Sara El-Amine
Sara is head of Public Engagement at Lyft. She is a longtime community organizer who was one of the architects of the Obama grassroots movement during both of the President’s campaigns and his eight years in office. She has led dozens of issue and electoral advocacy campaigns across the US and abroad in her work with the Obamas, Mark Zuckerburg and Priscilla Chan, and now in the corporate public policy sector. Sara lives in Oakland, CA, with her husband and her 3-year-old son (another on the way! PSA Pregnancy sucks!), and she enjoys hosting elaborate theme parties in her spare time.
What does your normal working day look like?
This is going to sound a little insane, and it kind of is. My husband and I are somewhat obsessed with efficiency as a way to free up time and brain space. It is absolutely a game for us. We take a weeklong/lifelong view of routines and then make our days work within that.
We both work demanding 8-5 + after-hours availability jobs but work out and do chores during conference calls wherever possible.
We try to leave as much time as possible NOT doing chores (by keeping a tidy and organized home in micro ways). I would estimate that we do 90 mins of chores each, each day. But, with WFH, almost 80% of our non-kid or dinner-related chores (food prep, unloading dishwasher, laundry) happen during workday conference calls, which has freed us up before and after work immensely.
We own household “verticals” so that, for example, I am in charge of all things food, including prep and procurement, and husb is in charge of all things cleaning, including laundry and dishes. This requires way less coordination day to day and frees us up to get creative about how we reach an agreed-upon end goal.
In my food vertical, I explicitly optimize for speed (& health): e.g. I only cook meals that take less than 15 mins total to make and no more than two pots/pans. This is pretty easy in that I rotate twenty or so dinner dishes (like salmon stir fry or greek salad) and have a formula of protein, veggie, veggie. For breakfast and lunch we eat even quicker, healthy meals or leftovers.
We clean up immediately after cooking or doing a play activity. Kiddo (Julius or “Jules” for short) knows this and mostly treats tidying as an efficiency game alongside us…mostly :)
We have also designed our house to optimize for simplicity; we try to keep all surfaces clear and clutter-free, e.g. no appliances on the kitchen counter except the coffee maker and nothing on the dining room table outside of mealtimes–so that it's easy and fast to scan the house and do a quick tidy. I call this colloquially the “broken window theory of home”-- in that I have noticed that one messy or even just cluttered pocket invites more casual mess, which eats up time and clarity of mind.
There is ONE place in our house for each category of thing, like flashlights or extra toiletries or Jules’ crafts and these places are usually labelled, which saves us endless time looking for things. We cull pretty aggressively and try to abide by the one-in, one-out rule.
Usually, on weekends, I get a morning to myself, and Jeff gets a morning to himself, while the other partner takes kiddo on an adventure. During the week, kiddo is at school 8:45-3 and with my sister from 3-5. We eat dinner at 5:30 nightly.
How long have you had this routine?
Routine has changed since WFH, but we have always made a game out of efficiencies since we started dating.
Sometimes we would design Saturdays to try to find the perfect chronological order for fun things and chores with the least transit time and the best energy flow. Probably a weird organizer quirk?!
I really believe the hype around picking the right life partner as the ultimate equality-ensuring and career-facilitating choice for women, and probably men too.
How has it changed as your children have gotten older or as your family has grown?
It changes every 3-6 months slightly as kiddo’s schedule or our workloads or mental health capacities adjust. Often we find ourselves out of sync and realize that it's because lil guy has dropped a nap and we haven’t caught up our systems accordingly, or I have taken on a big project at work, and husb needs to do more dinner prep or lead parenting for a stretch.
Pregnancy has really thrown a wrench in our routines. This is my third time pregnant and second kid. Being pregnant is the worst. I get very, very sick every time and have some complications that severely limit my activity and energy–same as last time around. But now we have a toddler and even more demanding jobs and personal lives.
I have really struggled “giving up” many of the things I love and re-adjusting my work and personal output expectations. I can do two big things a day while pregnant, outside of work, and one of them is usually a nap. In my non-pregnant times, I can/did do like eight things!
I really resent the narrative (just based solely on my own experience of very sick, difficult pregnancies) that pregnant women can do anything and everything not-pregnant women can do. In my experience of pregnancies, I very much cannot. The policy and economic implications of this false equality narrative, just for me, have made me feel very left out of our already weak support system in my most vulnerable times. I try not to let it affect my joy and output, but it's a bit of a fool's errand in these seasons. Jeff takes on way more, and we just do way less overall, frankly.
I think change is probably harder for adults than we acknowledge (it sure is for me), so our kid’s need for stability during times of change has actually been a kind of humane, grace-generating reminder at times for us as adults too.
What boundaries have you set around your work, and how did you work with your colleagues to enable them?
I run my own team, and most of my work is with them, which is something I’ve worked really hard for. As a result, I mostly set and keep a fast pace for us instead of the other way around. I like to be in meetings from 9am-3pm and doing quiet, focused launch or follow-up work before and after.
Both of our jobs often require lots of rapid response work, which can be very unpredictable and can sometimes land at the same time. Everything also goes out the window when we’re working with execs, who have much more demanding timelines and less accommodating reply windows. Thankfully, usually, these projects eb and flow, and only one of us is insane at a time.
One thing that is consistent and that we don’t scrimp on (this is a privilege) is childcare. Jeff and I both have demanding jobs and ADHD that causes us to hyper-focus or flail, so we are serious about heads-down time daily. We’re currently transitioning from a nanny share into pre-k, and my baby sister, a small biz owner, will pick up lil guy from school at 3pm as a paid side gig so that we can both work uninterrupted til 5pm.
I really find that 8am-9am and 3-5pm windows where we have childcare but not usually meetings to be invaluable for me, as a person and as a leader.
We are pretty intense about prioritizing quality family dinners and quality hang/bedtime routines, so we tend to try not to look at email between 5-8pm if we can get away with it.
Outside of that, usually, we have one “lead parent” for a stretch (a month or two usually), depending on who has the crazier work schedule. This helps a ton.
What are the most important things for you to get right to have a successful day?
Workout outside, sleep, make handwritten personal and work to-do lists with checkboxes and get 80% of the way through if I can…do something creative (even if it's just making my kids lunch in an artsy way or making up a weird kids game with the neighborhood kid crew).
I really liked the book “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg, and I’ve found that if I can start my morning with a couple of keystone habits – for me, it’s working out and actually doing my hair when not preggers and too ill for either – everything else comes much more easily.
My written to-do lists are also a beautiful and happy place for me. I love the feeling of checking a box AND crossing out the line with a nice pen on clean paper. I follow a model for to-dos wherein I break down tasks to their smallest possible units. Not sure where I picked that up (maybe David Allen “Getting Things Done”?). So instead of “prep exec briefing on x” as one line, I’ll sub-task the ten things I need to do as part of prepping, writing, circulating for input, etc.
It works quite well for me, whether I’m cleaning out a closet at home or running a large-scale social impact campaign at work.
Switching to weekends, what are the most important things to get right to have an excellent weekend day?
Being outside. Mega creative time. I really love making things, but I also love efficiency games, so I often will merge the two.
Last weekend we invited the neighborhood kids over to make a pirate ship out of our abundance of cardboard boxes from a home improvement project we did that week. I looove a creative, generative challenge. It got the boxes out of our house, broken down, and one step closer to the recycling bin for Monday pickup. Also, the kids (mine included) had a blast and built community and confidence together.
When not pregnancy sick, I love running, biking, swimming and other solitary workouts, so my husband and I work together on weekend days to give each other healthy alone time by taking the lil guy solo.
What has been the most impactful thing you've done to save time / energy in your family?
We have a saying in my family that I think originated with my grandmother or before: “do it, it gets done”. We really prioritize action and completion over perfection, and I think it's been a saving grace for our happiness. If we can’t do something in the moment it crosses our desks (personally or professionally), we either write it on a to-do list in that exact moment OR schedule a workblock to do it later on our calendars.
I love trying to only touch tasks once.
What principles have served you best in your parenting?
We explain why pretty constantly and very proactively, around rules or customs or science, even though it can get really exhausting. It works well for the kid we have, who listens pretty well for a 3-year-old and is a great team player in the family context.
We try to make as many things as possible into games (how many red things can we spot while grocery shopping?! Can you play “freeze” every time you see a car driving on the street on our walk!?), which entertains us and kiddo.
We talk about and show each other we love each other a LOT each day, with little songs or handshakes or funny notes or genuine compliments. I think we both really want kiddo (and each other) to have the foundation for a really healthy inner monologue.
When you feel overwhelmed as a parent, what do you do?
Call in reinforcements–e.g. my sisters or parents or inlaws. Most don't live nearby but will come to visit for a weekend to give us some perspective or a break.
Research obsessively until I understand popular canon around something (like potty training or first day of school prep). Then iterate to see what seems to work with our kid.
Go back into myself, making art or getting on my beloved ferry boat to SF or doing a hard long solitary workout until I have sweated out a mental block or mama challenge. Take a rare sleeping pill and get a long full night’s sleep.
Is there a primary parent in your household, or do you split the parenting evenly?
We trade off in 1-2 month stints depending on workload and mental health capacity.
We use the “you got him?” handoff system during the day-to-day within those stints to make sure that one parent is on duty if the other needs to step away.
If there is a primary parent, how do you set the boundaries, expectations, and breaks for that parent?
They typically are the de facto kid minder and need to actually *ask* the other parent to sub in proactively for bedtime or an adventure or a break. “You got him?!...can you do x today, I could use a break”. This helps with hot-potato-ing. It also has helped our lil guy deal with his preference for mama, which can get waaay too exhausting and overwhelming for me :)
What is your most life-changing parenting purchase under $100?
Cookie cutters and food garnishing supplies. I have a ton of fun getting creative kicks out of making funny shapes or designs with my kids’ food, and he has become a much more adventurous eater now that x vegetable is shaped like a bat from batman or y fruit is cut like building blocks to make an edible tower out of :) win-win.
How do you bring play and fun into your time with your children?
I have learned to play to my strengths and interests as they overlap with kiddo’s. E.g. I will always have a lot more fun and be more engaged with him when we are doing crafts (I love artsy things) or going on a ferry boat adventure (I adore boats!), or making up silly stories together (wacky imagination is my fave!) than I will playing kickball or soccer (leave it to dad) or cooking elaborate things (leave it to Aunties and Grandma Pam)
What book has been most influential for you as a parent?
None! I don't read parenting books I read the synopses of them, and it ROCKS. Highly recco. I have found that most of them are 3-5 central tenets that can be much more easily explained in a synopsis than via the drawn-out pages of an over-editorialized book :)
What piece of advice do you give to all new parents? What advice should they ignore?
I grew up with four younger siblings who sometimes felt like my kids (esp the way younger ones). Based on that early set of experiences and observations, I really do think that each kid is super different and requires very different things in order to succeed. My advice is to make it a game (if you like games!) to experiment and “sandbox” each week to see what types of things work with each respective kid. Then extrapolate and keep testing and iterating.
Ignore any advice that comes from people who don’t seem happy or aligned in their own lives or who have explicitly different values than you do.