Ungovernable Women with Portia Mount
"Ungovernable Women" (formerly The Manifista) dives into the lives and careers of extraordinary women who have redefined success on their own terms. Each episode offers a glimpse into the journeys of trailblazing women who dare to lead audacious, purpose-driven lives and the lessons they learned along the way.
Ungovernable Women with Portia Mount
Mini Pod: Time Management & Self-Care for the Sandwich Generation
Portia talks about the challenges faced by the sandwich generation - those simultaneously raising children and caring for aging parents. She shares her approach to time management and self-care, emphasizing the importance of nurturing yourself first in order to better support those who depend on you.
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Portia Mount on LinkedIn
Hey squad, it's your host, portia Mount. Thanks to so many of you who have downloaded and subscribed to our latest season of Ungovernable Women, I want to try something a little different. In addition to our longer podcast episodes, I am going to be recording mini pods. Now, if you follow me over on Instagram, I'm often sharing personal stories from my life as a mom, sports mom, athlete, as well as insights from my work as a fractional chief marketing officer and executive coach. These mini pod episodes are meant to give you a little glimpse into my life and share wisdom from the trenches of my business. So thanks for listening and let's get after it. Hey y'all, welcome to my first mini pod.
Speaker 1:I'm doing something a little bit different. I am not dressed up, I am, it's late in the evening and I have been thinking a lot about doing these episodes for a while, these shorter episodes, because I have so many things that happen during the week where I'm like, oh, I'd love to just share that, share my thoughts, share my ideas, share my experiences with you. So that's what I'm doing, and so sometimes you're going to see me with full Zoom, face on, glammed up, and sometimes you're going to see me like this, really dressed down and winding my day down. It's a Sunday, and Sundays are really important for me because I use them to prep for the week, get the kids ready and get my mind around the week, and I was in a meeting this afternoon with a service club that I belong to and there was a really powerful discussion that I want to share with you, because I think so many of us are going through it right now. Life is lifing really hard for so many of us. If you're a working mom or working parent, you know what I mean, especially if you're an entrepreneur. There is a lot to manage, and one of the things that I know I've noticed is many of my friends who are raising kids are also helping out aging parents, and in several of those cases, those friends have lost a parent and we're in that weird season it's not a weird season, I guess. We're in that season of life where we are starting to lose our parents and while, at the same time, we are trying to raise our children, and that is so stressful and really just can knock the wind out of you. So I want to talk to you a little bit about time and how I think about my time and also being part of the sandwich generation.
Speaker 1:And a quick story I live in the southeast, my sister lives on the west coast and a couple of years ago my dad became deathly ill. Deathly ill and my sister, who lives closer to my parents who are in Las Vegas, went out to help my mom out. And when she got out there my sister called me and said hey, listen, dad's really sick, you need to get out there. And so, uh, of course I dropped everything and um got on a plane to spend a stretch of time with my parents and, um, I was still in my corporate job, so I had to sort of pick up and leave that and my husband took over the kids, and that time I realized how much help my mom needed, everything from doctor's appointments to filing insurance for the dogs, vet's appointments. There was just so much to do, and I know so many of you have parents nearby who are doing this work, and one of the things that I tried to do while I was out there unsuccessfully, I might add was convince my parents to move closer to one of us, either myself or my sister. I was lobbying for the Southeast here in North Carolina because the cost of living is a lot cheaper, the weather's good and there's really good medical care out here. Well, I will just share that.
Speaker 1:My dad eventually did rebound, but it was just really frightening and it was so stressful for the entire family, and so many of us are dealing with that really having to be caregivers, especially when your parents are very close to your parents and raising kids and that puts a lot of pressure on your schedule, on your daily work. And the thing that I've thought about over the last few years, especially as I've watched my friends experience losses I have also had losses in 2012. My brother died very tragically. That's for another story, 2012. My brother died very tragically that's for another story and it just the whole thing made me rethink how I'm using my time and where I'm spending my time, and you know, it is the one thing that we never get back and it's so precious, and so I wanted to just share a few thoughts for you in terms of how I think about it.
Speaker 1:First of all, when I lost my brother and um, when I started, when I became an entrepreneur and had to really lean into the work of leading a business and still parent my kids and still support my family. All of a sudden, those requests for my time, whether they were an hour or volunteering for something, really became very important, and I have a motto, and it's this if it's not a hell yes, it's a no, and I have had to get really good at saying no, because I don't have the kind of free time that I used to. And, ironically, even as a corporate executive, I traveled all the time and I had almost no time. But I have found, even as a corporate executive, I traveled all the time and I had almost no time, but I have found that even as an entrepreneur, I just my time is used differently, and so that has been really important for me to really think about where my priorities lie. What kinds of choices and trade-offs do I need to make in order to have the kind of quality of life that I want? And if you're taking care of parents and you're taking care of kids, all of a sudden you have to make very different choices about where you spend your time. Maybe you can't volunteer as much, maybe even your actual job needs to change because you're needed. I think this is why this hybrid and remote schedule has been so great, especially for women, because we often are the ones who take care of our families. So the other thing that I think about then, in terms of choices and trade-offs, is I just think about how do I leverage my support network.
Speaker 1:I'm an oldest child, I am aggressively independent, trying to get over that, and I really had a hard time asking for help. People would say things to me like let me know if you need anything, and of course I would say, oh yeah, of course I will. And what I realized is I never did ask for help because, to be candid, I didn't know what to ask for help on. But now I know that one and so but now I know that one my support network is everything, and I've had friends come over and help me with the kids. I've had friends run errands for me. I have had friends just bring a dinner and I would say to you, especially as you're juggling, taking care of your parents and raising kids, don't be afraid to ask for help. We will all need it at some point, and the village is there for that reason and it's such a gift, and so that's a reminder for you.
Speaker 1:The other thing I think about is just in terms of taking care of myself. I am a recovering workaholic and it's hard. I'm one of those people who could work all the time, but I have worked very hard to create boundaries in my life, where this is especially needed when you're an entrepreneur, because you could literally work 24 hours a day on your own business. But I have really learned to think about how I prioritize downtime. If you follow me on Instagram, I see a trainer. I work with a trainer, which I love just because it gets my butt in gear, and those days I feel lazy. I can't do that when I'm with my trainer, but Tuesdays and Thursdays I work out with my trainer and that is a set date on my calendar and I really, really try not to move it unless I have to travel. So that's something that's really, really important.
Speaker 1:The other thing that has been incredibly important for me is just staying organized. I have shared online that I have ADHD, and so I'm very easily distracted. I can struggle with getting tasks either started or starting too many projects and not finishing them, and so I work really hard to stay organized. I live by my planner. I actually have a paper planner. I use my Google calendar, of course, like everybody, and I always joke that if I ever go missing. Just look at my Google calendar because you will know exactly where I've been. But I also keep a paper calendar because I like to visually see all my major appointments and events written out and it's just a way for me to mentally organize the work that I'm doing. So that's a hack for me.
Speaker 1:I work really hard to keep my workspace very clean. If you see me online, you'll see this is my home office here, but I have a standing desk, I have a walking treadmill and I have very organized drawers, and I made the investment a year ago to hire an organizer to organize the major places where the family spent time my office, our kitchen, bathrooms just because that visual clutter for me and I think for so many of us, is distracting and also we suck time away because we can't find things, and so really making sure all our spaces are neat and tidy has been a lifesaver for me. I find cleanliness and organized spaces very calming. Maybe you might too.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I think is really important in thinking about just the time management and being a sandwich generation, raising kids, taking care of parents is just preparing for the inevitable financial, unexpected financial hit that might be a medical bill. You didn't expect that might be a repair that needs to happen. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had to replace the HVAC on our top floor in our house and, believe me, it is not cheap to replace an HVAC. It wasn't anything that was in the budget, and so we had to go into savings and to pay for it, and so, luckily, we had it, but it was really. It was an expense that we could do without, but I'm glad that we had a rainy day fund that we could pay for it. So thinking about how you can prepare for unexpected expenses like medical bills, home repairs, car repairs, is really important. And finally, again, I just want to say the importance of prioritizing and really thinking about where you spend your time.
Speaker 1:We all, I think, especially as women, we have a hard time saying no, and we love to volunteer. We get asked to be the room mom or the team mom, and I have learned to say no and not feel guilty about it. In the past, I would say yes and I would feel resentful and angry, which is also not healthy, and so I encourage you to just really think about where is my time best spent. How do I make sure that when I am saying yes, it's a hell yes and how do I make sure that it truly is a hell yes and, if it's not, release myself from being guilty, feeling guilty if it's a no, because your time is valuable. Speaking of time, one last little story I want to share with you and I think it just speaks to the importance of your friends and your network, and I read so many articles about how hard it is to make new friends, to maintain friendships later in life.
Speaker 1:I'm a Gen Xer. I had kids late in life, so my kids are quite young. I have a 15 and a nine-year-old and a lot of our friends. Their kids are in college and so we just are on very different tracks. And I joke that we're in the high contact parenting stage still, where we are going to school presentations and practices and games. One of our kids does travel sports, and so we're just really busy with kid stuff. And I found that between the business and trying to be a good daughter and a good daughter, good sister and raising my kids there just didn't feel like a lot of time for friendships, and so this year I have really put a premium and priority on connecting with my friends, whether that's going out for drinks, meeting up for lunch, going out for dinner, just catching up. And I used to say no far more often than I said yes, because I had kid stuff, family stuff, and what I realized is that those friendships, my friendships, really fill me up. They energize me, my friends pour into me and I pour into them, and so I have made it a priority to stay connected to them.
Speaker 1:Just the other day I reconnected with a friend I hadn't spoken to in a couple of years. We were very good friends when we worked together in New York and I just adore her and she's so lovely. We knew each other before either one of us had kids and before all of life happened. She's got four kids. I've got two, she now lives in another, she's left New York and now she's living in the Southwest. And she called me up out of the blue.
Speaker 1:I happened to be sitting in my car literally doing nothing because the kids were at events. I had my eyes closed in the car and then my phone rings and I see her name and we ended up talking for 90 minutes. It was like no time had gone by and we just talked about everything. We talked about work and what it was like. You know, all the stuff that's going on in the world right now. We talked about just our kids and some of the challenges we were experiencing, and by the end of that call, I just felt revived and I had this huge smile on my face. She had totally made my day and so, as I think about that, it's more of that, and we also, by the way, said that we would never let that much time go by.
Speaker 1:I frequently, by the way, text my friends quite a bit and then we will jump on a call, or some of us use Marco Polo, but I just, you know, in closing, want you to think about that. We're in this time that's really challenging, especially if you're caring for parents, caring for kids, you're working full-time, either in your own business or in a company, and our time is so precious. And think about where you want to really spend it, what truly matters to you, and, along the way, think about how you can take care of yourself. As women, we burn the candle at both ends so often, and we deserve to be able to have ease and rest in our lives, even when life is demanding so much from us. So thanks for hanging out with me. Let me know what your thoughts are. Reach out to me, dm me on Instagram and at Portia Mount and let me know what you think and what your experience might be with this. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'll see you next time.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to Ungovernable Women. Our producer and editor is Megan King. Our social media manager is Destiny Eicher. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you listen to your pods. Your ratings help other listeners find us. You can follow and DM us on Instagram at ungovernablexwomen, and TikTok at ungovernablexwomen. See you next time.