Ducks on the Pond
A podcast for rural women... by rural women. Hosted by Kirsten Diprose and Jackie Elliott, they seek expert advice and the stories of other rural women on issues such as succession planning, motherhood, starting a business...running for politics and much more!
Ducks on the Pond
Convincing your partner (or yourself!) to book a holiday (Popular re-release)
If you can’t get your partner to book a holiday with you… would you just go without them? That’s just one of the tips and tricks we discuss in this episode on how to convince your partner to go on a holiday… because we all know what farmers can be like.
We also look at the research behind the benefits of taking a break and the psychological barriers around taking time away from the farm that our partner (or even ourselves) might have. And we get some practical advice about how to discuss this issue with your partner, how to get the farm and household ready to leave and clever ways to save for a trip.
This episode, from 2023, is one of our most popular so we are replaying it for you over the holidays!
It features:
Chantal Corish – Psychologist and PhD Candidate, based in Goondiwindi, QLD
Carmen Quade – Director of AgriFocused, a business skills consultancy, based in Tallimba, NSW
By the end of this episode, we want you to find the answer to break through whatever holiday barrier you have... to get that get away booked!
** This episode is sponsored by Alison Hamilton, farm office coach and creator of the Functioning Farm Office.
This episode was originally released in April 2023.
If you would like to sponsor an episode, email us: ducksonthepond.podcast@gmail.com
I think more than one farmer in the world has been accused of being a workaholic.
Speaker 2:If you wanted to live a really urban existence with a goldfish and a unit, you wouldn't be living in the areas that we live. So sometimes all of these things that we build in because we love where we live make it harder to get away.
Speaker 3:Hello and welcome to Ducks on the Pond. I'm Kirsten Diprose.
Speaker 4:And I'm Jackie.
Speaker 3:Elliott. This episode is sponsored by Alison Hamilton, the functioning farm office consultant. We'll hear from Alison and about her business at the end of this episode. But, for now, it's time to start dreaming of your next holiday. Whoa, hold up, Jackie.
Speaker 4:I don't think we have quite enough funds to be doing a holiday giveaway. I mean, I wish that we did, though no, but this episode is all about the importance of taking a break and how to convince your partner, because we all know what farmers can be like.
Speaker 3:Oh yes, my husband hates to book in advance, but I work off farm and I need to let my boss know, with you know, a bit of notice that I might be going away. So it's a constant battle in my household.
Speaker 4:So in this episode we speak to Chantal Kourish, aka the rural psychologist, about the science behind taking a holiday and the psychological barriers people can have about planning for a break.
Speaker 3:And we get some practical advice from Carmen Quaid, who is a farm business skills consultant, on how to organise your farm life to actually be able to have a break, tips on saving for a holiday and how to get your partner over the line to book a holiday. You know what I want to see, jackie, by the end of this episode.
Speaker 4:Do tell Kirsten.
Speaker 3:I want people to listen to this, find that answer, to break through whatever barrier they face and then book a holiday. Like, if you book a holiday within three days of hearing this, then you have to tell us.
Speaker 4:And then maybe we could actually follow them on like ducks on the pond on the road trip right for a holiday. Um no, the advice you're about to hear is the second best thing to us actually giving away the holiday but we're not giving away a holiday, just to be clear.
Speaker 3:There's no holiday here, but but it's a really good episode, so keep listening.
Speaker 4:You still have to book what might be at the end. You can't say that jackie, that totally falls advertising.
Speaker 3:you have to book. You never know what might be at the end. You can't say that, jackie, that totally falls advertising. You have to book and pay for the holiday yourself. But we're going to help you get to that point. So let's get started. Meet psychologist Chantelle Kourish, who lives on a cotton farm in southern Queensland.
Speaker 1:So I did grow up mostly in Gundawindi. I was born in Tennerfield but Gundawindi was my hometown. I did go away for a little while but I got brought back by my beautiful husband in my early 30s. I'm married to a cotton and mixed grain farmer. I've been married to Simon for about 15, I shouldn't say about, but for exactly 15 years. My parents are farmers. I come from a long line of farmers and my dad is also an ag pilot, so I've had a lifetime of connection to agriculture in various ways and continue to do so.
Speaker 3:Yeah, would you say, you're a farmer.
Speaker 1:I've listened to your podcast on this. Should we call ourselves a farmer if you don't get out and, kind of you know, get amongst it? I think no, I don't. I don't get out and get amongst it, but I certainly feel like I do my bit by supporting Simon and being a farmer and getting the crops in the ground.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. I guess your main probably identity in terms of your career is to do with psychology.
Speaker 1:It is, yeah, so that really is my main focus, apart from my beautiful three children. I have three daughters. Two of them are away at boarding school now, so I've only got the one little lonesome one at home. But, yes, my days are filled with psychology, a private practice that I've been in for 15 years, and also studying a PhD so that's a Doctorate of Philosophy, and I'm studying that in psychological safety and psychological safety on cotton farms, so in cotton teams.
Speaker 3:That's really interesting. What's psychological safety? That's really interesting. What's?
Speaker 1:psychological safety. So psychological safety is the idea that employees or people in teams feel very safe to be able to be themselves. So if you have ideas about something, or you don't really like the idea of something or you don't like the way something's being done, it's the idea that you can freely speak up about that or contribute an idea of your own. It's actually very closely linked to innovation, greater learning, greater engagement, and within the cotton industry at the moment, we're struggling to attract and retain staff, like a lot of industries, and so we're hoping that perhaps there's some answers in investigating psychological safety within cotton teams.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I look forward to hearing what you come out with. You'll have to come back when you've sort of done your PhD. Yeah, should be good Love to. So I brought you on here to specifically chat about going on a holiday, which is something that we all like to do. Hopefully we can do it maybe once a year. But what is it with farming? It can be really tricky to get off the farm and even plan and put in the calendar a holiday.
Speaker 1:Yes. So I think more than one farmer in the world has been accused of being a workaholic, whether that's male or female. I can be a little bit biased with the men. But, kirsten, the problem with when we're working, our workday can be filled with little stressors or hassles, and sometimes those stresses don't go away when we finish work at the end of the day, they kind of hang around. We can't detach from them.
Speaker 1:So taking a holiday is really important, because when you take a break away from work a lengthier period of time, you can psychologically detach from your work. There's actually a science behind holiday. For a holiday to be effective, we need to do seven things. The first one is psychological detachment. So being able to not think about our work when we aren't at work is really important. Otherwise we're kind of carrying that load with us and thinking about it all the time, and that's contributing to the strain.
Speaker 1:Number two is being able to relax when we go on holidays, or being able to just make sure that we're not feeling that kind of wound up feeling not being in that flight fight mode that can happen when we get stressed. The Germans have a lovely saying letting the soul dangle. So I love that idea of when you go on holidays, letting your soul dangle, being able to relax. So that's quite lovely. The third thing is mastery, so doing things that give you a sense of achievement. So there's a little bit of you know, a little bit of a challenge involved there, but actually being able to achieve and overcome that challenge and feel like you've been able to learn something or achieve something.
Speaker 4:Hold on there, Kirsten. Am I meant to be going on a holiday and achieving something? I thought the goal was rest.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have a friend like this. Whenever he has a holiday, he like builds a table or teaches himself piano Like it's insane. Is that you, jackie?
Speaker 4:I'd like to go away and maybe even, if it's visiting something that I'd like to see, you know whether it's a business or calling into a shop that I've been following. So a bit of a on the road trip but at the same time a bit educational. But no, I do actually enjoy the rest side of things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you do that, don't you? You've got to like a little business side to your trip. It's smart. You could probably claim that on tax, actually. But here's how Chantel explains it.
Speaker 1:And the thing I was thinking of there was perhaps, you know, when you go on holidays and there's a small mountain there to climb or a bit of a walk, a bushwalk, and you've set yourself the goal of doing that walk or doing that and climbing that mountain and getting home and having that sense of mastery or achievement feels really good.
Speaker 4:Oh, that makes more sense now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I get my sense of achievement on holidays from reading a book or making it to the restaurant on time. Now, what else, Chantel?
Speaker 1:Autonomy, having a sense of control or autonomy over your holiday, is also really important. So, knowing that this is what you wanted to do and knowing the things you know, you might not be the person who gets to control the whole holidays we do need to share, but having things within your holiday that you know you have control over, you have autonomy over being in a good mood on your holiday. This sounds logical or reasonable, but sometimes you could go on holidays and things can put you in a bad mood and that's not going to aid to your recovery. And some of the things that the research say that put you in a good mood are things like listening to music, going on holidays with friends, so that's a particularly large one. Being able to connect with people when you're on holidays, whether that's family or friends, it's really important. And exercise that was also part of the research. Also, being able to get into a flow, having a sense of time going by quickly. So, rather than it dragging and you're being very aware of it time is kind of you don't even notice it because it's sort of slipping away with you enjoying what you're doing.
Speaker 1:And the final one there is the opportunity cost benefit ratio. So this one's about. You actually feel like this is where you want to be. You don't want to be anywhere else. The trade-off of being on holidays is a good one, as opposed to the thing that you're not doing at that time. So I was thinking about this one and I was thinking this is one of the big ones, I think, for farmers, because when they're often on holidays they're thinking about what's going on at home and they've sort of got this pull to be back at home and getting things done. So there's got to be on that holiday really great benefit. It's got to be a really great holiday and really suiting them for them to want to be there and have that kind of positive cost benefit ratio. So it's not easy. It's not easy to get my husband on holidays, although he's a pilot and he does like to fly. So if I choose a holiday destination that's a few hours away, he'll often jump at it because he gets to fly there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sometimes I get to go on mini holidays when my husband buys some sort of piece of equipment you know interstate and off we drive and we might make, you know, a night of it for the family. But I don't quite consider that a holiday, not in the sense that you were talking about and just listening to you kind of talk about all those lovely things, like that sense of time where it just goes and you're not watching the clock, and all of those wonderful things I was thinking, oh yes, what to do with that Starting to want a holiday. I think a lot of people say and I know it's true for myself it takes a couple of days to get into that mode. I'm probably just as guilty of being a workaholic as my own husband and it's good because then we don't miss each other because we're both busy at work but we do like to go on holidays. But it takes me days to stop that little ticker in my brain like just constantly finding. It's like it wants to find things to do all the time.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. And look, that's why you know the research is showing that you do need to make sure that you're doing things not only for those two to four weeks a year that you might have on vacation, but actually more on a daily basis. So, you know, ensuring that you've got that work life balance, ensuring that you kind of understand what your values are, you know, around family or partnerships, or developing yourself, your health, all of those things, and not putting those off until the two to four weeks a year, making sure that they're kind of a part of your everyday life, and so then you're not so psychologically attached to your work, you're giving yourself a break once work is finished and detaching from work and letting your mind have a break so that you can start afresh again the next day. It's really important to be able to do that so that you don't burn out or so that you don't have difficulty sleeping, which can add to all sorts of health problems.
Speaker 3:I have to admit, jackie, I'm not very good with the consistent work-life balance. How about you? You have your own business with Rural Women's Day, and obviously farming is something that you do too, and you can't just switch that off at 5pm.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I must say I am hopeless with the work-life balance. But while I'm enjoying it, it's all right. It's when I get burnt out and then I really should have probably taken a holiday like a few weeks prior to that burnout point and I just fall in a heap and it's just a complete mess. And then I book my holiday and usually it's like six to eight weeks away and I just have to get through each day till that point.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, I'm glad I'm not married to you, jackie, that would drive me insane. I like I love knowing that I've got a holiday booked. I want to know that that June, july holidays booked and it's going to happen and I can visualize it. And holidays are obviously so important for that long lasting switch off. But how long? This is like the research how long do you reckon the benefits of a holiday actually lasts?
Speaker 4:Personally I'd say that at least six months. So I'm actually going away in about three and a half weeks for eight days with Dan, back to a spot that we visited for our honeymoon over in Eyre Peninsula and I know once I come back from that holiday it will get me through till, you know, october, november.
Speaker 3:Right, so you reckon six months?
Speaker 1:I'll let Chantelle, the psychologist, answer this A holiday, a vacation, a lengthier sort of one Once you've returned and you've gone back to work, it only takes about two to four weeks for the benefits to wear off or to fade away of that holiday. So you know, you're really expecting quite a lot of your body to kind of be sustained by one or two holidays. A year.
Speaker 3:Does that mean we should have a holiday after every two weeks of work?
Speaker 1:Possibly, possibly. I'm not against it. I'm not against it, for sure.
Speaker 3:What if you have a partner who just really either doesn't want to go on a holiday or doesn't want to plan for one? And I think farmers can find it really difficult to plan. They might want to go on a holiday, say in the middle of the year, but that finding that right time can be really tricky because they're like, oh, I don't know when shearing is going to end or whatever the thing is. How do you, particularly if that's your partner, how do you look after yourself and your family? And look, I'll just say it, get the holiday that you want Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I think it's really important to have the conversation with your partner about what's important to them. I don't know that a lot of us as couples are doing that. I don't know that a lot of us really know or understand each other's values, or even do we really know what the other person likes in a holiday, what they enjoy. You know, if you can actually have those conversations and tease out what might be something that they would like to do and where you can win on that cost-benefit ratio, where the holiday is actually much more enticing than him staying at home, then that's where you're going to have a win. So that sort of encompasses all of those things of giving him some control. I've gone back to the stereotyping of the man being the farmer. Sorry, but I think it is harder to get the men away than the girls. Is that right?
Speaker 3:Can we just I don't know if there's any research there in that but oh, who knows, but that's the stereotype for our family. And look, my husband does take holidays and likes to it's planning for one. That's always a struggle in our household, look.
Speaker 1:I think that it comes. It comes down to that discussion of you know what is important to to him, and I think you'll be able to have, you know, during your downtime, have those discussions around. Well, you know, is our marriage important? Is it important for him to spend quality time with his children? You know, is his health important? Those sorts of things and then kind of you know leading into well, if it's important, then we need to be able to meet each other halfway and put aside some time this year to be able to go away and enjoy each other's company and enjoy our family time together and enjoy a vacation.
Speaker 3:The more serious perhaps end of this is when someone just can't even get their head around a holiday, as in almost planning for a holiday is too much work. Is that a different kind of issue that's going on there? I've heard of farmers who really struggle to get off the land and struggle to even conceptualise how they could possibly leave the farm for a week or two weeks to to do that yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's actually sounding a bit more like burnout, you know. It's sounding like the, you know, when you you get to that point where you've been working so much and so hard, farmers don't get a heck of a lot of feedback for for what they do, you know. And so there's lots of reasons why people burn out. There's the working long hours, not getting positive feedback for what you do. You know, reward positive rewards, particularly in drought circumstances. Flood circumstances, you know, can really wear you out. So you have that sort of mental exhaustion where you can't conceive of trying to plan something different outside of your work, your working life. And perhaps that's where the partner can step up and do the planning. So if you've had that discussion, you've had a discussion around what he actually needs or wants to be able to get away, or what he would like on a holiday, and then kind of saying, right, well, why don't you leave it to me to organize and I'll do all of the planning? Sounds a little bit unfair, but it might be just one way of it actually working.
Speaker 4:And it is so important to recognize those psychological reasons behind why your partner may not be engaging with you around going on holiday.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or even recognize them in yourself, which is really hard to do. I also spoke with Carmen Quaid for some practical advice on this. You might remember, carmen, from last season when we spoke about is it better to work off farm or on farm?
Speaker 4:Yeah, doesn't? Carmen live near Wagga and, like, have five kids and is super organised?
Speaker 3:Yes, but she's organised in an awesome way not a crazy way in the way that she understands priorities about family and farming really really well. So she's got her own business, agrifocused, which is about helping people with their business skills the farm office. But she recently wrote an article about the importance of a holiday.
Speaker 2:Oh look, sometimes just to let you in on a bit of a secret, I think when I write for my business I'm actually writing an advice column for myself. So you have the all you know things that you pick up on, that friends or clients or people you're working with, that tend to be little pain points or trigger points at particular times of year, and particularly this year. For us the holiday was a tricky one. We're cropping. We had a very late start to harvest, you know. In a normal year we sort of you know try to be wound up by Christmas time. This year it extended right into January and it's just hard work.
Speaker 2:It's particularly hard work when things are hot and dry getting gardens sorted, getting animals sorted, getting all of those things that we love, and we love living on farms and doing these things.
Speaker 2:You know, if you wanted to live a really urban existence with, with a goldfish and a, you wouldn't be living in the areas that we live.
Speaker 2:So sometimes all of these things that we build in because we love where we live make it harder to get away. Thinking about these things, just trying to identify some of those things that just make it just that little bit easier to get away, because it is Like, even though it's hard, you never come home thinking I wished I'd never gone. You might come home thinking, you know, I wish I'd left a sprinkler on that plant or I wish I'd sorted something out for the pot plants, but you never, ever think I wish I'd just been here for two weeks. It just is so refreshing. You come back and you're happy where you are and it's just a great reset and certainly for couples that are working together and living together, it's the only break that you get, I think, as a couple, from that sort of really that work side of things really impinging on your personal life. So that's sort of really important to do that, I think, for your relationship as well.
Speaker 3:Carmen makes such a good point there. Yeah, it's basically the holiday and date night, if you can get that, where you have a conversation that doesn't go into. Have you paid the stock agent yet?
Speaker 4:Well, I mean, that's interesting. You say that, I'm sure if you can have healthy conversations and there's a question about have you paid the stock agent yet somewhere in there, if you're away on holidays or on a date night, does it really matter? Yeah, I suppose not.
Speaker 3:But at the same time you just want to I don't know remember what it was like when you first met and you could just have fun and sort of play, you know, like that, just flirting with your partner you know, you can't flirt with your partner when you're like. Have you paid the stock agent? Have you paid the stock?
Speaker 5:agent.
Speaker 3:See, I just don't think you can do it. It's just nice to have a break from talking business, but there's one thing that Carmen said before about how you never regret a holiday, which I am 100% behind most of the time. The one exception to that is a badly planned holiday with young kids.
Speaker 2:I'm talking about the under five-year-olds that aren't. You know. You haven't got that regular school holiday break, and going away is hard. I remember one horrendous holiday where we had sort of two preschool-aged children and a baby and we'd booked a caravan park because I think that's what we thought families did. We had no yard and we had two little runners, so instead of being like at home, you know you're pottering around in the kitchen and the kids are just playing outside.
Speaker 2:It became this like full on 24-7. They were getting out in the morning before we'd even get up. We're running here and there. It's just it was really hard work. Packing up was hard work, coming home was hard work and it just seemed a lot easier just not to go. So I think finding a holiday that actually is a break for you where you're at, is really, I think, the most important thing. So if you've got this mindset about what holidays should look like you know caravanning trips around Australia and you can't get your head around that it doesn't mean you don't want a holiday. It means what you're visualising as a holiday isn't a break for you and what you're doing and where you're at.
Speaker 3:I'm not a big camper, but those kind of caravanning or camping trips now that my kids are older are much more enjoyable. But the suggestion when they were little I had a vision of just me breastfeeding while I had my two-year-old running around and then having to bring all the food to then pre-make all the food, then construct the house where I was living in to then breastfeed in the dirt and run around a toddler who's probably going to try and run to the lake Like that just sounds like hell to me it is.
Speaker 2:I hear you and I think, living in a rural area, I think what I want from my holidays is being a little bit further from nature and a little bit less dependent on the weather. So the whole idea of a camping holiday for me is just not appealing. You know like it's a big job keeping snakes and ants and mice and things out of the house and dirt out of the house. It is when I want a holiday, I want a bit of a break from that. So, yeah, I think one of the parts about motivating yourself is definitely finding a holiday that is going to be a holiday and not a period of time in a different location, which is more work. And the other thing is and it sounds a bit preachy it's about getting organized. So it's about working out what needs to happen day to day, to build a bit of slack in, to say, okay, now we've got a time where we can take a little break from our, you know, on-farm role or our household role or our off-farm work role, and then working out what needs to happen in preparation so that you can get organised to go away and recognising you know it's all part of it. It's not. You can't sort of down tools one minute and hop away the next. But I'll have to say it's not just a farm families thing and it's not just a small business thing.
Speaker 2:So when I was first married, I was working for our local Shire Council and one of the things that we were working through with our HR department was convincing our staff to take leave. So they all had five weeks a year and some of the longer serving members had managed to accrue a full year of paid leave that they hadn't taken, so that they'd take about, you know, a week a year, maybe a week and a half a year, cobble together some public holidays with some annual leave, and basically would not take the leave. So it is. You know, I think it is. It's a phenomenon that is not unique, and I think we just have to get ourselves in the right mind space and sit down with a pen and pencil and just plan things out and make them happen, because we never regret them. When we do, we never regret them.
Speaker 3:I think a big part of it is, you know, a farm job or even sort of like you just described, is like the work is always there and you sometimes feel, if I take the leave, then I come back to a wall of work. You know it's piled up while I'm away and so you think, well, what's the point in taking leave? I'm just going to have to work 10 times as hard when I get back. Can we avoid that?
Speaker 2:in some oh, look, you can and you can't. You know there's some aspects of that that are part of the price that we pay for going away, but part of it is planning it out. So I met an inspiring woman in one of my courses so I asked people we had this sort of conversation about holidays and whatever else and planning out your year and you know, put your hands up if you have a week a year and that was, you know, pretty much everyone had at least a week, two weeks a year, yeah, quite a few still. And then I kept asking and this lady kept on having a hand up and I'm going well, what do you do? And she said no, we've made a commitment. We take at least a week off every school holiday, sometimes two to three weeks.
Speaker 2:And I said how do you manage it? And she said well, in a lot of ways it's actually improved our on-farm productivity. They've got school-aged children. We sit down at the beginning of every term. We work out all the things that need to happen. We shift dates to suit things.
Speaker 2:So they shifted their joining date, they shifted their lambing date, they changed their feeding and watering regime just to suit that and she said I think it has made us more productive. So we have this intensity and you think of those sort of fly-in, fly-out workers. They have an intense period of time where they're working and then they have some time off and that ended up increasing their organisation and their energy levels to such an extent that it didn't have a huge impact on their on-farm productivity. Now that's going to be different. If you've got a horticultural business or if your responsibility is milking twice a day, it is going to be harder for you than it might be for someone who can just let a crop grow in a paddock for a couple of weeks on their own. We've got to acknowledge that some businesses and some families it is harder. It doesn't mean that it's impossible and it doesn't mean that it's not worth a shot.
Speaker 3:Talk about priorities for that family Carmen just mentioned. That's great, but do you ever hit a wall, jackie, with your partner, where you just can't make a holiday happen?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, it's actually been interesting this time around booking a week in May. Like it took Dan a long time to come around to the idea of booking time away and I basically said I'm going whether you're coming or not, so you need to work out if you can go with me. And because my plan was like, rightio, dan can't come, I'm going to go to New South Wales and go and spend it with friends for a week, like that was my trip. But I said if you can come, let's go somewhere where we would like to go together again. So we decided Streaky Bay, which is a 13 hour drive to get there, and he's been more excited about going than I have. And I'm excited about going, but in conversation he's like got the weather app on his phone and he's added Strukey Bay on his phone sneaky, sneaky.
Speaker 4:I like it, that's an awesome strategy when we're there in in Strukey Bay, like that, I'm probably fortunate I'm not really involved in the books on farm payment stuff, so like, and I guess you know maybe you've got to put some boundaries around, like, look, let's not talk about this, but maybe have a jar with topics like a jar of topics. You can pull out a topic holiday topic. That's right. Pull out a topic or pull out an icebreaker question.
Speaker 3:Bring back more fun. Oh God, look, I've never tried it, so I just can't imagine how it will go down if I bring a jar of topics next time to the holiday, but maybe I should try it. I'm still trying to get my husband over the line with booking a holiday. We're close. This is for July. I've been angling on this obviously since the start of the year.
Speaker 4:What's the?
Speaker 3:special occasion. You know, just 10 years of marriage. That's right.
Speaker 4:So just book it and say whether you're coming or not, I'm going.
Speaker 3:I'm celebrating 10 years on my own. I'll find someone else to celebrate it with me. So Carmen has some really good advice on how to get your partner over the line in terms of getting that holiday organized to make sure it happens.
Speaker 2:I think sometimes the pressure point is really good. So you book it first, so you don't wait until everything is ready. Because if you wait, if everything is ready, and you think, oh, we've got this vague plan of getting away in April, we'll try to get away in April if we can, and we put words around it like that it doesn't happen. So first step is booking it and then we're sort of pretty much guaranteed it needs to happen. And then it's about, I think, breaking things down into spheres. So we might have a sphere that's livestock or a sphere that's maintenance or a sphere that's water or, you know, house and garden and pets, and work out what needs to be done before we go in that respect and then also asking ourselves what's the worst thing that can happen if it doesn't get done. So we might have this objective of you know, ideally, in an ideal world, we get the ute serviced and we give the shed a bit of a clean out before we go. Realistically, if that doesn't happen, it doesn't matter. So if we're working through that checklist, we start off with the spheres we write in an ideal world we'll get all of this done. But perhaps coming through a little bit later with a highlighter and saying, okay, these are our must-dos, these are our good-to-dos and these are our look, if we've got time, we get them done. Gee, they'd be nice to come home to.
Speaker 2:I asked for a bit of feedback on one of these things that I sent out and one lady talked about how. Look, you know you get obsessed with cleaning out the fridge before you go, but realistically, you can throw out the rotten avocado when you come back. You know all these things we get tied up into having to get done before we go, they're not essential. You know they can get done when we come back. So, fair enough, come back and come back with that later.
Speaker 3:Energy level and just get stuck into things later on and if you can't pin your partner down to actually book in a date? Carmen's got some advice for that too, and it's ruthless.
Speaker 2:It's not uncommon, so. So a couple of things I've been known to do are leave him behind, and we did that this year, not because we wanted to. He really wanted to come, but it just didn't happen and we'll just have to make some arrangements later on. So he managed, you know, four days of our two week family holiday, which you know they're the best four days, but that didn't happen.
Speaker 2:But the other sort of long-term motivation in terms of your family values is identifying the life that you want to have and why you're working so hard. You know, yes, we love working, and for a lot of people it's so tied up in who they are as a person and lots of other things. But you still need your holidays and you still need to live a life that another generation might want to take on. So if they look at farming as this very frugal household existence and being at home all the time with a cranky dad, they're not going to want to do it. And sometimes it's having that frank conversation to say, look, are your kids going to want to live our life, a life of no holidays? And chances are they're going to look at that option or the other option, which is four weeks paid annual leave a year and think, well, that looks a lot better. So we've got to create these lives for our kids. While we're building an asset bank, while we're trying to build a legacy, while we're trying to do all of these things, while we're building an asset bank, while we're trying to build a legacy, while we're trying to do all of these things, we've also got to build a lifestyle that they also want to sign up for later on, and holidays are a really big part of that. So the other thing that can be a really good way of motivating a partner to go on a holiday is make a commitment to some other people. So shared family holidays can be really, really fun. So booking in with another group. So you know, some people will be quite happy to let their life partner down, but letting somebody else down seems a little bit harder. So that can be a little tricky, sneaky way and a way of making things a little bit more fun, I think, especially if you've got young kids, because you can share the care and you can do date nights and you can do other things like that. The other thing is not getting too obsessed about school holidays. So one of those really good.
Speaker 2:Grey-haired earth-mother ex-teacher types once said to me, carmen, if they're doing well at school, a week off during term time isn't going to matter, and if they're not doing well at school, a week off during term time isn't really going to matter. And I think that's really important. And if you look back over your life and over your children's education, an odd week here and there is not going to make much of a difference. Never going on those holidays is because those kids will remember those trips and those kids will remember those holidays they're not going to remember, you know, missing week three of term two in year seven. It's not significant in the scheme of things.
Speaker 2:But that leads me on to another point, and the group that are the hardest to get away are the blokes that don't have school-aged children anymore. Because that pressure, those four opportunities a year, those four triggers for going away cease. So I had a lot of feedback via email one time when I mentioned that and these and you are dead right. We have not gone on a holiday since our last child left school seven years ago. The kids are then in their 20s and it just sort of tends to fall off the agenda. So again, continuing to make it a priority even in that life stage is really, really important. And again, continuing to make it a priority even in that life stage is really, really important.
Speaker 3:And when it comes to your kids, you know that phrase that gets me is 18 summers. You know you've got 18 summers with your kids and you think about the age of your kids now and suddenly go, oh gosh, I finally got 10. You know when you, when you put it like that, you go, oh gosh, I finally got 10. When you put it like that, you think, okay, you've got to enjoy that time.
Speaker 2:You definitely do, you really really do, and it's 18 summers, it's also 18 winters to go on a trip to see the footy, or 18 opportunities to go to the snow. So it's also that thing that there aren't that many opportunities and I'd say you probably don't even have 18. When you drop off a few of those early ones where it's, you know, just sometimes easy to go and spend a week with mum, or where kids sort of get to that stage where they're sort of more keen to catch up with their friends than they are to spend time with you, you probably don't. So you're sort of dropping those older kids off, you know. So they're gone because they're 18. You might have an 11-year-old, your 18 summers or your 18 years. The core of it is probably less than that.
Speaker 3:What about financially preparing for a holiday? Obviously, holidays cost a lot of money, particularly if you've got kids. I suppose they don't always have to. You can come up with ways of making them a bit more cost effective, if you've've got family you can stay with, for instance. But financially, how do you get yourself prepared to A have the holiday and then B you know not be fixated on finances when you're away.
Speaker 2:There's a few little strategies there, because it's a common problem, like when things are fairly tight week to week anyway, and we try to add in those extra activities, extra food and accommodation costs, it can make holidays quite expensive. So there's some funny little things that I've seen people do which sort of came to me as unexpected. So my idea of a cheap holiday is, you know, minimizing accommodation costs, cooking your own food and doing no activities, which is achievable especially with things like camping, coast holidays, where most of your activities the beach, etc. But I met a lady.
Speaker 2:I'd actually gone on a trip to Fiji with my sisters, which was a nice little holiday, and I met a lady and she was there with her family in quite an extended large family group, and she was talking about how economical this trip was to Fiji and my mindset is not economical overseas holidays. But essentially what she was saying was it was a fixed cost. So they did it every two years. They knew exactly how much it was going to cost and they paid it off and it never cost a cent more than they thought because they bought an all-inclusive package. And I was sort of keeping an eye on her husband at the bar and he was putting a fair bit of grog away and I thought if they went down to Narooma, you know, and had to pay all of that at the club or the pub, their holiday would blow out by an extraordinarily large amount of money.
Speaker 3:Fiji's not a cheap place to holiday like as in it's Australian prices when you get over there, but that's interesting that they did inclusive. The idea of inclusive holidays terrifies me. It makes me feel like I'm locked into something.
Speaker 2:Well, it wasn't. I didn't think it was my cup of tea until I actually got over there and realised it was great to absolutely do nothing. But yeah, it's just that whole concept of saying, okay, let's make this a fixed cost rather than something that's potentially going to blow out, so we can adequately prepare for it. The other thing is about making the holidays cheaper and making them shorter, perhaps making them more modest, saving up doing things, tricky little things to quarantine funds. So some people might say they might have a really minor enterprise like just a few steers or something, and they say, oh well, the steer money is our holiday money. So we just grow out these few steers and we use that money for holidays. Some people use off-farm income for their holiday money or perhaps take family tax benefit. If people are eligible for that as a lump sum rather than a weekly amount because the weekly amount, if it's small, quickly disappears as a lump sum it can usually be then allocated to something more significant.
Speaker 2:The other thing that one other wise woman brought up in a budget training that I was doing years ago during the drought we were talking about you know how you actually access funds for things.
Speaker 2:She talked about dipping into your children's savings accounts and, again, the choice between not going on a family holiday and dipping into children's savings account and actually billing them for their time on holidays account and actually billing them for their time on holidays. I really think choosing the latter is preferential and I think any child would then look back as an adult and say, look, I'm glad that, you know, $200 out of my savings account went into paying the accommodation for that family holiday because I really liked going to Tathra in 2027 and it was fun. So you know, we get ourselves in these mindsets around money which aren't really helpful and don't actually, you know, aren't actually in alignment with our long-term values. So we just have to sometimes, I think, take a step back from that and saying okay, you know who are we as a family, what do we want as a family and why are we working so hard?
Speaker 3:What's it for, and psychologist Chantal Kourish says even if money's tight, it's still important to get off the farm for a break.
Speaker 1:It's a privilege to be able to afford to go away on a holiday. You know, not everyone can afford a holiday and I certainly as a psychologist having been a psychologist in rural Australia for nearly two decades have come across people who haven't left the community or haven't been on a holiday for decades, even some children who have never even seen the ocean, which is quite unbelievable in Australia and quite sad really. Being able to go on a holiday is costly and it's a privilege. But I also think if you can be creative about your destinations and about where you go, I think you could probably come up with some cheaper, more affordable ways of just having a break and getting off the farm.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and even I mean there's that word staycation. But that idea of, like you go right, I'm not working, I'm just going to socialize and just give myself the break, I often sort of think, gosh, I'd love to. Just, I really like my home. I would love to just like lounge in my home like a teenager, just watch TV and go out with friends for lunch and dinner and just not have to do anything except enjoy my comfortable home.
Speaker 1:Oh, that sounds wonderful.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Someone else does my laundry and the cooking, or, like I just order food in all of that, don't you reckon that your home would just be this a magical place? Absolutely, I think so.
Speaker 1:We make our homes comfortable for a reason, don't we? And yes, certainly I'd love to have a holiday. That sounds amazing, a staycation. I'd love to have a holiday in my home, too. That's a great idea, and it's about actually having gratitude for what's around you and appreciating the little things that you do have in your life, without having to spend too much money or think too hard about where else you'd prefer to be.
Speaker 3:And that's it for another episode of Ducks on the Pond. Thank you to our guests Chantelle Corish, also known as the Rural Psychologist, and Carmen Quaid, business Skills Consultant at AgriFocused, and a big thank you to our episode sponsor, business consultant Alison Hamilton, who you're about to hear from in just a moment.
Speaker 4:And just a reminder, you can hear more from Carmen when she spoke to us last season for the episode about on-farm versus off-farm income.
Speaker 3:That was actually one of our most popular episodes. Jackie, now, since we're just starting out for this season, welcome back, jackie. Jackie, now, since we're just starting out for this season, welcome back, jackie. Yeah, welcome back. Yeah, hooray, another one down. I'm so excited for this season. We've already got a few interviews in the bag. But a reminder that we love recommendations, so if you know a rural woman who should be speaking to us, it could be you. Dm us over Instagram or you can email us too. Just find the address in our show notes.
Speaker 4:Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3:But before we go, I'd like to introduce you to Alison Hamilton, creator of Functioning Farm Office.
Speaker 5:I'm a business coach and consultant in the agri space. I have been for basically all of my career, but about 18 months ago I set up a platform called the Functioning Farm Office, which is my primary focus now. It's really just a place where people can connect to talk about the functionality of their farm office. You know, people talk over the fence or at the pub about weather or new fertilizer varieties and things like that, but the office was something that many people were struggling with and it certainly became evident to me when I hit a bit of a low spot. So I created a space where people can communicate and connect to solve problems in relation to their farm office and I provide masterminds and one-on-one calls to help people through that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, from what you just said there, it sounds like there was quite an underlying reason for why you wanted to start this. Is there a personal story there?
Speaker 5:Yeah, look, there is actually. I'm a farmer first and foremost, but I am also a business owner, a mother tree board director. So a few years ago I was juggling many hats and, to be honest, got myself in a bit of a low spot and felt I wasn't managing any of those roles very well. So it came to a breaking point. I had to do something about it. So I set myself on a learning path and a path of change to change the way I was managing all of the different hats that I was wearing. And I can say I'm in a much better place now from doing that and from pushing through the hard yards and changing some habits and learning how to do things better.
Speaker 3:So I always love to ask this question what's your favourite piece of business advice?
Speaker 5:This is a good one and I think and I hear it regularly but time cannot be managed is my favourite piece of business advice when I got my head around the fact that time cannot be managed. We all have the same 24 hours in every day. It's about the priorities and how we manage the priorities in every day as opposed to the time. That's been a huge game changer for me and I implement that every day.
Speaker 3:Now, finally, Alison Hamilton, thank you for sponsoring this episode. So how can people get in touch to find out more?
Speaker 5:Firstly, probably through Facebook is my primary point of contact, either through my page at Alison Hamilton or my private group, the Functioning Farm Office I'd love for people to join there or my website. Alisonhamiltonau has all my contact details.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, alison, really appreciate it.
Speaker 5:Thank you.
