[Mindful Working Series #2] Make Work & Parenting Fun - Bree Groff

0:04Hunter Clarke-Fields:You're listening to the Mindful Mama podcast, the mindful working series number two and episode number 558, Make Work and Parenting Fun with Bree Groff.

0:19Hunter Clarke-Fields:Welcome to the Mindful Mama podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have. And when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clark-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting course and teacher training, and I'm the author of the international bestseller, Raising Good Humans, Raising Good Humans Every Day, and the Raising Good Humans Guided Journal.

0:58Hunter Clarke-Fields:Hey, welcome back to the podcast. I am so glad you're here. Today, I'm talking to Brie Groff, author of Today Was Fun, a book about work. Seriously. And we talk about work and parenting. She lives in New York City with her husband and 10-year-old daughter. You'll get to Here's some very simple doable tips to help you focus on what truly matters and create positive ripple between your professional life and your personal life. And this is part of the Mindful Work series, and it's to help kick off some work I'm doing with the new Mindful Parenting Institute. That's kind of a teaser and some work we're doing with groups.

1:41Hunter Clarke-Fields:so very exciting if you have a company or in HR we've got some cool things for you so you should reach out at support at mindfulmommamentor.com but yeah this is part of the mindful work series and I think you're gonna love it that we're gonna talk about more joyful work sounds good right I think it's good we don't want you to overwork we don't want your kids to pay the price and we're gonna make it so much more fun with this episode so let's dive in

2:14Hunter Clarke-Fields:Hi, it's Hunter Clark Fields, author of Raising Good Humans. If you've ever thought, I wish I could help other parents the way I've been helped, this is for you. The Mindful Parenting Teacher Certification Program is now open for enrollment. You'll deepen your mindfulness, learn to lead powerful parenting groups, and join a supportive, heart-centered community. Are you ready to make a difference? I only take a very limited number of people into this program, so apply now. Visit mindfulparentingcourse.com slash teach. Well, Bree, thank you so much for coming on the Mindful Mama podcast. Yeah, it's my pleasure.

2:49Hunter Clarke-Fields:Thanks for having me. I'm glad you're here. I really enjoyed your book. Today was fun. A book about work. It just sort of feels like those two things don't go together for many people. And so many parents, right? So many parents are overwhelmed with work, with family. um in your research what patterns have you seen about why we overwork especially as parents yeah i mean it comes at us from all different places so there's the very obvious like we work to make money and we feel like we have to accomplish these things in order to fulfill our roles for paid work and so therefore we're working a lot to try and fulfill our end of the employment agreement.

3:34But it's actually far more complex and deeper than that, I find. Most tricky is not just working hard because or overworking because we think we need to. For me personally, and a lot of other working parents I know, we work so hard because we like it, because it's actually kind of addicting. And it gives us all sorts of things besides money, which is validation, accomplishment, a sense of identity, a sense of safety, like I'm needed and valued in this role, a sense of power, purpose, like all things which are good, but they can start to rewire our brains in the same way a video game would or social media in that it can be addicting to get the high performance review, to be putting work out into the world.

4:26Again, all good things, the trouble comes really at the opportunity cost of all of that. Like if you love working and you, you know, conceivably could do it nights and weekends because you're feeling important and powerful and that's all good. But the question is, if you only have 24 hours a day, what price are you paying in order to overwork in that way? And so I find the solutions sometimes it need to come from, I mean, there's a million and one productivity hacks, right? Like on how to work smarter, not harder. But there's also, we need to consider too, what inside us is driving us to work so hard, to potentially be overworking.

5:12Sometimes it's even an escape from our lives. Like I know when my daughter was first born, I was like, you mean I get to finish a cup of coffee while it's still hot at work, like, I'll take that. That sounds really good. So multifaceted problem. But that also means we have many solutions. Yeah.

5:31Hunter Clarke-Fields:And we've had, I've had Oliver Berkman on and talked to him about that. And the thing about productivity, you know, he pointed out is that you get, you're like, oh, just be more productive. But then you, you know, if you're faster sending your emails out, you're going to get more emails. Like there's, there's stuff that starts to fill it things just morph comes to sort of fill in if you you know you're aiming for productivity sort of to to get you know to solve the problem there was a leader i worked with who would tell his team the faster you realize work is a bottomless pit the better because you'll never reach the bottom there's always more stuff that would be good to do and so i'm a huge fan of Oliver Berkman.

6:19He blurbed the book even. But because if we're never going to reach the bottom of work, then we definitely need a different strategy. And we need to acknowledge why we're trying to get to the bottom of our work pits and how we can, in some ways, distance our identities and our sense of accomplishment and meaning and purpose from work such that what's left to the time that we freed up can be filled with family, friends, leisure, rest, all the other really important parts of our lives.

6:54Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah, it's interesting. It kind of overlaps in some ways with parenting in a lot of ways, like where we, a lot of us, I think we're trying to find this sense of worthiness from either parenting or from work, right? And these are these two big buckets that are trying to give us that we were taught to work hard at these things. We're taught from a young age to get good grades and work hard and do all your homework and get everything done. And then we apply that to our families, to our kids, and to our work lives. Yes. And I know as a woman too, Like, I feel like I've been surrounded by these messages of, like, be the good girl, get the good grades, do what you're told, please, people, don't disappoint.

7:45Like, that's been also my own journey and, like, what does it feel like is expected of me? And they're impossible standards that I never agreed to, but somehow just, like, I ended up swimming in this water. And so it is a question then of can we be worthy simply because we woke up this morning, simply because I'm a mother who loves her daughter. You know, the most valuable parts of yourself that you bring to work often are not the quantity of emails you can crank out or the quantity of work, especially in knowledge work professions. it's not the quantity it's the quality of thinking it's the quality of relationships that you have within a business like many things that don't require a brute force approach to working and believe me I have worked nights and weekends for a year like I'm very familiar with that lifestyle.

8:46And yet, I don't know, or rather, there's a drop-off in terms of what we are actually delivering to the business when we work into our 70th, 80th hour of work in a week. And so there's some hope, I think, for being able to detach a little sooner and sort of retatch to the rest of our lives.

9:12Hunter Clarke-Fields:So I love it because your book is like, you're kind of against the grind, right? You're like, it shouldn't be a grind. And A, we don't want to overwork. And also beyond that, to even push the envelope even more, your book is all about finding more fun at work, which is so interesting. I don't think a lot of people associate that term with their work. So how do you define fun at work? Like what feels authentic and meaningful for, you know, grownups who are juggling a lot and have a lot of pressure? Yeah, for sure. So I like the term fun because it feels very visceral. It's very childlike. Like, I like that it doesn't have, like, a very strict definition in that usually you can tell if you're having fun.

10:06Like, I'm having fun right now. Like, this is stimulating and interesting, and it's fun to talk to you and listen to the question. You can also always tell if you're not having fun. Like, I'm sitting with a hunchback doing my expense reports, or I'm trying to, like, prepare for this board meeting that has me, like, totally scared out of my skin. And so it's a visceral quality, but I think what I like about that is our experience of our lives can't be defined. I mean, obviously, happiness researchers try to quantify it or engagement surveys try and, you know, have you on a five-point scale, say how much you're enjoying, you know, your work.

10:46But ultimately, like the title of the book today was fun. And I think it's a very simple metric for if you're enjoying your days and therefore if you're enjoying your lives. If at the end of the day, you think to yourself, there are some tricky parts. There are some funny parts. That part was really bad, but then we recovered there. But on the whole, today was fun. I think if you can say that most days of your life, you're killing it. You've really, really won.

11:21Hunter Clarke-Fields:Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break. Emotional regulation is a huge topic in mindful parenting for obvious reasons. We want to have a more peaceful home. We want our kids to not be dysregulated. We want ourselves to not be dysregulated. We want to be able to stay grounded in the chaos. And one of the things we talk about very rarely on the podcast when it comes to dysregulation is sleep and our sleep quality. We know that sleep affects the whole house. A child's nighttime breathing and a parent's sleep quality can really shape the tone of the next morning. When kids sleep poorly, the whole family can feel it.

12:01Hunter Clarke-Fields:One of the things that can affect kids' sleep is mouth. A simple option for kids and adults is muzzle sleep. Muzzle is a small, low-tech habit that can fit naturally into your bedtime routine. What is it? Muzzle sleep makes comfortable mouth tape for kids and adults that is designed to gently support lip closure and encourage nasal breathing during sleep. The whole thing is built around a very simple idea that better nighttime breathing can be supported with a practical low effort bedtime habit that really fits into family life. So if you are worried about your kid's sleep or maybe you have a partner that snores, this is such a simple low-tech way to help this problem.

12:42Hunter Clarke-Fields:And And it's all super clean, BPA, forever chemical free, made in the USA. Go to muzzlesleep.com and use the code mindfulmama for 10 % off. That's muzzlesleep.com, promo code mindfulmama. Is that compatible with getting all this stuff done, being responsible, you know, producing for your workplace, all that stuff? Yes. Okay, so for sure. There's, sometimes I think about it, there's like a kind of fun that's like icing fun, which is like, you know, the apocryphal like ping pong table, like, or the work app happy hour or that sort of stuff that's not working in all play. Like, I'm very pro ping pong and pro happy.

13:35Like, that's all good stuff, right? But I think the strawman version of that argument is if you do too much of that, you're not getting the work done.

13:42Hunter Clarke-Fields:And you wouldn't feel purposeful either, I guess. Right. Yeah. But I would argue actually like if that's the icing, the cake of work is also fun. So if I come up with an idea that I think is like really strategically sharp and could help our project or our team solve something and I share that idea and someone's like, oh, my God, I didn't think of it like that. That's so smart. And I'm thinking like, oh, my gosh, like I'm kind of pleased with myself. And it was fun to come up with that idea. And I was creative. And now I get to build that idea with colleagues who I enjoy. Like that is, that's also fun.

14:22And so it's not that fun needs to, it's not that fun needs to be at odds with productivity. I mean, getting things done feels good. I think we all know that. Like we, whether it's something big and strategic and profound and creative for the business, or it's just something simple, like you've checked off a whole bunch of to-dos, that it feels good. And so I'm trying to sort of expand the notion of how might we find fun in the day-to-day, whether, you know, no matter what your role is, whether you're an accountant or a landscaper or a barista or a marketing manager, is there something within your role?

15:07and again, not the ping pong tables, but something actually within your role where you can share some of your own creativity, where you can create something impactful. Like I even think of a, you know, a marketing copywriter who writes some really clever copy and is like chuckling to themselves. And they're like, hey, we're colleagues, check this out. And then they laugh like, oh my God, that's so good. Yeah. Like you're doing the work, but it doesn't have to be painful. I think what I find frustrating is that we sometimes equate pain with greatness or, you know, we say nothing worth doing is easy.

15:47And it's just not strictly true that doing really impactful work doesn't require pain. You only get paid because you create value. You don't get paid because work is painful. And so if we think about how could I make whatever task I have at hand more fun, if we even stop to ask the question, that opens up a whole bunch of possibilities. Like, do I want to write 10 performance reviews hunched over my computer? Or do I maybe just, like, want to walk to a park nearby and do them with a hotspot and see if a colleague wants to come? And maybe we high-five each other when we finish each one. That there's so many ways that we can imbue humanity and creativity and movement and play in the actual cake of our work, if you will.

16:39Hunter Clarke-Fields:You know, it's funny. You mentioned a lot of different jobs as you were speaking there. And it made me think of a job that I had when I was a teenager. And I, because I've been working since I was 12. I was like a maid when I was 12. But anyway, when I was a teenager, I worked at Dunkin' Donuts at the end of my street. and a lot of times it was a grind it's busy you know whatever sure but then there was these afternoons where i worked with diane pimenta and she and i we this was a long time ago where it was like pre fancy coffees we like developed a new strategy for iced coffee where we would melt the sugar at the bottom with hot coffee first and flip the whole thing over and anyway people would come from places you know towns around this is in rhode island where there's they're everywhere to get our iced coffee.

17:26Hunter Clarke-Fields:And then we would force it. We would just like look at each other in the beginning and we'd be like, because we wanted tips, we're like, we're going to smile to everybody. And we would be like, yeah. And then we would like force ourselves to smile. And then we would end up having so much fun. And we were doing an incredible job. Like we were making the coffee better. We were smiling at everyone. We got great tips and we were psyched by the end. And it could have been a real, it could be a real grind, but we ended up making it really fun. And we were more effective ultimately by doing so. For sure.

18:05I love everything about that story. I wish I could have gotten my coffee from you back in the day.

18:12Hunter Clarke-Fields:We did have some fans. Actually, I had one guy. We got gifts through the drive-thru occasionally. It was very strange. Okay, but go on. Yeah, I'm sure like, yeah, if there were social media, I'm sure you would have had a cult following, like you have to go get your coffee. Oh my god. But I love that story so much, like for about a billion different reasons. But one, yeah, you made your fun. Like you took whatever was in front of you and you found a way to do it with a friend and creativity and a joy, and it was impactful. And I can only imagine the customers, I mean, clearly this was effective from the customers.

18:50Like, you can always tell as a customer or as a client when an organization, somebody is enjoying themselves. Like, when your barista is having fun, it's magnetic. Like, oh, I want to be having fun too. Like, They're expressing themselves. I want to express myself too. It's like, it's just such a nice way to run a business, but also just sort of be in a community where you're inspiring other people. I mean, maybe someone else went off to work that day with their coffee and was like, you'll never guess how good this coffee is. And, you know, anyway, I think it's fantastic.

19:28Hunter Clarke-Fields:Okay, but not everybody can have the great pleasure and joy of working at a Dunkin' Donuts. So there are a lot of different work cultures. And in Today Was Fun, you talk about the idea of like reimagining work cultures. So I know there are parents who listen that are in leadership roles. What advice do you have for them, for parents who want to model a healthier, more joyful work environment? Yeah. So in any role in leadership, whether you have like one direct report or you're leading a team or a whole organization, you are the culture maker. Like people are looking to you for, and I would just loosely define culture as what's normal here, what's accepted and won't get you any side eye and is generally a thing that we do.

20:17And so I would think of what you want to model is the kind of thing that you would want modeled for you. So to be more specific, I love when leaders model their own humanity. And you can do this lots of ways. Instead of wearing a super professional, you look put together like you spend all this time on your outfit this morning, maybe show up in like stretch joggers, especially if you're going to go for a run after work. You know, it just sort of models. I'm a human. I value my exercise. And I'm just as smart when I'm wearing my stretch joggers as when I'm wearing my like slacks or whatever it is.

21:01You can also model balance. And so I would always love, especially in the summers, if your company does like a summer Friday sort of thing, I worked with one leader who was so adamant on leaving loudly at like noon or one on Fridays. Summer Fridays being the sometimes prevalent custom of sort of knocking off early in the summer months. And she was so adamant about it being loud because what she was trying to do is glamorize balance. And I love thinking of balance as glamorous because we often think of like, oh, if I'm going to sneak out early on a Friday, like even the word I use, sneak, it feels like, ooh, trying not to schedule any meetings or like schedule send some emails and I'm just going to like slink out.

21:53But in her team, there wasn't this assumption that if you were leaving early on a Friday you were underworking or underperforming, it was actually the opposite. That if you were still there at 4 p.m. on a Friday, like, why weren't you efficient enough to get all your work done? Like, what happened there? And so not to, like, shame anybody, but I love that the balance was on the side, or the glamour was on the side of balance. And so it's what are those things that you can use your power to model for others that has people being more themselves, having more balance in their life, being more creative.

22:34Also, maybe you're the one as a leader to share the crazy half-baked idea. And then therefore, others are like, well, maybe I'll share my crazy half-baked idea too. Because that's what promotes a culture of creativity. So a few options for you there.

22:51Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah, I like that. I mean, I definitely know that as somebody who's worked in creative work my whole life, that you have to have a lot of terrible ideas to get to the 20 % that are good. So there needs to be, it's all about quantity, really. It's about numbers rather than quality sometimes. Or quality comes from quantity, I think, as far as ideas. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. It's like, it's just acknowledging that we are not machines. We're humans. And this is how human brains work. They work by sort of flushing out bad ideas. They work by socializing ideas. They work by somebody saying a crazy idea, which sparks another idea for you.

23:31Like that honoring that that's how human brains work. It's not that you sit down in a 30-minute meeting. You're like, best ideas, go. And then, you know, it's an acknowledgment that we work for our brains as much as our brains work for us.

23:47Hunter Clarke-Fields:That's true. That's true. Okay, so what about – how about a parent who's in a work culture that's kind of like a grind culture? For that parent, how can they take small steps towards more joy and ease at work without risking their job, risking their livelihood? Yeah. Okay, so one fun tactic and one scheduling tactic. So let me start with the scheduling one. It's a little bit more boring. If you work in a culture where it's normal to work all day long, nights, weekends, be available 24-7, and you're looking for more ease, what I often find in clients that I consult for, but also in my own life, is that work takes your life first, and then your kids, your health, your leisure gets the scraps.

24:40Like whatever happens to be left over. Like, oh, I finished working at 930. I have like 30 minutes to binge watch TV or maybe go like kiss my kid goodnight. So instead of letting work take first dibs, what I always try and do is I try and get there into my calendar first. So my daughter's art fairs, softball games, my doctor's appointments, her doctor's appointments, those go on the calendar. far in advance, months in advance, because I know it's so much harder to accept a work meeting, then go and decline it and be like, oh, sorry, I really want to be at my daughter's game, but that feels wrong to say.

25:24If I can get those on the calendar first, I have a much better shot, not 100%, but a better shot at saying, oh, I have another commitment, then I can't make it, let's schedule this another time. So that's one of my best personal tricks for making sure that You get dibs on your own life. The fun tip, like if culturally your company is really buttoned up and you feel like you have to put on your business mask every day, my favorite tip is to try a little act of micro mischief. And this is nothing that threatens the bottom line, nothing that threatens your job. It's a little sort of like a dropper of food coloring into the water of a very formal culture.