Life Hacks: Strategies to Suffer Less
February 2, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Thank you so much for really sticking there with us with all of these hard things we’ve been discussing over the last month. Today we are going to talk to you about some life-changing ideas to make your life easier. This is We Can Do Easy Things Life Hacks.
Abby Wambach:
Well, on the surface they might feel like hard things.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, no, really?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I mean, because these are life hacks, but sometimes some of these hacks I think are going to be difficult.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Abby Wambach:
They’re hard for me.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, it’s as easy as I get since college, okay?
Abby Wambach:
Right.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, I got it. I was a little late, but I got it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay. I was like, “You didn’t work hard in college. Oh, I get it.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. There you go sister.
Abby Wambach:
You were easy in college?
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, I wasn’t hard. I’ll tell you that. Can we all talk about what a hack is? Sister, what’s your definition of a life hack?
Amanda Doyle:
I think hacks are things that people have discovered that simplify or streamline a small or big part of their life, that if we all added to our portfolio of skills, we might make some things easier for ourselves.
Abby Wambach:
Those are the most amazing definitions-
Amanda Doyle:
Exactly.
Abby Wambach:
Of efficiency.
Glennon Doyle:
Do you have it written down?
Amanda Doyle:
No, I just thought of it.
Abby Wambach:
That’s outrageous.
Glennon Doyle:
So we have some categories here. We’ve got overall life hacks. We’ve got some relationship hacks. We’ve got some-
Abby Wambach:
Tech hacks.
Glennon Doyle:
Home hacks, tech hacks-
Abby Wambach:
Relationship hacks.
Glennon Doyle:
Travel hacks, and…
Amanda Doyle:
We have pod squad hacks.
Glennon Doyle:
Pod squad hacks.
Amanda Doyle:
That you have written into us or called with voicemails. We are very grateful. We are incorporating your hacks.
Glennon Doyle:
For me, I feel like life hacks are things also to help lessen suffering. Really all I’m trying to do is suffer less. Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
Right. It’s the idea of try easier.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
We could try harder. In some ways we need to, but in some ways we just need to try easier.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right. That’s right. And there are tricks that you can use to suffer less. That is how I feel about life hacks. So my first overall hack is called Eat the Frog.
Abby Wambach:
Where did that come from?
Glennon Doyle:
Well, a lot of people attribute it to Mark Twain. There was this quote that Mark Twain said that if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, then nothing worse than that will ever happen to you throughout the day.
Abby Wambach:
Ain’t that the truth?
Glennon Doyle:
Which is kind of funny because it’s like just do a terrible horrific thing and then everything’s up from there.
Abby Wambach:
Can you give me an example of something you eat the frog with in the morning?
Glennon Doyle:
So the way we explained it to the kids is worst thing, first thing. So here’s the way I think about it. We wake up in the morning and we all have that thing that we know we have to do.
Amanda Doyle:
Write that email, make that phone call, have the conversation. All things.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Or the project at work that you want to do the least, it’s going to require the most of you that you just start dreading. It’s the dread thing. Dread, dread. What we tend to do is put that thing off and off and off and off and off because we’re dreading it. So if you think about your time as a long stretch, you got a stretch of time each day. What happens when we put off that hard thing is that we spend all of the time between when we wake up and that hard thing in dread. So we kind of have a little pit in our stomach because we’re looking ahead towards this thing that we are dreading. We’re putting it off, putting it off, putting it off, which means that most of our time is spent in dread. But if you wake up in the morning, you do your little things, whatever you have to do, but then you do the worst thing first thing.
Glennon Doyle:
It causes less suffering only because it shortens the time of dread. So it’s a short amount of time of dread now, and then the thing is done, and then you have the rest of the day. You just feel lighter and happier.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, everything’s downhill. This feels like a really good procrastination hack too.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It’s just the opposite of procrastination and it has nothing to do with being more productive for me. Nothing. It just has to do with suffering less and living in that dread space less.
Abby Wambach:
And I will say that this is probably the thing that I’ve learned the most from you in terms of how you live your life and that I’ve put into my daily regimen because early days, when we first got together, I was the queen of procrastination.
Glennon Doyle:
No, you did not want to eat the frog. You didn’t want to look at the frog.
Abby Wambach:
I didn’t. I was just like, “No, that’s for tomorrow.” And now I really admire and I have admired you for all of these years because you do that. You do the very thing that you least want to do first. And then I look at you and I mean, for the first few years I just would have so much envy like, “Oh, she’s done with her thing. I’m so jealous.” And so then I started to implement it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, you did.
Abby Wambach:
And I am a considerably more happy person after noon.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And the other thing is people like me, you don’t need to eat six frogs. If it’s Tuesday, you do not eat next Wednesday’s frog.
Abby Wambach:
Just eat one frog a day.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. You must have time after the frog for enjoyment or there’s no point in eating the frog because I know you frog eaters will be like, “Great. So if I just spend Monday eating 365 frogs for the whole year,” no, no, no. There has to be some discipline of rhythm in it where it’s like eat the frog and then enjoy the fruits of the frog digesting.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
And now we’ve jumped the shark and now to you sister, what’s one of your overall hacks?
Amanda Doyle:
I have a simple one and then a bigger one. My simple one is that I just learned that I’ve been breathing wrong for four decades.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh yes.
Amanda Doyle:
And that was a surprise to me because I know how to properly cite a foreign constitution in a legal brief, but I didn’t know how to breathe. I don’t understand how that happened. So this is something I would like to share with the group. When you breathe, you are supposed to inhale and your stomach goes out. Okay. Your stomach goes out because then you are expanding your diaphragm, you are letting the air into your lungs. Then when you exhale, your stomach contracts, comes in. And then if you give it a little pinch, that’s like expelling the bad stuff in there. So think of it as that. You’re breathing in the new, it’s filling you up, then you’re letting it all out and you’re coming in. I was doing that wrong for 43 years.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, like you’re filling a balloon I would say.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, filling a balloon, letting it out.
Abby Wambach:
It’s called diaphragmatic breathing. Diaphragmatic breathing.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes, that’s what it’s called. I just didn’t know how to say that word. Okay. That feels important since breathing feels essential. Also, I realized something that I think that it’s a good life hack to not ask to know things that you don’t want to be responsible for. So for example, on Thanksgiving, my amazing sister-in-law was here with us, Johnny’s sister, Kate, and she’s wonderful. And she, curious minds want to know about who was the person on the episode that wasn’t.
Glennon Doyle:
The person that… okay, reference, the person that we canceled the interview with because she was very rude to-
Abby Wambach:
Our producer.
Amanda Doyle:
So she said, I need to know who the person was, and I know Kate very well. So I said, “Kate, do you want that job? If I were to tell you who that person was, I would be giving you the job of holding that information and never telling not one single person who that is. So you would have the information, but you would have to protect it for the rest of your life.” And she said, “Oh my God, no, never tell me that. I never want…” And her head kind of exploded about it because she hadn’t done that calculus. She’d only done plus for me in the column if I know more things, but not on the other column of now I have more jobs. And I feel like that relates to so many things. Anytime someone butt dials me, I immediately scream into it, “I can’t hear you.”
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I’m so scared of somebody talking shit.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m so scared I’m going to… exactly. I’m so scared when I hear anything. I never want to know anything that someone says about me. If someone starts telling me a story, oh my gosh, I heard they were saying, I was like, “Please stop now. Please.” Why am I going to accept that burden from you? I’m just walking around in my life. I don’t want to know things about things. None of my business.
Glennon Doyle:
That is a job. Being mad at people is a job.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
It takes a lot of your energy.
Abby Wambach:
This is tough for me because I like to tell secrets.
Glennon Doyle:
I know you do.
Abby Wambach:
This is revolutionary for somebody like me. Tell me nothing.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, and also similarly, don’t give people jobs they’re not qualified for. So if you are a person with a secret, a very upsetting way to live is to know there are people in your life who can’t keep secrets. Then to know as you’re telling them a secret that they’re definitely going to tell it. And then to harbor the anticipatory anger that will occur when they will tell it. And then to be shocked, which is a bullshit lie because you’re never shocked that they did tell it because…
Glennon Doyle:
So also it’s the exact same thing as holding a very hot pot, being like, “I can’t hold this. It’s too hot. It’s burning my hand. So you hold it,” handing it to your friend and then being pissed when they give it to somebody else. You couldn’t hold it yourself.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
It was too hot.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Amanda Doyle:
So you just don’t give people jobs that they’re not qualified for and you don’t ask for jobs that you don’t want to be responsible for. And I think everyone would just be better. More information is not better.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, babe, what’s one of your life hacks?
Abby Wambach:
Okay. Mine is on in the same vein a little bit as yours, Glennon, but it’s kind of got a different vibe to it. So every single one of us knows that there are certain things in our life that when we do them, we just feel better. For me, I know that I have a few things that I sometimes struggle with, whether it’s motivation or just the doing of them that I know every single time make me feel better. So for example, for me it’s exercise. Even though I was a pro athlete, staying fit and healthy was always something that was a big struggle of mine. So sometimes I would wait to be motivated or I’d wait to see how I felt that morning. And that always ended up giving me an option, a choice. Like, “Oh, I get to choose.” So I have in my daily regimen that I do things no matter what, that I know make me feel better every single day, every single time I do them. Every single time, I’m never like, “Oh man, I wish I didn’t work out.”
Glennon Doyle:
That’s how I feel about walking or meditation.
Abby Wambach:
So I put into every single one of my days, something like that, whether it’s working out or reading the book or meditating, the things that I know that never let me down when it’s done, those are things I do every single day. So treat the frog.
Glennon Doyle:
Treat the frog. It’s kind of like worst thing, first thing, next thing, best thing. It’s like the hard icky thing and then the thing that feels like a treat to you, because it doesn’t always have to be working out something that’s miserable during it.
Abby Wambach:
Of course, of course.
Amanda Doyle:
So for me it’s showering. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s like I-
Abby Wambach:
It’s personal hygiene.
Amanda Doyle:
Well yeah, I get it to some people, personal hygiene, to some people treat. I will go days where I have slept in whatever I sleep in, wake up, go the whole day still in those clothes and go to bed in the same clothes that I slept in the night before. And it’s just because I don’t need to leave my house. I work from home, whatever.
Glennon Doyle:
To be clear, you work from your bed. So she doesn’t need to leave her bed.
Amanda Doyle:
I literally don’t. That’s another story. That started with my broken toe where they said I had to work from a bed and then I was like, “Oh my God, why have I not been doing this for my entire life?”
Glennon Doyle:
Treat the frog. Treat the frog, sissy,
Amanda Doyle:
Treat the frog. But I often feel like I don’t need to take a shower, but every time I do it, I’m like, “That was a great idea. Good for me.”
Glennon Doyle:
Treat the frog. Okay?
Amanda Doyle:
Treat the frog.
Glennon Doyle:
So good. Okay, I have a couple more. One I learned when the kids were little. I wanted to have this vibe in my house that I thought would require me to create the vibe. So when the kids were little, I wanted everything to be playful and cozy and fun, but I was miserable and tired and cranky so I could not be the vibe that I wanted my home to be. So-
Amanda Doyle:
Be the vibe you want to see in the world.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. I could not be the vibe I wanted to see, nor can I still be the vibe. So what I figured out one day, I turned on some kids’ music like a kindergarten teacher would. Like I used to play in my classroom or circle time music or kids’ music and damned if I was standing there just totally miserable, third cup of coffee, unshowered, cranky, turned on that music, my house felt so peaceful, cozy, vibey, like preschool teacher ran this house. I looked at the kids and I had not changed my vibe at all. This is when I realized you just have to play the vibe you want to be in the world. You don’t have to be it. If you want some peace, turn on some peaceful music. If you want to remember your freaking college vibey self, turn on some Dave Matthews. You don’t have to be a vibe. You just have to play a vibe. And suddenly you want your house to seem peaceful. How often do I turn on some freaking spa music when I’m cursing and miserable?
Abby Wambach:
And I’m telling you, it works. I walk into our room and I’m like, “Ooh, I feel good.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yep.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
She’ll light some incense and I’m like, “Ooh.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yep.
Abby Wambach:
Are we getting a massage? What’s happening?
Glennon Doyle:
If you want to know how miserable I am and how cranky I am and how anxious I am, you just have to figure out how peaceful the music is on in my house.
Amanda Doyle:
You’re always the equal and opposite of the music.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s good.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s right. It’s like joy to the world and Glennon’s like, “Fuck this shit.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that’s a life hack. You don’t have to be it. You just have to play it. Any others for you two?
Abby Wambach:
I have one. I just think that one of the best things that I heard long ago was don’t make any big decisions after 9:00 PM. After 9:00 PM that’s when all the things go silent. You’re laying in bed and you start the worry list and you get up and you make lists and what am I going to do to? It’s like, don’t make big decisions… nothing good happens after 9:00 PM, 10:00 PM.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
And that dovetails a lot with that horseshit of never go to bed angry. You should mostly when you’re angry, go to bed. Because half the time you wake up and you’re like, “Oh, I wasn’t so much angry as I was real tired.” And then you wake up and it’s done. Or you have some perspective on it where you’re like, “Huh. Yeah. I kind of see another side of it I didn’t see before.” When you’re angry, 9 times out of 10 just hit the old sacarooni.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re tired. We need to not make any decisions about how much our life sucks at night. We can only decide in the morning if our life sucks.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, witch don’t worry, it’ll probably still suck at the morning.
Glennon Doyle:
Of course it’ll be there when you wake up to suck and suck and sucks more. Sleep first.
Amanda Doyle:
All right. Let’s hear from Maggie. I loved this that she sent in about her life hack.
Maggie:
Hi Glennon, Abby, Amanda. This is Maggie. I think one of my favorite life hacks is the 10 second rule, 10 seconds of silence when you are asking for something that you want, need or desire and deserve, when you explain what it is that you want, just wait 10 seconds. Wait because it’s so easy that we start explaining away the reasons why or undermining our request to begin with. And so allowing for those 10 seconds to just let your request or your requirement stand on its own, it empowers it rather than devalues it. I appreciate all of you so much.
Abby Wambach:
Hold. Hold.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God, it’s so good.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s so good. I feel like we need a 10 second silence after that wisdom. It’s so good because think of all the-
Glennon Doyle:
We couldn’t do it. We couldn’t do it.
Amanda Doyle:
No. We were like one… think of all the context where that applies. It’s even when you’re asking for something, when you’re saying something and there’s an awkward silence and you’re like, “I cannot tolerate this. I’m just going to fill it, fill it, fill it.” And then it doesn’t honor the thing that you’ve put out there and then you’re actually allowing someone to respond to it instead of just being like, “Oh, see, I knew I was wrong. Nevermind. I take it back.”
Glennon Doyle:
I think that this is revolutionary because sometimes it’s easier to say the thing than to hold the line of the thing. Because after you say the thing you’re dealing with the other person’s facial expression, you’re dealing with what they might say or not, you’re dealing with the discomfort of what you just put into the universe. Then I think what happens is that we try to bolster our case. We try to bring more evidence to why we deserve to say the thing that we just said, which reminds me babe, of when we are arguing and you just say, “That hurt me,” and then you just leave it. And I’m like, “Whoa. You can’t argue with that.” You don’t make a case of all the reasons because then you can attack the reasons, but just saying what you just said or what you just did really hurt me and then leaving it, is very powerful.
Abby Wambach:
It reminds me of getting the courage to say something that you want or need, and then the fear of rejection of it is what makes us want to add more and add more and not just wait and hold the space. That fear of rejection, I think that makes it really hard to actually do this 10 second rule. But I love it, Maggie.
Glennon Doyle:
And standing strong in the disequilibrium that bringing your need to someone causes because it does cause a disequilibrium because people are not used to hearing people say boldly what they need. So there is a disequilibrium that happens and allowing that awkwardness to be a sign that something new is happening. Instead of that, you need to take back something. I feel like that goes along with the idea of when you’re drawing a boundary with somebody or you’re saying no, and that person gets really upset, I used to really think, “Oh, that’s a sign that I’ve done something wrong and that I should backtrack what I just said I needed.” And now I always think of it as a sign that I should double down that I absolutely did the right thing. If I say something to someone that’s a basic boundary or need and then they are angry with that, that just shows me that was the absolute right move in the first place.
Glennon Doyle:
That just because someone gets mad at you because you have said what you need does not mean that you’ve done something wrong. It probably means that you’ve done something right because your establishing of a boundary means that they no longer get to override your boundary that was working for them.
Amanda Doyle:
I also think it’s just a lot of people who are most empathetic and most emotionally intelligent can see a hundred sides to the same situation. So we go through the process when we’re figuring out what we need, we also can understand, okay, this is how that impacts that person. And they might feel when I say this like this, and so I am prepared with all of that when I go in and state just my need. And so as soon as we state our need, we feel the need to bring up, “And I know that it might be that you feel like this, and I know that in this one instance that didn’t work, and so you might be thinking that I’m not serious about this,” we bring it all to the moment. But I think if we can separate that and say all of this is true and yet we still feel like we need this thing, there will be time to get to the rest of it.
Amanda Doyle:
Just give this one thing that you have decided you want, the 10 seconds, it deserves to stand alone and there will be time for the conversations of all those nuances and holding your line and validating the other person. We just don’t need to muddy the one moment where you need to say the thing you need to say.
Glennon Doyle:
It would be a good life hack, I think just to incorporate the pause into so many things. The pause is… it’s the difference between reacting to something and responding to something which people talk about so much, but I have found to be unbelievably true that for me the difference between war and peace with someone is usually 15 seconds. Responding to something right away, which feels like it’s going to feel good almost always for me creates more pain for both people. But if I can spend just a long pause, metabolizing it a little bit, getting some creativity in there, some space, some breathing, I can almost always respond in a way that works better for both of us. And it’s not just about being kinder actually, it’s about being more efficient, being more generous, being more able to come out with an outcome that works for both people.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, it’s so awkward. I could use a total masterclass in this because I can’t handle awkward silence and that’s what is probably stopping so many of us from creating this space for even a pause in conversations.
Amanda Doyle:
And not for nothing. I don’t think that this is where Maggie was going with this necessarily, but from a negotiation perspective. If you are asking for a salary, if you are asking for more flexible arrangements, if you are saying what you need in any kind of negotiation, the one who can handle the silences wins.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Because what happens is you say, “I need a $10,000 raise,” and when you fill in that silence with, “And I understand the business has been doing bad and I understand… and you’ve been so good to me and you let me stay home with my kid for that week he was sick,” what you’re doing is handing the other person what they say back to you. Whereas if you say what you need, “I need the $10,000 raise,” you are not showing them the keys to the kingdom. You are not showing them your vulnerable pieces that they know now to use against you.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
They have to fill that silence and then you get to react to what they say instead of reacting to what is your biggest vulnerability, which is what you’re going to fill the silence with to begin with.
Glennon Doyle:
So good.
Abby Wambach:
Is that how you’ve been arguing with me all these years? That’s really smart.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I mean, I do think…
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, that’s correct. Okay, here are some tech hacks. I have three. My first one is turning your phone to gray scale. I’m not even going to begin to try to tell you how to do that. Just Google it. Here’s the reason my phone is on gray scale. It’s so boring. Your eye does not go to it. It’s not as pleasing. It’s not as moth to a flame anymore. It’s like the world is suddenly brighter than your phone, which makes you look at your phone so much less. Okay. It really works for me. Gray scale your phone. Number two-
Abby Wambach:
I did it for one day and I had to switch back.
Glennon Doyle:
That is true. Number two, if you don’t want to constantly be held hostage to your phone, if you don’t want to live a life of reactivity by constantly having to text people back, tell people in your life that you’re not a texter. Tell them that’s not how you communicate, that you don’t use your phone for that. That’s what I always say, “Oh, I don’t use my phone for that.” Just tell them. And it’s suddenly you put down 479 jobs. You can then decide with people how you prefer to communicate. That’s different for everyone.
Glennon Doyle:
Number three, my third one, unfollow people who make you feel bad. I know this seems simple, but I do it every few months. It is unbelievable to me how I will sit there and scroll through things that make me feel like crap for a very long time until I remember I don’t have to do this. And what makes me feel bad or doesn’t make me feel good is different all the time. So it does require a repeated curation. For me right now, I am allergic to anything that even has hints of diet culture. I’m learning about all of that. I don’t make myself prove why I deserve to unfollow this person. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people. It doesn’t mean I’m even making a judgment about them. It means it’s not good for me. And also, if you don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, then you can mute people. I’m not going to go through that. Just Google it. But there’s ways you can unfollow or not see things where that other person won’t know that you have unfollowed them.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
Sissy, what are your tech hacks?
Amanda Doyle:
Well, I am the last person in America to know this, but if you happen to be the other person, this is for you. Do you know how on text you can send an audio file? If you press the little thing, you can say something, the other person receives it as an audio file. There is another way to text that is you say it with your voice, but it goes into typed out words. Okay.
Abby Wambach:
What is it called? Where?
Amanda Doyle:
So you go to your text, you click on the place where it says message where you would normally type. Then there’s a little microphone at the bottom of your phone. You hit that and you say, “Hey, I’ll see you at five o’clock. Do you need anything from the grocery store? Question mark.” You actually say, “Question mark,” and then you press it and it goes to them as writing, and I am the person who has written paragraphs and paragraphs, thumbs on the text. This has changed my life. Okay. Number two, when you’re writing an email, I’m always afraid that the email’s going to go to the wrong person, that it’s going to go prematurely. Write your email and then put the recipient in the email last. That’s it. Then you don’t have to worry about it going prematurely or accidentally sending it to the wrong person.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Amanda Doyle:
Third thing. This is one for me because I wish people would do it for me and I wish to do it for other people. Venmo requests. So I live in fear that I accidentally owe someone money that they are now harboring a resentment towards me for, but I don’t know about it. Because if we were to go to dinner, I am always afraid that I owe people money. So it is kind to send a Venmo request. Then people know you owe me 30 bucks and then you can just press it. Also, it helps you not to harbor secret resentments. If instead of saying, “Oh, we’re going to split this dinner, you’ll just give me 30 bucks later,” you can do it in that moment, send the Venmo request. Then you don’t have to worry about whether that person is doing it intentionally.
Abby Wambach:
It’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
Good job. I like that.
Abby Wambach:
I love that so much.
Glennon Doyle:
All right, babe, what are yours?
Abby Wambach:
Well, having been a professional athlete for so many years, I was never very good at staying on task. Basically, I just followed the herd everywhere it went. And so now in my post career, early days, I would forget to show up or to write things down in a calendar. So what I do is actually I set 10 alarms in a day because when the calendar notification comes up on my phone, I ignore it every single time. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Glennon Doyle:
Me too. I don’t know. I’m like, “Why are you bothering me again?”
Abby Wambach:
I know. I just flick it. I clear it. So that’s one. Another one is to take selfies in the iPhone app, in the photos section, you just press the volume up button. So people are always amazed when anybody has ever asked me for a photo.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh my God, I just did it while you’re talking. Yeah. I cannot believe that works.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I always-
Amanda Doyle:
I struggle to hit the dot in the middle every time, and then you have to hold it in a funky way on the side and on the middle. Wait, so you just hold it up like this and press the up volume?
Abby Wambach:
Yep.
Glennon Doyle:
I just did it. I just did it.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh my God, that changes everything.
Abby Wambach:
It’s a game changer for family photos-
Glennon Doyle:
And you always take the selfies when we’re out and someone asks for when I hand it to you because you do it so easily and that is why.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. Yes. That is why.
Glennon Doyle:
Great.
Glennon Doyle:
Friendship hacks. I’ve got a few. Okay. Number one, when someone comes to your house, you can tell them what time you want them to leave. We always have start times for everything. And then there’s no, the ending time is just this ghost. And you just have to figure out when people want to leave and read the energy and you feel like they might never leave. No. I always say to people, well, to person, to Alex, the one person who comes over, I say to person, “Would you like to come over from six to eight?” What’s wrong with that? Then the person comes. Then you’re not wondering the whole time, you know when your stuff has an ending time.
Amanda Doyle:
Hack within a hack? Have the ending time a half an hour earlier than the time that you really must be done. Because then you can seem super gracious when it goes to 8:30.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Yes, yes. Okay. The five minute check in. This has been very, very important to me. I don’t like to call people for a few reasons. But one, because I don’t want to talk for an hour. I just don’t want to do the whole thing where you’re just trying to figure out what to say and how are you and how’s everything? Five minute check in. Do you have five minutes to just check in and see how things are going? 10 minutes, whatever it is. Every conversation doesn’t have to be an hour long.
Abby Wambach:
That’s a preemptive text. So hey, do you have five minutes check in? And so everybody knows this is a five minute call. It’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And then of course, we’ve talked about this one before, but I really like the postmortem where you are with someone and then you, at the end of the getting together, you talk about all the things that you wish you didn’t say or that you already feel awkward that you said at the end of it. So you can get that out of the way so you don’t have to do it on your way home and then for the rest of your life.
Abby Wambach:
That’s so sweet. I’d never ever worry about that.
Glennon Doyle:
I just want to be you in another life.
Abby Wambach:
I know. I know.
Glennon Doyle:
What about you sissy?
Amanda Doyle:
One is the friend caucus during difficult times. When something happens in… if there’s a separation or divorce within your friend group, I think it is a really, really good idea to bring all the friends together for a meeting. So recently when this happened in my friend group, I called a lunch meeting at my house where we just had lunch and it was with the express intention that the friend in our group who was going through a separation and eventual divorce, could sit down and tell us what she wished to share about the situation to all of us together once so we’re not doing this phone tag game. And even more importantly, hearing from her about what she wanted from us. So everyone is different when this happens. And I did this because I wish that I would’ve done it for myself when I went through my divorce, but there’s so many things that come up in that situation that are not intuitive, that people who want to be a good friend don’t know how to handle and also don’t know how the person wants it handled.
Amanda Doyle:
So we talked about very specific things like, are you okay with us speaking individually about our concerns and worries about this? Or do you want us not to? Because then everyone could hear together. So if she said no, then you in this group, if you come and talk to me about it, you know it’s not what she wants and we-
Glennon Doyle:
Love it.
Amanda Doyle:
Pretend that we’re talking in a concerned way if she said she doesn’t want us to do that. Also the intention of how she could feel supported in our interactions with her ex. Do you want us to be gracious? Do you want us not to? Are you going to feel like we’re disloyal if we say hello when we meet him? How do you want us to interact with your kids with respect to this? What do they know? Do you want us to keep inviting him to the family barbecues?
Amanda Doyle:
Do you want us not to? All of those kinds of things. And then we don’t have to guess. Also, how do you handle the inevitable community members who during school pickup will say things like, “What happened there?” Because people are not equipped… well, if you don’t think of it, you get caught off guard. You eventually say something that you end up feeling disloyal about. It’s terrible. And so we actually practice. What I’m going to say is it’s a really hard thing and I’m not discussing that. Or it’s very complicated. You know how these things are. Or whatever it is that you don’t walk away thinking, “Oh shit, I just shared my friend’s confidence and I didn’t even mean to. And now I feel terrible.” And also, do you want us to report back things you see? See back to the first thing about jobs you don’t want, I didn’t want to hear anything that people knew about my ex. I didn’t want to hear they’d talk to him. I didn’t want to hear anything.
Amanda Doyle:
So I just feel like it’s a really helpful thing to do because that is way too complicated of a system for everyone to be navigating independently without hearing directly from the person.
Abby Wambach:
Really good. The only problem I have with this is that I don’t have more than one friend.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God, Abby.
Abby Wambach:
To need to caucus.
Glennon Doyle:
I was just thinking that. I was like, “Who would I-“
Abby Wambach:
Who would be my caucus friend?
Glennon Doyle:
Who would come to the caucus? That’s a good… I don’t know. I think that’s good for us to sit with.
Abby Wambach:
We need to find more friends.
Amanda Doyle:
But it’s different. This is the group that all of our kids went to preschool together. All our kids are in elementary school together. It’s a different phase of life where we are in this community in all the same places. And so that makes it even more important that we are representing her the way she wants to be represented.
Glennon Doyle:
God sister, that is so-
Abby Wambach:
Really beautiful.
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know. I just love that so much. It just shows so much about you too as a protector of people. It has so much integrity. I feel like everybody wants to feel held by a group like that.
Abby Wambach:
Talk about having gone through a divorce and needing a little bit of a playbook, right?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
This is good.
Amanda Doyle:
There’s no playbook. That’s exactly right. And then we’re like, “Well, I hope all of these six people that are in this friend group that are all raised in a very different way, that all have different life’s experiences will do what I wish they would do even though we never talked about it.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
It doesn’t make sense. And then some people feel like they need to be mean to the dude because that’s the most loyal thing, but that might not be what she wants.
Glennon Doyle:
And families don’t even do that. You’re going through divorce. The siblings and whatever, they don’t know what to do. They don’t know if they’re supposed to be talking to that.
Abby Wambach:
This is good for families too.
Glennon Doyle:
The caucus. The caucus sister. Very good life hack. Okay, super quick ones. Parenting. A number one, our biggest parenting hack and also Abby’s biggest relationship hack with me is every time your kid comes to you with the drama and the trauma of little beingness or teenageness or whatever, not fixing the problem. The way we changed our relationship with one of our children is to every time they came to us to say in one way or another, “Are you wanting a solution right now or no?” That changed everything because this kid needed a place to just be and have all of their feelings and have that space. And every time we jumped into solution mode, it would steal away her whole transformation. We talked in the Sara Bareilles episode about some people just need that cocoon time and don’t want to be forced into viewing a butterfly because they know how to get to the butterfly place and it’s to stay in the cocoon place for a while. It’s not to be shoved because rushing the transformation doesn’t work.
Abby Wambach:
And now what she does is she just comes into the room and is like, “I need to vent.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. She doesn’t-
Abby Wambach:
Go ahead.
Glennon Doyle:
She knows. Okay. Number two, and this comes from my teaching years. Little children are so annoying.
Amanda Doyle:
By fact, they are. Children are so annoying.
Glennon Doyle:
And one of the reasons that they’re so annoying, and by the way, I love them more than adults. So let’s just say like I’m obsessed with children. I would spend all day with them if I could. But the reason they’re annoying is because they have no power and control, so they nag the shit out of you all day. When I had little kids, tell them what’s going to happen that day, put a piece of paper up, put a something, have a schedule, this 9 to 10… tell them what’s going to happen. And then 70% of their questions will be gone from you all day because you can just point back to the schedule. They just, “What are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing?” Point back to the schedule. I used to do it when they couldn’t read. I didn’t even know what I was pointing to. It’s just like something is there.
Abby Wambach:
Structure liberates everyone.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Number three, last one. When I was teaching preschool, I would prepare for hours and hours and hours, all their activities, all day. And then I would hear back from their parents that they didn’t remember shit. They didn’t know what we did. They didn’t know what we did all day. I might as well just stood there and handed them iPads. So here’s what I figured out. In preschool and with children, you start strong and you finish strong. That’s all they remember. They remember the thing that they did the second they get to you and they remember the thing that they did right before they get in the car with their parents. Rest of the day, abyss of nothingness. So apply this to your life in any way with children. Start strong, finish strong, all in the middle, screen time.
Abby Wambach:
That’s so good.
Amanda Doyle:
I love it. Abby, what are your parenting things?
Abby Wambach:
I think one of the things that I like to believe that I brought to the family is when the kid asks a question, I just respond with, “Well, what do you think?”
Amanda Doyle:
So good.
Abby Wambach:
Before I go into my diatribe of I know how to answer it, but I want to call on them to start developing their own thoughts. I mean even something as simple as what do I get at a restaurant or what do you think I should get?
Glennon Doyle:
Or what should I do with this friend?
Abby Wambach:
And I’m like, “Well, what do you think?”
Glennon Doyle:
It works.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. It’s good.
Amanda Doyle:
It works. It works with things like God too. What’s God, what do you think? And they also have the way cooler answers than I would come up with. So it’s fascinating.
Glennon Doyle:
And they almost always have something and it’s like, “Oh, they just needed a sounding board.”
Amanda Doyle:
My only parenting thing is to get a dog.
Abby Wambach:
Ooh, that’s good.
Amanda Doyle:
Because it just takes the edge off the whole family. No one feels like talking to each other. No one knows what to say to each other. Everyone’s talking to the dog.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s all we do.
Amanda Doyle:
Everyone’s talking as if they were the dog. Everyone’s imputing some kind of conversation to the dog’s mouth. It’s so much more fun than it used to be.
Abby Wambach:
It’s like it’s the bridge of all things, awkward silence-
Glennon Doyle:
Love, liability.
Abby Wambach:
Energy. The amount of love that our children that are now in the teenage years that they’re expressing themselves with this, our dogs, I’m like, “Wow, that’s so beautiful.”
Glennon Doyle:
And we don’t even look at each other. All we do is sit around and stare together at the dog. I don’t even remember what anybody looks like.
Amanda Doyle:
And it models the kind of thing, I look at my reaction when my husband comes through the door versus my dog’s, and I’m like, “Take a lesson, Doyle.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
That is a lot of love when someone comes to the door and that probably feels real good.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. And then you personify the dog and work out all your own shit. I’ll be like, “Look at Honey on the couch, she’s thinking, why the hell doesn’t anyone pick up their shit?”
Amanda Doyle:
Yes, exactly. Okay. Let’s do travel. Travel hack. Someone wrote this in, take a photo of your hotel room number so you don’t forget it. So smart. Also, please take a photo of the nearest pole to the place you park in the parking garage.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Because you need that too.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Very good. Babe.
Abby Wambach:
Okay, so I travel and I have traveled my whole life. And what I have found is if you find yourself traveling more than a couple times a month, even if you just don’t, I have a bag that is my travel bag. And I know that might sound obvious, but every pocket in my travel bag has a specific reason for being there. My pens are in the same spot. My chargers are in the same spot, where I put my wallet is in the same spot. My toiletry kit, I just bought double of everything. And so it just lives in my travel bag. So whenever I go to travel, it’s all done and dusted like I like to say.
Amanda Doyle:
You do like to say that.
Abby Wambach:
And so when I travel with my family, they don’t also understand this life travel hack that I have. And so it’s like, “I don’t have a pen.” And I’m like, bam.
Glennon Doyle:
Yep. She’s got everything.
Abby Wambach:
Does somebody have a charger? Bam.
Glennon Doyle:
Bam.
Abby Wambach:
I’m just bamming everybody on the freaking plane.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s true. You taught me some cool things about driving. Do you remember when you taught me about the arrow? This is going to blow the pod squad’s mind unless it’s something basic that everyone knows.
Abby Wambach:
I think a lot of people know this, but maybe if you don’t, it might blow your mind. Nobody ever remembers the side of the car the gas tank is on when you’re going to get gas. And there’s a little telltale sign on your gas gauge where there’s a little gas pump next to your gas gauge. There’s a little arrow. And the arrow is pointing to the side that your gas tank is on.
Glennon Doyle:
This has changed my life. The amount of times I pull up, guess, hope, pray, open my door, damn it, pull back around, there’s a freaking arrow that points to the side.
Amanda Doyle:
But remember when you realized that on every elevator there is a star next to one of the numbers? And that star indicated for you where the lobby was? Remember when you realized that?
Glennon Doyle:
That was after eight years of travel, every month and week. What a sweet thing to do. What a sweet thing to do to put that star on there.
Amanda Doyle:
I have one. When you’re traveling, if you happen to be a family of four with two adults like our family is, when you are traveling somewhere, you should book two of the three person rows and just book an aisle and a window in both sets of seats. And you book those seats because few people prefer a center seat, so they won’t purchase that ticket in between. And then you’ll have the whole seat to yourself, which is lovely. Now if by chance they do purchase the center seat and you get to your seat, you get to be a joy giver because you get to say, “Would you prefer to have the window seat?” And then they say, “Yay.” And then you are a hero and you didn’t end up any worse than you would’ve.
Glennon Doyle:
Love it.
Amanda Doyle:
We have a call in hack for travel from Kim.
Kim:
Hi Glennon, Abby and sister. My name is Kim. My life hack is that if I go away, I tell everyone I’m coming back a day later than I actually do. That way no one is looking for me and I have a whole day for reentry back into the world. Love what you guys do. Take you on all of my walks, even when it’s raining. Bye.
Abby Wambach:
Really, really smart.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s awesome. Good idea.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay, we have got home hacks.
Glennon Doyle:
I saw this home hack on the interwebs. I don’t know if it works, but I saw that if you don’t want your pot of water to boil over, you can put a wooden spoon across the pot and it will stop the bubbles from boiling over.
Abby Wambach:
Do you even know what that means?
Glennon Doyle:
What does what mean?
Abby Wambach:
How does that even work?
Glennon Doyle:
The wooden spoon stops the bubbles.
Abby Wambach:
I know. Do you put the wooden spoon just on the outside, under the lid, on top of the lid?
Glennon Doyle:
So on the picture, Abigail, on the interwebs, the wooden spoon was splayed across the pot.
Amanda Doyle:
No top, just boiling water, lay it across the top of the boiling water. It doesn’t overflow. It works.
Abby Wambach:
So good.
Amanda Doyle:
Also fitted sheets. You know how annoying that is to find the way the fitted sheets fit? To put a fitted sheet on the bed, the tag should be in the bottom left or the upper right corner. That’s how you put it on correctly the first time.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God. That’s life changing. I get so mad every single time.
Amanda Doyle:
Every time. Every time. Okay. We have a couple of columns from Hailey and Leanne on home hacks.
Glennon Doyle:
Great.
Hailey:
Hello, it’s Hailey. I am calling with a life hack. Okay. So it’s actually really funny. It’s not mine, it’s my sister’s. So I just got off the FaceTime with her. I was on FaceTime with her. And she puts me down, she props me up on her counter and she says, “Hailey, look what I did.” She opens her stove and proceeds to pull out all of her dirty dishes from the night before because she had people coming over yesterday. So she literally put her dirty pots and pans and hid them in the stove because she had people coming over. And she’s a mom of two young kids. And I just thought it was the funniest thing. I’m like, “That is the best life hack ever.” If people come over, just hide your dirty dishes.
Abby Wambach:
It’s freaking brilliant.
Hailey:
In the oven.
Leanne:
Hey, it’s Leanne, and I’m calling about life hack. Mine is claiming a corner of the couch as my own for television viewing. It is of course the most comfortable part of the couch, the part that comes out long that you can lay out in. And I claim it by leaving a blanket there and I leave my shoes. So if anyone comes up, they think I’ve just left and I’m coming back. And they won’t sit there. Although they’re probably onto this now, but no one’s sitting there. So it must be working.
Abby Wambach:
Our kids wouldn’t care.
Glennon Doyle:
I feel like we need some kind of… we can do easy things aboard that we give out to people like Hailey and Leanne who just win at life. So I love that couch-
Amanda Doyle:
The Leanne part of the couch is brilliant. I mean, Leanne, you paid for it.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
Good for you.
Glennon Doyle:
We never get the good part on the couch ever.
Abby Wambach:
No, I’m always sitting at… the kids are always laid out, legs long. And I’m just sitting with… I’m trying to put my legs on the coffee table and that’s not comfortable. Coffee table’s hard. I want to-
Glennon Doyle:
And we bought the couch.
Abby Wambach:
Why aren’t they deferential to what we want?
Glennon Doyle:
I know. All right. Let’s hear from Laura.
Amanda Doyle:
Or just deferential at all.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Laura and Catherine.
Laura:
Hi Glennon, Abby and sister. I am Laura. And I am calling with one of my life hacks, which is a mom life hack. If you have small kids and they bring home roughly 1.7 million pieces of artwork or paper and they’re all special, but you just can’t imagine where in the world you’re going to keep it all, I would invest in black trash bags. That way when you throw it away, they don’t see it through the white trash bag. It’s completely blocked from their view. You just step it down there. They’ll have no idea when they inevitably forget. And then when they ask you where it is, just plead the fifth. But it’s worked well for me. So hopefully some moms can use that.
Catherine:
Hi everyone. This is Catherine. So my life hack is doing a load of towels. I have three little kids. I have endless, endless amounts of laundry. And when I get super sick of folding little shirts and pairing little socks and all of that, I throw in a load of towels and the size of the mounds of laundry that I have to do decreases by… oh, I don’t know, 50 to 60%. And so it feels like I have less to do then. And then also towels are super easy to fold. So I feel like I win at life when I do a load of towels when it occurs to me to do that. You just got to grab the low hanging fruit where you can. All right. Love you guys. Bye.
Glennon Doyle:
I feel so strongly about the towel load of laundry. And when the towels are in the load of laundry, just pulling the towels out first because then the whole thing is reduced and it looks like such a huge pile. But really if you pull the towels out, it’s not so big.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. I feel like there’s a life metaphor in there somewhere.
Glennon Doyle:
There is. I’m too tired of this-
Amanda Doyle:
A lot of towels in my life. God, coming out to the side.
Glennon Doyle:
Eat the towel. And then also for you supermoms who feel bad about throwing away the art, you can take pictures of the art. Okay? You take a picture of the art on your phone, you make a little file, and then if you’re really an overachiever, you can throw it all to one of those companies that make it into a book at the end of the year. So then you’ve got all your kid’s art, but that fits in a very small spot.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Amanda Doyle:
And if you’re not super, please know that none of the three people of this podcast have ever done that.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, no. Of course not. Of course not. Of course we’ve never taken pictures of pictures. Of course we have no books. All right. I saw it somewhere. My laundry hacks are just, everyone in my family knows if you have a piece of clothing that can’t be washed and dried, that piece of clothing will be ruined. You have to know thy self. I have never once, not one time hand washed something, not one time ironed something. If you are going to wear something that needs ironing, you are going to look like crap.
Abby Wambach:
I also have a little bit of a hack because Glennon is the one that does our laundry in our family.
Glennon Doyle:
Not well.
Abby Wambach:
But one thing that I do as… and I don’t know if you know this, but I turn all of my clothes right side out.
Glennon Doyle:
And I do appreciate that.
Abby Wambach:
And I take my socks off from the toe so that the socks don’t need to be folded right side out. So that is a gift that you can give the person who is doing laundry, you are giving them time back because they’re not having to spend the extra time turning the shit right side out.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I appreciate that actually. The other thing is everyone in our family just has to be fine with all of their white clothes being gray or brown. I don’t separate laundry. I will never separate laundry. It’s not ever going to happen.
Abby Wambach:
And what about the socks, honey? We saw that tweet.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh yeah. So we saw this brilliant sock life hack from @wtflanksteak, which said to declare sock bankruptcy. And Abby and I laughed so hard because if you knew pod squad, the amount of time that I spend trying to put socks back together. We have entire bags full of single socks.
Abby Wambach:
Where do they go?
Glennon Doyle:
We call it singles mingle.
Abby Wambach:
Where do they go-
Glennon Doyle:
Put them together.
Amanda Doyle:
Singles mingle.
Glennon Doyle:
Every couple weeks I lay them all out. I ask Craig to bring over his socks. We have a speed date. It’s the eternal battle of reuniting socks. And so I just felt so much freedom seeing that tweet of declaring sock bankruptcy.
Abby Wambach:
It’s also now kind of cool for a teenage kid to wear different socks. And I see kids wearing different socks and I’m like, “Oh, I know those parents. Those parents are us.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
They just can’t find the other sock. Where the fuck do they go?
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know.
Abby Wambach:
Where the fuck are the socks?
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know. You guys, this is fun.
Abby Wambach:
Do you feel hacked?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I feel hacked.
Abby Wambach:
I feel hacked.
Glennon Doyle:
I feel hacked. I feel like all of these little things that can make life easier, I’m actually very grateful for. And if the pod squad wants to keep them coming, I’m open. I’m all about suffering less. If there’s anything you do during the days that helps you suffer less, let us know. We will keep reporting back because we live to make hard things easier.
Amanda Doyle:
We can do our things, but we’re going to try easier.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, that’s right. We love you pod squad, and we will catch you back here next time. Bye.