The Juggle

The overwhelming challenge women tell us they face is managing their time. Finding enough hours in the day to fit all the things that need to be done can be a struggle, but it is far from impossible.   

In this week’s re-air, we speak to time management and productivity expert, Laura Vanderkam, about her new book Off The Clock and exactly how to “feel less busy while getting more done”.  

Laura Vanderkam is the author of several time management and productivity books, including Off the Clock, I Know How She Does It, What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, and 168 Hours.  If anyone can help us to manage our time, it’s her!  

Laura is not about finding little shortcut productivity hacks in an effort to ‘save time’, instead, she has studied how thousands of successful women and men spend their time and analyses what they do that makes them good at it.   

Some of the highlights from this episode include:  

* An explanation of time tracking – what it is and why you should give it a go. You can download Laura’s free time log and make over guide on her website.  * What it means to feel “off the clock” and practical things we can do to “stretch the experience of time”, including creating “effortful fun” and saying no.  * Reframing the “busy” narrative that so many of us have adopted.  * Why we should re-organise our weeks and schedule our most important work for first thing on Monday morning.  * Laura’s take on outsourcing, is it really just for the rich?   * What Lucy and Jo learnt from their own time tracking experiment.  * The one piece of advice Laura gives to professional women managing the juggle. Hint: it relates back to one of our favourite topics, your mindset!  

Off the Clock will be released on 29 May, but it is available for pre-order now. Find links to buy the book on Laura’s website and while you’re there, check out her other books too, especially our favourite, I Know How She Does It.   You can also find Laura on Facebook and Instagram.   

If you give time tracking a go we’d love to hear how you get on. Join our Facebook group, The Juggle Community. and let us know. 

We’re re-airing another of our most popular episodes this week – a fantastic conversation with author Jamila Rizvi. We cover a lot in this one – from women’s experiences of new motherhood to why we don’t take credit for our work in the workplace and managing the career/family juggle.

Jamila is an author, presenter and political commentator.  She describes her first book Not Just Lucky as a career manifesto for millennial women. Her new book The Motherhood brings together 32 raw, compassionate and funny letters from Australian mothers – written to themselves – about their first few months of being a mum.  

This episode is on the longer side, but it’s worth it! Talking to Jamila felt like having a conversation with an old friend, so grab a cup of tea and join us as we talk about:  

* Jamila’s career path that has seen her go from studying law, to being a political commentator, working in the media and an author;  * how Jamila manages her own juggle with her career and three year old son Rafi and her new position as editor-at-large of Nine Network’s Future Women;  * what inspired her new book, The Motherhood, (Check out our on Facebook or Instagram for your chance to win a copy);  * the variety of experiences of new motherhood and the importance of recognising that we each have a different experience, no matter how similar;  * the huge identity shift that comes with becoming a mother;  * how Jamila’s first book, Not Just Lucky, came about from her desire to start a conversation about feminist issues relating to women at work in a simple and conversational way;  * how the patriarchy and the double-glazed glass ceiling affect women at work; and  * women’s use of apologetic language and how that positions us in the workplace.  

Jamila and Penguin Random House have kindly given us two copies of The Motherhood to give away to you. For your chance to win, check out our competition on Facebook and Instagram.  

You can find Jamila on her website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.  Click these links to buy your own copy of The Motherhood or Not Just Lucky. 

Happy juggling! 

This week we’re re-airing one of your favourite episodes – a change of pace from talking about managing work to look at home life, specifically, parenting. We’re joined by Mandy Richardson, an early childhood education professional with a natural passion and love for children. Mandy’s focus is on helping parents and people working with children to form new and respectful perspectives.   

We don’t let you down in this episode – we ask the biggest question that all working parents ask at some point or another – are we harming our children by being working mothers? What we love most about Mandy’s response is her honesty. As a teacher and before Mandy had children herself, she struggled with the idea that women would have children and seemingly be uninvolved in their children’s lives; but since becoming a mum herself and especially after carrying out research for her Masters and PhD, her view has changed completely. She now advocates that it is the quality of the relationship between the mother and child that matters far more than whether the mother works outside the home.   

Mandy shares many more valuable insights about parenting during early childhood:  

* the question is not whether we are a stay-at-home mum or a working mum, rather how are we connecting with our children and building a predictable, loving relationship;  * the importance of a child forming secure attachment to their caregiver (whether that is their mother or another caregiver), especially during the first year;  * parenting is about quality care over quantity care – predictability is important. Our children need to know that there are predictable times when we will be 100% present and available to them;  * when looking for caregivers for our children we should look for sensitive caregivers – one caregiver is better than many in the early years;  * children can sense when we are feeling guilt or apprehension about our decision to work or use childcare. If we are confident in our decisions then they too feel more confident;  * a respectful approach to parenting is about removing the parent’s agenda about how a child should and shouldn’t behave and instead letting our children develop their own identities and giving them room to be individual;  * why boundaries are so important for young children and how we can learn to love them (if, like Lucy, you struggle!); and  * a parent’s role in dealing with sibling rivalry – sometimes less intervention is better.  

We hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did. 

Find out more on Mandy’s website, Raise Early Childhood, on her Facebook page, her (beautiful!) Instagram, or connect with her on LinkedIn.    

Make sure you join our Facebook community, The Juggle Community, so you can also have the opportunity to ask your questions of our expert guests.  

Until next time, happy juggling!  

As has already been said – we don’t think anyone predicted their 2020 would look like this. 

A lot of people were feeling inspired by 2020 – the themes of 2020 vision, and the start of a new decade and a new chance to start fresh once more. 

Then…coronavirus. 

It started off as a big year for The Juggle podcast. We hit 100 episodes back in January and we’ve been sharing the presentations from our event over the last few episodes. 

But it’s been an even bigger year for Lucy and Jo personally. As a result, the podcast has been taking a bit of a back seat recently. 

Given we are halfway through the year and it’s been such an unusual one – we opened a conversation in The Juggle Community to talk about reflections on 2020 so far. We share those reflections and a few of our own in this episode. 

Links mentioned in this episode:  

* The Juggle Community, our online Facebook group * Subscribe to The Juggle Podcast on Apple Podcastst, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or Android  * Find us on Instagram and Facebook * The Juggle website, where you can find all episodes of The Juggle and sign up to be notified when a new episode is released 

Happy juggling! 

Today is our final episode from our Design your Decade event to celebrate 100 episodes of The Juggle Podcast.  

Our intention was to get people proactively thinking about their lives and understanding what they can put in place to make sure that they live according to their values and priorities, not just whatever life throws at them. 

We had a change of pace for part 3 and invited a design thinking expert, Premila Jina, to facilitate a super-fast design sprint to help us design our juggle.  

Premila Jina is the Innovation Lead for a local WA based management consultancy. She spends her days designing, developing and implementing innovative programs that enhance customer experience. 

As well as furthering her corporate career and raising her two daughers, Premila devotes time and energy to global charities focusing on improving the lives of women and children including the Aspire Foundation. 

Premila strongly believes that we don’t get here on our own, only by passing the baton on can we make the world a better place. 

We’ve included the audio straight from the event, so you’ll get a feel for the high energy, fun (and a little bit of dancing) that we had going on. 

In true designer fashion, Premila handed out post-it notes and sharpies and had us all scribbling our thoughts on post-it notes at each break. Rather than let you hear the white noise of our background, we’ll put a few second music break at each point and you can pause and play along yourself. You may even give yourself more than 2 mins per session if you’re not under time pressure like us! 

Let us know what you come up with! Enjoy! 

Links  

* Connect with Primila Jina on LinkedIn * The Juggle Community, our online Facebook group * Find us on Instagram and Facebook * The Juggle website, where you can find all episodes of The Juggle and sign up to be notified when a new episode is released 

Happy juggling! 

Today we’re sharing the second of 3 presentations from our Design Your Decade 100 episode party back in March. 

Dr Marny Lishman, joined our panel of guest speakers to share her view on managing the juggle from a psychologist’s perspective.  

Marny is a Health & Community Psychologist, Personal Coach and Channel 9 Perth’s Resident Psychologist. She works with professionals to facilitate personal and professional growth. Marny believes that the challenges that many people face are that they lack the knowledge, the mindset and the lifestyle balance that one needs to live a healthy, satisfying and fulfilling life.  

Marny started her presentation by talking about the many different hats we wear and how we don’t fit neatly into a particular box. She shares three mantras that we should adopt to lead a live where we thrive, not just survive:  

1. Know thyself 2. Eyes on your own lane 3. Own it 

Recently, Dr Marny distilled many of her ideas in her book – A Beautiful Mess – How to thrive in a modern world. In it she discusses the areas where people get stuck and the little things they can do to get unstuck. So if you like what she has to say, be sure to check out her book too. 

Links mentioned in this episode:  

* Connect with Dr Marny Lishman (and buy her book!) here * The Juggle Community, our online Facebook group * Find us on Instagram and Facebook * The Juggle website, where you can find all episodes of The Juggle and sign up to be notified when a new episode is released 

Happy juggling! 

Back in March (when we were still allowed to socialise!) we held an event to celebrate 100 episodes of The Juggle Podcast.  

Jo and I met in early 2018 and quickly discovered that we had a similar vision: we wanted the world to be a place where women didn’t feel like they needed to leave their career when they had children. Where they didn’t feel “less” because they were choosing to work flexibly. Where they didn’t feel alone and overwhelmed. 

We created The Juggle Podcast and The Juggle Community on Facebook. We now have over 800 women in that community, have passed 100 episodes on the podcast, have over 53,000 downloads, and now have listeners around the world.  

We’re all busy going through the motions of life and we don’t often make time to stop, pause and reflect on what we’ve done. So we made sure we did this time! 

Over the next few episodes we’ll share the presentations given by our amazing guest speakers at the event as we celebrated 100 episodes, celebrated #IWD2020 and #eachforequal and designed our juggle for the coming decade. 

First up was The Hon Justice Jenni Hill. Justice Hill joined us as a guest back on ep 91 and joined us again at the event to address the audience.  

Justice Hill has had a distinguished career in the legal industry culminating in her appointment to the Supreme Court of WA in May 2019.  Justice Hill’s family includes her husband and two teenagers, Lachlan and Sophie. 

Justice Hill gave a really touching and pertinent talk about the importance of sharing our stories – both the good and the bad; the importance of flexible work done right; and how we can support each other in little ways that can often be much bigger than we ever intend. 

Links mentioned in this episode:  

* Listen back to our interview with Justice Hill in episode 91 * The Juggle Community, our online Facebook group * Find us on Instagram and Facebook * The Juggle website, where you can find all episodes of The Juggle and sign up to be notified when a new episode is released 

Until next time, happy juggling! 

We’re back talking #thejuggle, this time joined by guest Dr Jemma Green, the Executive Chairman and Cofounder of Power Ledger, mother of two and serious super star!

Power Ledger is a blockchain powered peer to peer energy and carbon credit trading platform that now operates in several countries.  If that in itself isn’t enough work, Jemma is also an expert in residence at Curtin University helping with the commercialisation of tech and the start up ecosystem; a board member, regular speaker on technology and leadership in business, and  a mother of two. 

We speak to Jemma about life as a loosely organised chaos – how she juggles all these responsibilities, her support networks and life as a female in very male dominated industries. She may have a surprise in store for us too!

Episode links

* Connect with Dr Jemma Green on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook * The Juggle Community, our online Facebook group * Subscribe to The Juggle Podcast on Apple Podcastst, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or Android  * Find us on Instagram and Facebook * The Juggle website, where you can find all episodes of The Juggle and sign up to be notified when a new episode is released 

Happy juggling! 

In today’s episode we are joined again by Katrina Alilovic, our resident psychologist, and Jo’s sister. 

We figure people probably need a psychologist more now than ever as our worlds are turned upside down and our feelings are changing constantly. 

During the episode we share how our lives have changed so far with kids home from school and the changes to how we work. Katrina shares her personal story of settling into a new normal and how she has instigated family meetings to ensure that everyone remains well and sane. 

We stop short of giving too much advice on how to manage things as you are no doubt bombarded with “how to’s” everywhere. Some of our key take aways are: 

* Be prepared for the long haul. * Create a new “do” and “don’t” list that takes into account your changed circumstances. * Allow yourself to feel all the things – tired, loss, resentment and whatever else. Give yourself time to deal with things. 

Links mentioned in this episode:  

* If you want to connect with Katrina Alilovic you can find her here * The Juggle Community, our online Facebook group * Subscribe to The Juggle Podcast on Apple Podcastst, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or Android  * Find us on Instagram and Facebook * The Juggle website, where you can find all episodes of The Juggle and sign up to be notified when a new episode is released * Episode 58 – The Walkaway Job  

Happy juggling! 

We hope everyone is staying safe and well during these crazy times. We know many of you are now working from home with kids so here are a few of our tips from this week’s episode…  

* If both yourself and your partner are working – negotiate a roster with them. Think about when you work best (eg. Early morning, late at night, whether you like a solid block of 5 hours or prefer shorter blocks of 1-2 hours) * Ask a family member or friend for help. Perhaps you can set up little mini school arrangements between you. * Budget in some down time. It will be really easy to feel like you are on all the time.  * Negotiate with your employer – perhaps negotiate that your work expectations are reduced during that time. You may also be able to access paid carers leave. * Communicate with other staff and clients about your current working situation and be open about it. More than likely some of your clients will be in the same boat! * Plan out a few activities ahead of time now so they can be pulled out of the cupboard when needed. Time to get creative! * Don’t forget your kids! Plan some activities that are just for you and your children so you’re still fitting in that quality time and not feeling overwhelmed. 

If you’re an employer, Jo is putting up lots of good information on her website in regards to working from home and managing staff obligations. 

Stay safe Jugglers! 

Competition time! 

LawCPD’s great competition will soon be drawing to a close. Enter here for your chance to win 10 hours of CPD courses of your choice (drawn 27/3/2020).  Everyone who enters will receive a discount code to save $25 off their first purchase. 

Links  

* The Juggle Community, our online Facebook group * Subscribe to The Juggle Podcast on Apple Podcastst, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or Android  * Find us on Instagram and Facebook * The Juggle website, where you can find all episodes of The Juggle and sign up to be notified when a new episode is released