Remember the kids’ sports schedules conflicts and way too many overlapping client-and-biz-collab-and-team meetings you were complaining about to your husband yesterday?
You DO know that all those calendar conflicts are YOUR fault, right?
- It’s not your clients’ fault for booking you back-to-back and having yet another lightbulb moment right at the end of your call (which made you show up late to the NEXT client session).
- It’s not the baseball coach’s fault for scheduling more game practices than 3 parents could drive to in one night (thus causing you to miss family dinner with your kids for the 3rd night in a row).
- It’s not your VA’s fault when you see your work calendar stuffed with collab planning sessions, guest interviews, and weekly team meetings (instead of deep work time blocks).
No, it’s actually yours – because YOU get the final say on everything in your schedule.
- Who decided to prioritize the client getting to fully process her latest realization over your need for a bathroom break and coffee refresh between sessions? You.
- Who signed your kids up for all those sports, forgetting that she still had to make carpool arrangements for every single game (or choose which practice to skip)? You.
- Who forgot to carve out creative work time, no interruptions, in your Gmail calendar so that your VA would know Tuesdays and Thursdays are the only available guest interview slots? You.
Because you, NOT your clients, get to decide how long your coaching calls run and what kind of margin you need in between your available time slots.
And you, NOT your kids’ soccer coach, are ultimately in charge of your family calendar.
Oh – and you, NOT your VA, are the CEO of your business (which includes prioritizing your scheduled deep work hours).
Make sense?
So why do you keep letting the kids’ sports schedule or those guest podcast spots throw curveballs at you, day in and day out?
Do you LIKE getting pelted by curveballs??
Didn’t think so.
So. Let’s take responsibility, take action, and shift this.
Number one: radically reorient your day-to-day workflow based on YOUR needs right now as a woman, NOT just the entrepreneur.
- What kind of food prepping time do you need to hit that optimal real-food protein intake?
- What about how much time for movement?
- Where’s your breathwork fitting in?
- Do you need to permanently bump anything in your day to make space for your new 3pm matcha break?
In other words, bite the bullet and reduce your weekly workload so you can fit all your wellness practices in.
And if that means taking one fewer client spot per day, or one less project per week, YOU need to grow up, let the chips fly, and set a new, non-workaholic tone for your schedule.
Number two: re-institute cancellation policies for EVERYTHING you’re doing as a family.
As in, anytime one of the kids is too overloaded, or you’ve got a launch coming on, or you and your husband just need a liiiitle more time together – you’re allowed to cancel anything that’s on your family schedule.
Period.
(Rescheduling optional, but not required.)
YOUR marriage and YOUR wellbeing and YOUR need for a break after you just hosted family in town are all WAY more important than a perfect attendance record at soccer practice or skipping the tap class just this once.
And if you DON’T believe that, you’ve got some re-prioritizing to do (on where keeping sports coaches happy fits in compared to the health of your immediate family relationships).
Three: Take a good, hard look at your booking policies.
- Have you ever sat down with your VA and given her firm “don’t book me” zones?
- Set up an availability scheduler that protects your creative time?
- Told your collab partners that you’re only up for calls on Wednesdays and Fridays?
Look – people are going to book you whenever it’s most convenient to THEIR schedule.
So stop expecting them to think of YOU before reserving an interview spot on Monday (when that’s your put-out-fires day for the business).
That’s the part you have to take care of for yourself – ‘cause they don’t know, and frankly, it’s none of their business. (Literally!)
Because when you start ANTICIPATING life’s curveballs by building the calendar margin to handle them into your daily schedule….
Everything about your work-at-home mom life changes.
Everything.
(From the amount of patience for your “can’t find boots for school again” kids, to being able to re-plan your dinner menu on the fly when the hamburger for supper had to be thrown out because of bone chips – true story, to handling your husband’s last minute “renew the car tags for me ‘cause I’ve got a work trip that week” request with graciousness not resentment. Also happened to me last week.)
Which is why we’re going to actually set those just-right-for-you work hours, calendar margin included, when you hand the “make more hours appear in my day” problem off to me – all by zeroing in on scheduling.
(That is, I’M going to – you’re just going to give me the life download and wait for my calendar magic to happen.)
And you’ll be amazed at how FAST the margin pockets can appear (when you didn’t think you had even a spare 20 minutes).
So, to end this on a practical note: which two things on your personal or work calendar need to be rescheduled or cancelled, right off the bat?
(They’re practically screaming at you from your weekly Google calendar – no time! No time!)
Go text the coach, or reschedule the client, or add a “discuss booking days” line item to your next VA Zoom meeting agenda.
In other words, take action right now.
Or else you’ll drop right back into the “shoulds,” and forget that you ever gave yourself permission to need MORE downtime than you currently have built into your schedule.
Don’t make that mistake. When you know better, you do better. (Maya Angelou.)
So which two obligations are you going to “do better” about right now, by not even showing up to?
Because I KNOW you don’t need another “manage your time better” scolding.
You need to break the cultural motherhood programming that’s keeping you stuck in your business.
So DM me when you’re ready for a spacious schedule NOW (not 5 years down the road).
