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053: Tina Paterson on burnout and sharing the mental load
545 Plays3 years ago
In this episode, we interview Tina Paterson, remote working and productivity expert, about burnout and how to avoid the ultimate level of exhaustion.
About Tina Paterson
Tina Paterson has worked across nine industries and 12 countries over the past 20+ years. She has led large departments, governed billions of dollars of assets and her teams have delivered Transformation Programs and Projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
She has achieved all this while raising two kids with her husband James, running marathons, raising a million dollars for charity and taking 3-month sabbaticals every 5 years with her family.
Following her own story of burnout (where she ended up in the local Emergency Department due to being at work with pneumonia), she now partners with large organisations to help their leaders embed the strategies she has learned, lives and breathes.
What we talk about
During the interview, we chat about:
- what burnout is - a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress
- Tina’s story of burnout and how it slowly crept up on her
- that people often abandon their self-care right at the time they need it the most
- how Tina’s burnout was the impetus to do things differently
- that the mental load of parenting and household management contributed to her burnout
- that reducing the number of decisions she has to make is an important contributor to relieving the mental load
- how she relies on friends to make recommendations about what to buy to save herself the time to do the research
- that 'being busy' is not a badge of honour
- that doing a time audit of your 168 hours per week can help you consciously see what you are spending time on and how you can swap your hours to activities more in line with what is important to you
- that it’s common to get out of touch with what’s actually fun for you
- setting up your environment to make the things you enjoy easier to do
- how Tina shares the load with her husband and kids - by having a regular family meeting and agreeing who owns what and ensuring end to end accountability
- how watching Teenage Boss inspired Tina and her husband to put their kids in control of the family budget for a month to provide a real lesson in the value of money
- how she has a chart to help navigate what fruit and vegetables her kids enjoy to simplify family dinnertime.
- Tina Paterson’s website
- Tina Paterson on LinkedIn
- Time to Breathe : Navigating Life and Work for Energy, Success and Happiness, Dr Bill Micthell
- 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, Laura Vanderkam
- Teenage Boss
- Money Brilliant App
Please head to the Life Admin Life Hacks Facebook, Insta or Linked In pages to connect with listeners and share your thoughts, questions or suggestions.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money and improve your household harmony.
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm Diana Roberts, a former corporate commercial executive who knows all too well how burnout can creep up on you. I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer who had flashbacks during this interview of sending out a client website design update from a hospital bed while attached to a painfully droop. This episode, we interviewed Tina Patterson, remote working and productivity expert.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Life Admin, Life Hacks. Before we leap into this week's topic, we'd like to remind you to subscribe to the monthly momentum newsletter, which will nudge you about seasonal life admin tasks and practical resources to add to your toolkit. Head to lifeadminlifehacks.com to sign up. And while you're there, opt in to be notified when our book Life Admin Hacks is available. It's coming out in January 2022, and you'll be the first to be emailed about when you can get your hands on it.
Understanding Burnout
00:01:04
Speaker
So, to burnout. Burnout is a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It shows up as having no energy or enthusiasm and falling productivity due to working too hard. And unsurprisingly, burnout is on the rise due to the pandemic. Whether you're working in the front lines in healthcare, experiencing a sudden surge or prolonged drop in demand in your line of work,
00:01:29
Speaker
juggling home learning and working from home, reeling from the lack of the usual support services, the solitude and the social connection. It's fair to say we've all been under considerable stress in the last 18 months. For some, the tipping point into burnout is imminent and we wanted to explore how to get some of the load off your plate.
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think burnout's really part of the reason why Mia and I started this whole life admin journey. So, but we really wanted to chat to someone else to talk about their experience. So in this episode, we interviewed Tina Patterson, who's come out the other side of burnout too. And we chat to her about how people often abandon their self care.
00:02:09
Speaker
right at the time they need it the most, how it's common to get out of touch with what's actually fun for you, and how she put her kids in control of a family budget for a month to give them a great lesson in the value of money. If you want to avoid ultimate exhaustion, listen up, this one's for you. Tina Patterson has worked across nine industries and 12 countries over the past 20 years.
00:02:34
Speaker
She's led large departments, governed billions of dollars of assets, and her teams have delivered transformation programs and projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. She's achieved all this while raising two kids with her husband, running marathons,
00:02:47
Speaker
raising a million dollars for charity and taking three months sabbaticals every five years with her family. I love that. We need to talk about that. Following her own story of burnout, where she ended up in the local emergency department due to being at work with pneumonia, she now partners with large organizations across six continents like Amazon, GE and Sky, to name a few, to help their leaders embed the strategies she's learned
00:03:11
Speaker
lives and breathes. Welcome to the show, Tina. Thank you so much. Very happy to be here. Let's kick off today's interview with thinking about life admin and what's important for
Household Harmony and Outsourcing
00:03:22
Speaker
you. So is it peace of mind, saving money, saving time or household harmony? Thank you. Well, they're all important is what I'd say, but household harmony is the one that really resonates with me as the most important. And the reason I think this is because if I think about the others, so for example, saving money
00:03:41
Speaker
How I approach that is I really do think of it like a business transaction. And what I mean by that is I think about the different tasks that I want to do. So whether it be doing some cooking, cleaning, gardening, whatever it might be. And then I think through, well, how much do I make an hour? And where possible, I really do try and employ that thinking of if I earn more than that amount to pay for it per hour, where possible, I do try and outsource.
00:04:10
Speaker
And then when I think about the saving time, for me, once I'm clear on what needs to be done, often people stop there and just think what actually needs to be done? OK, I'll just get on and do it. My approach is a bit different because the next question I follow up with is who makes sense to do it? So I'm one of these believers in life that I'm not a martyr. I don't have to do everything. And so thinking about who can do it, whether that's my husband, kids, my PA,
00:04:39
Speaker
whoever else it might be, is a really great way for me to think about the saving time. And then when I think about when there is household harmony, I get peace of mind. So I think it's a two for one that, you know why I think for me, when it's a calm and happy household, life is just so much better. Absolutely. I think there's a beautiful link there between thinking about what concerns you, what worries you, and if it is things that are to do with people in your household that, yeah, if you solve that,
00:05:09
Speaker
you are gonna give yourself that peace of mind. Now look, you talk openly about how it took just coming to burnout for you to rethink the way you approached work and that work-life juggle. And the moment we're living in, I'll use the overused term, the unprecedented times that we're in.
Burnout Journey and Self-Care Importance
00:05:26
Speaker
Everyone we've talked to is in lockdown this week and more people than ever are at risk of burning out. Can we start by explaining what burnout is and its symptoms? Yeah, sure.
00:05:37
Speaker
Perhaps to explain what it is, I'll share with you my story of what I went through, because it was something that happened gradually over time. And then when it came, I felt like I'd been hit by a bus, that when it came, it really was there. So for me, my story actually goes back about 7 years ago. So I was working in corporate in Australia. I had a large senior role.
00:06:01
Speaker
And I really did love my job. At the time, my kids were 6 and 4 years old, and I'm happily married. My husband James and I, we co-parent together, and, you know, we really are equal partners in the parenting we do with our kids. And at the time, I felt like
00:06:17
Speaker
On the whole, I had my act together. That juggle was doable. But then it took one thing to tip it over the edge. And what it was for me was a wonderful opportunity came up. So the CEO, where I was working, asked me to take on an additional project. And that was on top of my day job. And I was so excited. I wanted to do it. I wanted to learn from him. And so I started working on this special project as well on top of my day job.
00:06:45
Speaker
But what started happening over the weeks was that bad habits just started creeping in. Little things such as where I would typically run three times a week. It would get to the stage where I'd go, well, I could go for a run now or I could just try and get through my inbox a little bit more. OK, I'll choose the inbox. And so I'd skip going for a run or I'd skip my Monday night yoga.
00:07:08
Speaker
This sort of thing just kept happening. So at night I'd put the kids, or James and I would put the kids to bed and then I would open up my work laptop again and it would get to about 10 or 10.30 at night. And I'd think, okay, I know I probably should go to sleep, but I'll just keep working a little bit longer. So I'd sacrifice sleep for getting more work done. And this happened over quite a few weeks of me doing this. So having less sleep.
00:07:34
Speaker
not exercising. With that came often thinking, What on earth are we going to have for dinner? Okay, we'll just grab whatever's the quickest thing. It wasn't necessarily the healthiest thing. My stress levels were quite high as well. And it got to one weekend where I knew that I had been pushing through. And I'm a pretty resilient person. And so my whole view was, I'll just keep pushing. I'll just keep sucking it up and push forward.
00:08:03
Speaker
And on the Sunday night, I opened my work laptop and my thinking was, I'll look and see what day I can take a sick day this week. I'll have one day in bed, then I'll get better, and then I'll be back to work. But all I could see were important meetings. So I literally just turned up to work the next morning, even though I knew I wasn't well. By the Wednesday, I had this cough. I sounded like this barking dog. But I thought, you know what? Suck it up. Everyone's in a similar situation. Just keep working and push through.
00:08:33
Speaker
And it got to the Friday and I was sitting in a meeting and my boss, my wonderful boss said to me, look, Tina, are you actually okay? And it took that question for me to sit there and just take a deep breath and say to him, no, I'm not, I've got to go right now. And I packed up my things and I took myself straight to my local doctor. And within about five minutes, he sent me to the emergency department and I was diagnosed with pneumonia. So I'd actually been at work trying to push through, trying to work with pneumonia.
00:09:02
Speaker
And I remember when James, my husband, got to my bedside and him saying to me, look, Tina, no job is ever worth you lying here in the emergency department. And I knew he was right, but I just at that time didn't know, well, how can I do things differently? Because when I did get better, and it did take me a good month to recover from pneumonia.
00:09:24
Speaker
When I got better, I started reading up on, okay, well, how do you have a career? Because as I said, I really did love my job. How do you have a great career? How do you look after your family? How do you look after yourself? How do you actually do all of that?
00:09:40
Speaker
And this was seven years ago and back then, every article said the same thing. They said, you've got to fit your own oxygen mask first, meaning you've got to look after yourself so you can look after your team, your family, whoever it is that's important in your life. And I thought, yeah, I get that. That makes sense. But every single article fell short of telling me how to do it. And so I love what both of you do in terms of thinking through what are the hacks of how to actually manage
00:10:07
Speaker
this work-life integration, balance, juggle, whatever you want
Impact of Lockdowns on Burnout
00:10:11
Speaker
to call it. And so for me, similarly, thinking through, and particularly on the work side, how can you work smarter and not harder? And so it was that burnout that made me realize, okay, I need to do things differently.
00:10:24
Speaker
And I think, you know, you mentioned that a lot of people are in lockdown that's unprecedented times right now. And I completely agree. And for many people, it's as though they're doing quite a few different jobs at the same time. It's not just whatever their day job is, but also whether it be parenting for a lot of people, remote learning on top of that. And it is a lot to ask. And so, yeah, a lot of my clients' burnout is a key topic that we discuss right now to make sure that people know that
00:10:54
Speaker
Actually, that advice that I got of fitting your own oxygen mask first is really relevant and is the thing that can help you to get through when you do have these kind of challenging times. Thank you for sharing that with us. It's always interesting to hear how gradual these things can be. It's not something that happens overnight. It's sort of these creeping, as you described it, these
00:11:18
Speaker
you kind of start abandoning some of the habits that are really the scaffolds that are supporting your wellbeing. But in times of stress, you kind of throw them away. Yeah, absolutely. It's a lot of micro decisions. You're right. It's not one grandiose thing that means that you then burn out. For me, it was lots of little micro decisions that I made along the way. Do I get an hour's sleep here or do I work?
00:11:46
Speaker
do I order some junk food or do we work out something healthy to eat? Do I go for a run or do yoga? Do I not? It was all those micro decisions and those micro habits or not doing some of them that built up over time to lead to then, you know, the dramatic me ending up in an emergency department situation. And you mentioned that, you know, you have with your husband James, you have this equal partnership where you're sharing things.
00:12:11
Speaker
But was there, you know, in terms of your mental load or you mentioned that also that you don't have that sort of martyr complex about you need to do everything.
Mental Load and Life Admin Solutions
00:12:20
Speaker
Was there something around the way that you're managing life admin that you think contributed to the burnout too? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. You mentioned the mental load and I absolutely believe that that is real and something that absolutely I was thinking through at the time. So when I would sit in a meeting, I'd be there going, Oh,
00:12:39
Speaker
My daughter has got Sally's birthday party on the weekend. What's the present? You know, something so, so small, but absolutely, I'd be thinking through what is it? OK, when am I going to go out and buy Sally's birthday present so that my daughter, Eliza, has it to take to the party? All that sort of stuff running through the mind. Yeah, it does take its toll. So for me, since then, working out, well, what are the practical things to try and lessen that load? So, for example, on the birthday present one,
00:13:08
Speaker
I now have a present cupboard. So some people love choosing the perfect present for each person to give. I actually flip it and do something different, which is by the age of what my kids are. So my kids are 13 and 11 now. I have one boy, one girl and go through in general, what's a great present for an 11 year old girl and a 13 year old boy. Okay. I'll buy two or three of whatever it is, have it in the present cupboard so that when they do need to give the gifts,
00:13:35
Speaker
I don't have that mental load thinking through, okay, I've got to go out specifically and get a present. Even things like that to try and lessen the load have been really, really useful. And I think it's really useful to think about what's important to you. So if we talk about gifts, you know, Mia's like really the person who likes to buy the perfect gift for everybody and wrap it beautifully. And that's, you know, really important to her.
00:14:00
Speaker
but I think I probably fall into the Tina camp in terms of, as long as there is a gift and no one feels embarrassed that there wasn't a gift. And I guess increasingly for me, I make the kids buy the gifts for their own friends and give them a budget and say, hey, they're your friends, you figure it out. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. In my defense, when it comes to like eight-year-old boys, I'm not so worried about them. A lot of Melissa and Doug and plenty of Lego bought
00:14:29
Speaker
Good bulk, beautiful. OK. Lego's been in the present cupboard a lot. But I think the thing that I realised with the mental load was often it was around decision making, just having to make so many decisions. And I remember one night during this time coming home and as I said, my role was pretty big at the time. And so I'd be making a lot of decisions throughout the workday at work of signing off things, approving things, debating things.
00:14:58
Speaker
And I remember one night getting home and I said to James, look, I am really exhausted. And this is as I was on that slippery slope downhill towards my actual burnout. And I remember him saying, oh, look, I'm happy to make dinner. What would you like for dinner? And I said, I've made too many decisions today. I'm happy to make the dinner. I just cannot make another decision today. I've made too many decisions. So for me with the mental load,
00:15:24
Speaker
where possible, trying to take decision making out of the things that aren't important to me is really important. So whether that be what I wear and just kind of literally going what's on the left-hand side of the wardrobe, that's it today, and working through or what to have for dinner and circling through quite a few different dinner recipes, all of those things I think really do help to reduce that mental load. Yeah. All excellent things for people to be gravitating towards now.
00:15:55
Speaker
sort of deciding do I need this much variety in what I'm wearing or what I'm eating or we just like just like as you said cycle through the favorites or just move from one side to the cupboard to the X and the other thing around decision making and Diana and I actually explored this in our book that's coming out next year is
00:16:13
Speaker
Having the criteria to make a decision. And so when you're thinking about my electricity plan is out of contract, I need to pick a new provider or need to look at plans and not actually knowing what the decision making criteria should be. And certainly that's a blocker. That's something that sits in your to do list for four weeks because you don't even know how to make the decision. So it can be useful to grab resources.
00:16:36
Speaker
that I'm going to simplify that for you so that you understand these are my decision making criteria. Now it's a 20 minute exercise, not a massive production where I have to research the internet. Oh, completely. My view on that one. The other hack that I do is I have some friends who love to analyze every single energy deal out there or whatever it might be. I've no interest in doing that, but I love that they do it. And so I know which of my friends to call.
00:17:05
Speaker
to say, hey, I gather you've probably done the research. I remember even with our car doing that to think through who also has got two kids. So they're going to be in a similar family situation. So it needs to be a family car.
00:17:19
Speaker
to call them to say, which car did you end up going with and why? And from that, very quickly got to, this is the car we want to get because our family is similar to those couple of families and that would work for us. So yeah, working out your friends who love doing the analysis and the research is also a really good way to do it. And letting go of that idea of finding the ultimate deal and just thinking, yeah, absolutely. Anything that I get that's better what I have now will be fine.
00:17:45
Speaker
Yep, completely. Awesome. I think you've already talked a little bit about it, but you are considered to be a global expert in becoming unbusy. So how do you apply those unbusy principles you train professionals in to your approach to life admin?
Rethinking Busyness and Time Management
00:18:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question. I'm sure you hear, like I do, people using the word busy like it's a badge of honor, where you say,
00:18:09
Speaker
How are you? And they say, Oh, I'm busy. I'm busy. And I really encourage people to think that that might not be the best term because busy doesn't necessarily mean progress or outcomes. We can be doing a lot of activity, but it doesn't necessarily means it leads to what you want. So one of the best ways that I worked out once I got better and went through, okay, well, how do I actually
00:18:37
Speaker
look after myself, get my work done, and to become I'm busy. One of the key things I did, I'm a bit of a data nerd, so I love analyzing stuff. And I remember someone saying to me how we all have the same 24 hours in a day, and we all have the same 7 days in a week. So if you do the maths, we all have 168 hours in our week. When I heard that the first time, I thought, Oh, it does not feel like I've got 168 hours in my week. You know, I'm just
00:19:04
Speaker
I'm too busy. I don't have time. And so to really pause and reflect and go, well, where am I spending my time is a great thing to go through. And so what I teach with my clients when we do this exercise is quite detailed what we go into, but everyone's situation is different. So what you might consider to be wasted hours might be something that I absolutely love doing.
00:19:29
Speaker
So for example, at the end of a work day, after the kids are in bed, if you love sitting for an hour, just watching Netflix on the couch, it helps you relax. Fantastic. It's up to you to consider, well, if I'm doing it for five hours, is that really what I want to be doing or is there a better use of those hours? So to really consciously think through for whatever it is that's important for you, be it spending time with family or going for a run or reading a book.
00:19:55
Speaker
to think through, well, doing those things isn't necessarily additive, but to work out where are the wasted hours based on your own definition and swapping them to be able to swap them for the things that make you feel a bit better about yourself. And so that's one of the key things. But the other one I mentioned earlier about how I'd read that fitting your own oxygen mask was really important, but I really didn't know how to do it back at that stage.
00:20:21
Speaker
And there's a wonderful concept by a man called Dr. Bill Mitchell, which I love, where he talks about working out what your non-negotiables are. And these are the things outside of work that give you energy, that give you joy, that just make you happy. And I think, particularly in the circumstances that we're in right now, of working out those things that can give you that happiness, joy and energy to do everything else that's going on in your life is a really powerful concept.
00:20:50
Speaker
So for me, it was realizing that running is my non-negotiable. And I mentioned to you how when I was in that big job and taking on that additional project with the CEO, it was one of the first things that I let go, that I let other meetings take priority over it. And now I realize actually those three hours out of my 168 in my week of going for the run are actually probably the most important three hours in my week because they give me the energy to do everything else.
00:21:20
Speaker
So it's about thinking about what you can swap out based on whatever is more important to you in your life. You raised two really good points there around knowing yourself and really taking the time to ask yourself some questions around what does nurture me and how do I have fun. I think especially for women, they spend so much time working and looking after other people.
00:21:46
Speaker
have to actually sit and consciously think, what do I like doing? What am I doing? What is actually going to be fun for me right now? What can I do? And even to find the time to have the headspace, to have that conversation with yourself can be a challenge. So, you know, it might be on your next walk or run. Take that time to think about, okay,
00:22:07
Speaker
What do I like? What are my sources of fun going to be? So that you can make intentional choices about what your time is. You also need to be in touch with your values about, okay, is the Netflix five hours? How I want to be spending my time or am I more about having a sense of balance or creativity of the creativities?
00:22:27
Speaker
important to me as a value. That could be time when I could be playing music or writing or whatever your little creative pursuit might be. Yeah, it's interesting you say that, because it has happened several times. So I often do group coaching. So it's usually about 8 to 10 people at a time, senior leaders in organisations. So it's usually a leadership team. And it happens quite often that when we have this conversation, and dare I say it is often the women who say it, of going
00:22:53
Speaker
I don't know what brings me joy anymore. I have not thought about doing something for me for so long. Just that first question of what brings you joy, I don't know at the moment what to answer to that because I'm giving myself, be it at work, to my family, to my friends, everyone else gets the best of me and there's not much left for me to think about. So for some people, that's the most important part, just working out.
00:23:22
Speaker
what it is. And so we brainstorm together and go through, okay, what could those things be? Because it's not all about something as vigorous as running. It could be, you know what, I just love curling up with a great book, or calling my sister just makes me happy, feeling connected. It doesn't have to be some
00:23:41
Speaker
huge physical activity. But yeah, the number of people who it takes them a bit of time to work out what it is. And as I said, it is usually the women who find it a bit hard to think through at the start.
00:23:53
Speaker
And I do think it's kind of interesting. I don't know if you, you know, the Laura VanderKam, she's obviously the 168 hour lady who loves to talk about the 168 hours. But if you have ever done this sort of exactly detailed time tracking, I think that the really fascinating thing is about the people who say they're super busy. Often when you do dig down, they're often the people who have watched
00:24:16
Speaker
all sorts of Netflix series and you know I think it's very easy to become particularly at the moment to spend time doing things you don't actually even enjoy because they're easy you know because they're there and about making sure that you set up your environment to make the things that you enjoy easy rather than the things that are just easy easy if that makes sense yeah absolutely default we're just defaults aren't they getting out the Facebook or flopping on the couch and you have to be
00:24:45
Speaker
have a circuit breaker to think, no, no, no, no, I wasn't going to do that. I was going to knit. So you put the meeting somewhere obvious in so you can put my, yeah, it's front of mind. Completely. Well, there are two key areas that come up pretty much in every coaching session when I do this. So keep in mind that I work with senior leaders in corporate. Meetings is the first one.
00:25:07
Speaker
where they say there are just wasted hours, where I'm sitting in a meeting that, you know what, it's not a great use of my time. So that's the first one. The second one is social media, where they say, I went onto Instagram for five minutes and three hours later, I'm still on there. To the point of when people do feel overwhelmed, they don't have time, it's there. It's just pressing pause to be able to go, hang on a second. Where for me, based on what matters to me, are there those wasted hours?
00:25:36
Speaker
So you mentioned earlier that you co-parent with your husband and you have a very equal partnership and I know lots of listeners ears will have picked up when you said that.
Family Meetings and Task Delegation
00:25:45
Speaker
How do you share? How does this happen? What's your system? How does it work? Yes. So as well as co-parenting, very much also about getting the kids involved. So it's not just James and me, and I'm sure we'll cover that off. Getting the kids who voted as well. One of the key things, and I think about this because it's important in work as well, when I work with corporates as well of
00:26:06
Speaker
Thinking through who owns what, we, every couple of months, all four of us will have a kind of family meeting as such and we'll sit down and go through what is all the stuff that needs to happen for the Paterson household to run. So, you know, this is all sorts of things from who empties the dishwasher to the vacuuming to the shopping to paying bills, et cetera. And so we have all of them listed out and then just go through and say, well, who
00:26:34
Speaker
makes sense to do what. And so with the kids, they kind of rotate between each other because there are some chores that they like doing more, some they like doing less. And so, you know, they switch it up a little bit. But having that end-to-end accountability of something, that works for us. So how it practically shows up is I couldn't tell you what night been night is. I literally do not know because James does it. I pay all the bills. He would have no idea, you know, what that looks like. And
00:27:03
Speaker
Just having that really clear, I think, helps. And then the other thing with that is we don't tell each other how to do the job that's been assigned. So even if there are some of those jobs where I go, Ooh, I would not have done it that way. It's just going, OK, bite your tongue. It's being done in some form. That generally works for us to have that conversation. And then the other thing, and maybe this is just from personal circumstances, but
00:27:32
Speaker
James saw me when I had pneumonia and we were absolutely co-parenting at the time. But just to really understand that if one of us has got too much on, the whole family go ends up going down. It's not just that one person. And so I think that's helped us to be really mindful of spreading the load between the four of us where possible.
00:27:56
Speaker
I'd love to dig a bit more into the kids side of Delegate Life Admin. And I know, Tina, that when we chatted earlier, you talked to me a bit about the Eddie Wu show, Teenage Boss, which inspired me to go off and watch some episodes.
Teaching Kids Financial Literacy
00:28:11
Speaker
So maybe you could tell our listeners about that and I guess any other hacks to get your kids to pick up more of the load. Yeah, sure. So this one that I'll share with you, we'll horrify some of you. I will put that out there before I get into it.
00:28:25
Speaker
There is a wonderful show on ABC called Teenage Boss and a wonderful maths teacher, Eddie Wu, runs it. And the premise is that a lot of teenagers in particular think that money grows on trees. So instead of them just going to the bank of mum or dad for them to really understand the value of money. And as I said, that doesn't come on trees. So what the show goes through is that the teenager is in charge of the family budget for a whole month.
00:28:55
Speaker
And so whatever that family's usual household budget is, that's the amount that they're told. You've got this amount for the whole month and it covers everything. And so they then do a detailed budget and what the carrot is for them is whatever amount they come in under budget, they get to keep. So you've got all these kids going, fantastic. I'm going to buy this and that thinking they're going to be absolutely rich.
00:29:19
Speaker
And then invariably one parent will have a flat tire and they'll need to buy a tire or the shower door won't work and it needs to be fixed. All sorts of things come up. And so the children learn about how they budget. So we actually have done this for the last couple of years with our kids. And so they started pretty young doing it. And our approach is that whatever money's left over, a third of it you can keep and spend how you like. A third of it you give to the charity of your choice.
00:29:49
Speaker
and a third that you save. And it's really helped them to understand the value of money. But also with that, they were the ones actually going to do the shopping. So it's a bit terrifying the first time you do it, where, you know, you got my son going through Cole's supermarket with a trolley, and I was outside of the checkout sitting on the bench there waiting with my credit card to pay for whatever he had put in. So we had to have the conversation of, OK,
00:30:16
Speaker
you don't just go to the Chips and Lolly aisle and shove it in. And then as he came back, there were a couple of things I said, Hey, you probably want to think about things such as laundry detergent and dishwashing powder and shampoo and things that weren't on his radar the first time he did it. It really helped because I remember both times, the first time the kids did it, they said,
00:30:38
Speaker
Gee, everything's expensive. But that has been one of the best things that we've done. As I said, a bit scary to do the first time, but the lessons they learn are amazing.
00:30:48
Speaker
It's a great show. My kids have watched it and we watched it with fascination. And there has been some funny incidents with you, what gets chucked in the trolley, lots of noodles and chips and stuff. And also what's interesting about that is that they have to negotiate with their family members about, you know, as one of the other family members consider non-negotiables in terms of the kind of food they want to eat or the fact that they do have an expense coming up in a week that needs to be accounted for.
00:31:17
Speaker
and watching the kids on the show, you kind of juggle thinking, oh, okay, oh, I've got to, mum needs money for that. So this means that I can't, you know, do what I was expecting.
00:31:26
Speaker
I love the fact that you've actually tried this with your own kids. How old were they when they, when they did it? So we started when they were relatively young, as I said, Angus was 10 and Eliza was eight. Oh my God. Eliza was ruthless. So she was there going, I don't want you to spend a thing. Cause all she, she had her eyes on the prize of, you know, I see how much money I'm going to get. In with that, we had to have the conversation of.
00:31:55
Speaker
It's also important to be generous. And it's not just about penny pinching the whole time. So, you know, do let your brother go and go to the movies and that sort of thing. And so it, it helped on both sides, not only on the saving, but also that having that generous spirit as well. Wow. I'm feeling inspired. I'm sitting here. Oh, they know the show. They know the premise. Yeah. So on that, it's a great app. So in the lead up.
00:32:24
Speaker
There's a great app called Money Brilliant that we used. And so we had all the different bank accounts and credit cards, all sorts of stuff linking to really understand what our baseline was. So to really understand, well, how much do we on a regular basis spend on our car? So to be able to give them something to benchmark against of what we've done the previous few months, we did that for, I think it was two or three months in the lead up before we actually did it the first time. And that was time and effort well spent.
00:32:54
Speaker
OK, what I'm curious about to finish up is what's one life admin hack that you wish someone had told you earlier? Yeah, sure. I'm going to link it back to what we started with where we're talking about household harmony. One of the things that I think can either be a wonderful situation or it can be exhausting is family dinner time.
Meal Planning and Family Preferences
00:33:17
Speaker
And so it's a really simple one and it's really effective. So the hack is
00:33:23
Speaker
And I was inspired to think about this after reading John McGrath's book, You Inc, You Incorporated, where he talks about how often when you think about the foods that you eat, often the things that you really like aren't necessarily good for you. But there are often foods that you do like the taste of that are healthy. So think about what those ones are, what the hack is in our family. And it's up on our fridge. We have a list of all the main fruits and vegetables that you'd normally get in a supermarket.
00:33:53
Speaker
And the kids got one cross, one veto to say, I do not like this particular fruit and this particular vegetable. And then for the rest of them, we have a tick system of three tickses. I love it. Literally I'd have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Two is, yeah, it's pretty good. And then one is, look, I don't like it, but I'll tolerate it if I have to. And having that and empowering the kids to go, I don't want to eat my fruits.
00:34:23
Speaker
was fantastic. And then to go, they both really love peas. OK, peas are going to be in our family dinners a lot more. And so going by what the likes are, as well as what's good for you and focusing more on that, but also empowering them to have one that they go, nope, I'm not eating it. That has just made family dinner time so much more enjoyable.
00:34:47
Speaker
I love it. Great advice. Anything that can also make meal planning easier in terms of constraining or narrowing your focus makes thinking what to eat, which can consume so much time. So great advice.
00:35:02
Speaker
Well, Tina, thanks so much for sharing your experience and your ideas with
Tina Patterson's Upcoming Book and Closing Notes
00:35:07
Speaker
us today. It was such a pleasure. Where can our listeners find you if they want to hear more about what you're doing? Yeah, sure. So LinkedIn is the main area where you can find me. So if you just look up Tina Patterson, Patterson is with 1T. So just worth you knowing that. Feel free to follow me on there. I share lots of practical stuff, particularly for people in senior leadership positions in corporate that can
00:35:30
Speaker
make you, help you to be able to get your work done effectively and to look after yourself. Similarly, I also have a book coming out in a couple of months. So if you follow me on LinkedIn, you can find out all the details there. Oh, exciting. What's it called? Yeah, so Remote Team Secrets. It's for, my view is very, very much that we're not going back to the office how it used to be pre-pandemic. And the smart companies are the ones who realize
00:35:55
Speaker
and the data overwhelmingly supports that employees want flexibility and they want the option of in the office sometimes, working from home sometimes. And so my view very much is that's the new normal, but you need to lead a little bit differently when you don't have your team in front of you the whole time. So it's everything that I've learned of how I've led my teams over the past 20 years of how can you successfully do that.
00:36:24
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks.com. And if you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend or review us in your podcasting app. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.