Don’t feel guilty for letting your work hours ebb and flow according to your family season.
If you’re stretched out on the sofa trying not to move anything so you don’t throw up, don’t bother typing and doing hardcore studying – that pregnancy nausea is *allowed* to be too distracting for you.
(Just try to batch ahead if you know you’re trying to get pregnant, or you’ve tested positive but the morning sickness hasn’t kicked in yet. You’ve got a couple precious weeks before you *know* you won’t feel like doing anything – so use them to get yourself batched and ready till 12 weeks, or whenever your nausea normally subsides!)
And conversely, if your youngest just started school, and you suddenly have 2 more hours in the workday than you used to, don’t feel guilty for using that to work on your business. Please.
We’re all envying you when we can’t, so don’t you back off now that you have the hours and the energy to actually *start* working more!
For example, I had to rearrange my weekly schedule to give one of my kids major math help when she had just started high school, and needed heavy algebra and physics tutoring – *without* wrecking my carefully designed work schedule.
(But still respecting her need to be done with math brain before evening!)
I added a bunch of reminders to my work calendar, first off, or else I knew I’d slide *right* back into my standard work routines.
But, I also lined out specific hours (*after* my content creation and client checkup time blocks) when I was *still* thinking and generally pretty upbeat. (You need it for algebra tutoring!)
*Then*, I told her when *my* availability hours would be (so that she didn’t come to me in the middle of client serving time and interrupt a coaching flow) – which *also* let me keep my business as the priority.
(What wasn’t any more: checking the news 5 times a day and browsing ThredUp. Yes, I still had time to “fiddle” on the computer – and that was the *easiest* place to cut.)
What each of these scenarios have in common is the CEO guilt we feel when we’re not able to work the number of hours we expected.
It’s like a set point for your body’s weight – *you* have an unspoken hours-per-week expectation, and when you don’t meet it (or you *exceed* it), you get uncomfortable.
Except you shouldn’t be.
- Why should you feel guilty for growing a small human inside you?
- Why should you feel embarrassed for needing extra time off for trips to the bathroom? (You shouldn’t! It’s not like they’re fun….)
- And whyever *not* extend your work hours for a short season to celebrate your new transition of “all kids in school” and “a quiet house, all to myself”? (Do you know how many moms *dream* of that scenario?!)
And if enjoying it means knocking out a couple more work projects in peace and flow, you go for it. With zero “am I working too much” guilt allowed.
Because once you give yourself the *permission* to do whatever needs to happen as far as *your* schedule, right now, in *this* time of life, then you’re already past half the battle. You *know* you’re giving yourself the “more time with your kids” AND the “check off everything my business needs from me today.” And it all came back to *mindset.* Permission.
Now. Where have you been putting “mental set point” pressures on yourself about work hours today?
Where in your life are you *not* making allowance for either the unexpected family circumstance or the unexpected pocket of time that just popped up, that now you have to deal with? Or lean into?
Don’t let yourself self-guilt over *having* to cut back your work hours, or *getting* to work more on your business than some other moms do. Than you used to.
That’s just crazy thinking. You’re not bound to never exceed the lowest number of hours someone *else* can work on their business and survive – and a good thing, too!
So give yourself permission – *full* permission, today – to either lean *into* or lean *out of* more work hours this season – you know which is right for you.
You just need to go do it. Officially adjust your schedule to match it.
And then there you’ll be, back in perfect harmony with your to-do list. Neither over nor underworked.
Isn’t that a great feeling? Your schedule is calm again. Your expectations are peaceful again. Your to-do list is just right again.
And that’s how you get to live, moving forward. Because you’re unbusy.
All you had to do was make a tweak to your to-do list. You’ve got this.
