Now, this client brought an excellent question: what if your daily routine is already full – so is your weekly one, as a matter of fact – and it’s working really smoothly for you – but then one of your kids gets sick and you have to take extra time out from your day to deal with them, OR you get the unexpected pop-up task of a new doctor’s appointment (that *must* be on such-and-such day), handling quarterly taxes, or an unexpected house cleaning/insect issue?
What if, in fact, your kids are in that stage where they’re bringing something home every other week from nursery and Sunday school, and you’re having to deal with “sick schedules” as your other most-frequent weekly norm?
What should you do then?
This is a great question, and I actually have a super easy solution for you.
It’s called margin time.
Margin is when you *don’t* cram your entire day, every single time block, full with must-do stuff.
Margin is when you leave one work block a week for pop-up tasks that you *know* are going to come up – you just can’t predict ahead of time what they are.
Margin is when you tell your clients, “Hey, I’ll deliver this copywriting project in 12 weeks as contracted” – secretly knowing that it should take you about 10 weeks – and you *use* those extra 2 weeks as buffer time if your kids get a stomach bug and you’re repeatedly doing laundry and lysol-ing everything instead of working on their copywriting.
That sort of thing.
Building in *margin* is what’s going to allow *you* to handle anything your schedule throws at you (or rather, anything that *is* on your schedule and wasn’t supposed to be), *without* going crazy.
It’s priceless.
It’s what lets you consistently work FEWER hours each week (but still have the grace to run over if you need to wrap just one more web design project).
It’s what lets you KNOW that you’ve got room this quarter to push out your new course idea or VIP upsell (without dropping a single one of your current lead gen activities to make it).
It’s WHY you NEED to resettle YOUR personal version of biz-and-kids balance around what YOU’VE got going on in this season. Both with your kids, and in your business/launching/team life. Okay?
So I know you’re a busy business mom, and you *like* all your work hours, and you don’t want to give them up. But I would just encourage you to pick one 2-hour slot a week – maybe it’s Monday when you don’t want to “go to work” yet, or Friday when you’re feeling so done for the week – and mark that on your calendar as your “put out fires” spot.
And then if your kids are getting sick a lot, save an alternate weekly schedule for which biz projects *must* get done, and which get bumped, as well as what reflects your upgraded load of household chores.
Because you’re going to pull out this “light biz week sick kids” routine fairly often, so you might as well have it ready to go.
All right. Did that just majorly de-stress you? I hope so!
‘Cause margin, more than super-efficient time blocking, is really the savior of a CEO mom’s schedule. Sure, you have to be efficient enough to get everything done – but it’s *reacting* to the changes that life throws at you where your routine *really* comes into play.
Let’s make it work *for* you, no matter whether it’s an easy season or a busy one.
You’ve got this.
Where are you going to build margin into your rhythms today?
