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043: Carly Jacobs on productivity, habits and planning
594 Plays3 years ago
In this episode we interview Carly Jacobs, host of the Poductivity podcast, about the little habits that support a big life.
Carly Jacobs has written in the self-improvement space for well over a decade, and we talk to her about her experiments and habits related to life admin and household harmony.
During the interview, we chat with Carly about:
- how completing her tax return as a teenager started her love of organisation
- finally paying for a Dropbox account to store all her digital files (although she still has a concertina file)
- how wasting time is her biggest pet peeve
- using the Moleskin Time Page and Actions apps to manage her calendar and to-do lists
- bullet journalling
- managing each day with a work to-do List and personal to-do list
- using an hourly rate to value her time to decide what tasks to outsource
- her love of robot vacuums and AirPods
- using time blocking to make the most of your time
- how planning is more important when you live in the country.
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Transcript
Podcast 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. I'm Donna Roe Roberts, an operations manager whose very, very first podcast I ever listened to was Carly's Straight and Curly. I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer who introduced Zyna to Straight and Curly, and that's how this whole podcast caper began.
Interview with Carly Jacobs
00:00:28
Speaker
This episode we interview Carly Jacobs, host of the Productivity Podcast and Blogger. Hello and welcome to Life Admin, Life Hacks. We've decided to interview some people from business, media, creative industries and sport to see how they tackle Life Admin in our How They Do It episodes. Carly's Straight and Curly podcast, which she co-hosted with Kelly Exeter for several years, was the inspiration for Life Admin, Life Hacks.
00:00:53
Speaker
as we discussed in this episode.
Carly's Productivity Habits
00:00:55
Speaker
It was so great talking to Carly and in this episode, Carly reveals how her productivity habits started with her very first tax return and an expanding file, how time boxing is her most important productivity hack, and her love of robot vacuums and ear pods.
00:01:12
Speaker
Carly Jacobs is a writer, researcher, podcaster, and mostly sensible habit maker. Writing in the self-improvement space for well over a decade, Carly explores, experiments, tries, and fails at all the self-help stuff you've read about on the internet to find the best and most useful bits. Her blog is 13 years old. That's old for internet. And like a good internet dinosaur, she's published there at least once a week that entire time, which is also a major feat. We'll talk about that later.
00:01:42
Speaker
Carly, thank you so much for coming on the show. No worries at all. Thank you so much for having me. It's lovely. We've both been such big fans of your podcasting work in particular, Straight and Curly and now Productivity. I actually have to admit that back when we started this project, we suggested that you and Kelly do an episode on Life Admin. Your episode 104 on Straight and Curly came off the back of one of our questions in your Facebook group.
00:02:10
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing. That's what I was fully addicted and I was quite active with the Facebook group because I was hanging off every word you guys were saying. And I'm like, life admin, they need to help me crack life admin, maybe I'll put a little message. And that's like our origin story because after that, you did that episode and Diana and I talked about it more and how it was, you know, it still felt so out of control for us.
00:02:33
Speaker
And that was where we decided we were going to do our own podcast and try and write a book. Oh, that's amazing. Oh, you're very welcome. I'm so pleased. So when did you first become life admin aware and realize this was a thing that wasn't going to go away and that you just had to have some, you know, systems, you had to get get reckoned with it?
00:02:54
Speaker
Oh, look, it was quite early on for
Carly's Career Beginnings
00:02:56
Speaker
me. I started working as soon as I possibly could. I'm from Canberra. I was born and bred Canberra. And you just had to have a job in Canberra because you needed to buy a car as soon as humanly possible. Otherwise, you just could not get anywhere. So the second we all turned 14 and nine months, we were knocking down the doors of all of the local businesses. So I started working at a newsagent in Woden Plaza, if there's any Canberra's out there.
00:03:21
Speaker
It was called Top News, and I worked there from when I was 14 and nine months, literally as soon as I could, until I was probably about 22 when I left that job. It was a very long time. But it was at that point that I realized that I'm earning money. I have to pay taxes. I have to do my tax returns. I have to sort all this out. And then the second year,
00:03:42
Speaker
the tax account because I went to like H&R block or whatever to get it done just like one of the local places and the accountant was like oh well I need your tax returns from last year and I was like.
00:03:53
Speaker
I don't have them from last year. And then it was then that I realized I had to hold on to all of my tax returns. And so there's like a very steep learning curve. And then I just kind of fell in love with, you know, filing and systems and figuring things out and having one of us. Exactly. So I had this, like one of those Constantina folders for years and years and I had each
00:04:17
Speaker
tax return in there. And I just really, I just always got a huge sense of self-satisfaction from being able to put my hands on the thing that the person needed from me at any given time. Yeah, I just, I really get off on being liked is, is the main thing. So that's where it all started. And then it just gets worse from there from your first job. It just gets worse and worse and you need to make sure that you're on top of things. And, you know, I was at uni before the internet was a big thing. I still had to drive in it.
00:04:45
Speaker
you know at five twenty five before the five thirty cut off to hand in my assignments and you know you really needed to be quite organized that you need to make sure that things got printed in time and to make sure because you know before the internet we didn't really have the option of doing things at the last minute if you didn't you know have enough time to print things then you know you would lose marks on your assignment you couldn't just.
00:05:07
Speaker
The Internet that we had was just so slow that you just really relied on it anyway. So yeah, that's kind of where my love of being organized came from. And so you started with that concertina file. What tools are you using now to keep all this admin and paperwork under control? Well, I still have that concertina file with all of the original tax returns in it.
00:05:30
Speaker
I use Dropbox a lot. I'm a big Dropbox fan. And I, after years and years of resisting, I just pay for the pro account because you keep going over and because they charge you like once you have too many things or if you want to share with too many people. And I resisted for so long and I'd like sign up under a new account. So I didn't have to pay for it and all of that stupid stuff. And now I'm just like, you know what? I'm going to throw money at this problem. And by throwing money at it, I mean something like $14 a month.
00:05:58
Speaker
to make sure that I can actually accurately store all of my stuff. So yeah, Dropbox is a big thing for me. I'm a chronic screen-shotter. So on my phone, if I see something I like, I screenshot it. I wish there was a better system for phones, actually. I find it difficult to organize notes and things in. Little photos? Yeah, yeah. Organizing photos on my phone is hard. Notes, I'm okay with. That's a running joke for us.
00:06:23
Speaker
Oh, is it? For three years, we've been looking for the holy grail of how to organize digital photos. It's just it's impossible. It's so hard. But then the search function on the photos is so, so good that you can actually find what you're looking for most of the time. So if you so I've got a screenshot, I've got a scan of my passport in my phone because I stopped carrying a wallet years ago because I've got an Apple Watch that has my credit card on it and I don't really need anything else. But I've got a scan of my passport.
00:06:51
Speaker
saved in photos and I can just search passport and it pops up. It's amazing. And so when you partnered up and started living with your partner, how did the life admin change? How did you share the load? Has he got the same kind of capability and attitude towards life admin that you do? He does. Yeah, he does. Absolutely. We're very well matched. We have a very harmonious relationship and I think it's just because we're
00:07:17
Speaker
both grown adults that just do our own thing so he is a business owner as well as am I and we've just always dealt with our own stuff and done things totally separately and we will have been together for 15 years in March and we've got a two-year-old and we only just combined our finances when we bought a house two years ago so
00:07:38
Speaker
Yes we just kind of dealt with all of our own things. He's actually really good because he's got really good organizational hacks for me. I'm not actually very techie. He's extremely techie, so he's taught me a lot of good things. I wouldn't have even started my blog if I wasn't with him. I was going to say I'm taking that with a grain of salt given that you'd run a podcast blog.
00:08:01
Speaker
No, no. It's like I'm very bad at figuring out how to do things on my own. So literally all of the techie stuff that you see is literally a result of me going, Ben, how do I do this? In-house IT support. I love it. Yeah. For the first year that Kelly and I recorded, Ben Plugg did my microphone for me every time I bought class.
00:08:24
Speaker
So when it does come to life admin for you, what's most important? You talked a little bit about
Time Management Strategies
00:08:29
Speaker
most recently paying for Dropbox. Is it peace of mind? Is it saving money? Is it saving time or is it household harmony?
00:08:37
Speaker
Look, for me, it's an equal tie between saving time and household harmony. I hate wasting time and I hate people wasting my time. It's actually a massive problem for me. I get very, very annoyed about it. So anything that will help me be more efficient is right up there.
00:08:54
Speaker
Personally, in our family, we don't struggle much with household harmony, where my partner and I are generally quite harmonious. We get along really very well. We do have a two-year-old, though, so that is going to throw a mega-spanner in the works several times a day. We do have this lovely kind of us-versus-her mentality, though, so we're very much the team
00:09:13
Speaker
that is trying to manage her at any given time. And she's great, but we spend a lot of time prioritising whatever is going to keep her in a good mood. So... That's wise for the two-year-old. Yeah, yeah. I mean, she's great, but she's two. Yeah. Well, we've been there. We get it. Oh, God. How are your kids?
00:09:31
Speaker
I have a nine-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son. I have 12 and 13. Yeah, things are about to get harder for you, right? Yeah, they've already started. 13 is very ugly. Oh, no. See, that's the thing. I look at people with seven and nine-year-olds and I'm like, your life is so freaking sweet.
00:09:49
Speaker
I feel like that's the sweet spot. Things are just about to go off the rail again, but you've just got these lovely, compliant little people who think you're the greatest human in the world, so we're hanging out for seven.
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. If I wasn't still traumatized by home learning during the pandemic, I'd be not doing anything else. When you have a kid, you know, sometimes that is, of course, a point where friction can enter a relationship because suddenly there's this mental load of having to anticipate
00:10:20
Speaker
what the kid needs or the logistics around your child. And sometimes that isn't shared so fairly. How have you navigated that with Ben? Ben is a very evolved man. So that helps. He knows how to do things and does things without having to be asked to do them. Yeah. He's very much a unicorn. But I knew that about him. That was really sexist. I shouldn't have said that. I might scrub that out.
00:10:47
Speaker
But we've been together for such a long time that I knew that he was going to be like that if we had a child and I made a conscious choice to have a child with someone who was like that. So I just wouldn't have been with someone who wasn't good at pulling their own weight or could be a grown up about things. So that was certainly a conscious choice in the grand scheme of my life. We are OK at sharing the mental load. One of my main issues with Life Admin is that
00:11:15
Speaker
When I get thwarted, it tends to be at the folly of others, which is really frustrating. So like I've done my tax this year and I'm still waiting on my accountant to finish doing my partner's tax so that we can do this combined thing that we need to do. So I've done my bit and I'm just, I can't close that book until the accountant gets back to me and I'm chasing up a childcare rebate. And that's not still sorted because there are like three people playing phone tag with each other.
00:11:41
Speaker
So all of my open book admin stuff is waiting on other people, which I find very frustrating. Yeah, my, my mental load is quite heavy, but I do, I really enjoy being busy. I'm such a weirdo. I just, I really enjoy being like run off my feet. A good day for me is where every hour is filled.
00:12:00
Speaker
And then I get to the end of the day and I can have a quick tidy of the house and eat dinner and then sit down and, you know, maybe watch some TV or crochet or do something like that. Having had a very busy and fulfilling day and very strange, but I don't I don't like holidays. I don't like.
00:12:15
Speaker
sitting around with not much to do. And I like my work life is really similar. So I'm a copywriter and a podcaster and I've got a crochet school. So I just I like having a lot of things happening all at once. And I like dipping in and out of different things because I get bored if I do the same thing every day. So I like having different bits and pieces. I'm a strange human. And so with so much going on, how do you manage to do lists and how do you prioritize? I have a system where I use so
00:12:43
Speaker
My partner, he runs Moleskin Studio, which is the digital component of Moleskin Notebooks. So he actually does iPhone apps for productivity. So I use a combination of TimePage, which is the calendar app, and Actions, which is the to-do list app. And Actions actually, once you put an item on your Actions list and you schedule it, it carries over into your diary. So I really like
00:13:07
Speaker
time blocking. Time blocking is a huge lifesaver for me. I've started doing bullet journaling as well, but I do it digitally. So you've said you know bullet journaling, right? Did you try bullet journaling and then you were like, well, this is just a waste of time. Why does it take so long?
00:13:23
Speaker
I never went there, just journaling, just journaling, generally. I just thought they might want to hear that too. Yeah, no, Sam, it was never, it was never my bag. But I liked the idea of bullet journaling because it was supposed to be a superior way of doing to-do lists and compartmentalizing many different areas of your life into one area. But I got stuck in a bit of a rabbit hole when I was researching bullet journaling. And there's this whole community out there of people. It's basically like bullet journaling, but scrapbooking. So people
00:13:52
Speaker
do like stickers and make it look all pretty. And then they put it on Instagram and I'm like, guys, I don't, I just want to, can you just tell me how to do it and do it quickly so that I can get on with my life. No one like that existed until I just applied all those principles to a digital version. So I just use, I use the flow app on my iPad and I can just like, I can grab the whole day and duplicate it, drag it into a new day and then just use it like a notebook. And it's so much easier. I don't have to write out, do all the little squares and all that kind of stuff. So,
00:14:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's been that's been huge for me. And I generally have a work to do list and a personal to do list each day. So I'll have write blog post in the morning, write sales page for such and such client, write email sequence for such and such client. And that's all color blocked and timed out in my day. And then I've got my personal one down the side where it'll be like go to the gym in the morning, cook dinner, start dinner at four o'clock so that it's ready at such and such a time or
00:14:50
Speaker
things like make sure to pack Harriet swimmers in her daycare bag so that we can go to swimming afterwards. So all of those personal bits and pieces so that I don't forget go kind of down the side. That sounds really comprehensive. I think I'm straight in Kelly and productivity. Lots of the episodes have explored how to best use your time and how that helps you live a meaningful life and live authentically.
00:15:18
Speaker
because your priorities are playing out in the way you structure your day.
00:15:22
Speaker
How would you say, what are your priorities and your values in terms of, because you really thought about how you're using each and every day. What are the priorities for you? Well, I find that a lot of people, particularly people who kind of later free our less uptight existence than I do, often kind of ask me, you know, do you have time for fun? And I absolutely do. And the reason why I do have time for fun is because I spend my life so scheduled. It sounds
00:15:50
Speaker
totally counterintuitive and counterproductive. But what I really enjoy is sitting down at the end of the day in a clean house, having done all the things that I needed to do, you know, clean sheets on the bed. And then I just get to sit and do something I really want to do, like, you know, as I said before, crochet or knit or, you know, do something creative or read or, you know, watch something like that. And I do not like doing those things if
00:16:17
Speaker
There's unfinished other stuff that I haven't done during the day. And I also really like, we live on a property in Northeast Victoria and we have a lot of people come and visit us. And when they come and visit us on the weekends, I want to cook them dinner and sit around and drink wine and have chats and let the kids play outside.
00:16:36
Speaker
and I want to sit there and be completely immersed in that moment without worrying that I didn't do my taxes this week or without worrying that there's enough food in the fridge or without worrying that I forgot to enroll Harriet in daycare again next week. I know that sounds really
00:16:53
Speaker
It's, I mean, like, what Kelly always said is that, oh, hang on, I kind of remember quite properly. It's, I'm totally messing this one up. It's something about, um, outer, outer, you know, yeah, that one. Yeah, exactly. Outer order equals inner calm.
The Importance of Organization
00:17:12
Speaker
That's the one. And I just, I really do feel that in my soul. I enjoy things being organized and I don't like feeling out of control.
00:17:20
Speaker
So like my reoccurring nightmare that I actually wake up in cold sweats over constantly is I'm late for the airport and I haven't packed my bag. So the taxi's outside and they're beeping and I need to get in the taxi and I haven't even packed and I'm going overseas and I don't know where my passport is. And that is my worst nightmare. It's hard being there. I can't stand being late for aeroplanes artists, so I share that same challenge. Like I showed up before both of you to record this podcast. That's true.
00:17:50
Speaker
That gives you any indication of what my life is like. Yes, I don't like being late either. No. I was actually listening yesterday to your episode with Naomi Simpson. Naomi, she was great. And she talked quite a bit about outsourcing and you spoke about that. And so I'm really interested in kind of, I think as we're particularly familiar and as we're getting older,
00:18:10
Speaker
I think we've become more logical when it comes to outsourcing in terms of thinking about money in a different way. So be really interested to know how you feel about outsourcing things you either aren't good at or don't even just don't want to do. We're a little bit of both. We've had a cleaner for quite a few years now and we will not tell either of our mothers that because they would be horrified because they're of a generation where you just don't pay someone else to clean your house. Like that's something that rich people do.
00:18:38
Speaker
It's just not something that they would ever consider putting their funds towards despite the fact that they could both easily have afforded it for most of their lives. It's very much about compartmentalizing what is worth more to you, your money or your time. So we do a calculation of what our hourly rate is worth.
00:18:58
Speaker
And if we are happy to spend that time doing that task and whether or not we would pay ourselves to do it. So for instance, I don't want to pay myself to clean the house because I don't like doing it and it's horrible. So we get someone else to come in and clean our house. I also need to be very, very clear about
00:19:20
Speaker
paying the people that you outsourced to come and do things for you, particularly physical things. Be ethical about the way that you do things. I use a reputable cleaning company with people that pay their staff superannuation, holiday leave, casual leave. It's a family-run business. It's local. It's above board. There's no illegal workers. Everyone's being treated fairly. I think it's very easy for people, particularly people who
00:19:44
Speaker
run their own businesses to engage in a lot of cheap labour that's not necessarily ethical. That's something that I'm really concentrating quite hard on at the moment. However, I don't want to pay myself to clean the house. I'd rather have someone else do it because I don't enjoy it and it's a good way to support local businesses here as well because we live in the country and it's a good supportive thing for local people. However, we have
00:20:10
Speaker
two acres. We live on two acres and that's a lot of grass and we have to mow it with a ride on, which I absolutely love doing. So I'm going to pay myself to do it because it's a nice break. I get to listen to a podcast. It's really fun. Like just so much fun. It was like, it was such a curve ball because
00:20:31
Speaker
We moved here and Ben was like, Oh, we've got all this grass tomorrow. And I was like, Oh God, I'm going to hate this. This is the worst. And I absolutely love it. I just walk around on it. And I've got, I've got a little drink holder where I have, you know, my, my little hard seltzer on a Friday afternoon. And it's a, it's a break from parenting. It's a break from life. I get to tune out and listen to something. And I mean, you know, if in five years time I get bored of that and I don't like it, I will consider outsourcing it. But until then I enjoy it and I'm happy for that to be. I like active downtime.
00:21:00
Speaker
So that works very well for me. Some people like downtime, downtime. Downtime, downtime makes me bananas, makes me go bananas. Yeah. And I think that takes, you know, that's a healthy approach because it's showing some self-awareness of where you actually, how you do value your time and what you know you will enjoy doing. So for someone else, the idea of mowing the lawn would be just, you know, anathema to them.
00:21:24
Speaker
But they quite get into the zone when they're cleaning their house and they'll put a podcast on and they'll just get in the flow. And they just, you know, you know, some people just really like cleaning. So it's horses for courses. And I think some of those value judgments people make where they're like, oh, you know, if you outsource that sort of snacks of privilege.
00:21:42
Speaker
It's really about absolutely knowing if you have the means, where do you want to prioritise your time? How does your time reflect your values and your priorities as opposed to just assuming you have to do everything yourself? I also need to touch on the topic of it being within your means because a lot of people
00:22:00
Speaker
think it's not within their means but will happily spend $200 on a Friday night on dinner and a couple of drinks. So it's just about kind of prioritizing what money you do. And I know that that sentence absolutely was a very privileged sentence because some people can't afford $200, but there are some people who would be spending that money on other things that could be spending it on cleaning. They don't have to, but if it's something that you want to do, it's just about allocating what funds you have towards the things that are going to increase your own time.
Mindful Spending and Outsourcing
00:22:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's that mindful spending, whether you need new sunglasses every year that are on trend or another 11th pair of shoes in the cupboard versus getting someone to... We talked to Amanda Imba recently, who is a CEO of a company who has... I love her, she's great.
00:22:45
Speaker
Yeah, he came in to help prepare meals, chopping vegetables and that kind of stuff. So she could spend time with her kid because that's where she decided her priorities sat, which some people would just roll their eyes. But when time is scarce and you have some trade-offs, that one made sense to her.
00:23:02
Speaker
Oh, definitely. I agree. I read an article the other day by Denise Duffield Thomas, who is, she's a money mindset coach who I follow on Facebook. And she wrote this whole article about all the help that she has. And she's got
00:23:17
Speaker
So much help. She has like a housekeeper and a nanny and daycare and like cleaners. And I'm looking at this going, oh my gosh, that's amazing. But she literally hires someone to pack and unpack her suitcase because she doesn't like doing it. And it sounds so next level privilege. Just like, how do you even afford that? But
00:23:35
Speaker
She's just like, well, I'm good at this particular thing in my work and that's the only thing I want to do and I pay everyone, I pay people to do everything else. And it seems to be working for us, so. I think when you're a freelancer and a business owner, it's easier to do the math in your head. But I think for people who are employed, they sometimes find it a bit hard to kind of grasp that kind of concept because they perhaps can't work more hours. But I often think people make the decision to either work part time or full time.
00:24:02
Speaker
And I think sometimes they don't realise they're working four days a week so they can clean the house, but the other might be to work full time and pay someone to do those things that they don't necessarily want to do on that fifth day. Yeah, absolutely. So it's interesting the idea that we've got some money mindset coaches out there to teach people how to think more logically, less emotionally, perhaps about these things. What's going to be one of the first life admin tasks you teach your daughter?
00:24:30
Speaker
Well, we're actually already on that at the moment. We're already teaching her to tidy as she goes. So we've got these tubs that have all of her toys in them. And if she wants to play with her barnyard toys, we get that box out. She plays with the barnyard tub. And then when she's finished and asks for puzzles or something, we have to pack all the barnyard stuff away before we get the puzzles out. So that's just something
00:24:51
Speaker
that we're working on with her at the moment. She's at a very malleable age though, so I'm sure there are people at home going, oh yeah, it's easy to get a two-year-old to do stuff because everything's brand new and they love it, and that is absolutely true. I'm 100% ready for her to tell me to go stick it in a couple of years' time when I try to get her to unstack the dishwasher. I definitely think it's worth it though, because my kids make their own school lunches, and people think that I'm quite harsh, and I'm like, why wouldn't they?
00:25:20
Speaker
He's 12, he's very capable of making his own school lunch and people are worried about what he might put in it. I'm like, he won't die.
00:25:29
Speaker
And you can control the environment of what's available to put in it. Exactly. That was like what Naomi Simpson said on the podcast about two-year-olds can go and get their own breakfast out of the fridge. That's very true. She's still in her cot. We haven't dropped to the side of the cot yet because we haven't had to. And I really, really like the idea of her being in baby jail as long as possible. I like
00:25:50
Speaker
Hang on to it while you can. Yeah, I'm not keen on the idea of an unbridled child in my house at night, so I'm going to hold on to that until she's literally chewing the side of her cot down. We're very much of the philosophy that we want to teach her how to be as independent as possible. And we've done that basically from birth. And at the moment, it's a huge mistake because we've got a very headstrong two-year-old who literally wants to do everything on her own.
00:26:15
Speaker
But we're hoping that this is going to result in a 12 year old who makes her own lunches. So we're in for the long haul on this one. Great. You've talked a lot about some of the life admin tasks that sound like they actually energise you. But do you have any areas of life admin that are like your pet peeves?
00:26:31
Speaker
I hate doing my tax. I hate it so much. It does too. I just hate it, guys. Like I get so angry and then I put it off and I put it off. And because I'm not a procrastinator, I'm really, really good at getting things done. And it just feels like a personal failing every time I have to do my taxes because I just put it off and then I procrastinate. And it's always quicker than I think it's going to be. And then that makes me hate myself even more.
00:26:56
Speaker
So, I think my relationship with doing my taxes is emotional and I think I need some therapy over it. It's just, I can't hack the mainframe of that one. And I'm not actually terrible at numbers. You'd think I would be because I'm a writer and a lot of writers are like, oh no, numbers are terrible. I don't suck at maths. But for some reason, yeah, taxes just do my head in. And I hate doing flaws before we had a clean. And we clean in between our cleaner.
00:27:26
Speaker
It's not like, you know, we sit around on the lounge eating bonbons while someone comes in and cleans our house. Like I still clean my house. I hate doing floors. I hate it so much. I hate vacuuming. I hate mopping. I hate skirting boards. Moping is the worst. Moping sucks. It's terrible. So when your daughter can get to the age of making herself breakfast, your floor will probably look like what my floor looks like right now because my children both make their own breakfast.
00:27:53
Speaker
Half of which ends up on the floor every day, since they were like four years old. But yes, I hate going to the floors too. I'd rather have, if I was going to get a dog, that is why I would get a dog. Yes, I don't have anything on our floor because we're the dogs. And just lick it up, it's gross.
00:28:10
Speaker
but it's clean. Yeah, we're definitely considering that. We do actually, we have a robot vacuum, which we absolutely love. And robot vacuums are one of those things where people go, oh, is it worth it? And you go, yes, absolutely. It's the greatest thing we've ever bought. And people are still so suspicious of them.
00:28:26
Speaker
And it's the same with like AirPods because we've had, I've had AirPods for quite a few years and people go, but are they really all they cracked up to be? And you go, yeah, yeah, they are. And then people are still just suspicious of them. So if you're one of those people who thinks that AirPods and robot vacuums are a conspiracy theory, they're not. They're amazing. Buy both immediately if you have the means.
00:28:46
Speaker
I was the early adopter on the robot vacuum, and the day that it died, I would have had it working very hard. Very messy floors, and my children were little. A tear came to my eye. Yeah, ours broke and we had to replace it. So we had a, what's the original one called? Roomba. Roomba. So we had a Roomba.
00:29:08
Speaker
originally, and then he knocked a glass of water on his own head and died. But we'd had him for seven years anyway, and he was on the way out. And then we replaced it with a Robo Rock. I don't know the names of anything. Sorry guys, I'm a terrible recommender. And so we've had him and he's fantastic. We really want to get a scuba, like the mopping one. Yes, I've seen those. I'm interested in that one too. Yeah. And then mop. Listeners, they vacuum and then they mop. Yeah. Wow.
00:29:35
Speaker
That's one kind of outsourcing in itself. Yeah, it's really good. And we just do that in between the cleaner and I don't have to touch my own floors ever now. So it's great. What's one life admin life hack you wish someone had told you earlier in your life? Time blocking.
00:29:49
Speaker
That's a huge one. So actually block out the time in your diary for when you're going to do certain things. As I said before, I've been doing my bullet journal in, in flow. So it's digital and I just time block my days and it's been such a time saver. Another thing that I really love is asking yourself when you're going to do something rather than deciding if you're going to do something.
00:30:13
Speaker
So I exercise at least four mornings a week during the week, so Monday to Friday. And I've done it for so many years now that I don't even think about it. I just set my alarm and I get up in the morning and I go. And it took several years to solidify that habit.
00:30:30
Speaker
But it makes such a big difference. I get it done first thing in the morning. It's out of the way. It affects no one else in my family because they're all still in bed by the time I get back. And if they're not, my daughter's in bed with my husband and they're watching TV. It gets it out of the way. It means I exercise as much as I should be. I start my day better. And it's also just like if you ask yourself when you're going to do the thing you don't want to do, it takes the option to not do it away from you. So on tax day,
00:30:58
Speaker
When am I going to do my taxes today? I go 12 o'clock rather than, I don't know, maybe next Friday. Swallow the frog, swallow the frog, get it done. It's a very special reframing, but it does just taking the decision making out because you also do get decision fatigue.
00:31:15
Speaker
And when you just take the decision making out of these things that you want to nurture in your life and these habits that you want to establish so that it's just automatic, it's one less thing to think about it. You don't have a choice. You just know it can be a very effective way to get those habits to stick. Well, in our family, we eat low carb, high fat or keto, depending on what you want to call it. I do it for weight maintenance and my husband does it just for clarity. Like he just feels better and doesn't get hungry all the time and just
Simplifying Life with the Keto Diet
00:31:43
Speaker
generally feels better. We both feel better on keto and have been doing it for two or three years now and we both really, really like it. And I've actually found one of the benefits, one of the biggest benefits of keto is that it's such a small range of food that you eat. So you basically eat meat, vegetables, cheese, dairy. It makes shopping so much easier. It makes meal planning so much easier. You're not sitting there trying to decide which pasta you're gonna get because you're just not eating pasta. So you just don't even have to make that decision.
00:32:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's been such a weird thing. And I'm not promoting keto diet at all. I'm not telling people that they need to lose weight, that this is not a discussion about diet. It's a discussion about a decision that we made years ago that made us feel very good. And a byproduct of that has been really time saving because we just buy the same stuff every week and there's
00:32:30
Speaker
no decision for Tigo because I've got a really, a really close mate of mine who loves cooking and she likes giving time to cooking, but also she doesn't like making the same thing more than once. So she's constantly looking at recipes and meal planning and shopping and all this kind of stuff. That's my best nightmare. Well, that's the thing. And like sometimes she gets annoyed by it and it'll be like, Oh no, the dinner that I cooked tonight took two hours instead of 45 minutes.
00:32:55
Speaker
And I'm just like, oh my God, I would be so mad if I had to spend two hours cooking every night. Like that would just drive me up the wall. I mean, honestly, do what you want to do with your time. And if you enjoy cooking, obviously go there. But if you don't enjoy cooking, consider going K2A because it's such a time saver. Well, it's that paradox of choice where you have too many choices, it actually becomes stressful and confusing in itself. Yeah. So limiting choice is actually much more worthwhile. Yeah. Like Steve Jobs wearing the same thing every day. Yeah.
00:33:24
Speaker
So when you moved to the country, did anything change in terms of your life admin or your need to save time or different choices in terms of things that you... less choices perhaps?
Country Living Benefits
00:33:35
Speaker
One thing that changed quite a lot in the country is you have a lot more time in the country. So you generally don't have to wait too long at the post office and there's always a car park at the supermarket.
00:33:46
Speaker
unless it's the weekend and all the tourists have decided to come up for the weekend. That changes things. There's hardly any traffic. Everything is just a lot. It's a lot easier. Life is a lot easier. We were living in Brunswick and sometimes it could take us 30 minutes to get from one side of Brunswick to the other in Melbourne in bad traffic just to go to one shop. We need to plan a bit more here because we'd
00:34:10
Speaker
know, our nearest big centre is 45 minutes away. So there's no ducking to Big W or ducking to Kmart. Our local small town, I live really close to Beechworth. So I'm only 10 minutes away from Beechworth. And that's, it's got everything we need there, which is great. Yeah, we have absolutely no regrets about moving to the country and we have more time. I know that sounds crazy because we moved here when we had a kid
00:34:34
Speaker
So we and who gets more time when they have a kid. But yeah, for some reason, everything was just a lot easier and quicker and little things like we have a local post office that's run by volunteers. And sometimes if you can't go in to get your mail, you know, if you know the person who's working, they'll just bring your mail over to you. You know, there's little things like that that are just that's helpful.
00:34:56
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we have a lot more work to do garden-wise, like on our property, like we're out in the garden all the time and we've got mangy wombats that we take care of and we have to go and give them medicine and things like that. But we really enjoy it. And as I said before, we're active relaxers. So at the end of the day, when I'm not working and I'm not parenting anymore and the kid's in bed, I can go mow the lawn or do some gardening or something like that. And it's really wonderful, active, relaxing that's productive as well.
00:35:26
Speaker
Yeah. I love the idea that you've really spent time thinking about how best to use your active downtime, as you call it, and what is going to make you happy and what is worthwhile. Yeah. That's also not the right way to do it. That doesn't work for everyone. So there are some people who need proper, proper relaxation time, like lying alone in a bath in complete silence for an hour. And that is just as valid and just as productive as my gardening. It's just that that works for some people and it doesn't work for others.
00:35:56
Speaker
Yeah, the key is being self-aware enough to know what works for you and then designing your life so that you can actually get that. I hear Dinah laughing with hysteria in the background. Sounds quite nice right now, Diane. Well, I was just thinking that in previous years I was definitely an active relaxer, but this year I just want to lock myself in a dark room with nobody at the end of the year. We need a do-over. This year was just a nightmare. Yeah, 100%.
00:36:21
Speaker
Yeah, so Carly, thanks so much for sharing your experience and ideas with us today. It was such a pleasure. Where can our listeners find more of you if they want to hear more?
Where to Find Carly's Work
00:36:31
Speaker
Look for me on productivity on iTunes and all of the podcasting places. I'm also at Carly Jacobs dot com. That's D O T C O M on Instagram.
00:36:42
Speaker
and Carly Jacobs dot com, which is dot com on the internet. It's all very confusing, guys. But, yeah, Carly Jacobs is me. We'll have the links in the show notes. Thank you.
00:36:58
Speaker
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