I’m team dual-system (well actually, it’s a tri-system) on the calendar. Ryan and I have a shared digital calendar that is home for everything anyone is doing. I do a week ahead review each weekend and input any new items into my paper calendar that I carry basically everywhere with me. I also prefer the visualization of seeing the full calendar laid out on paper and while it is added time, I love and find great benefit to the process of manually mapping through my weekly plan. Finally, we also keep a big wall calendar in the kitchen that everyone can see that houses all of the kid activities, trips, family activities, and the dinner menu for the week. I’ve noticed Henry has started referencing it and likes to consult for countdowns to upcoming fun.
One thing I appreciate about your paper calendar approach is the added layer of control and thought it gives you around your calendar. You rarely commit to something on the spot because you don’t have your calendar in front of you. I imagine the added time to decision limits your frequency of saying yes to something that you later wish was a no. But selfishly, I’d still like you to have your calendar with you at basketball games for planning purposes 😂
BETHANY! I literally had a paragraph in an earlier draft about how I appreciate my paper calendar because it keeps me from committing to things on the spot, and that is a valuable delay for an introvert!! Great minds.
I agree with the dual-system calendars. I work through my paper calendar weekly, but it is nice that my husband and I have a shared digital calendar which helps for scheduling and planning ahead.
Our grocery setup looks a little different, but it works well for us: We do a weekly Walmart pickup (and have had just one error in almost 3 years, which I recognize makes us an anomaly/contributes to me liking this!), then buy our produce from either our town’s co-op or farmers market. Gives us time back in our lives by eliminating the big shop but still lets us be in the stores/our community. Foster and I also tend to do at least one small grocery run in person during the week (mainly because the boy drinks more milk than anyone I know).
Your point about asking real life people for recommendations really resonates with this enneagram 5! I went down a lot of scary parenting Reddit rabbit holes when Foster was a baby and had to remind myself that seldom is someone with a normal, positive experience writing about it on Reddit. I had to release the desire for the absolute BEST answer with more stress and settle for a pretty good answer with less anxiety. It is a worthy trade off, though hard for my information loving brain 😂
It's funny - I would have never thought of any of these things as swaps! All 5 are things I do in regular life (although I do also cling to the shared google calendar my husband and I have - it is a critical part of our daily functioning ha! But my paper planner is always with me too)
I would add a perhaps corollary to the cooking at home one - I have also tried to use cookbooks in my house for recipes rather than googling (this is not an always thing but I find overall my tried and true published cookbooks are far more reliable in quality than a random blog on the internet!). This also has an advantage of making it easy for my girls to help me prep dinner or bake - and when we really have our act together - dig through to plan our meals for the week.
I rarely search for tips on the internet except for sometimes travel tips (your travel blogs are so handy!) but I am pretty good at relying on people I know for other thoughts (or I have a bad habit of just not asking things ha!) I will say I have excellent coworkers who are great for recs on travel, good restaurants, good books, and parenting stuff - librarians are the best knowledge workers out there and so I usually go to my colleagues for a lot of things first!
Oh my gosh, a crew of librarians at your fingertips is the dream!
I didn't have room to get into this nuance in today's piece, but whether it's right or wrong, I'd put certain internet sources in the category of "people who have earned my trust over time"! Perhaps selfishly, I think there is a difference between a recommendation from someone whose blog I've followed for years and a random Instagram reel I stumble upon with no context.
Yes! There are some blogs (and then their linked social media accounts) I've followed for 10 plus years and I know if I can trust their recommendations or not! (and also their readership who can be avid commenters - creating mini communities!)
I just started using the online calendar with my husband and it’s been so helpful because I can make the next appointment when I’m leaving wherever place and that feels like such a load off.
Also love kindle for this phase of young children, hard to get to the library for myself! Also still up in the night with my baby so it’s nice to read without turning on a light.
I keep a physical planner that also stays open in our dining room and keep all of my to-dos on there as well. I actually hold on to my planners almost as a type of a one line a day journal that chronicles our family life in different years- what we ate, how we spent our days. Then we also have a wall calendar and David and I share a digital calendar which I frequently forget to update much to his frustration!
Grocery shopping is one of my least favorite activities actually, but David loves it! So he is our family's main shopper and I am so grateful to him for it!
Your last point about asking IRL folks for advice has been SO incredibly helpful to us in recent years as we have now had 2 floods in our downstairs. We chatted with a couple repairmen that posted on NextDoor, but our favorite repairmen were recommendations from neighbors and friends. What a difference it made!
I am curious about the other side of this conversation? What tasks have you outsourced with the aid of technology? And what are your thoughts on how helpful/not helpful they have been?
Ditto to your last question!! I think one of the things that’s interesting about this topic is almost everyone to some degree outsources *something*… it’s just a matter of what.
I’ve also wondered about the planner memory thing. There are seasons of life I SO wish I had a daily record of!
A big one for me is recipes - i have been disappointed again and again with recipe blogs (sooo much scrolling, and often the recipes aren’t test more than once). Instead i own a cookbook collection and check out others from the library.
Love this, Liz! Yes, printing out all of my "internet recipes" and making a recipe binder to cook from a few years ago was a game changer. Are you familiar with The Defined Dish? Her cookbooks are some of my favorites!
I like my paper calendar AND I like that my husband and I have a shared google calendar that we can just look at easily when we need to schedule something.
I’m with you on the grocery shopping. I’m a little type A and am very particular about which produce I pick. I saw another comment about a CSA and we have considered that to try to be more adventurous in what we are eating but I think a trip to the farmer’s market weekly when it opens back up in May sounds more fun.
We don’t have that many people in our life that we feel close with so I love that my neighborhood has a Facebook group that I can ask for recommendations about who to hire for certain jobs or something else I’m looking for. I haven’t posted on my Facebook in over 6 years but I love having the 3-4 groups that I can rely on when I have a question.
Yes, my neighborhood Facebook group is so helpful! And I think that's in part because these people are my actual neighbors, who I see walking their dogs and at school pickup, rather than anonymous people on the internet :)
The thought of someone else picking out my groceries, particularly the produce…yikes! For the last swap, I’m torn here. As minimal as I am with technology, I love a good reddit thread so much that its become an inside joke between me and my husband. :) Also I rely heavily on Google reviews when seeking local activities, restaurants, travel planning, etc. and Amazon reviews or reddit for purchases. Your blog’s travel posts are some of my favorite (of course, I know you in real life, but still rely on your blog/substack for a lot of life advice!!)
I didn't have room to get into this nuance in today's piece, but whether it's right or wrong, I'd put certain internet sources in the category of "people who have earned my trust over time"! Perhaps selfishly, I think there is a difference between a recommendation from someone whose blog I've followed for years and a random Instagram reel I stumble upon with no context.
Both Omar and I recently changed jobs (at our same companies!) that offer flexibility in a different way (more Flex Time for vacations/days off, but more busy in the time we are actually working), which pushed us to start grocery delivery. Part of it is from a CSA that we LOVE, which is fine, but I actually kind of hate the grocery delivery from our grocery store. It has nothing to do with our shoppers or what we are getting, but I think I do miss going to the grocery store! A lot of my mental brain space has been going to trying to figure out what we can outsource instead of grocery shopping recently. So all this to say, I agree with you on the grocery shopping thing :)
Also number 5 has been a huge thing for us recently too. In reality, most advice I read on the internet just stresses me out, whereas my friends are more likely to say “it’s probably fine!” or “my kid did that too!”
I’ve also had to put some limits on text messages and when I check them. I’ve tried, instead, if I haven’t seen the people I’m texting with regularly, asking to schedule some time to see each other in person - whether that be something local with someone who lives nearby, or planning a weekend trip to visit or to have someone visit. If I’m texting with someone a lot, they are clearly important to me, so instead of leaving it in the digital world, I’m really pushing for it to be in person.
Love your last point so much, Chelsey!! I can think of two friendships specifically where we have agreed to try to discuss things less over text and more often in person. Sometimes we'll text each other bullet points of things to talk about the next time we're in person! :)
I’m team dual-system (well actually, it’s a tri-system) on the calendar. Ryan and I have a shared digital calendar that is home for everything anyone is doing. I do a week ahead review each weekend and input any new items into my paper calendar that I carry basically everywhere with me. I also prefer the visualization of seeing the full calendar laid out on paper and while it is added time, I love and find great benefit to the process of manually mapping through my weekly plan. Finally, we also keep a big wall calendar in the kitchen that everyone can see that houses all of the kid activities, trips, family activities, and the dinner menu for the week. I’ve noticed Henry has started referencing it and likes to consult for countdowns to upcoming fun.
One thing I appreciate about your paper calendar approach is the added layer of control and thought it gives you around your calendar. You rarely commit to something on the spot because you don’t have your calendar in front of you. I imagine the added time to decision limits your frequency of saying yes to something that you later wish was a no. But selfishly, I’d still like you to have your calendar with you at basketball games for planning purposes 😂
BETHANY! I literally had a paragraph in an earlier draft about how I appreciate my paper calendar because it keeps me from committing to things on the spot, and that is a valuable delay for an introvert!! Great minds.
I agree with the dual-system calendars. I work through my paper calendar weekly, but it is nice that my husband and I have a shared digital calendar which helps for scheduling and planning ahead.
Our grocery setup looks a little different, but it works well for us: We do a weekly Walmart pickup (and have had just one error in almost 3 years, which I recognize makes us an anomaly/contributes to me liking this!), then buy our produce from either our town’s co-op or farmers market. Gives us time back in our lives by eliminating the big shop but still lets us be in the stores/our community. Foster and I also tend to do at least one small grocery run in person during the week (mainly because the boy drinks more milk than anyone I know).
Your point about asking real life people for recommendations really resonates with this enneagram 5! I went down a lot of scary parenting Reddit rabbit holes when Foster was a baby and had to remind myself that seldom is someone with a normal, positive experience writing about it on Reddit. I had to release the desire for the absolute BEST answer with more stress and settle for a pretty good answer with less anxiety. It is a worthy trade off, though hard for my information loving brain 😂
You and me both, sister! Enneagram fives just trying to live our lives ❤️
It's funny - I would have never thought of any of these things as swaps! All 5 are things I do in regular life (although I do also cling to the shared google calendar my husband and I have - it is a critical part of our daily functioning ha! But my paper planner is always with me too)
I would add a perhaps corollary to the cooking at home one - I have also tried to use cookbooks in my house for recipes rather than googling (this is not an always thing but I find overall my tried and true published cookbooks are far more reliable in quality than a random blog on the internet!). This also has an advantage of making it easy for my girls to help me prep dinner or bake - and when we really have our act together - dig through to plan our meals for the week.
I rarely search for tips on the internet except for sometimes travel tips (your travel blogs are so handy!) but I am pretty good at relying on people I know for other thoughts (or I have a bad habit of just not asking things ha!) I will say I have excellent coworkers who are great for recs on travel, good restaurants, good books, and parenting stuff - librarians are the best knowledge workers out there and so I usually go to my colleagues for a lot of things first!
Oh my gosh, a crew of librarians at your fingertips is the dream!
I didn't have room to get into this nuance in today's piece, but whether it's right or wrong, I'd put certain internet sources in the category of "people who have earned my trust over time"! Perhaps selfishly, I think there is a difference between a recommendation from someone whose blog I've followed for years and a random Instagram reel I stumble upon with no context.
Yes! There are some blogs (and then their linked social media accounts) I've followed for 10 plus years and I know if I can trust their recommendations or not! (and also their readership who can be avid commenters - creating mini communities!)
I just started using the online calendar with my husband and it’s been so helpful because I can make the next appointment when I’m leaving wherever place and that feels like such a load off.
Also love kindle for this phase of young children, hard to get to the library for myself! Also still up in the night with my baby so it’s nice to read without turning on a light.
I keep a physical planner that also stays open in our dining room and keep all of my to-dos on there as well. I actually hold on to my planners almost as a type of a one line a day journal that chronicles our family life in different years- what we ate, how we spent our days. Then we also have a wall calendar and David and I share a digital calendar which I frequently forget to update much to his frustration!
Grocery shopping is one of my least favorite activities actually, but David loves it! So he is our family's main shopper and I am so grateful to him for it!
Your last point about asking IRL folks for advice has been SO incredibly helpful to us in recent years as we have now had 2 floods in our downstairs. We chatted with a couple repairmen that posted on NextDoor, but our favorite repairmen were recommendations from neighbors and friends. What a difference it made!
I am curious about the other side of this conversation? What tasks have you outsourced with the aid of technology? And what are your thoughts on how helpful/not helpful they have been?
Thankful for you friend!
That last suggestion sounds like the perfect follow-up post! On the books!
Ditto to your last question!! I think one of the things that’s interesting about this topic is almost everyone to some degree outsources *something*… it’s just a matter of what.
I’ve also wondered about the planner memory thing. There are seasons of life I SO wish I had a daily record of!
A big one for me is recipes - i have been disappointed again and again with recipe blogs (sooo much scrolling, and often the recipes aren’t test more than once). Instead i own a cookbook collection and check out others from the library.
Love this, Liz! Yes, printing out all of my "internet recipes" and making a recipe binder to cook from a few years ago was a game changer. Are you familiar with The Defined Dish? Her cookbooks are some of my favorites!
I like my paper calendar AND I like that my husband and I have a shared google calendar that we can just look at easily when we need to schedule something.
I’m with you on the grocery shopping. I’m a little type A and am very particular about which produce I pick. I saw another comment about a CSA and we have considered that to try to be more adventurous in what we are eating but I think a trip to the farmer’s market weekly when it opens back up in May sounds more fun.
We don’t have that many people in our life that we feel close with so I love that my neighborhood has a Facebook group that I can ask for recommendations about who to hire for certain jobs or something else I’m looking for. I haven’t posted on my Facebook in over 6 years but I love having the 3-4 groups that I can rely on when I have a question.
Yes, my neighborhood Facebook group is so helpful! And I think that's in part because these people are my actual neighbors, who I see walking their dogs and at school pickup, rather than anonymous people on the internet :)
The thought of someone else picking out my groceries, particularly the produce…yikes! For the last swap, I’m torn here. As minimal as I am with technology, I love a good reddit thread so much that its become an inside joke between me and my husband. :) Also I rely heavily on Google reviews when seeking local activities, restaurants, travel planning, etc. and Amazon reviews or reddit for purchases. Your blog’s travel posts are some of my favorite (of course, I know you in real life, but still rely on your blog/substack for a lot of life advice!!)
I didn't have room to get into this nuance in today's piece, but whether it's right or wrong, I'd put certain internet sources in the category of "people who have earned my trust over time"! Perhaps selfishly, I think there is a difference between a recommendation from someone whose blog I've followed for years and a random Instagram reel I stumble upon with no context.
Both Omar and I recently changed jobs (at our same companies!) that offer flexibility in a different way (more Flex Time for vacations/days off, but more busy in the time we are actually working), which pushed us to start grocery delivery. Part of it is from a CSA that we LOVE, which is fine, but I actually kind of hate the grocery delivery from our grocery store. It has nothing to do with our shoppers or what we are getting, but I think I do miss going to the grocery store! A lot of my mental brain space has been going to trying to figure out what we can outsource instead of grocery shopping recently. So all this to say, I agree with you on the grocery shopping thing :)
Also number 5 has been a huge thing for us recently too. In reality, most advice I read on the internet just stresses me out, whereas my friends are more likely to say “it’s probably fine!” or “my kid did that too!”
I’ve also had to put some limits on text messages and when I check them. I’ve tried, instead, if I haven’t seen the people I’m texting with regularly, asking to schedule some time to see each other in person - whether that be something local with someone who lives nearby, or planning a weekend trip to visit or to have someone visit. If I’m texting with someone a lot, they are clearly important to me, so instead of leaving it in the digital world, I’m really pushing for it to be in person.
Love your last point so much, Chelsey!! I can think of two friendships specifically where we have agreed to try to discuss things less over text and more often in person. Sometimes we'll text each other bullet points of things to talk about the next time we're in person! :)