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The smart way to create a compassionate and professional lactation private practice, hosted by private practice IBCLCs Annie Frisbie and Leah Jolly.
Leah Jolly is a private practice IBCLC with Bay Area Breastfeeding in Houston, Texas.
Annie Frisbie is a private practice IBCLC serving Queens and Brooklyn in New York City and the creator of the Lactation Consultant Private Practice Toolkit.
Tune in each week to learn all the ins and outs of running a successful private practice lactation business!
Connect with Leah and Annie:
On Instagram: @lactationbusinesscoaching
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lactationbusinesscoaching
On YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv3-4pMgjlzbXD9KWFCIV3-1LipsTbgsj
Leah: Hi Annie.
Annie: Hey Leah, how are you?
Leah: I'm doing really well excited about our topic today cause we're talking about life hacks, and I always love a good hack. As a busy mom and business owner and just living life, hacks are where it's at because that's how we survive, right?
Annie: For sure. I really want anybody and anyone to tell me how I can do things better, faster and with less stress on me and everyone around me.
Leah: Yes, I am 100% with you on that. So I'm excited that we'll get to share some specific for IBCLC life hacks today.
Annie: I know and we have so many plans to keep on creating things that are going to help you help the families that you love, and that's really our mission here is to just build a community where we're supporting each other and taking inspiration from each other. So thank you for supporting us, helping us pay for this podcast. It really means a lot.
Leah: Definitely. All right, before we dive into our life hacks, I've got a marketing motivation tip for today and it's talking about overwhelm because that's usually where our life hacks come from, is from overwhelm, and it's just a little reminder that when you're hearing in your head all these thoughts going through and they're making you feel overwhelmed, most of those thoughts are going to be something in the past or something in the future, and rarely are those thoughts focused on what's around you and happening right this minute. And if we keep our thoughts from trailing down to catastrophizing, Oh my gosh, everything's going to fall apart and I'm not going to ever be able to figure any of this out and come back to okay, what's the next right move that I can do? What's right here in front of me? What can I accomplish at this minute? Not the 5,000 things that are on the list that you're never going to get to. Just staying really, really present. That helps so much with overwhelm, and this is something that I'm constantly working on too. So I'm giving you this tip, but also giving it to myself of just really trying to stay present and leave those past thoughts and the future thoughts and stay present, just really staying present on what you can do right now.
Annie: That totally reminds me of when my kids were toddlers and I love to read, so of course I read 500,000 books on parenting and found nothing in them helpful at all except for one book. And I honestly can't even remember what the book was, but they said that when things are going wrong with your toddler, just tell yourself this is happening now.
Leah: Oh, I like that.
Annie: That has been working for me. My kids are not toddlers anymore, and that really helped me. This is happening now.
Leah: Yeah, this is it. This is what's happening. Next best move and just keep moving forward, but it keeps you so present. I love that phrase. I'm going to steal it. I'm going to steal.
Annie: It's a good one.
Leah: That's the first life hack.
Annie: I give that one to clients too, just telling them this is happening now or even just with you're saying, not getting going too much into the future or the past. I tell my clients when you're with non-latching babies who have latched but don't latch consistently. I say when you're working on breastfeeding, just say we've done this before. It's a true statement that makes no predictions about what could happen either way, good or bad. Just tell yourself something is true. So I really, really liked those. Those two mantras together really helped me get away from too much future thinking, which totally does. It's a killer. So thank you for that. Yeah, thank you for that.
Leah: Awesome. Well, let's start talking about some of these life hacks. So we broke them down into a couple of different categories. So the first one we're going to talk about is life hacks to meet your own needs, like your own personal physical needs. So Annie, why don't you start us off with your first life hack for meeting your own physical needs?
Annie: I mean, it goes so deep. It seems so simple, but the amount of difficulty I have meeting my physical needs while running a home visit private practice, it's staggering.
Leah: Isn't it?
Annie: I'm actually feeling a little emotional right now. We talked in advance about what we were going to talk about today, but when you just said, how do you meet your physical needs, I have to tell you I'm actually tearing up a little bit because I'm realizing I don't do this well at all, so I need life hacks. I have them. I just don't rely on them but really the fundamental number one thing that I need to do for myself that I don't do, but whenever I do do it, I'm like, thank you past Annie for helping the Annie of right now, which is packing myself a lunch that I can be on the road and eat in my car while I'm driving between consults and I've come up with a lot of different things that actually can hang out in my car, protein bars or I like salami and cheese, so I'll cut that up and put it in bite-sized pieces in a cooler bag in my car, some fruit in there. Honestly whenever I pack myself a giant bag of carrots and cucumbers and peppers...
Leah: I eat them all.
Annie: I'll eat them all, and that's healthy, hydrating and it's filling too. All that fiber is great. So it really keeps me going and keeps me energized. And so whenever I do that, I'm really happy because when I don't do that, what it means is that I don't eat and that cannot be so great. That leads to me making bad choices later in the afternoon. That's where I'm like, well I skipped lunch today, so why don't I have three bowls of cereal after dinner?
Leah: I need the calories. I didn't eat all day. I totally hear you on this one. This is one that I have learned throughout my years. So my backup plan is I have a bag in my car of snacks that won't melt or get rotten or whatever. So of course it's going to be like beef jerky, dried fruits, nuts and seeds. Every once in a while if I don't eat some of them, like the nuts especially in the heat in the summer, they'll kind of be like not that great, and I hope it won't kill me, but I'm going to keep eating it cause I'm starving. But I don't eat a lot of grains so I don't have a lot of crackers. But if you were a grain eater or you use some of the substitute ones. I have these crackers, they're totally just flax seeds. They're called flackers.
Annie: Oh wait, I've heard of those.
Leah: Yummy. They're so, so yummy. And they're kind of filling and it's flax seeds and it's really good for you. Anyway, so I have this whole bag that just stays in my car of my emergency. So when I don't do a really good job packing a bag with cooler and healthier foods like vegetables and things like that, then I have my backup bag because I will do exactly what you do. I will justify bad eating, then I got to have Chipotle. I mean, if you don't eat all day, you need to Chipotle. I'm 100% certain.
Annie: Okay, you just made me so hungry right now for Chipotle. I'll be right back.
Leah: Okay. We'll just pause this podcast. We'll all be back after a Chipotle break. Yeah. So I am totally with you on that one. And it's so simple. I mean, it just seems crazy and when I talk to people in other professions and say some days I just don't eat, they're like, wait, wait, what? You don't have a lunch break? No, I don't have a lunch break because I can't fit in the three clients and take an hour lunch break, and with all the unpredictability with visits and travel time and everything, it just doesn't work, and I'll get home a whole hour and a half later because of traffic times. I have to do this this way. You know, this is how it rolls in our field, but we do have to be so, so careful with ourselves, and Annie and I preach it all the time and we're preaching to ourselves as much as we're preaching to everybody else about self-care.
Annie: And the same thing goes with staying hydrated, which you can go without eating lunch. Nothing's going to happen if you spend all day dehydrated and hungry. You're going to be fine in general. I mean please don't do that, but I always do keep cans of seltzer in my car because I never remember to fill my water bottle before I go. But as long as I've got the seltzer and here is a super advanced next level hydration life hack, which is I crack open a can of seltzer when I get in the car and I drink a little and then I drink that same can of seltzer until it's gone, which could be two or three days because what I'll do is I'll have a fresh seltzer that then also comes out to the car with me, and then sometimes I have two seltzers, but you know what? It's those days where I forgot my seltzer, I'm like past Annie left you some lukewarm flat seltzer, don't you just love her? She's the best.
Leah: At least you'll stay hydrated
Annie: It's water. Nothing wrong with some lukewarm flat seltzer and I've even been so thirsty that I've drunk hot seltzer because it was in my car. But here's what I'll do - I'm going to give you guys this one for free. If you hold the can of hot seltzer because it's hot because it was in your car up to the vent of the air conditioner while you're driving, it cools off pretty quick enough so you can drink it again.
Leah: I could just see you driving down the road - and I have driven with Annie before - honking your horn and holding your can and like, everybody get out of my way. I've got to get my seltzer cool and I have got to get to my client. That is hilarious and genius all at the same time. I love it so much. That is awesome. But drinking all that water poses one other issue, and this is why for a long time I literally did not drink water while I was out and about until I started having kidney and bladder issues, and then it's like oh yeah. Maybe being dehydrated for 12 hours out of the day is not the best plan. Come to find out your body doesn't like that, but there is this whole issue of where are you going to go to the bathroom? If you're on the road all day long and you know you don't know what house you're going to go into, are you going to feel comfortable asking those people to use the restroom or not and it's such a hit or miss for me. Some people are so warm and friendly. Right away if I needed to use the restroom, I wouldn't feel weird and then there's some people who I don't know if they'd feel offended if I asked. How do you handle the bathroom situation?
Annie: I ask. If I have to go, I ask and I've just gotten to a point in my life and in my ability to hold my pee, which is getting poorer and poorer as I get older and older and if I have to go, I have to go and that is a universal human need. I can't think of a person on the planet that is going to say no if you ask if you can use their bathroom.
Leah: Yeah, totally.
Annie: But it is a weird thing to get over.
Leah: I definitely have scouted out restrooms all around town, so if I'm in the Heights, I know where I'm going to go. There's a couple of little coffee shops. I grab a coffee or a bottle of water, use the restroom. There's a couple of grocery stores I'll go into. I totally have it all scouted out and I try to be a nice person and still buy something like a pack of gum or something or a bottle of water. So I'm not just walking in, using your restroom. You know, I feel like grocery store restrooms are often very clean and nice. I'll use those over anywhere else, like over gas stations or restaurants.
Annie: So that must be a regional thing because there are no grocery stores with bathrooms in New York City.
Leah: Oh really?
Annie: They're just too small. We don't have the big grocery stores and even the ones that I'm thinking of that are the big chain ones, they don't have grocery stores. We have coffee shops on every corner so I'll go into a nice coffee shop and order an iced coffee and use their bathroom and that's my go-to, or I'll go into a Thai restaurant and get a Thai iced coffee and use their bathroom. So that's two-for-one.
Leah: Yeah. Right, because then, well you know, one more coffee today won't hurt too bad, right? The other issue that I have with physical needs is getting rest, and that's really hard because we're running a business so it's not just the work we do with our clients. You come home, you have other work to do, then you have your family, whether that be a partner or immediate family, kids or just distant family too, and friends that you need to communicate with and everything. It's hard to get enough respite. Gosh, more and more research keeps coming out about how impactful sleep is on overall health. So I've really made this a top priority and one of mine, like I have a pretty firm bedtime for myself. When I'm home on the week days, it's pretty firm. I'm going to be in bed at nine o'clock. It's so preschool, but it's so needed. My kids go into bed, I tuck them in and I literally go straight to bed and that might mean some things get left for the morning or the next day. And if it is, I just write them down because I don't function well late in the day. My brain just doesn't even work very well. So it's pointless for me to keep pushing myself with work or even household tasks because I'm not going to give you my best work, so I feel like I might as well sleep and hit the floor running in the morning and get more done than if I were to try to stay up and push myself. So Annie, what do you do for rest? How do you prioritize rest in your world?
Annie: So I'm getting better about this. If you had asked me this even a year ago, I would have frozen like I did about the eating lunch question. But I've really come to a more balanced place where I really have seen how rest builds on itself, that the more rest I get, the more able I am to get rest. So for me, that's not necessarily about going to bed early, but I find a lot of rest from just being in a space where I'm not working and really prioritizing enjoying my family. So rest for me is at bedtime. My kids still let me read to them before bed, so I know that starting at about eight o'clock, I'm off the clock for work. You're not going to find me for work. If you do, I'm not doing it right. But my brain shuts down. I really can't think. I can't remember anything that I talk about with anybody. And I go into my kids' bedroom and I read to them from our book. I sing to them, tuck them in, and then I come out and then my husband and I watch TV together and that's what we do, or we hang out and I find that so restful and that by the time I'm ready to go to bed, which is usually for me, it's around 10:30 that I'm super ready to go to bed. I'm just wound down. And if I try to do any work at night that winds me up, then I can't sleep. So by dialling into that wind down time in the evening, and then I always read for pleasure before bed. I've done that my entire life under all circumstances. I've got a fiction book that I'm reading in my bedroom and I read on my Kindle with all the lights out. And then sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with my Kindle...
Leah: Kindle on your face.
Annie: Kindle on my face and I'm still wearing my glasses, but that's how I really like to end my day is with just this really quiet time, and I'm not a big napper. It's not for me but having that evening routine be so disconnected from work really, really helps me be way more productive during the day.
Leah: Yeah. I also think sometimes it's our brains that need the rest. It might not be physical, your body needs to lay down and go to sleep, but it's your brain. And one thing that helps me, especially on those days where I'm feeling extra tired, sometimes either if I have a moment between visits, I might just stop and put a timer on my phone for 10 minutes and whether it be meditating or I'm just going to listen to music and not think about clients and not think about what I should be doing next and push, push, push or listening to music. You know, I'm such a consumer of things. I love to listen to podcasts and books in between visits, but it is taxing on your brain to always have something going that's information. And so one thing I've been trying to do is if I'm feeling overwhelmed or just tired, rundown that all that day, either listen to nothing or maybe just like more relaxing calm music when I'm in between clients, but giving your brain a rest. You don't need a ton of time to do that. Sometimes a reset on your brain might be 5 to 10 minutes that you're just going to tune everything out and if it's a favorite song you want to listen to or do some kind of meditation like breathing exercise or something, or some stretching, I love taking five minutes. I do this at the clinic a lot before my next client because we'll have back to back, maybe eight visits in a row, and so if a client is running five minutes behind, I'm usually excited cause I'm okay and I'll do just a few stretching moves and it just reenergizes you giving you that moment. I'm not thinking about anything else. I'm just going to listen to my body and move a little bit. So some of those hacks that you can work into your day I think make a big difference.
Annie: I love that one about the stretches because I think exercise is something that I find somewhat elusive. Just with time I'm like, when am I going to go somewhere and like do something and I can really get it built up in my mind that exercise has to be this event that goes on the calendar and I was so good for a long time about exercising at home and I do Daily Burn. I'm a big fan of Daily Burn and I was doing their 30 minute workout and then I kind of stopped because I just couldn't find 30 minutes all at once, and then I really kind of let it go and then I could feel it in my body. I'm tired, I'm slower. I don't think as well when I'm not exercising and so I'm like, I don't need 30 minutes, I need 10 minutes. And so the Daily Burn did not give me anything to tell you this about them. I just love them because you can also find free workouts on YouTube, but they have like a 10 minute program and I'm like, you know what? I can do 10 minutes.
Leah: Anybody can do 10 minutes.
Annie: Anybody could do 10 and then I told myself, I was like, I think you could do 10 minutes every day. So I've been streaking, doing 10 minutes a day and...
Leah: What? How long have you done that?
Annie: A couple of weeks now and...
Leah: That's awesome.
Annie: And I have to say it feels really good, not just in my body. Is a 10-minute workout the same as a one hour workout? No, but the cumulative effect of telling my body for 10 minutes every day, you are important to me and I'm trying to take care of you and keep you strong, I think that really does help with my overall everything.
Leah: Okay, here's a call to action folks. Why don't we all streak with Annie and commit 10 minutes to our own bodies every day? Who's in with me? You guys hop on social media, let us know you're in on it. I'm going to join you, Annie. That just seems doable, and I actually did it yesterday. I was like, this is ridiculous. I haven't been doing my morning workouts as well for many reasons that I won't get into now, but I haven't been on my good streak. And so yesterday I was like, okay, I'm just going to put a timer on. I know exercises that I can do and I'm just going to do it for 10 minutes and I totally did it and now I'm going to join you. I'm going to keep going. I'm going to do it 10 minutes a day. Everybody can do that.
Annie: Awesome. I love it. We all can do it. If I can do it, you guys can do it. So now with all of our physical needs met now that we are living our best life. Looking amazing, sleeping, eating, peeing, working out. Got it all covered, so now our next level of needs is our logistical needs. So these are just the things, our systems that we need to have in place that are going to keep everything moving along and going smoothly. So we're not having to spend a lot of time thinking about dumb things that can drive you insane, or that prevent us from becoming too tied to our notifications on our phones, which are really big disruptors. We all know this, but just to put it out there that when your phone pings you that you have a new message, that your brain is wired to see that as an urgent alert emergency, and you also get a dopamine hit like something new happened. But all of that then derails you from what could be happening and you can end up losing a lot of time during your day by allowing your brain to respond to these new notifications whenever it wants to. And so in terms of logistics for communications, one thing that has really helped me avoid that trap is that I really set times a day when I'm returning texts and emails. And so for my clients, I'm a little bit more like if it's about something that's happening right this second, I'm going to look at it and hopefully respond in a shorter amount of time. But for the most part I'm responding to emails first thing in the morning and I'm responding to emails in the evening usually while I'm making dinner before I put my kids to bed, and then I really don't respond to work emails on the weekend. And this has been a new evolution for me personally is that I've just stopped doing that. And again, it's because what I've learned is that if I don't respond to them, they're still there on Monday. Nothing changed and I come to realize that my Monday inbox is pretty big, but trying to clear it out over the weekend doesn't save me any time on Monday cause then I can come up with a whole bunch of other things I need to do on Monday anyway. I'm not really getting ahead the way I thought I was and then it actually feels really good to be like I'm going to just be here and be with my family and not deal with it. That doesn't mean that I'm ignoring them.
Leah: Yes, of course. Of course. One thing that's helped me with my daily workflow is I do not answer other questions and things through the time that I'm working with clients. So in that time that I have, obviously I'm driving between clients so I'm probably not going to be answering anything because I'm driving. But I try not to look at anything or answer anything during the in-betweens, and then also on my office work days, I don't look at my phone in between visits, other than to check and make sure that my kids didn't call or the school didn't call or something like that. But if it's just spruce notifications, luckily I can just tell. It doesn't have like any words by it so it's just like spruce notification and that's where our clients communicate with us, and so I'm able to really just set aside time in the morning and then after my client day to answer emails and texts and things like that. And that's helped me a lot because if I'm bouncing around in my head all day from, okay, the client that I saw three days ago and then I've got this person in front of me and then there's another person that I saw two weeks ago and I'm trying to pull their stuff up and I'm looking at this and I'm charting that and la-la-la. My brain can't handle it anymore so I've been a little bit firmer about that, especially during the days that I'm in the office. I just cannot. It's so back-to-back that I can't really manage thinking about anything else. So all those days, it just has to be done in the morning, before or after and that's helped me a lot. The other thing I know when I didn't have an admin that was helping me with phone calls and things. One of the things that really helped is I had a designated notebook for phone calls cause you got to keep track of that. But if you're in the car answering phone calls between consults, you're going to be like, Oh, I'll try to remember what that person said. So at that time, I had this little notebook that I just carried in my glove compartment and then took in and out of the car. Obviously I wouldn't leave it in the car, but it was just my notes from phone calls and anything I need to remember or do from each phone call and it became kind of our standard. Now my admin has the same thing in case she doesn't have a way to write it down right then. In our online things she can do it, just write notes and make sure that you keep that cause keeping that in your head can be really hard, but if you have a designated place for it, you can keep it safe, number one, cause it's not scattered on random papers everywhere or in a notebook you'd use for something else so you can keep it safe. And then the other thing is is that you won't have to try to retain all that information in your brain, which is really hard to do as well.
Annie: That's really good. I also carry a notebook where I write things down because I just have to get it out of my head and I really find that I do get the bulk of my charting done during the consult, but there usually are a few things that need to be done when I get home. And so having that time where I've got my charting platform opened up, I have Spruce opened up and I'm just saying this is the time when I'm giving my focus to my clients and giving that time to them is that I do find that I'm more effective. I'm faster at coming up with responses to them. I'm in that mode. I'm just doing it. And then honestly, since I started for however long now, it's been a long time since I got let myself get sucked into one of those texts back and forth that take up your whole day. I mean, I'm really good with my boundaries at this point and my client outcomes have not suffered because I take time now to respond to people.
Leah: Yes, for sure. I would agree with that. I would agree with that in my experience too. And also I think at the beginning I was trying to fix everything too like over a text. You can't fix stuff over text message. Half the time I'm either saying we need to have a phone call about that and here's a way to schedule a phone call, or we need a follow up visit, because rarely can I get much information figured out over a text message. You know, rarely, rarely, rarely, rarely. So I think it's good to have a little bit tighter boundaries on that, especially on those. Even email is really hard. So I have a thousand questions and I can't get the information I want just on these drill down questions on an email. I'm just like I really need to talk to you, I need to hear your responses, be able to respond to the responses that you have and so on and so forth. So I definitely think keeping some boundaries on communication is super important
Annie: Definitely. And now so another logistical need that we have because we do home visits is travel. That is kind of nuts because people book you and you're so far from the other person I just saw and I love the feature in Google maps is the one that I use. I'm sure a lot of them have this feature though where you can put in the two addresses and then say I need to arrive at this address by this time and it tells you when you have to leave. So like I have to be there by one o'clock tomorrow because the travel time, if I'm looking at it at 6:00 AM when I first wake up it's going to look really different than if I'm looking at it for later. So I really like to make sure that I totally know how long it's going to take me to get between my consults. I also will - this kind of connects with the previous one - I like to do a little quick search in the area and see if there is any place where I can stop in and grab a quick lunch or some coffee or use the bathroom if it's an area I'm not totally familiar with. And then I also always ask my clients - and this is a very New York City specific thing - but I ask them about alternate side parking. So here in New York City you get the streets cleaned on certain days of the week. So it'll say like on Monday from 11:30 to 1, you can't park on this side of the street. And so that means even entire side of the street that is unavailable for any kind of residential parking.
Leah: Oh no!
Annie: And so I asked them about it and I have rescheduled clients where I know that you're in a neighbourhood that doesn't have a lot of meters or parking garages. That's another thing that I always map out and if I physically can't get to you, if it's during alternate side, I might say I'm going to move you half an hour later, or I'm going to swap you to the afternoon after alternate side is over. But that is a question on what they fill out even before they get the intake form. When they make the request for the appointment, it says please tell me about alternate side parking on your street, or if you have a driveway that I can block because some people have their own private driveways that I can block their driveway or park in front of it and that's really helped me a lot. I know that's a very New York City-specific thing, but talking with other people in other metropolitan areas, asking about parking policies. People say, if they know that somebody is living in an area that has a lot of high rises, they might ask, does your building have parking? So that's one variable you're taking out of the equation.
Leah: We have so many gated communities and I always like ask about that ahead of time if I know that's a gated community. Please give me your gate code because I am not going to be able to fumble around for an hour trying to get the gate to call you and all of that. So taking more time to figure out our travel time can really help us with logistics. So the last need that we're going to try to life hack for you is our need for emotional and spiritual connections and meeting those needs, because that's a big part of who we are as well but it's probably the last thing that we think about because we're so busy with all the other things that we're thinking about that are just more in front of your face, but without connecting with family and friends and remembering that you have emotional needs as well that can wear you down just as fast as those physical needs issues are as well. So have you thought through this Annie? Do you have any good tips taking care of your emotional or spiritual needs?
Annie: So you know, with emotional needs, I think building community, like being with other people and being with my friends and my family is really important to me, and being with my family is not so difficult because my kids are still at the age where they need us to take them everywhere, so like basketball games all weekend long. So there's a lot of togetherness happening and we live in a small apartment and my kids would prefer that we all be in the same room at all times.
Leah: At all times.
Annie: So there's a lot of togetherness there. And my friends are really important to me and I get a lot of energy out of just having social time with my friends. One of my best friends here, she is a small business owner as well. She's a seamstress and she makes curtains and pillows for fancy, fancy apartments and also for TV shows and stuff. I mean she's amazing, really talented but she works the way I work. She and I, we love to work and so we do a regular treat yourself day where we both basically "fire ourselves" for the day, which is a phrase I got from my dad, who is a business owner. And then we go get in the car and drive to the outlets and go shopping all day and get Shake Shack for lunch and just like try on clothes, and it's so fun because she's really fun to shop with and we end up talking about business and our families, but it's so nice to have a long day with her as opposed to let's meet and grab a quick lunch. By the time you will have ordered, it's over. You can't really get anywhere. But when you're on hour five of outlet shopping and then you still have a two hour drive home, I mean you can go deep with somebody and really cherish those times that I get to spend with her.
Leah: That's so awesome. And I think the thing that is my life hack tip for this would be you have to put it on the calendar. Don't just talk about it. Because I have several friends for many years that were like, oh we need to get together yet. Send me some dates you're available, and then we both forget and then we'll see each other, call each other and it's like, oh let's just make it happen. Let's get together. Okay, let me know when you're available. And I just see that it's so, so hard. All of our lives are trolling around and you're doing with your friend, it's like you have to just make it happen and put it on the calendar and block your schedule and keep that time protected with a heavy fortress all around it, because it's such good vital time that refuels you and re-energizes you and makes you better in every other part of your life. But it oftentimes is the thing that we don't value and we let slip through the cracks. So I just encourage you when you say to a friend like, Oh, we should get together, that minute, stop and try to get a date and put it on the calendar and then block everything else.
Annie: That's so smart. I agree with that 100%.
Leah: Yes, and I think when we're with our family and friends, it can get a lot easier I think to not get pulled into business talk and everything, which isn't such a bad thing, to talk business, talk shop and everything, but it is good sometimes to just really try to have focus outside. And I'm talking to myself here really trying to have focus outside of just business related things because there is so much that fills our lives that isn't business related and I think we get burned out faster when that is our sole focus, you know? So really making sure you have other places to connect and other places to spend your energy and your time other than just business stuff, and that's just a smart way to take care of our long term energy.
Annie: So true! 100%!
Leah: So as we wrap up today, do you have a tech tip for us, Annie?
Annie: I do. If you're out there and you're looking for a DIY way to do online scheduling, G-Suite did something really sneaky recently, which is they added this feature to their calendar called appointments where you can actually open up appointment slots that are then publicly available for people to schedule a...
Leah: Huh, what in the world? I did not know this.
Annie: Yes, so next time if you use G-Suite and looking in the calendar, click to add a new visit and you'll see appointment slot come up. It's pretty wild.
Leah: If you didn't want to dive in with a big scheduling app or program, this might be a nice way to sneak in, especially I think it would probably be really helpful if you're using G-Suite for your charting.
Annie: Yeah. Yeah and I've done it. I've set it up for a few people recently and I just keep being like, wow, this is a potential game changer. For those of you that don't have the volume yet where you feel like you want to pay for a whole separate platform and maybe you're, you've got a inpatient job in the hospital and you're doing private practice on evenings and weekends and you're like, I only want to see one client a week when I can. This is a great way to do that cause if you're using G suite for your email, it's bundled in there as a service.
Leah: Wow. That's an awesome tip. And you're always so good at finding all these sneaky little things that are coming out for us. I so appreciate you being on the hunt out there, giving us the insider tips. Well it's been really great talking to you today and we're hoping to come to you guys with more life hacks in the future and some of those we would love to have come from other IBCLCs that want to share what you're doing to take care of yourself and to make this whole gig easier, faster, smarter.
Annie: Totally. So anyway, thank you for everything, and I don't know if anybody else has I think, is it Radiohead that has the song fitter, happier, more productive? That will really date me right there. Or is that the beginning of a Trainspotting when he's running, or the end of Trainspotting and he's got the whole 'choose life, choose happiness, choose a great job'. I'm also really dating myself. I've seen that movie so many times. So anyway, if you like Trainspotting like I do, let me know in the comments because I would love to connect with other lactation consultants who are obsessed with that movie too. And with that, we will say goodbye for now and we'll talk to you soon.
Leah: See you soon, Annie. Bye.
Annie: Bye