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Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,

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Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's

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Speaker 1: tip is to make your schedule more resilient. By having

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Speaker 1: layers of backup should things go wrong, you limit the

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Speaker 1: amount of chaos in your life. Complexity and chaos are

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Speaker 1: not the same thing, and a resilient schedule is how

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Speaker 1: you can have one without the other. So I have

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Speaker 1: often heard people describe their lives as a circus. The

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Speaker 1: funny thing about that is that people are using this

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Speaker 1: metaphor wrong. When someone says my life is a circus,

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Speaker 1: they tend to mean it is chaotic, with unplanned things

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Speaker 1: happening all over the place. But an actual circus is

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Speaker 1: nothing like that. A circus is complex but orderly. No

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Speaker 1: one gets shot out of a cannon at the wrong time.

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Speaker 1: You can have eight motorbikes zooming around a metal sphere,

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Speaker 1: but you can bet that they are all going exactly

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Speaker 1: where they are supposed to go at exactly the right pace.

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Speaker 1: You'll also notice that the tightrope walkers and acrobats tend

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Speaker 1: to perform over a net. That is so if something

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Speaker 1: goes wrong, a mistake doesn't result in disaster. If you

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Speaker 1: have a complex life, there's a lot to learn from

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Speaker 1: that practice. You want to construct your schedule so that

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Speaker 1: things going wrong, as they often go wrong, doesn't result

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Speaker 1: in anything actually terrible happening. I have a lot of

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Speaker 1: moving parts in my life, and so I wind up

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Speaker 1: thinking about this all the time. For instance, I decided

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Speaker 1: this year that my five year old would take the

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Speaker 1: bus home from kindergarten as his default transportation. We live

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Speaker 1: close to the school and we still employ a full

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Speaker 1: time nanny, so theoretically she could pick him up every day.

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Speaker 1: But if the default was for a car to arrive

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Speaker 1: at the end of the school day every day, there

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Speaker 1: was just a little less give with this. Someone has

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Speaker 1: to meet the bus, but that someone could be anyone

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Speaker 1: over about thirteen years of age. They don't have to

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Speaker 1: be a licensed driver, so there's just a little more

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Speaker 1: resilience to the bus option. This actually wound up mattering

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Speaker 1: the other day when our nanny was on vacation. I

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Speaker 1: was at the airport getting on a flight, and my

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Speaker 1: husband was driving back from Maryland. He was supposed to

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Speaker 1: be back by the bus's arrival, but the time was

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Speaker 1: getting tight. Fortunately, my thirteen year old daughter was home

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Speaker 1: and was able to go down the hill to meet

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Speaker 1: the bus. As it turned out, my husband just made it,

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Speaker 1: but that resiliency made me a little less stressed as

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Speaker 1: I was getting on the plane. If you've got some

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Speaker 1: complex situation in your life, could you add another layer

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Speaker 1: of backup. If your kids are in daycare, you figure

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Speaker 1: out quickly enough that you will need a backup care

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Speaker 1: option for all those days that they will be homesick.

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Speaker 1: If you've got a tight connection on a flight, you

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Speaker 1: should check when the next flight is and whether it

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Speaker 1: will be possible to get on it. You might have

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Speaker 1: a backup meal option for Monday in case you don't

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Speaker 1: manage to make it to the grocery store on Sunday

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Speaker 1: because you are flying back from a trip and your

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Speaker 1: flight is delayed. At work, you might cross trained team

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Speaker 1: members on various functions so work never grinds to a

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Speaker 1: halt because John has Jerry duty. It would be lovely

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Speaker 1: in life if everything went as planned, but sadly, things

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Speaker 1: just don't. The other day we had another bus situation

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Speaker 1: that could have been a fiasco. I was at my

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Speaker 1: fifteen year old's cross country meet. My thirteen year old

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Speaker 1: daughter was at tennis practice. Our nanny was taking the

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Speaker 1: ten year old to pottery class after his bus dropped

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Speaker 1: him off, but his bus was so late that by

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Speaker 1: the time she grabbed him to take him to class,

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Speaker 1: she was risking not being home for the five year

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Speaker 1: old's bus. But fortunately, my husband was working from home

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Speaker 1: that day and had arranged to not leave for the

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Speaker 1: airport for his night flight until four thirty p m.

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Speaker 1: So we still had a layer of back up. He

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Speaker 1: met the five year old at the bus and all

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Speaker 1: was well. We simply have to expect that well things

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Speaker 1: will go wrong in life and build life with enough

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Speaker 1: resiliency that it just doesn't matter. A little mistake or

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Speaker 1: a small change doesn't result in disaster. With a resilient schedule,

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Speaker 1: that can be the case in the meantime. This is Laura.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of

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Speaker 1: our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've

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Speaker 1: got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at

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Speaker 1: Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a

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