Episode 33: Literary Life Lately – Fall 2023

It has been awhile since we have checked in on what’s happening in your literary life lately! Did you know reading books has been scientifically proven to lengthen the number of years you live? Talk about a sustainable way to live! If you or your loved one is a reluctant reader, you will get tips to address this so you too can live a longer life.

Here is what you can expect in this episode:

  1. Why readers live longer and what you can do to join the ranks.
  2. Fun, quirky books Susan completed since the last Literary Life Lately episode.
  3. Two books that were meh, plus one that you need to borrow or buy TODAY.

Listen at the link below or search for “Sustainable Productivity with Susan Sanders” everywhere podcasts are available.

Links to Learn More

Links mentioned in this episode of the Sustainable Productivity podcast:

We would love to hear from you. Send your feedback on the episode, suggestions for future show topics or guests, and anything else to Susan@SustainableSue.com or in a DM on Instagram.

PS: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

By |2023-09-19T18:52:41-04:00September 18th, 2023|Show Notes|0 Comments

Bonus Episode: Three 5-star Reads This Month!

This bonus episode is to bring you a few 5-star reads that I came across in July. Yes – THREE OF THEM in one month! All books mentioned in this bonus episode are linked below in the show notes.

Podcast listeners are the second group to get this list. Earlier this week subscribers to the Sustainable Sue Bookmobile were the first to hear about about them. If you want to be in the early recipient group, sign up to join the bookmobile at SustainableSue.com/bookmobile.

Listen at the link below or search for “Sustainable Productivity with Susan Sanders” everywhere podcasts are available.

Links to Learn More

Links mentioned in this episode of the Sustainable Productivity podcast:

We would love to hear from you. Send your feedback on the episode, suggestions for future show topics or guests, and anything else to Susan@SustainableSue.com or in a DM on Instagram.

By |2023-08-03T12:48:30-04:00August 4th, 2023|Show Notes|0 Comments

Episode 21: Special Guest for Literary Life Lately!

Special guest alert! It’s that magical time of the season – time for a reading round up and all thing literary life lately. This installment is extra special since Susan’s sister will be joining her on the microphone. Before they offer up thoughts on who and what they have been reading lately, Elli and Susan chat about literary life NOT lately.

Here is what you can expect in this special guest episode:

  1. What memories around reading exist for the Edwards girls.
  2. How books and reading shaped their parenting.
  3. Differences between reading as a kid and reading as a parent.

Listen at the link below or search for “Sustainable Productivity with Susan Sanders” everywhere podcasts are available.

Links to Learn More

Links mentioned in this episode of the Sustainable Productivity podcast:

We would love to hear from you. Send your feedback on the episode, suggestions for future show topics or guests, and anything else to Susan@SustainableSue.com or in a DM on Instagram.

By |2023-06-26T09:22:06-04:00June 26th, 2023|Show Notes|0 Comments

Episode 17: Sustainable Sue, the Book Bully

One of the frequent questions that comes into the Sustainable Sue inbox is about where to find book recommendations. Susan does not mind being a bit of a book bully, pressing books into people’s hands and sending unsolicited recommendations at random. But her tastes may not line up with yours. Or you might be in a book rut and need to find a new book bully to tell you what to read.

Here is what you can expect in today’s episode:

  1. The Sustainably Productive adjustment that took Susan 48 years to start and only took 60 seconds to complete
  2. Where Susan finds her recommendations
  3. Why anti-recommendations have value and how to use them to your advantage

As always, even if you are not a book lover, this guidance applies to whatever your hobby is. If you love to lift weights, where do you get inspiration and recommendations for exercises and routines? Travelers don’t know where to go before they actually travel – if this is you, how do you learn the best places to hit in a new city? Maybe instead of a book bully, you wish you had a foodie bully – someone to recommend recipes, restaurants, and techniques to improve your food experience. Listen at the link below or search for “Sustainable Productivity with Susan Sanders” everywhere podcasts are available.

Links to Learn More

Links mentioned in this episode of the Sustainable Productivity podcast:

We would love to hear from you. Send your feedback on the episode, suggestions for future show topics or guests, and anything else to Susan@SustainableSue.com or in a DM on Instagram.

By |2023-05-29T08:21:30-04:00May 29th, 2023|Show Notes|0 Comments

Episode 14: Sustainable Sue Cleans the Kitchen

Sometimes on the podcast we will talk about existential questions like why we do the things we do, what happened in our childhood to make us the way we are, and how to move forward when you are so burned out you can’t sit up straight. Today, it is a topic that might seem more trivial and purely surface level. But I assure you there is always more to what meets the eye. Listen to the latest episode for a look into how Sustainable Sue cleans the kitchen.

Listen at the link below or search “Sustainable Productivity with Susan Sanders” wherever you get your podcasts.

Links mentioned in this episode of the Sustainable Productivity podcast:

By |2023-05-08T08:57:15-04:00May 8th, 2023|Show Notes|0 Comments

Episode 13: Literary Life Lately

Its time to see what’s happening in Sustainable Sue’s literary life lately! It has been awhile since we have checked in on what Susan is reading. This episode expands past books to include magazines and prepping reading material for business travel or vacation. Of course we talk about a few books Susan read since we caught up last. Some books were a hit, some a miss, and one was in the paranormal fantasy genre. Yep, not a typo – paranormal fantasy. And that is not one of the books she abandoned.

Listen at the link below or search “Sustainable Productivity with Susan Sanders” wherever you get your podcasts.

Links mentioned in this episode of the Sustainable Productivity podcast:

By |2023-05-01T06:09:38-04:00May 1st, 2023|Show Notes|0 Comments

February Reading Round Up

This episode is about one of Susan’s favorite things in the world – books! Reading is one of Susan’s favorite hobbies, and hobbies are a component of the Mental Well-being dimension of Sustainable Productivity. On average, Susan reads about 15-20 books a month, but the recap provided in the episode is limited to the books that stood out because just running down every book each month would be the audio equivalent of watching paint dry.

Links mentioned in the Sustainable Productivity episode about reading:

  • Sign up for episode emails, weekly essays, and links so you never miss a thing!
  • You can see the complete list of books Susan has read on Goodreads, linked here.
  • Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler can be purchased at this link.
  • Seatmate by Cara Bastone is an Audible exclusive available at this link.
  • God is Closer Than You Think by John Ortberg can be purchased at this link.
  • This is Marketing by Seth Godin can be purchased at this link.
  • In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner was the favorite book I read this month and it can be purchased at this link.
By |2023-02-27T09:22:27-05:00February 27th, 2023|Show Notes|0 Comments

4 Ways to Find More Time to Read

One of the most common questions I get it HOW DO YOU READ SO MANY BOOKS!?

Left to right.

hahahahaha. Ahem.

It is natural for me because reading is one of my favorite hobbies. It serves as entertainment, distraction, escape, and personal growth. Reading has always been encouraged in my family. We often trade books and talk about what we are reading.

But I know that is not reality for everyone. Often people grow up only reading the books school requires or going to bed with no stories read to them or generally reading not being a value. When people with these reading histories ask me how I read so many books, they are often asking how I find the time to read so much.

I want to share a few suggestions on different ways I have fit reading into my schedule during different seasons of life. Reading looked different when I was a parent to school-aged kiddos compared to my current empty nest life. When I was a full time grad student also working full time, fun reading looked really different to times when I was between jobs for a several weeks. Vacations vs. work days. Winter vs. summer. All of these are variables that impact reading, but there are some common tools and tricks that might help you find more time to read.

Timers

You will be amazed at how quickly you can get through a book by reading only 20 minutes per day. Set a timer for 20 minutes and over a couple weeks you will be able to get through a 300-page book. If you don’t think you have 20 minutes in your day, I gently suggest that you look at the report on your phone that tells you how much time you spend on different apps, particularly social media.

If you truly don’t have 20 minutes, what about 10 minutes? I have family members who spend more time than that on the toilet everyday.

Identify small pockets of time

A corollary to the 20-minute suggestion is to identify pockets of time where you wait. These could be small pockets of time that occur naturally throughout your day. Car pool lines, picking up groceries, waiting for dinner to cook / water to boil, while the coffee percolates.

You also could manufacture small pockets of time for you to fit some reading in. Arriving to an appointment extra early, placing your dinner order at the restaurant instead of calling ahead. Yes – generally being “inefficient.” But is it truly inefficient if it is building in time for a hobby that brings you joy?

Different formats

If you find yourself without time to pick up a book, maybe switching to audiobook would work for you. Are you in  “Mom’s Taxi” years of parenting? The car is a great place to engage in audiobooks. A Kindle is a great option for readers on the move. Often a book is cumbersome to carry around, but a Kindle can hold hundreds of books and easily fit into a purse or briefcase.
Perhaps the fiction books you are reading are not really landing with you lately or you lose track of fiction books on audio. Switch to non-fiction. Putting down romance for historical fiction or sci fi might reignite your love of books. Burnt out on non-fiction self-help? Pick up memoir to break out of your rut.

Keep a list of suggestions

What happens when you identify small pockets of time, set your timer and then can’t decide what to read? Plan ahead for this eventuality by keeping a list of book recommendations. You probably have come across suggestions in magazines, podcasts, this blog, friends, and more. Keep these suggestions in 1 location so you can grab a title when you are stumped.
Some readers like a simple notebook to list their To Be Read books. Others use a Word document or Excel list. I use the app Goodreads. You can read more about this decision here.

Your Turn

If you are a regular reader, how do you make time in your day? If you are not, what is keeping you from reading more?
By |2021-09-12T19:58:05-04:00September 14th, 2021|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

The Push – A Book About Motherhood…and SO MUCH MORE

I know not everyone is a book nerd like I am so I usually save my 5-star book announcements for Sustainable Sue Bookmobile  subscribers. But this book is so much more than a great read – I had to share it with everyone.

Books can make you think and feel things you don’t want to or did not even know existed in your mind and heart. There are times that books make you reconsider what you thought, approved, and wished for. Sometimes books help soothe the rough edges on feelings that you did not even know were there. The Push by Ashley Audrain is that book and more.

The Premise

Here is the Goodreads description of this novel:

Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter–she doesn’t behave like most children do.

Or is it all in Blythe’s head? Her husband, Fox, says she’s imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well.

Then their son Sam is born–and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she’d always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth.

The Push is a tour de force you will read in a sitting, an utterly immersive novel that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about what we owe our children, and what it feels like when women are not believed.

The Impact

This book made my insides shrivel up in a way that few books ever have.

I am a childless by choice step mom to 2 kids who had just turned 4 and 6 when I met them. My husband and I had some tough conversations in the first couple years of our relationship and marriage about whether we would have kids together. I had a several reasons against having a biological child. Here are a few of them.

  1. Post-partum depression runs in my family. I already lean on meds and therapy to keep the ship afloat. I have taken enough biology and human physiology classes to understand the hormonal chaos that pregnancy and early motherhood wreck on a woman’s body.
  2. I could not imagine how I would manage all of my big feelings while abstaining from caffeine, alcohol, vigorous exercise, and SSRIs for 9 months while incubating, then indefinitely after. I know zillions of women do this every day and have for millenia, but I am a research study with an N of 1. I knew my best coping strategies – healthy or unhealthy as they were.
  3. I loved our life. We had the kids 3-4 days each week, every week. We could do things like the zoo and practices, then drop the kids off at their mom’s house and spend whole days riding our bikes or touring through wineries near the mountains.

But I felt selfish and less than. It seems like I was bombarded with messages ranging from evolution to pop culture about how motherhood is a woman’s purpose in life.

So if I did not want to be a mother (a “real mother” as some women called it, separating out my step-mothering from what they did), what kind of woman was I?

This book explored all of these ideas and more from the perspective of Blythe and flashbacks to her mother ‘s and grandmother’s lives. For the first half of this book, I pretty much decided that I could not rate this book. I felt so strongly about it – loved and hated it, but I would never be able to explain the real truth behind why I loved and hated it so much. I did not want to try to explain all of these big feelings in a book review blurb.

But I decided that I was going to swing for the fences and be honest about the complicated feelings I had about motherhood. As much as I can do that today. As the layers of the onion are peeled, there may be more to share with you in the future.

This is the power of books – it is not just a story. It is how that story makes you think about your life. It can help heal, restore and reframe what we always thought was true.

“A library is a hospital for the mind.” Anonymous

Your Turn

I need people to talk to about this book. If you have read it and want to swoon together, comment below or come find me on social media. I have been pressing this book into everyone’s hands – and now yours. Go read it RIGHT NOW and come back to help me process this.

I know you will want more after you finish reading it. You can listen to an interview with the author here and hear a bookish podcasters talk about it here.

By |2021-05-18T08:47:01-04:00May 18th, 2021|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

Ways to Improve Physical and Mental Health

Spring forward and the vernal equinox sure help me improve mental and physical health! It’s that time of year when we start to come out of hibernation. I have a bit more energy to tackle, well – anything. If you have been around here for a minute, you know how much I love books and gardening. These are a couple of my favorite hobbies. I want to share with you why they also improve mental and physical health in hopes you will be inspired to add a hobby to your life. 

Benefits of Books

While self-improvement and memoir are in my top favorites to read, fiction is what is my favorite for escape, relaxation and general enjoyment. Research proves this is not just in my head. Reading fiction can

  • Reduce stress by 68% – demonstrated by lowered heart rate and muscle tension
  • Enhance “Theory of Mind” which is the ability to understand other’s mental states and show increased empathy. 
  • Increase your life span. According to Social Science and Medicine, those who read 3.5 hours per week had a 17|% lower risk of dying in the next 12 years. Reading MORE than 3.5 hours per week lower their risk by 23%. 

Source: Dr Caroline Leaf

Benefits of Gardening

Gardening can be equally healthy – both mentally and physically. You don’t have to have an elaborate or expansive property, even a simple container garden on the balcony of an apartment can bring you benefits. 

Benefits of Hobbies in General

While books and gardening might not be your jam, I cannot encourage you enough to find your jam. Hobbies give you a respite from the grind. You are more than the sum of your work hours. Whether that work is something that gets a W2 or not you need a hobby. 

  • Stay at home moms need time to give to themselves just as generously as they give to all of their people ALL DAY (and sometimes night) LONG.
  • CEOs need to take off the high heels and put up their feet to just be, not to solve all the problems. 
  • And where are my teachers? Sheesh, you are the CEO, mothers, tech support, and educators that the rest of us can’t even pretend to keep up with. 

It is more important to find some kind of hobby that to find the perfect hobby. No matter what you try, the simple pursuit of a hobby is what will reduce your need to escape your life. 

Extra Credit

Hobbies are just as important as laughter. If you want bonus points towards creating a life you don’t need to escape, check out this “No’s of Hobbies” podcast episode. 

By |2021-03-21T12:11:15-04:00March 23rd, 2021|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

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