Weekender #242

🎯 Self-advocacy at work without sounding like you’re pitching yourself for a promotion.

📖 The 2025 nonfiction reads NPR couldn’t stop talking about.

🤖 Five productivity-book prompts ChatGPT can run for you.

🎵 Joanna’s inner emo kid is screaming: Jimmy Eat World is touring Bleed American.

Summer arrives for working parents with equal parts excitement and dread.

On one hand, the school-year chaos eases. No more packing lunches, signing permission slips, or rushing everyone out the door before 8 a.m. On the other hand, your kids are suddenly home all day, your workload is exactly the same, and you’re somehow expected to keep both running smoothly.

If you work from home, the friction sharpens. To your kids, your physical presence means availability. To your workplace, your calendar still looks open. To you, it can feel like a daily tug-of-war you’re losing at both ends.

The first move is letting go of the fantasy version of summer.

It doesn’t have to look like a curated highlight reel of educational crafts, organic popsicles, and endlessly patient parenting. For most working families, summer is far less cinematic and far more practical. The goal is just a rhythm that works.

That starts with structure (without over-scheduling). Kids thrive when they know what to expect, but you’re not recreating school at home. A simple flow is enough: mornings for camp, reading, or independent play; afternoons quieter, with intentional screen time during your busiest blocks. Predictability lowers the temperature for everyone.

It also helps to lower the bar in the right places. Peak work performance, a spotless house, gourmet meals, and magical family bonding every day isn’t a real ask. Something has to give, and choosing that intentionally beats letting summer make the call for you. Convenience dinners, repeated lunches, grocery shortcuts, and relaxed laundry standards are all on the table.

For at-home workers, boundaries need to be concrete. Saying “Mom is working” every twenty minutes rarely lands, especially with younger kids. Visual cues, timers, or clear rules around what counts as an actual interruption work better. Kids respond to specifics, not vague.

And yes, screens might play a bigger role this summer than you originally pictured. That doesn’t make you a bad parent. The play is using them intentionally: saving them for critical meetings, building family movie traditions, or working them into the daily flow instead of defaulting to all-access.

Most importantly, give yourself grace.

A working summer with kids at home is genuinely hard. It’s messy, noisy, overstimulating, expensive, funny, and sometimes exhausting. Your kids don’t need a flawless summer. They need safety, connection, some structure, moments of joy, and a parent doing her best without collapsing under impossible expectations.

If your summer feels chaotic, that’s just the season. It asks a lot of working families. Aim for a summer that works on your own terms instead of the one that looks impressive from the outside.

Kristel (TA Marketing)

What am I forgetting?

That vague sense of dread on Sunday evening rarely comes out of nowhere.

It’s usually the forgotten follow-up, the project status you’re not sure about, and the task that someone owns, or maybe no one does. And it’s the deadline living somewhere between your inbox, Slack, a spreadsheet, and a note you scribbled three days ago.

That’s where the Sunday Scaries thrive: in uncertainty.

The right project management platform helps replace that uncertainty with clarity.

monday.com makes work visible at a glance, so you can quickly see what is on track, what is stalled, and where your attention is needed before Monday chaos kicks in.

ClickUp is ideal for teams juggling constant moving parts, centralizing tasks, docs, timelines, goals, and collaboration so fewer things slip through the cracks.

Quickbase helps teams tame messy workflows by turning disconnected processes into organized, customizable systems that actually reflect how your business works.

Zoho Projects brings structure to planning, tracking, and execution, helping teams stay aligned and ahead of deadlines instead of reacting at the last minute.

👉 Compare 11 tools that put every deadline in one place.

📖 Read: Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel

Perel writes about the tension between security and desire in long-term relationships with the kind of honesty that lands harder than expected. Even if you’re not in a relationship right now, the way she dissects intimacy and the stories we tell ourselves makes this one you’ll keep thinking about for weeks.

📺 Watch: Rooster on HBO Max

Steve Carell plays a famous author who shows up at his daughter’s college campus to support her through a messy marital breakdown, and ends up tangled in everyone else’s drama. Bill Lawrence’s comedy is warmer and weirder than it looks, and Carell does the kind of work that reminds you why he’s so good at this.

🎧 Listen: My Regards by Maisie Peters

A tongue-in-cheek flip on the classic ‘stand by your man’ song where Peters casts herself as the protective bodyguard of the relationship instead of the love interest. Country-leaning, witty, and sharper than her usual sound.

If your office snack drawer is still giving “forgotten granola bar from 2020,” your team has definitely noticed.

Simpalo delivers better-for-you snacks and fresh fruit curated by people who are professionally obsessed with finding options that actually taste good. More than 5,137 companies use Simpalo to treat their teams, with 500,000+ employees enjoying the snacks on the other end.

Why teams love it:

• Better-for-you snack boxes plus fresh fruit delivery: real options, not vending-machine castoffs.
• Pre-curated, fully custom, or team-choice: pick the level of effort that fits the office.
• Flexible delivery cadence: one-time, monthly, or whatever rhythm works.
• A personal message included with every box: the small touch that lands.

Plus, Simpalo is offering new customers an Amazon gift card of up to $200 when they try a box. The exact amount depends on the order.

👉 See the snacks, pricing, and gift card offer.

Upcoming Events

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• Tues 6/9 @ 1PM PT: Co-working Session (SGS Only* | Join the waitlist)
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* Smart Girl Society is our private community for women who want deeper conversations, accountability, and tools that actually make life easier. Join the waitlist to get in the next round.

Meet Maximus, aka “Max,” a 90 lb “lap dog” who still thinks he’s 15 lbs. He barks tough with his little pup sibling, but truth be told, pots and pans send him running. He loves everyone, notices every tiny detail (dog park detective 👀), and still plays like a puppy at 7 years old.

His favorite things? Walks, food, long naps, and climbing right into his humans’ laps like he owns them.

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