I have been happily reading your newsletter for a few months (found you via Both Are True) -- this is my first time commenting and I just had to because omg how this resonates. I am a mother of two (ages 5 & 10) and I find myself in a time of mothering and taking care of home as my main work. Your suggestion of the three-legged stool of paid work, life maintenance work and creative work makes so much sense. It seems simple but since society is not set up to support this framework, I haven’t considered a three-part balance like this before. Just last night, I was folding laundry, making piles on the bed (jinx!), and I thought -- this is relaxing. I’m actually kind of enjoying this. But then I thought -- what does it mean about me that I am enjoying this? (Sounds weird but hopefully makes sense?) Anyway - THANK YOU. This is extremely helpful.
Thanks for writing, Abby, and great to meet you! So interesting to have that thought - what does it mean about me if I enjoy laundry? I totally get it. I have had thought spirals like this: folding laundry is a nice break for me, but it's not productive, so maybe I'm just not someone who likes being productive, I guess I will just never amount to anything, anyone who has done anything big and important clearly doesn't spent AN HOUR doing laundry and enjoying it. Sigh. Seems like this is our culture speaking to me through my brain.
I think folding laundry is a wonderful example of how housework allows us to be in complete control of something in our busy, buzzing lives. Yes, we might be able to get someone else to do it, but we CAN do it and it feels good to get something done. I find cooking a similar activity. Preparing a meal, and it doesn't have to be award winning, creates instant gratification for me. It's a creative event that has a beginning and end. Folding laundry gives the folder a sense of accomplishment that Instagram cannot.
Rae Katz, it's a pleasure reading your articles! I rarely am able to find substacks that are truly interesting, easy to read and useful. Thank you for your work! 🐣
Love this, it reminds me of "On Work" by Kahlil Gibran (in The Prophet). I was going to quote an excerpt here, but the whole thing is really worth the read: https://poets.org/poem/work-4
Wowow. "Work is love made visible." I love the idea of doing different types of work "as if your beloved" will benefit from them. Thanks for sharing this, so potent.
It's does seem to me that the "menial" or maintenance tasks of life are the ones that connect us most to the earth, and he puts it so beautifully: "You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth."
Feels like the advice to outsource housework is a recent manifestation of the broader, long-term diminishment and undervaluing of traditional “women’s work.” I’m with you--let’s challenge this diminishment. I also find life maintenance work grounding, connecting me to the physicality and tangibility of life as well to other people. The immediacy of the results are uniquely satisfying to me. So much of my other work has uncertain outcomes but if I fold the laundry carefully, the clothes are there to behold.
Yes, immediacy! That's so true! For me, wiping the kitchen counters is the daily practice that most gives me this feeling: the kitchen (and my life?) feels a mess, and then the act of wiping everything down provides an immediate, lovely, cleansed feeling. I like your use of the word, "behold." Totally, let's behold our folded laundry.
You may have seen the link to The Prophet that Breena posted above (https://poets.org/poem/work-4); this line stood out to me, related to your comment:
"in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life, / And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret."
Yes! Wiping the kitchen counter is the tangible completion of something that can be done quickly and makes life feel more in sync—and it also feels like a simple way of taking care of self and family.
First time reading your newsletter and this resonated! My husband and I went recently from two executive level jobs and four kids to just one (thanks in large part to my stage 4 cancer diagnosis, although I was the one who stayed employed). Our income has been halved, and we stopped outsourcing laundry and meal prep; but there is no question we are so much happier. To the questions you posed: we pay our weekly cleaner more than she asks and make sure everyone in the family is openly appreciative of the role she plays in our lives. And my language for “people like me” is “pleasing achiever,” sometimes preceded by “reformed” if I’m feeling optimistic.
Wow, it seems like you and your family made some big changes that most people would make all kinds of excuses to avoid--giving up "prestige" and income and taking back household tasks. I guess these are the kinds of gifts offered by something like a cancer diagnosis and other lifequakes (to use Bruce Feiler's term - brucefeiler.substack.com.) I'm so sorry to hear that you got that kind of news. I am equally heart-warmed to hear about your happier state of living.
Yes to "pleasing achiever" 😊. Yes to "sometimes-reformed" 😃
And, I’m glad to say I’m not sorry about my diagnosis: it’s the best worst thing that ever happened to me! My Substack looks back on my four year journey en route to the 5th anniversary of my diagnosis to extract what I learned along the way. Sometimes I even proof read it. ; )
The lucky ones are those who manage to combine the paid work and the creative pursuits. Unless you think getting paid will inevitably take away some of the soul-enrichment from the creative pursuits? I’d guess some writers (to use one example) have stuff they produce to get paid and some more personal creations that they pursue just for themselves.
Do you ever just do the menial stuff without an audiobook/distraction? I found a few years ago that so much of my day was taken up with podcasts to distract myself from the boring menial work of day to day life (cooking/cleaning/commuting) and worried I might be missing something. Have since tried experimented at just focusing on the task without distractions and can feel quite meditative.
I'm glad the triad resonated! It's interesting to think about people with creative professions. I've generally thought that my generation (millennials) has been a little deluded in thinking that work should ideally provide both adequate monetary support and full creative fulfillment (I actually wrote a cartoon about this once :) https://www.instagram.com/p/B08lkCKj9cg/?hl=en). But certainly some people will be able to find work that is also highly soul enriching.
Even in these cases I think it would be worth carving out time for non-income generating creative work. If you are doing creative work for money, it will necessarily be subject to the constraints and demands of the economy. I also think everyone also has a natural limit on how many hours they can really do their work productively. Creative juices for a professional writer could also be channelled towards some totally different domain--choral singing or basket weaving or community building--and my guess is these may be more enriching than writing more.
Regarding limiting podcasts and audio--I have also been on this journey! I too felt like I was blocking out the world and my thoughts with audio. I have altered my approach to walks, most I do without headphones. I haven't yet applied this to laundry folding, and perhaps that's worth a try. I do try to balance how much I'm pushing myself and when--I don't want every moment of life to become an exercise in self control. I can be prone to overdoing things, and I am also looking for ease.
One question I had as I read your comment and responded: should the work of maintaining relationships also be included in the foundational types of work? Nurturing friendships, family and community definitely takes time and effort, and is clearly an important pillar of a life well lived. I wonder if it's a four-legged stool?
As someone who wrote fiction for a living for many years, I feel very fortunate to have been able to do so. But there have also been times when I got tied up in knots over book contracts. Substack has given me a space to be creative in a way that isn’t so clearly tied to the mortgage, and the non-commercial creative work I get to do here has fed energy and inspiration into the “professional” part of my writing life.
The fourth leg is interesting. It’s important, but for creative people in solitary occupations, like writing, you tend to naturally forget about that fourth leg (not the family part, but the friends and community part) because it is the hardest to fit in.
Interesting to hear your perspective as a professional fiction writer, Michelle! I definitely think that there is is just a different vibe or feeling when you are doing an activity outside of economic goals, even if it's the same activity. It reminds me of the adage "the medium is the message," which refers to the reality that the way we communicate and what we say is shaped by the platform on which we say it. The same could be said about doing creative work on the "platform" of the modern economy.
That's so interesting that even as a creative you feel a need for a creative space that doesn't feel as much like 'work'. There's clearly something about being able to do something on a whim, for its own sake, that we all need to feel completely fulfilled.
That cartoon is great! I agree on still need to carving out some creative work just for the self. I'd be hesitant to qualify relationship maintenance as work. Something about that framing makes it seem more like a have-to-do rather than the nourishing aspect of our lives that it should. If there are relationships that feel like arduous work then that might be a signal that they're not working out for some reason, perhaps time to let it go? I don't know, just spitballing generalisations here, which is probably dangerous territory!
Very interesting read. I am now retired, but early in my corporate career at General Electric I had similar heady experiences--in my case, more first-class travel to the Far East than skyscraper office. But the majority of time stateside--in meetings--ground down my soul & bored me completely.
I think your three-legged stool has an application to retirement, with the paid work support replaced by something challenging, structured, and outward-directed. In Connecticut, I discovered that 62+ are given free tuition at state universities. I enrolled in Botany, far afield (!) from any of my past studies. It’s fascinating, stimulating & interactive. I love being with the other students & doing labs.
Ah that's so cool that you enrolled in Botany class! It makes total sense to me that retirement would be a time (maybe the only time for most people?) when this type of three-legged life structure could actually be implemented. It sounds like you've really done it!
Totally agree. I’ve recently found peace in laundry folding though I typically don’t get through it all in one session. The turning point for me was just designating an area of my house the laundry-folding area (not my bed). There is pretty much always an in-process pile and I’m fine with that. Fold a few shirts, chase a child, answer an email is a pretty typical chain of events.
That is a really nice way of doing it and definitely an approach that would help me. Thanks! Also, it seems like it might evolve and change in different phases of life. Having young kids is the "there's always laundry" phase, for sure.
My mother was a master at the 3-legged stool approach. She had a full-time job as a nurse, she kept a clean house with beautifully ironed and folded laundry, and she had time for reading, needlework and gardening. Her hobby was planning family vacations. She used to say that the daily living activities were what kept her grounded and able to be happy at work. Sadly, I still struggle with this, but your article is making me think about the importance of these tasks and how to turn them into positives.
So cool that you had that kind of role model, Jennie. It seems rare today (in my circles) to find anyone who seems satisfied with their version of this. I do wonder if it was easier back then without the firehose of communications we have now, but maybe that's not giving your mom enough credit.
Interesting perspective but I disagree. I think the triad leaves out a number of things that are important - socializing, working out, self care. Also, I do think there is value in doing nothing sometimes and being with your thoughts. My paid work is not all consuming and I have good hours and still find it difficult to make the time for everything I want to do. I don’t subscribe to “outsourcing” everything that falls under “life maintenance”. But personally, “outsourcing” some of my “life maintenance” has significantly improved my quality of life and even allowed me to be a better parent.
That's interesting, and thanks for sharing your thoughts! I think I agree with you as well--doing nothing is so valuable, caring for oneself is so valuable. I was thinking mostly about taking the hours that people typically spend doing paid work, and breaking them across multiple types of "work." But I see how it paints a picture of a very work-focused life.
I am curious how you decide what to outsource and what to keep doing yourself. Is it just a financial calculation? If you could outsource it all, would you? That's the thought experiment that I'm playing with and, as with basically everything I write, I don't know if there's really a "right" answer.
Ah I see. Well if my 8 hour work day was split into these three buckets and I could spend the rest of the day on other stuff, then yes, I totally see your point!
Finances are a big part of it but also the trade off between cost, gained time, and mental health. Where I come from, most people I know outsource it all and that is how I grew up. There’s a big chunk of time you spend with family back home and I’ve never known anyone who felt like there was a void in their life because they did little to no “life maintenance” on their own. Happy to chat more about this!
Super interesting - yeah I certainly have a US-centric worldview here. It comes back to a mantra that I like to repeat to myself, especially when offering anything like advice - there are many good ways to live.
I am retired, after two twenty-year careers came to a close. I struggle with things I want to do because I don't have a schedule. The regimentation of working five days a week provided reminders, mile markers, for my day. Those all disappeared when I quit working. It's been two years, but I'm coming to grasp with how this works. Breakfast at 8 am, lunch at 1, dinner at 6. I struggled with taking a walk and practicing with my guitar every day, but now I am doing those things because I walk after lunch and I practice when my son leaves for work around 11 am. Basically, I have your three-pronged plan now, but it's a wobbly stool with only two legs since I've retired. I think that works for me, though. Thanks for your comments. New perspective is good perspective.
I love the perspective, Chuck. I too find a schedule to be absolutely imperative for me to feel happy and healthy. This is part of why I think the utopian (and very Silicon Valley) vision of Universal Basic Income would need to be paired with a total cultural overhaul in order to work--finding structure and meaning in a life without paid work can actually be super hard! It sounds like you've made a ton of progress on that and it could be a model for others in retirement as well.
As a retired Australian, I can totally recommend volunteering as the third leg. A very rewarding part of my retired life and excellent for discipline and for scheduling other things around.
This has come up a couple times on this thread - it's good to be reminded that volunteering or community-oriented work is an important leg of work, and it sounds like in retirement it can be a very central organizing force in a life.
Feb 25, 2023·edited Feb 25, 2023Liked by Rachel Katz
Here's a real life example.... my wife & I are fairly successful authors. Dollar wise, we earn enough to pay our bills, buy some toys, and do a vacay 2x / year in addition to skiing in winter & golf in summer. Yeah, we're living the dream. (We're in our 60's, so no kidlets...) It's been this way for about 4 years or so.
BUT...
You're dead right in your metaphor of a 3 legged stool.
Our work takes up on average 2, maybe 3 hrs / a day. That's a TON of free time.
Last summer I decided to have a daily 'To-Do' list that included chores on a granular level: such as
- walk the dogs
- make the bed
- cook supper
I'd add the weeklies as needed (laundry, grocery shopping, stuff like that)
My point:
These 'chores' that are daily/ weekly have to be done; but adding them to a list of things to do have in some odd way added a dimension of richness to my life. Oh, and cutting back on online stuff to 2 hrs/day is also a big plus. I had to b/c that 'To Do' list got bigger and bigger.
If my own personal experience counts for anything, you're right on the money. Good job!
There is no greater compliment than having someone with more life experience tell you
"you're right on the money." 😂 Thank you.
I think the way you are writing your to-do list gets at the original question that sparked this newsletter: why don't I figure these tasks in the same way that I would a work task? It's kind of bizarre, but almost universal.
I keep bringing this book up in this thread, but it's so relevant - I'm wondering if you've read or might like Oliver Burkeman's 4,000 Hours, Time Management for Mortals. It's really more of a philosophical work on time versus a time management book. It was a bestseller so this might be old news to you 😊
'this might be OLD news to you'... smart aleck, I saw what yer doin' there! BWHAHAHA!
Actually, for me at 64, despite the Arthur-itis, the memory lapses, etc etc... I'm blessed to be this age.
At the top of my daily to do list is a series of affirmations I've collected over the last 6 months. I treat them like morning prayers; they set the tone of my day. One of them is a very, very important one that was told to me by a young whippersnapper. It's all in caps b/c it's so damn important to know once you cross the 40 year mark:
GROWING OLD IS A PRIVILIGE. JUST ASK A KID DYING OF CANCER.
I will never, ever EVER bitch about elderly decline.
***
Now regarding the 4K hr book... I'm not familiar w/ that work, but I am familiar with, and am living proof of the theory of 2,000 hours of working at something makes you get good at it. This theory is pretty much an accepted maximum for learning a complex skill.
....Please fill this space with a long meandering commentary on how my wife & I went from being an overworked secretary and a frikkin' cab driver to authors....
Bottom line: from 2012 to 2017 we each slaved 50-60 hrs a week learning all the skills to become profitable authors. That comes out to about 4K hrs. EACH Writing is more of a craft than an art; yes there are true artists in this line of work, but TBH, most writers are craftspeople. Skill means more than inborn talent; unfulfilled genius is a cliché, y'know?
Ya gotta:
1. Put in the time and
2. Be willing to learn to get better.
Finally (do I run off at the keyboard or what!) If you liked my last comment on your post, you're gonna LOVE this observation:
The hallmark of a good writer is when the reader is unaware that they're reading. They're so caught up in the material that they're 'in' it as opposed to reading it.
Rae...you do that so damn well. I blew thru your original post like a hot knife thru butter. Ya got game, girl. Keep at it.
The 3-legged stool metaphor is an interesting one. Yet for me I see it as a 4-legged stool, the 4th leg being the selfless time given to others, whether that is to family members or neighbours or friends or as a volunteer in good causes or citizenship.
I love that, and it makes so much sense. I was pondering whether "building and nurturing relationships" belongs as a leg too (there's a discussion about that somewhere in this thread). I think that inadvertently by trying to articulate three legs, I also prompted thoughts about what the other most foundational elements are in a life well-lived.
It is also valuable for your kid to see both parents do the work of keeping life going. I look back at my childhood. I learned alot watching my Mom cook and maintain a household. My brother and I did chores. Learning these skills is an underrated part of growing up in this society.
I like the triad, but it is missing the leg of unpaid fun, leisure and self-care time. Productivity advice that ignores the desire for that part of life bugs me. That is the fourth leg for me! Now that is a stable table of life :-)
It makes sense to me to clearly delineate time for fun and leisure! What would life be without it? My original orientation was to delineate "types of work," but perhaps the word work in itself needs defining, or is just too limited.
I am currently reading Oliver Burkeman's funny and eye opening book, 4,000 hours: Time Management for Mortals, which is basically a book-length argument against time management in all forms. I am compelled by his argument that any type of "productivity advice" will never work because the more productive you are the more you find to do. The big goal is to make hard decisions about what NOT to do, so that you can actually do the meaningful things. I'm curious if you've read it or if that resonates. In any case, I hope not to provide productivity advice, and will be clearer in the future about my goals there 😊
No I have not heard of that book. I may need to look it up. Saying no to things that are not important or don’t spark joy is important. Speaking of Marie Kondo, she recently admitted she has given up on tidying after having her third child. It makes sense to me. Other people have lost it on her. People can reprioritize.
Yes! Thanks for this, Rae. The despair-inducing image of unfolded laundry on the bed you must now sleep in as you're getting tired was salient and scary! But you provide solutions and remind us of its importance 🙏
i have a sheep farm with my husband, nine dogs (at present, soon to become ten), two cats, and 200 sheep (at present, soon to become somewhere between 230 and 250). i'm tickled by the notion of assigning work to specific parcels of time! work on a farm is an ongoing presence from the time you wake up until you fall into bed at night — during the fast-approaching lambing time, even sleep is
interrupted several times a night to stagger out to the barn, flashlight in hand, to check for newborn lambies and their mamas who must be tended. we sandwich our many and varied chores between major work elements such as (his) teaching sheep-herding lessons and cleaning out the barn and (mine) cleaning up after husband and dogs, tending two giant vegetable gardens, grocery shopping and cooking, and my profession, painting portraits of people's dogs. somehow it all gets done, with the usual emergencies involving so many animals tucked in there. farm life isn't really compartmentalizable, is it? ;-)
First of all, your life sounds incredible, and hard, and unfathomable in the most compelling way. It's so funny that you write this particular comment right now--I am currently reading Oliver Burkeman's 4000 Hours, Time Management for Mortals (also mentioned above), and he describes people's relationship to time in Medieval times before clocks--it sounds so similar to what you are describing. The way he puts it, there is no concept of "getting through the task list," because farming is never done, and basically you just do what needs doing and then at some point the day is over. It's kind of a hard thing to imagine for those of us whose relationship to time is so centered around "having" it and "managing" it and "saving" it and "wasting" it.
he's so right about that! i do have a small notebook with daily lists of things i have to do *in addition* to all the usual things i have to do, though. ;-D
I have been happily reading your newsletter for a few months (found you via Both Are True) -- this is my first time commenting and I just had to because omg how this resonates. I am a mother of two (ages 5 & 10) and I find myself in a time of mothering and taking care of home as my main work. Your suggestion of the three-legged stool of paid work, life maintenance work and creative work makes so much sense. It seems simple but since society is not set up to support this framework, I haven’t considered a three-part balance like this before. Just last night, I was folding laundry, making piles on the bed (jinx!), and I thought -- this is relaxing. I’m actually kind of enjoying this. But then I thought -- what does it mean about me that I am enjoying this? (Sounds weird but hopefully makes sense?) Anyway - THANK YOU. This is extremely helpful.
Thanks for writing, Abby, and great to meet you! So interesting to have that thought - what does it mean about me if I enjoy laundry? I totally get it. I have had thought spirals like this: folding laundry is a nice break for me, but it's not productive, so maybe I'm just not someone who likes being productive, I guess I will just never amount to anything, anyone who has done anything big and important clearly doesn't spent AN HOUR doing laundry and enjoying it. Sigh. Seems like this is our culture speaking to me through my brain.
I think folding laundry is a wonderful example of how housework allows us to be in complete control of something in our busy, buzzing lives. Yes, we might be able to get someone else to do it, but we CAN do it and it feels good to get something done. I find cooking a similar activity. Preparing a meal, and it doesn't have to be award winning, creates instant gratification for me. It's a creative event that has a beginning and end. Folding laundry gives the folder a sense of accomplishment that Instagram cannot.
Rae Katz, it's a pleasure reading your articles! I rarely am able to find substacks that are truly interesting, easy to read and useful. Thank you for your work! 🐣
What a lovely compliment to receive, and very motivating. Thank you so much, Ted!
Love this, it reminds me of "On Work" by Kahlil Gibran (in The Prophet). I was going to quote an excerpt here, but the whole thing is really worth the read: https://poets.org/poem/work-4
Wowow. "Work is love made visible." I love the idea of doing different types of work "as if your beloved" will benefit from them. Thanks for sharing this, so potent.
It's does seem to me that the "menial" or maintenance tasks of life are the ones that connect us most to the earth, and he puts it so beautifully: "You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth."
Thank you for the link to “On Work”. I had never read that piece and it’s fabulous.
Feels like the advice to outsource housework is a recent manifestation of the broader, long-term diminishment and undervaluing of traditional “women’s work.” I’m with you--let’s challenge this diminishment. I also find life maintenance work grounding, connecting me to the physicality and tangibility of life as well to other people. The immediacy of the results are uniquely satisfying to me. So much of my other work has uncertain outcomes but if I fold the laundry carefully, the clothes are there to behold.
Love reading every week!
Yes, immediacy! That's so true! For me, wiping the kitchen counters is the daily practice that most gives me this feeling: the kitchen (and my life?) feels a mess, and then the act of wiping everything down provides an immediate, lovely, cleansed feeling. I like your use of the word, "behold." Totally, let's behold our folded laundry.
You may have seen the link to The Prophet that Breena posted above (https://poets.org/poem/work-4); this line stood out to me, related to your comment:
"in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life, / And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret."
Whew. Yes. Something to strive for.
Yes! Wiping the kitchen counter is the tangible completion of something that can be done quickly and makes life feel more in sync—and it also feels like a simple way of taking care of self and family.
First time reading your newsletter and this resonated! My husband and I went recently from two executive level jobs and four kids to just one (thanks in large part to my stage 4 cancer diagnosis, although I was the one who stayed employed). Our income has been halved, and we stopped outsourcing laundry and meal prep; but there is no question we are so much happier. To the questions you posed: we pay our weekly cleaner more than she asks and make sure everyone in the family is openly appreciative of the role she plays in our lives. And my language for “people like me” is “pleasing achiever,” sometimes preceded by “reformed” if I’m feeling optimistic.
Wow, it seems like you and your family made some big changes that most people would make all kinds of excuses to avoid--giving up "prestige" and income and taking back household tasks. I guess these are the kinds of gifts offered by something like a cancer diagnosis and other lifequakes (to use Bruce Feiler's term - brucefeiler.substack.com.) I'm so sorry to hear that you got that kind of news. I am equally heart-warmed to hear about your happier state of living.
Yes to "pleasing achiever" 😊. Yes to "sometimes-reformed" 😃
Ooooo I love lifequakes!!
And, I’m glad to say I’m not sorry about my diagnosis: it’s the best worst thing that ever happened to me! My Substack looks back on my four year journey en route to the 5th anniversary of my diagnosis to extract what I learned along the way. Sometimes I even proof read it. ; )
Just one job rather than just one kid, yeah?
I had the exact same reaction 😂
LOL! Another argument for proofreading and revising. Confirming we still have four kids, although one is now at college. : )
I really like this framing of a triad.
The lucky ones are those who manage to combine the paid work and the creative pursuits. Unless you think getting paid will inevitably take away some of the soul-enrichment from the creative pursuits? I’d guess some writers (to use one example) have stuff they produce to get paid and some more personal creations that they pursue just for themselves.
Do you ever just do the menial stuff without an audiobook/distraction? I found a few years ago that so much of my day was taken up with podcasts to distract myself from the boring menial work of day to day life (cooking/cleaning/commuting) and worried I might be missing something. Have since tried experimented at just focusing on the task without distractions and can feel quite meditative.
I'm glad the triad resonated! It's interesting to think about people with creative professions. I've generally thought that my generation (millennials) has been a little deluded in thinking that work should ideally provide both adequate monetary support and full creative fulfillment (I actually wrote a cartoon about this once :) https://www.instagram.com/p/B08lkCKj9cg/?hl=en). But certainly some people will be able to find work that is also highly soul enriching.
Even in these cases I think it would be worth carving out time for non-income generating creative work. If you are doing creative work for money, it will necessarily be subject to the constraints and demands of the economy. I also think everyone also has a natural limit on how many hours they can really do their work productively. Creative juices for a professional writer could also be channelled towards some totally different domain--choral singing or basket weaving or community building--and my guess is these may be more enriching than writing more.
Regarding limiting podcasts and audio--I have also been on this journey! I too felt like I was blocking out the world and my thoughts with audio. I have altered my approach to walks, most I do without headphones. I haven't yet applied this to laundry folding, and perhaps that's worth a try. I do try to balance how much I'm pushing myself and when--I don't want every moment of life to become an exercise in self control. I can be prone to overdoing things, and I am also looking for ease.
One question I had as I read your comment and responded: should the work of maintaining relationships also be included in the foundational types of work? Nurturing friendships, family and community definitely takes time and effort, and is clearly an important pillar of a life well lived. I wonder if it's a four-legged stool?
As someone who wrote fiction for a living for many years, I feel very fortunate to have been able to do so. But there have also been times when I got tied up in knots over book contracts. Substack has given me a space to be creative in a way that isn’t so clearly tied to the mortgage, and the non-commercial creative work I get to do here has fed energy and inspiration into the “professional” part of my writing life.
The fourth leg is interesting. It’s important, but for creative people in solitary occupations, like writing, you tend to naturally forget about that fourth leg (not the family part, but the friends and community part) because it is the hardest to fit in.
So much to ponder here. Thank you for this post.
Interesting to hear your perspective as a professional fiction writer, Michelle! I definitely think that there is is just a different vibe or feeling when you are doing an activity outside of economic goals, even if it's the same activity. It reminds me of the adage "the medium is the message," which refers to the reality that the way we communicate and what we say is shaped by the platform on which we say it. The same could be said about doing creative work on the "platform" of the modern economy.
That's so interesting that even as a creative you feel a need for a creative space that doesn't feel as much like 'work'. There's clearly something about being able to do something on a whim, for its own sake, that we all need to feel completely fulfilled.
That cartoon is great! I agree on still need to carving out some creative work just for the self. I'd be hesitant to qualify relationship maintenance as work. Something about that framing makes it seem more like a have-to-do rather than the nourishing aspect of our lives that it should. If there are relationships that feel like arduous work then that might be a signal that they're not working out for some reason, perhaps time to let it go? I don't know, just spitballing generalisations here, which is probably dangerous territory!
Very interesting read. I am now retired, but early in my corporate career at General Electric I had similar heady experiences--in my case, more first-class travel to the Far East than skyscraper office. But the majority of time stateside--in meetings--ground down my soul & bored me completely.
I think your three-legged stool has an application to retirement, with the paid work support replaced by something challenging, structured, and outward-directed. In Connecticut, I discovered that 62+ are given free tuition at state universities. I enrolled in Botany, far afield (!) from any of my past studies. It’s fascinating, stimulating & interactive. I love being with the other students & doing labs.
Ah that's so cool that you enrolled in Botany class! It makes total sense to me that retirement would be a time (maybe the only time for most people?) when this type of three-legged life structure could actually be implemented. It sounds like you've really done it!
Totally agree. I’ve recently found peace in laundry folding though I typically don’t get through it all in one session. The turning point for me was just designating an area of my house the laundry-folding area (not my bed). There is pretty much always an in-process pile and I’m fine with that. Fold a few shirts, chase a child, answer an email is a pretty typical chain of events.
That is a really nice way of doing it and definitely an approach that would help me. Thanks! Also, it seems like it might evolve and change in different phases of life. Having young kids is the "there's always laundry" phase, for sure.
My mother was a master at the 3-legged stool approach. She had a full-time job as a nurse, she kept a clean house with beautifully ironed and folded laundry, and she had time for reading, needlework and gardening. Her hobby was planning family vacations. She used to say that the daily living activities were what kept her grounded and able to be happy at work. Sadly, I still struggle with this, but your article is making me think about the importance of these tasks and how to turn them into positives.
So cool that you had that kind of role model, Jennie. It seems rare today (in my circles) to find anyone who seems satisfied with their version of this. I do wonder if it was easier back then without the firehose of communications we have now, but maybe that's not giving your mom enough credit.
Interesting perspective but I disagree. I think the triad leaves out a number of things that are important - socializing, working out, self care. Also, I do think there is value in doing nothing sometimes and being with your thoughts. My paid work is not all consuming and I have good hours and still find it difficult to make the time for everything I want to do. I don’t subscribe to “outsourcing” everything that falls under “life maintenance”. But personally, “outsourcing” some of my “life maintenance” has significantly improved my quality of life and even allowed me to be a better parent.
That's interesting, and thanks for sharing your thoughts! I think I agree with you as well--doing nothing is so valuable, caring for oneself is so valuable. I was thinking mostly about taking the hours that people typically spend doing paid work, and breaking them across multiple types of "work." But I see how it paints a picture of a very work-focused life.
I am curious how you decide what to outsource and what to keep doing yourself. Is it just a financial calculation? If you could outsource it all, would you? That's the thought experiment that I'm playing with and, as with basically everything I write, I don't know if there's really a "right" answer.
Ah I see. Well if my 8 hour work day was split into these three buckets and I could spend the rest of the day on other stuff, then yes, I totally see your point!
Finances are a big part of it but also the trade off between cost, gained time, and mental health. Where I come from, most people I know outsource it all and that is how I grew up. There’s a big chunk of time you spend with family back home and I’ve never known anyone who felt like there was a void in their life because they did little to no “life maintenance” on their own. Happy to chat more about this!
Super interesting - yeah I certainly have a US-centric worldview here. It comes back to a mantra that I like to repeat to myself, especially when offering anything like advice - there are many good ways to live.
I am retired, after two twenty-year careers came to a close. I struggle with things I want to do because I don't have a schedule. The regimentation of working five days a week provided reminders, mile markers, for my day. Those all disappeared when I quit working. It's been two years, but I'm coming to grasp with how this works. Breakfast at 8 am, lunch at 1, dinner at 6. I struggled with taking a walk and practicing with my guitar every day, but now I am doing those things because I walk after lunch and I practice when my son leaves for work around 11 am. Basically, I have your three-pronged plan now, but it's a wobbly stool with only two legs since I've retired. I think that works for me, though. Thanks for your comments. New perspective is good perspective.
I love the perspective, Chuck. I too find a schedule to be absolutely imperative for me to feel happy and healthy. This is part of why I think the utopian (and very Silicon Valley) vision of Universal Basic Income would need to be paired with a total cultural overhaul in order to work--finding structure and meaning in a life without paid work can actually be super hard! It sounds like you've made a ton of progress on that and it could be a model for others in retirement as well.
As a retired Australian, I can totally recommend volunteering as the third leg. A very rewarding part of my retired life and excellent for discipline and for scheduling other things around.
This has come up a couple times on this thread - it's good to be reminded that volunteering or community-oriented work is an important leg of work, and it sounds like in retirement it can be a very central organizing force in a life.
Care is care. Your family, your community: it all counts.
Thank you. My stool is okay on two legs now, but I’ll keep that in mind and try to find something I could volunteer for.
Here's a real life example.... my wife & I are fairly successful authors. Dollar wise, we earn enough to pay our bills, buy some toys, and do a vacay 2x / year in addition to skiing in winter & golf in summer. Yeah, we're living the dream. (We're in our 60's, so no kidlets...) It's been this way for about 4 years or so.
BUT...
You're dead right in your metaphor of a 3 legged stool.
Our work takes up on average 2, maybe 3 hrs / a day. That's a TON of free time.
Last summer I decided to have a daily 'To-Do' list that included chores on a granular level: such as
- walk the dogs
- make the bed
- cook supper
I'd add the weeklies as needed (laundry, grocery shopping, stuff like that)
My point:
These 'chores' that are daily/ weekly have to be done; but adding them to a list of things to do have in some odd way added a dimension of richness to my life. Oh, and cutting back on online stuff to 2 hrs/day is also a big plus. I had to b/c that 'To Do' list got bigger and bigger.
If my own personal experience counts for anything, you're right on the money. Good job!
There is no greater compliment than having someone with more life experience tell you
"you're right on the money." 😂 Thank you.
I think the way you are writing your to-do list gets at the original question that sparked this newsletter: why don't I figure these tasks in the same way that I would a work task? It's kind of bizarre, but almost universal.
I keep bringing this book up in this thread, but it's so relevant - I'm wondering if you've read or might like Oliver Burkeman's 4,000 Hours, Time Management for Mortals. It's really more of a philosophical work on time versus a time management book. It was a bestseller so this might be old news to you 😊
'this might be OLD news to you'... smart aleck, I saw what yer doin' there! BWHAHAHA!
Actually, for me at 64, despite the Arthur-itis, the memory lapses, etc etc... I'm blessed to be this age.
At the top of my daily to do list is a series of affirmations I've collected over the last 6 months. I treat them like morning prayers; they set the tone of my day. One of them is a very, very important one that was told to me by a young whippersnapper. It's all in caps b/c it's so damn important to know once you cross the 40 year mark:
GROWING OLD IS A PRIVILIGE. JUST ASK A KID DYING OF CANCER.
I will never, ever EVER bitch about elderly decline.
***
Now regarding the 4K hr book... I'm not familiar w/ that work, but I am familiar with, and am living proof of the theory of 2,000 hours of working at something makes you get good at it. This theory is pretty much an accepted maximum for learning a complex skill.
....Please fill this space with a long meandering commentary on how my wife & I went from being an overworked secretary and a frikkin' cab driver to authors....
Bottom line: from 2012 to 2017 we each slaved 50-60 hrs a week learning all the skills to become profitable authors. That comes out to about 4K hrs. EACH Writing is more of a craft than an art; yes there are true artists in this line of work, but TBH, most writers are craftspeople. Skill means more than inborn talent; unfulfilled genius is a cliché, y'know?
Ya gotta:
1. Put in the time and
2. Be willing to learn to get better.
Finally (do I run off at the keyboard or what!) If you liked my last comment on your post, you're gonna LOVE this observation:
The hallmark of a good writer is when the reader is unaware that they're reading. They're so caught up in the material that they're 'in' it as opposed to reading it.
Rae...you do that so damn well. I blew thru your original post like a hot knife thru butter. Ya got game, girl. Keep at it.
tell me more about the writing training @Jim M
The 3-legged stool metaphor is an interesting one. Yet for me I see it as a 4-legged stool, the 4th leg being the selfless time given to others, whether that is to family members or neighbours or friends or as a volunteer in good causes or citizenship.
I love that, and it makes so much sense. I was pondering whether "building and nurturing relationships" belongs as a leg too (there's a discussion about that somewhere in this thread). I think that inadvertently by trying to articulate three legs, I also prompted thoughts about what the other most foundational elements are in a life well-lived.
It is also valuable for your kid to see both parents do the work of keeping life going. I look back at my childhood. I learned alot watching my Mom cook and maintain a household. My brother and I did chores. Learning these skills is an underrated part of growing up in this society.
I like the triad, but it is missing the leg of unpaid fun, leisure and self-care time. Productivity advice that ignores the desire for that part of life bugs me. That is the fourth leg for me! Now that is a stable table of life :-)
It makes sense to me to clearly delineate time for fun and leisure! What would life be without it? My original orientation was to delineate "types of work," but perhaps the word work in itself needs defining, or is just too limited.
I am currently reading Oliver Burkeman's funny and eye opening book, 4,000 hours: Time Management for Mortals, which is basically a book-length argument against time management in all forms. I am compelled by his argument that any type of "productivity advice" will never work because the more productive you are the more you find to do. The big goal is to make hard decisions about what NOT to do, so that you can actually do the meaningful things. I'm curious if you've read it or if that resonates. In any case, I hope not to provide productivity advice, and will be clearer in the future about my goals there 😊
No I have not heard of that book. I may need to look it up. Saying no to things that are not important or don’t spark joy is important. Speaking of Marie Kondo, she recently admitted she has given up on tidying after having her third child. It makes sense to me. Other people have lost it on her. People can reprioritize.
Yes! Thanks for this, Rae. The despair-inducing image of unfolded laundry on the bed you must now sleep in as you're getting tired was salient and scary! But you provide solutions and remind us of its importance 🙏
i have a sheep farm with my husband, nine dogs (at present, soon to become ten), two cats, and 200 sheep (at present, soon to become somewhere between 230 and 250). i'm tickled by the notion of assigning work to specific parcels of time! work on a farm is an ongoing presence from the time you wake up until you fall into bed at night — during the fast-approaching lambing time, even sleep is
interrupted several times a night to stagger out to the barn, flashlight in hand, to check for newborn lambies and their mamas who must be tended. we sandwich our many and varied chores between major work elements such as (his) teaching sheep-herding lessons and cleaning out the barn and (mine) cleaning up after husband and dogs, tending two giant vegetable gardens, grocery shopping and cooking, and my profession, painting portraits of people's dogs. somehow it all gets done, with the usual emergencies involving so many animals tucked in there. farm life isn't really compartmentalizable, is it? ;-)
First of all, your life sounds incredible, and hard, and unfathomable in the most compelling way. It's so funny that you write this particular comment right now--I am currently reading Oliver Burkeman's 4000 Hours, Time Management for Mortals (also mentioned above), and he describes people's relationship to time in Medieval times before clocks--it sounds so similar to what you are describing. The way he puts it, there is no concept of "getting through the task list," because farming is never done, and basically you just do what needs doing and then at some point the day is over. It's kind of a hard thing to imagine for those of us whose relationship to time is so centered around "having" it and "managing" it and "saving" it and "wasting" it.
he's so right about that! i do have a small notebook with daily lists of things i have to do *in addition* to all the usual things i have to do, though. ;-D