Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip is to make backup plans. When you've got
Speaker 1: a great Option B in place, you can relax more
Speaker 1: about Option A. Indeed, you can enjoy life more in general.
Speaker 1: Over the past two years, people have had to change
Speaker 1: a lot of plans, travel plans, wedding plans. I think
Speaker 1: about how often small businesses have had to pivot from
Speaker 1: beefing up online operations to navigating pandemic restrictions and changing
Speaker 1: tastes and supply chain issues. Parents have had to figure
Speaker 1: out back up schooling plans and childcare plans, me things
Speaker 1: and conferences, switched to zoom and sometimes switched back to
Speaker 1: in person and sometimes switched again. None of this has
Speaker 1: exactly been fun, but it's been a good reminder that
Speaker 1: Option A isn't going to always be available. You don't
Speaker 1: necessarily know when Option A won't be available, but some
Speaker 1: chunk of the time it just won't be often. The
Speaker 1: difference between panic and calm is having a reasonable option B.
Speaker 1: In my family, with two working parents and lots of kids,
Speaker 1: we've had to think about this a lot. One reason
Speaker 1: we elected to hire a nanny rather than use daycare
Speaker 1: for our toddler is that our nanny can then be
Speaker 1: the backup childcare for the older kids when school is closed,
Speaker 1: as it was unexpectedly on the day. I wrote this script.
Speaker 1: When the pandemic began close to two years ago, and
Speaker 1: I realized that in person speaking wasn't going to be
Speaker 1: happening for a while, I started doing more podcasting. I
Speaker 1: wrote an e book backup Plans that replaced the speaking income.
Speaker 1: It's worth thinking about this in any scenario. You've got
Speaker 1: option A. You like option A, but if option A
Speaker 1: doesn't happen, what would you like to see as option B.
Speaker 1: We wind up needing to think about this. In a crisis,
Speaker 1: you need to be in Chicago, but all the flights
Speaker 1: are canceled due to bad weather. What are you going
Speaker 1: to do? The upside of thinking about option B ahead
Speaker 1: of time is that you can figure out more options.
Speaker 1: You can look at the situation more holistically. You can
Speaker 1: have the logistics in place to make option be fairly
Speaker 1: automatic when the need arises. We saw the upside of
Speaker 1: proactive backup plans in the early days of the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Places that already had robust work from home policies were
Speaker 1: able to just use them daily, whereas organizations that hadn't
Speaker 1: thought about what they do in a blizzard or in
Speaker 1: a natural disaster, or yes, in a pandemic had to scramble.
Speaker 1: Small businesses that had figured out how to sell online,
Speaker 1: we're in a better place than those that hadn't thought
Speaker 1: about what they do if in person operations were shut down.
Speaker 1: When we think about option B ahead of time, we
Speaker 1: can sometimes come up with such great option bees that
Speaker 1: we become a lot less worried about whether option A happens.
Speaker 1: This is how wise families handled that high stakes drama
Speaker 1: known as college admissions. The phrase safety school is often
Speaker 1: used disparagingly, But when you choose some schools that you
Speaker 1: know are great and that you know you are highly
Speaker 1: likely to get into, then the whimsies of selective schools
Speaker 1: matter less. You know you will get a great education.
Speaker 1: It may be at one place, or it maybe at another,
Speaker 1: but there are no bad choices. Having great option bees
Speaker 1: should also be the goal of networking. It's not about
Speaker 1: collecting business cards. It's about having a few folks who
Speaker 1: have told you that if you are ever thinking of
Speaker 1: leaving your current job, you should call them first. Knowing
Speaker 1: you have great backup options makes you more relaxed about
Speaker 1: your current position, which makes you better able to take
Speaker 1: risks and set boundaries that can make Option A a
Speaker 1: lot more tolerable. So for anything in life, think about
Speaker 1: your backup plans. Sure, we love our option a's, we
Speaker 1: chose them for a reason, we'd like to stick with them,
Speaker 1: but sometimes that's not going to be up to us.
Speaker 1: Knowing there is a great option B means we can
Speaker 1: take life as it comes, rather than mourning the loss
Speaker 1: of things that it isn't in our power to keep.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: here's to making the most of our time. Hey everybody,
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from you. You can send me
Speaker 1: your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with
Speaker 1: me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod
Speaker 1: that's B the number four, then breakfast p o D.
Speaker 1: You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeartMedia dot com. That Before Breakfast is spelled
Speaker 1: out with all the letters. Thanks so much, I look
Speaker 1: forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production
Speaker 1: of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.