fun, more adventure, more spontaneity, and I want that for you. 

Oftentimes I have my clients that come to me, and they're just in this grind of life, right? They work eight to 10 hours, and then they come home and they work a second shift at home, taking care of the house and taking care of their kids. 

And there's just, they tell me, you know, I just don't have room for hobbies, for playtime, for adventure. And usually what I ask them, I say, well, are you scheduling in that time and you're just not taking it, or are you not scheduling it to begin with? And 90% to 95% of my clients will say, well, I'm not just, there is no time, so I'm just not scheduling the time. 

And I'm like, well, obviously, if you're not scheduling the time for you and for your hobbies and for fun and for adventure, then of course you're not going to take it. 

Fun and adventure and spontaneity and these things don't just magically fit into your very busy schedule. 

You have to decide that those things are a priority and then put them in your calendar first. 

That's called priority or value based scheduling, and then work around it. If it doesn't make it into your calendar, it's likely not happening. 

Fun needs to be scheduled. 

And I don't just mean on your vacations. I mean on a daily, on a weekly basis. Right? An ambitious and balanced life is not a life that's serious all the time. It shouldn't feel like a grind. 

My husband and I were talking about just the other day about how we can make chores more fun around the house because our kids resist and they kick and they scream and they do anything but what we ask them to do when it comes to chores. And I get it. I don't really want to do chores either. But if it's fun, they're likely to be more willing to do it. 

So we started asking this question, well, what would make this more fun? How could we do this together that would make this. That would be more of a memory together? 

And I just recently, we had to do a whole pickup of the house because the house cleaner was coming over. And I talked to the kids. I was like, kids, how could we make this more fun? We came up with a list of ideas of what we could do to make it more fun. 

Everything from just fun music on to, we decided, in this case, my son and I decided to do everything together as partners, where we had to, where we had to do it in kind of a silly way. 

So we actually made a list of silly things we could do. We had to do the task while we were locked arms. We had to do the task while walking backwards. We had to do the task while crawling on the floor. We had to do the task while doing the crab walk. We had to do the task while pushing something with our head. It was great. 

He came up with the silliest ideas, and we just did these things together to make them fun. And guess what? I have this very silly memory of us doing it together. The kids were so much more likely to do it with us. They were actually excited to do it with us. And it brought that levity, it brought that fun into our daily life and rhythms of life. 

What if you just start with this question… 

What's one thing you could do tonight that's fun? 

Or if you don't really have any wiggle room in, like your schedule, like, there isn't time to do something additional? How can I make cooking dinner tonight more fun? How can I make bath time more fun? How could we make bedtime more fun? 

I love asking this question of my clients, because sometimes the work that we do in coaching, it's not all fun, right? Some of it is like, deep, reflective work and kind of habit changing work that can kind of feel very difficult. It can feel hard at times. And so I say, well, while you're doing that, what do you think it would take for that to be more fun? 

And my clients sometimes have the greatest answers, everything from the kind of music they're listening to to maybe where they're sitting that would be more reflective to them or something that just sounds more nourishing to them. Sitting next to a cozy fire with a cup of tea, or maybe it's bath time, maybe it's taking a bath. 

And reflecting on these questions that I have them reflect on, whatever it may be, what would make this more fun? What would bring more levity to something that can often feel kind of hard and like a grind? It's such a great question to ask. 

You can be productive and have fun. 

You can be more disciplined and have fun. 

That's one of the reasons why I named this podcast and this community ambitious and balanced, because so often we think of those things as being opposite of each other. But I want you to create both an ambitious and a balanced life. It's a both, and life. So plan for fun. 

Decide when you're not going to work and when you're going to be off. 

Take unplugged vacation time and plan for that. 

Adjust your expectations so they're realistic and attainable. 

And plan for some big feelings this summer as rhythms are off and changes happen. 

Working moms, I want you to have a memory filled summer, and I hope these five tips are going to help you to do that. I want you to know that as we look into the fall, I have you on my mind. I am thinking about how I can help you create more ambitious and balanced lives more effectively, faster. 

Surprise group coaching opportunity.

And so I'm putting together a group program. I'm not going to give you too many details about that, but I'm going to be launching that in the fall. So make sure you are definitely following along to learn more about that. 

We are going to be implementing so many of the strategies that we talk about right here on this podcast together and creating ambitious and balanced lives together. So definitely be paying attention to what is coming up. 

You are not alone.

But most importantly, working moms, what I really want you to remember is that you're not alone. Thousands of women listen to this podcast and are working to create ambitious and balanced lives, just like you.

I have personally coached hundreds of working moms in creating a life that feels balanced. I have taught the principles and the tools that are required to do that. Just like the tools that we talk about right here on this podcast, I have taught that to thousands and thousands of parents over the past several years. 

The fastest way to become an ambitious and balanced working mom is to hire an expert. 

Somebody that has done it, someone that is teaching others to do it. And I have a couple of open spots in my calendar where I am taking new clients and I would love for you to be one of them. 

This is a personal invitation to you to schedule your free breakthrough call, if you haven't done so already, to start the process in becoming an ambitious and balanced working mom, to learn about what exactly coaching is, how we are going to apply it to your life, and to get you fast results. 

I can't wait to hear from you, working moms. 

I can't wait to hear and see all of those memories of your summer where you are having a blast with your kids, where you are doing all the things that you want to do and feeling unplugged and rested.

Working moms, it's going to be a great summer. Can't wait to continue on with you until next week. Let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson