A few months ago, Sarah and I decided to divide and conquer on podcast interviews. So I’ve really been enjoying listening to the ones she’s done when I hear them for the first time as the episodes are released!
In today’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah interviews Megan Hyatt Miller. Megan is the CEO of Michael Hyatt and Co. (which many listeners know from the Full Focus Planner — he happens to be her dad) and the co-author, with him, of the soon-to-be-released book Win at Work and Succeed at Life. In this episode, she talks about raising her brood, and how she pursues “double wins” — moments when work and life fit well together. Certainly a “best of both worlds” concept!
In the opener, Sarah puts on her pediatric endocrinologist hat, and talks us through puberty, and what age is “normal.” Then, in the Q&A, we address the topic of returning to work after a 7 year leave. This is definitely a subject we’d like to revisit, more in depth, in the future, so we welcome stories of successfully navigating career pauses.
Please give the episode a listen, and as always, we welcome reviews, ratings, and suggestions for improvement.
I also took a career pause – I cut back to PT in Nov 2014 when my oldest son was 2 and my second child was born – and went back to work FT last August when my #3 was 2.5. So that would be an almost 6-year hiatus. I’m a data scientist but similar to the woman who asked the question, I was able to do a lot of adjunct teaching and consulting while I was not working. I had not planned on going back FT at that point, but a number of outside factors plus a really great opportunity made me decide to make the transition, and I’m really glad I did.
The first thing I would say is to feel free to be choosy about the position you take. I think it can be easy to worry that you have to jump at any job offer you get because you are “less than” other candidates, but – as Laura said – you still have very desirable skills. In this day and age, lots of people have weird resume gaps because they – say – tried to start their own business or worked for a start-up that didn’t actually start up, and it’s not going to come across as unusual as you might fear.
The second is to not fear that your workload is going to go up proportionally to your paid time. I’ve found that working FT is *not* 4x as much work as teaching one part-time class. In some cases, it’s not even 2x that much work. I was so used to hustling so hard that, honestly, having a FT job feels like a breeze most days.
However, I’m very glad I went part-time when I did. I had a very, very bad experience going back to work when my oldest son was born (which was not optional because my husband was still in school at that point), but I promised myself I was *not* going through that again when #2 was born, and it was 100% the right decision.
I would definitely look into getting someone from “The Mom Project” on as a guest – they specialize in returnships. https://themomproject.com/
I think an episode where you interview Sarah about what parents need to know about puberty and how to support them would be great! It’s a long ways off for me but a fascinating topic! One thing I am curious about is whether puberty is happening earlier than historically. I hear of that in different news stories, potentially related to phthalates or things like that, but is Sarah seeing evidence of this?
Great interview, though! Was cool to hear from someone who built her family a different way, too!
Really enjoyed this interview and shared it with multiple coworkers! I will definitely be checking out the book. I also enjoyed hearing Sarah talk about puberty – this could worthy of a deeper dive topic in my opinion.
So many interesting topics covered in this episode! Great to learn about puberty onset ranges and enjoyed the interview with Megan. Look forward to reading her book.