Episode 122: The Time Management Skill Working Moms Actually Need

ITUNES | SPOTIFY

You can have the most organized calendar in the world, and it won't matter the moment the nanny calls off, your kid gets sick, or your car won't start. It's why the most important skill you can develop as a working parent is flexibility. The flexibility to rework your schedule, shorten your to-do list, and get creative with how to get things done.

In this episode I share the self-talk I use to reset my expectations, how I decide what actually has to get done when everything shifts, and how to adjust without losing momentum or burning out. If you're a working parent whose plans keep getting blown up by real life, this episode gives you a way to respond that still moves you forward.

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• Want to learn more about coaching? Visit www.themothernurture.com/work-with-me

• Ready to apply for coaching to see if you're a fit? Visit www.themothernurture.com/application

• + Click here to read the full episode transcript

  You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode.   Hey, hey. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I wanna talk about flexibility. Not being flexible enough to do the splits or a back bend, but flexibility as a working parent You could have the best time management strategy, the most organized to-do list or project plan. Your calendar could be meticulously organized, but those tools won't help you if you don't know how to manage things at a moment's notice, when the nanny calls off, when your kid is sick, or when your car doesn't start in the morning. And for working parents especially the skill of being flexible is the most underrated time management skill that there is Just this morning, maybe a half an hour before I sat down to record this episode, I had to call the dentist to try to get a last minute appointment for my daughter who chipped her tooth over the weekend. Her front tooth. It is not a baby tooth. Ugh. Of course, it's back to school week and all of the things, so to say the least, getting a last-minute dentist appointment was not in my plan for the week. We have two days to both work, I need to work, and prepare my kids for back to school. Nowhere in my calendar do I have space for a dentist appointment. And this one is an easy example, because I have a whole day's notice. You know, right? Most of the time we don't get 24 hours notice, because they can't get me in until tomorrow morning, and she'll be okay to wait until then. So I have a full 24 hours notice to start to move things around and adjust my expectations for what tomorrow is going to look like. But most of the time, we don't get any notice. We have no idea that daycare is gonna call us at 10:15 in the morning to let us know that our kid has a fever and they need to be picked up. We do not know that we're gonna wake up to our AC being out, and so we're gonna have to spend the morning calling repair companies to see who can get us in the fastest, and then rearrange our schedule to be here and be available when they do show up in that one to three-hour window. We definitely do not know that our colleague or our nanny is gonna wake up sick and have to call off The moments that require the greatest flexibility often give us the least amount of notice. But it is how you respond in those moments that sets you apart from someone who only follows traditional time management advice. I've said it before, and I will say it 100 more times if I need to, most productivity and time management advice isn't written by working parents, and if it is written by a working parent, it's rarely written by someone who is the default parent, the parent who gets the call from school or from daycare, the one who manages the doctor's appointments, the one who is available for the repair company to come and look at whatever is not working today That traditional time management advice is very idealistic. There are wonderful tools in it, and I'm gonna talk about that because I certainly use a number of what I would call traditional productivity or time management advice in how I approach my week as a working parent But what it lacks is the tools and the scenarios and the examples of what to do when your rigid plan, your well-thought-out and meticulously organized plan is blown to smithereens because you have a sick kid at home, or you don't have childcare today, or your team member who was supposed to cover this thing didn't come in What about those scenarios? Now, ironically, when I think of default parents, at least in the women in my community, and probably many of you listening as well, it is often the parent with the flexibility. Funny, right? With the flexibility, we are the ones that then also need to learn how to be flexible. I'm curious if you have a flexible job if you feel this as well, right? You have the job where if you had to, you could go in late to work, or you could make up some of your work in the evenings, or even take the day off if you needed to at a late notice. Maybe work from home instead of in the office A lot of the women that I talk to have that type of job. I have that type of job. And I did even when I was in the corporate world. I either worked from home full-time there toward the end, or when I did have an office, I had that flexibility that if I needed to work from home and I worked it out with my manager, I could do that Now, some of it is true flexibility compared to their partner's job where maybe their partner is a teacher or a doctor or working in a factory or in a government job where they don't have access to their phone or they, are responsible for a classroom of students, or they do have a patient on the operating table at 10:00 AM and they really cannot miss that surgery. So some of it is legit, but some of it, is built or created, that default parent flexibility where you have maybe created the environment where you are the only one who can take the call or who can take the time off Now maybe you're like me, where the first step in rearranging things, in enacting this flexibility is a negotiation. It's a negotiation of calendars, of schedules, of deadlines. Who has what going on? Who can step in today and cover the sick kid or take the kid to the doctor or be here when someone comes to, make that repair? But regardless of what your scenario is, even if you are the one with flexibility in your work, that doesn't necessarily mean that you know how to be flexible. I know because I've lived it and I've seen it time and time again. I decided to look up the definition of flexible because I was curious, of what it actually says. And of course, there are multiple definitions, but one was capable of bending without breaking. I love that. But another one that I think is probably more applicable here in what we're talking about as default parents or as working parents is the capability to adapt to new, different, or changing requirements So can you pivot? Can you let go of the day that you thought you were going to have and create a new one instead? Can you, now that you know what the new requirements, the different requirements are, can you adapt? Now, I said two very important words there. Let go. Can you let go of the day you thought you were going to have? And this is where I see even the most flexible people fall down. You might be flexible and be able to quickly change your schedule or reschedule that meeting. But if you can't let go of your expectations, the entire experience of that is pretty miserable. Ask me how I know. Because what I see is that you will yes, arrange your schedule, pick up the kid, call for the repairs, pivot for alternate childcare when the nanny is sick, but still keep all of the meetings that were previously scheduled on your calendar, or still keep the to-do list with 10 things on it You'll try to figure out how to still get it all done despite the change in circumstances. I remember for me, this used to look like working from my phone maybe in the lobby of the doctor's office or while we were waiting for the doctor to come in, taking calls in the car on the drive home with a sick kid, working on my laptop from the couch next to them or from, the lobby at the auto shop, Working late at night after the kids have gone to bed, waking up early in the morning to squeeze in a couple of extra tasks, working through nap time, right? Squeezing it in wherever you can And that's not a bad thing. It's, it's creative. It's problem-solving. It is doing the things that have to get done in a different room, in a different timeline, in a different scenario. But what happens when your kid can't fall asleep, or doesn't take a long nap, or you're too tired late at night or early in the morning to produce anything of value It is unreasonable to think that you could produce the same output when your schedule doesn't look the way it did when you created those expectations But letting go is hard. Letting go of things that you thought you were going to do today is hard. You tell yourself that all of those things have to get done, and they have to get done today. You can't possibly let any of it go. You'll just work harder. You'll be more creative. You'll do things faster than you normally would because you're under pressure now. You have less time And sometimes that works. I have gotten things done in much less time because I had to, as opposed to the more spacious time that I had originally allotted myself. It can work. But being flexible is adapting to changing requirements. You made that plan before you knew what the day was actually going to look like. So now that you do know, how will you adapt? The biggest hurdle still is that story that you tell yourself, the clinging to how you pictured the day was going to go. So one of the very first things I do, and this often happens before I even get to the negotiation phase with my husband about who's gonna handle what and is there anything he can take or vice versa, I always start with a little self-talk. I know you can't see me right now, but my instinct is to always put my hand on my chest right over my heart or kind of in the center. I always start with a little self-talk. This is not the day you thought you were going to have. And there's a little bit of that sucks , tone of voice happening when I say that to myself. This is not the day you thought you were going to have. Your circumstances have changed. So how will you adjust your expectations? And that last question, that last one is a question for a reason. Your circumstances have changed. How will you adjust your expectations? If you can adjust your expectations, the tactical work of adjusting your schedule and your to-do list and moving all of those puzzle pieces around now that the puzzle board has changed, it becomes so much easier, and you can move through the steps so much faster if you acknowledge that things have changed and you start to, you don't have to have it fully done, but you start to adjust your own expectations Then we quickly get to work. You look at the calendar, and you be ruthless. If you have ever had a medical emergency, maybe for you or for a family member, you know it is amazing in those moments how nothing else really matters. When my mom was admitted to the hospital with a brain tumor for the second time this fall, I didn't think twice about anything work-related. I know you know what this feels like, right? I just canceled it all. I canceled it all. I made sure I had childcare for my kids, and I just, I took off to make that drive. Literally took off in the car, but I also took off. I took off from work. I knew I would figure it out. I knew my clients would understand. I knew that a podcast being released on a Tuesday was not life or death. This was Now, you don't have to be that ruthless here, depending on your circumstances, but you do have to be honest. Do you really have to be a part of that meeting, or can you catch up on a replay or the notes afterward? Will it kill the project to reschedule that call to later in the week? Or my favorite one, can it just be an email? Can we just type up an email instead and communicate asynchronously? So be ruthless with your calendar. Sometimes you're just forced, and that's what has to happen. Other times, maybe whatever has come up requiring you to be flexible, there's still some room to play, but it still isn't all gonna quite fit. So what can we move? What can we delegate? What can we delay? Next, you have to look at your to-do list, the things that you thought you were going to get done today, and your goal is to create some space And I hate to recommend worst case scenario thinking, but part of that is what being flexible is. So if you were to go into your new day with your new set of circumstances and ask yourself, " if I can hardly get any work done today," right? "If this repair takes longer than I expect, if this appointment, if this fever lasts longer than I want it to, if this..." insert whatever your scenario is, what actually has to get done today? Cut your list way down. Delegate something. Delay something. Own the new timeline. Communicate it out. So many of you don't wanna let people know that something is going to be late, because now you're being flexible and you're having to make choices, but being proactive about it is always better than asking for forgiveness later. Let other people know, and let other people plan around your new timeline So be ruthless with your schedule, create space by cutting back on your to-do list and how much you expect yourself to do. And then, yes, be creative, work in the nooks and crannies for the things that do have to get done, but don't overload your evenings, your early mornings, all of the other nooks and crannies of your time. Because depending on the thing that you're responding to, It might take some of your capacity. It might be emotionally draining. You might feel more tired or less focused, or the pivoting itself to rearrange might take something out of you Letting go of the day you thought you were going to have can dampen energy and decrease motivation for a time. So factor that in. You have less time, and you may have a little bit less energy. Again, it, it all depends on what's actually happening that's required you to be flexible, so you know your situation best, but do take that into account Now, I do just wanna call out that it can be really easy to question your life choices in these moments. I can't tell you the number of times I've thought about quitting working when I've had to pivot and be flexible, or how I wanna purge the entire house because I can't live like this anymore. But just like a cloud or a wave, those feelings do pass, so don't make any drastic changes while you're in the midst of a pivot. I can tell you from experience that the more I change how I think about flexibility and the unexpected, the less intense those thoughts of burning it all down feel Now, some of you might hear this episode today about flexibility and think that the answer is to plan your day with contingency plans, a plan B, or that you always should be thinking about what you'll do if the unexpected happens I don't think that's actually flexing the skill of flexibility Flexibility is how you respond in the moment. It's bending without breaking, right? It's changing and adapting when your circumstances change. So I don't want you to walk around waiting for the other shoe to drop. Those working parents, we know there's always something unexpected. There's always something But what I do want you to recognize is that your plan, your list, your calendar is not set in stone. So use the tips that you know and love. If you like to time block your calendar or batch your tasks or eat the frog or choose three main priorities for the day, I do those things too But just because you create the plan doesn't mean it's set in stone. It's a best guess at best It's a series of decisions that you made before you knew that you were gonna get sick or that school was going to call and ask you to come pick up your kid. And so now that you know those things, you're going to adjust. You're going to change. You're going to pivot And some days your plan will go exactly as you have it laid out. And other days it'll go right out the window by 7:00 AM and you'll have a completely different day in front of you. You can cling to the old plan and be upset that it's not what your day is going to look like anymore, or you can take the new information that you have, what you know now, and adjust. Make a new plan. Make a slightly updated plan, a more informed plan Yes, you will let go of some things. You might not get as much done unless you have backup care or people or teams who are there to help you respond to the unexpected. That's amazing if you have that And I know it doesn't feel like it in the moment, but these things do ebb and flow. And I promise you that almost everyone around you, working parent or not, is navigating something Their day is looking different than what they thought But if you can learn to be flexible, to take the new information, adjust your plan To acknowledge that the day is gonna look different Not only does that feel better, but what I see time and time again is that those are the people that are still able to make progress. And they do it without burning out along the way This is a skill that I think all parents underestimate. It's one that will really test you, but it is one that you can learn, that you can strengthen, that with time can become so second nature that you don't even need a step-by-step here's how to be flexible and here's how to pivot plan. If you know that this is an area of growth for you, that you want to be flexible, to still get things done but not let it completely ruin your day when your day doesn't go as planned I would love to help you grow this skill. And yes, we will start with a step by step, here's what we do when we need to be flexible because it's not second nature. It is something that we have to learn. But with repetition, with time, with practice, with feedback from me, from your coach, it will eventually become second nature. And some days will go exactly according to plan and others will not. But in both of those scenarios, you'll still make progress, get the most important things done, and most importantly, you'll feel better while doing it If you'd like to learn more about coaching, about what it looks like to work with me as your coach, please check out my website. You can do that over at themothernurture.com/work-with-me. That'll give you an overview of what this experience is like, especially if you're new to coaching. And if you are ready, you wanna have a conversation, you wanna talk about the exact challenges that you're facing and, and what you would like support with on your individual coaching journey, you can go ahead and submit a quick application at themothernurture.com/application. You'll answer a few quick questions, and I'll reach out to let you know whether I think you'd be a good fit and what my recommendations would be. It's as easy as that. As I said in last week's episode too, this back to school season is a perfect time. I've been getting a number of applications recently, so if you're feeling that nudge, definitely jump in, answer some of those questions, and we'll go from there. All right I'm wishing you a beautiful week. For those of you whose kids are headed back to school this week like mine are, I'm wishing you all the flexibility. And until the next episode, I hope you take care. I'll talk to you soon Thank you for listening and as always, for being a part of this working mom community. You can find everything related to this episode in the show notes at themothernurture.com/podcast, you can also find information about how I support working moms just like you through one-on-one, and group coaching, as well as access a number of resources and articles all on my website at themothernurture.com. I will see you again next week for another episode of the podcast.

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