Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to make your schedule more resilient. By having
Speaker 1: layers of backup should things go wrong, you limit the
Speaker 1: amount of chaos in your life. Complexity and chaos are
Speaker 1: not the same thing, and a resilient schedule is how
Speaker 1: you can have one without the other. So I have
Speaker 1: often heard people describe their lives as a circus. The
Speaker 1: funny thing about that is that people are using this
Speaker 1: metaphor wrong. When someone says my life is a circus,
Speaker 1: they tend to mean it is chaotic, with unplanned things
Speaker 1: happening all over the place. But an actual circus is
Speaker 1: nothing like that. A circus is complex but orderly. No
Speaker 1: one gets shot out of a cannon at the wrong time.
Speaker 1: You can have eight motorbikes zooming around a metal sphere,
Speaker 1: but you can bet that they are all going exactly
Speaker 1: where they are supposed to go at exactly the right pace.
Speaker 1: You'll also notice that the tightrope walkers and acrobats tend
Speaker 1: to perform over a net. That is so if something
Speaker 1: goes wrong, a mistake doesn't result in disaster. If you
Speaker 1: have a complex life, there's a lot to learn from
Speaker 1: that practice. You want to construct your schedule so that
Speaker 1: things going wrong, as they often go wrong, doesn't result
Speaker 1: in anything actually terrible happening. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: moving parts in my life, and so I wind up
Speaker 1: thinking about this all the time. For instance, I decided
Speaker 1: this year that my five year old would take the
Speaker 1: bus home from kindergarten as his default transportation. We live
Speaker 1: close to the school and we still employ a full
Speaker 1: time nanny, so theoretically she could pick him up every day.
Speaker 1: But if the default was for a car to arrive
Speaker 1: at the end of the school day every day, there
Speaker 1: was just a little less give with this. Someone has
Speaker 1: to meet the bus, but that someone could be anyone
Speaker 1: over about thirteen years of age. They don't have to
Speaker 1: be a licensed driver, so there's just a little more
Speaker 1: resilience to the bus option. This actually wound up mattering
Speaker 1: the other day when our nanny was on vacation. I
Speaker 1: was at the airport getting on a flight, and my
Speaker 1: husband was driving back from Maryland. He was supposed to
Speaker 1: be back by the bus's arrival, but the time was
Speaker 1: getting tight. Fortunately, my thirteen year old daughter was home
Speaker 1: and was able to go down the hill to meet
Speaker 1: the bus. As it turned out, my husband just made it,
Speaker 1: but that resiliency made me a little less stressed as
Speaker 1: I was getting on the plane. If you've got some
Speaker 1: complex situation in your life, could you add another layer
Speaker 1: of backup. If your kids are in daycare, you figure
Speaker 1: out quickly enough that you will need a backup care
Speaker 1: option for all those days that they will be homesick.
Speaker 1: If you've got a tight connection on a flight, you
Speaker 1: should check when the next flight is and whether it
Speaker 1: will be possible to get on it. You might have
Speaker 1: a backup meal option for Monday in case you don't
Speaker 1: manage to make it to the grocery store on Sunday
Speaker 1: because you are flying back from a trip and your
Speaker 1: flight is delayed. At work, you might cross trained team
Speaker 1: members on various functions so work never grinds to a
Speaker 1: halt because John has Jerry duty. It would be lovely
Speaker 1: in life if everything went as planned, but sadly, things
Speaker 1: just don't. The other day we had another bus situation
Speaker 1: that could have been a fiasco. I was at my
Speaker 1: fifteen year old's cross country meet. My thirteen year old
Speaker 1: daughter was at tennis practice. Our nanny was taking the
Speaker 1: ten year old to pottery class after his bus dropped
Speaker 1: him off, but his bus was so late that by
Speaker 1: the time she grabbed him to take him to class,
Speaker 1: she was risking not being home for the five year
Speaker 1: old's bus. But fortunately, my husband was working from home
Speaker 1: that day and had arranged to not leave for the
Speaker 1: airport for his night flight until four thirty p m.
Speaker 1: So we still had a layer of back up. He
Speaker 1: met the five year old at the bus and all
Speaker 1: was well. We simply have to expect that well things
Speaker 1: will go wrong in life and build life with enough
Speaker 1: resiliency that it just doesn't matter. A little mistake or
Speaker 1: a small change doesn't result in disaster. With a resilient schedule,
Speaker 1: that can be the case in the meantime. This is Laura.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
Speaker 1: our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
Speaker 1: got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Speaker 1: Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
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