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 build in life maintenance time. Running a household,
Speaker 1: or even just your own life is a real job
Speaker 1: that takes real space in a schedule. You can wish
Speaker 1: that that weren't the case, but it is wiser to
Speaker 1: simply build in time to manage what needs to be managed,
Speaker 1: because then you will feel less stressed about the whole thing.
Speaker 1: So today's tip is based on a listener question that
Speaker 1: we received on my other podcast, Best of Both Worlds.
Speaker 1: A listener worked for a local government agency and needed
Speaker 1: to be in her office from eight to four thirty
Speaker 1: each day with a thirty minute lunch. I understood from
Speaker 1: the question that she didn't really have the ability to
Speaker 1: do any personal tasks during her work hours since she
Speaker 1: had a house and three kids, things like teacher emails,
Speaker 1: permission slips, making appointments, calling contractors, or even scheduling a
Speaker 1: haircut for herself, or just stacking up, and she felt overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: I know this is a common problem. One of the
Speaker 1: real benefits of working for myself and working flexibly is
Speaker 1: having the freedom to home from work, as I sometimes
Speaker 1: call it, as opposed to working from home, even though
Speaker 1: I have a home office, so I guess I'm really
Speaker 1: homing from home. If I need to buy a kid
Speaker 1: a coat, I can do that at two thirty PM
Speaker 1: and it is all fine. Sometimes I get annoyed at
Speaker 1: the volume of household management stuff that stacks up, but
Speaker 1: I am not going to get fired for attending to it.
Speaker 1: I know that is not universally the case at all.
Speaker 1: Some jobs simply do not allow for doing anything else
Speaker 1: while you are actively working. If you are doing dental
Speaker 1: procedures or driving a bus or directing traffic, you are
Speaker 1: not going to be purchasing that coat online while people
Speaker 1: drive into each other in that intersection. Some employers also
Speaker 1: maintain much stricter rules about time and place and outside
Speaker 1: information than others. Sometimes this is for good reasons, like
Speaker 1: security clearances. Sometimes it isn't, but it is what it is. Alas,
Speaker 1: people in these less flexible jobs do not magically get
Speaker 1: a pass from doing home and life maintenance things, so
Speaker 1: when do you do them? The answer is that you
Speaker 1: have to figure out a time that does work with
Speaker 1: your life life and with your job, and block that
Speaker 1: in treat this life and household maintenance time as work
Speaker 1: hours just like your other work hours, because it is
Speaker 1: actual work, so in the best of both worlds listener
Speaker 1: case I advised her to set aside four thirty to
Speaker 1: five pm a few days a week as official life
Speaker 1: maintenance time. She likely couldn't do this work at her office,
Speaker 1: but she could use her personal phone in her car
Speaker 1: to do these tasks sitting there in the parking lot
Speaker 1: if need be, or if there were another space like
Speaker 1: a library or a coffee shop or a mall with
Speaker 1: a seating area nearby, she could go there. She could
Speaker 1: write down tasks as they occurred to her during the day,
Speaker 1: or give herself assignments during a weekly planning session. Then
Speaker 1: during her life maintenance time, she would go through the
Speaker 1: tasks one by one and cross them off. The key
Speaker 1: was that she needed to figure out how the rest
Speaker 1: of her life could support that. For a lot of
Speaker 1: working parents, one of the primary considerations is childcare to
Speaker 1: cover this time. If her kids were at daycare or
Speaker 1: after school care, or with a sitter, or with her
Speaker 1: partner or another relative, then she needed to see if
Speaker 1: this time could be extended to allow her to use
Speaker 1: this four thirty to five window a few days a week. Now,
Speaker 1: I know that seems not fun, it's not really happy hour,
Speaker 1: and it's also a little sad to miss a little
Speaker 1: family time. But kid care is both about being with
Speaker 1: them and managing the logistics of their lives. Her little
Speaker 1: bit of extra work would allow her to do both.
Speaker 1: In her case, the four thirty to five window was
Speaker 1: particularly nice as it was still during business hours. I
Speaker 1: know some people work, say nine to five, I have
Speaker 1: thirty with a thirty minute lunch or something like that.
Speaker 1: If so, you can still do a lot of the
Speaker 1: work outside business hours at a designated time. But then
Speaker 1: you will need to make a list of anything that
Speaker 1: can absolutely only be done during business hours and devote
Speaker 1: say ten minutes of your lunch break to these tasks
Speaker 1: a few times a week. Some could stack up for
Speaker 1: a day off. Sometimes people in inflexible jobs do get
Speaker 1: some personal days as part of their contracts. It might
Speaker 1: be worth thinking strategically about how to use some of
Speaker 1: those for longer term tasks. Life administration is work like
Speaker 1: any other kind of work. Being able to do it
Speaker 1: during working hours does make it easier to combine work
Speaker 1: in life. But if that is not possible. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: work doesn't disappear. You'll need to figure out a different
Speaker 1: time that works for you, but do build it in.
Speaker 1: You will feel a lot less overwhelmed as a result.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
Speaker 1: you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
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