157. Scheduling Curveballs (Without the Mom Guilt)

Full disclosure: I recorded this episode the night before it goes live because, well, life happened. One of my kids came home sick, my focus was fried, and I had to make real-time decisions about rescheduling and protecting my boundaries. Then I found a second curveball: someone booked on a day I’m off (because I hadn’t updated my calendar). In this episode, I walk you through how I coached myself through it so you can borrow the mindset shifts and the practical strategies the next time your schedule blows up. 

What You’ll Learn:

• How I stay considerate and professional without apologizing for being a parent and business owner
• A simple reframe I use (The circumstance is neutral, the meaning I attach is optional.)
• Why rescheduling takes serious executive function (decision-making, working memory, planning, prioritizing)
• How I reduce the cognitive load when I have to reschedule (especially on low-focus days)
• What I do when systems and scheduling tools fail—and how I use that failure as useful data 
• Why systems can support boundaries, but can’t replace your responsibility to set/hold/communicate them

Key Takeaways:

• You can apologize for short notice or inconvenience without apologizing for your boundaries
• A scheduling mishap isn’t proof you’re scattered, it’s information you can use to adjust your system
• If rescheduling feels hard, maybe that’s because it is hard. But it can get easier. 

To find out how I can help you improve your work-life balance, click here.

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Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

All right. This is gonna be a fun one. I am recording this episode. It is the night before it's coming out, and I'm Like final deadline approaching. And I'm gonna be, full disclosure, struggling a little bit in terms of attention and Okay, here we go. I am... My executive functioning skills and my focus are wah, very, very low right now. My brain is pretty fried, which is not when you wanna be recording a podcast or I... You know, I don't mind, but it's not when you get the best typically not when you get the best, clearest message. However, if you can bear with me through the rambling, I promise this is gonna be a really good one. So, today, here is what the, here is what the story is, the long and short of it. So, I-- my kids are in camp, full day, and long story short, my youngest came home sick, and I... This was, like, a perfect example of what my... Like, a- as I was managing this, right? Like, okay, what does this mean? What does this mean for today? What does this mean for to- for tomorrow? What does he need, right? As I'm, like, sort of juggling the stuff that comes with that curve ball. And that wasn't the only curve ball, by the way. There was another curve ball, which was a scheduling glitch. This, this is what we need to talk about. Like, how do... What do you, what do you do when this happens? How do you handle it? And not that I am at all, a, a, like, perfect in this. Nobody is. And you know what I always say, right? Progress over perfection. So I wanna be clear that it's not about me teaching from a pedestal. It's about, like, oh, this is me doing the work in real time, okay? So- All right, so let me walk you through what happened, why this matters, and if you are somebody who struggles with work-life balance or you are trying to shift your work-life balance or be more intentional about it, this episode is, I think, a perfect example of how I approach it and what you can learn from it. And not that, again, not that I have every, every answer. I absolutely don't. And if you are in an SLP private practice or if like if you are a private practice owner, this is especially important and relevant for you because if you are self-employed, you know that your schedule, most of the time for most of you, your schedule is your income, right? It's your childcare plan for many of you. Many of you are the default parent. And how do you approach that, right? What-- Like, let's talk about that. So I'm gonna give you today some mindset takeaways and some actual tactical, practical strategy takeaways that you can go and apply. And I think the value here is when you can apply both of these, meaning both categories of these, both the mindset shifts and the strategy shifts, I think that's where, where you will really have the most opportunity to experience a positive change in your enjoying your personal life and your home life and your work life rather at the same time. Okay. I have to plug this in. I keep pausing. I'll have to plug it into, Descript to get the pauses taken out of this. I might have to edit, actually. At least edit the pauses for your alls- for your time, for all of your sakes. Now, mindset takeaway. First one that came up for me that I wanted to share with you is that you do not have to apologize for being a mom and being a business owner. I think so many of us when we are in business owner mode, or even for those of you w- who might be listening, you might be employees, and you feel like when something happens, right? Maybe you're not the owner of the business, but you work for somebody who is, and when life comes up, kids come up, right? So many times we feel like we are... like, if we are in mom mode and something kind of pulls at us from work mode, we have a tendency to apologize or feel guilty for it. So I noticed this coming up with how I wanted to approach the rescheduling of the appointments because as I was looking to tomorrow, knowing that I'm, I'm gonna be with him, I was trying to see, okay, who do I need to reschedule? How do I, how do I wanna do this? And l- I noticed that I was getting a little bit stuck on the wording of my emails in a couple of cases. Like, I wanted to apologize, but I wanted to apologize and I wanted to be clear that I was apologizing for the last-minute notice or the any... the possible inconvenience, not apologizing for putting family first, right? And, and that's a subtle but important distinction. And I think it's important for you all to hear how that distinction might be helpful for you, right? And knowing that I value time, and I value time for my clients, right? And I also value transparency. So being able to not f- do what I needed to do as a mom tomorrow and not feel guilty about it is huge, and I want you to know that that is something that is possible. It is possible to make these changes, right? To, like, be, in this case, be responsible for, like... you can make these decisions to run your business the way you wanna run it, okay? So the, a strategy that I want to incorporate here is... I was gonna go mindset, strategy, mindset, strategy. I think I gotta keep on mindset, okay? And then go to strategy. That makes more sense for my brain, so we are pivoting. Cognitive flexibility in real time. Okay? So second piece in terms of mindset that I think is really, really important is that the circumstance, in this case needing to reschedule or needing to reschedule sessions because child is sick, that's s- that's the circumstance. But the circumstance itself is neutral. It is not a good thing. It is not a bad thing. It is not a disappointing thing. It's a fact. He is sick, and I am choosing to reschedule. But the meaning that we apply to it or attach to it is optional. Okay? This is a prime example of how your story in your head or your beliefs about what's right or wrong, or what's rude and not rude, Those are what make a circumstance mean something. So I now recognize for myself that this is neutral. Right? But it doesn't mean anything about me as a person. I told you there was an added curve ball in this situation, right? The added curve ball being in the midst of this, right? My son's getting sick. Spare you the details, but he's getting sick. I've got the four kids home. I'm trying to juggle, right? In the midst of all of this, I also realized that... I'm laughing. I also realized that a client or th- somebody had booked a session with me, booked a meeting with me for Friday, which is a day off. Like, for me, it is a day that I'm gonna be out of the office. I hadn't updated my calendar to reflect that, and lo and behold, somebody scheduled on that day. So then I had that added scenario that I needed to address, and again, in the past, like old story, old me would have reacted probably in the way of, "Well, this person's gonna think I'm either unprofessional or scattered," or, "This person's gonna think I don't value their time." Like, if it's a client if, that I'm rescheduling, you know, they're gonna, they're gonna think like, "How could you be doing this kind of work where you make these mistakes yourself," right? This is like old story. New... If it, if it was a consult, somebody booking a s- a coaching consult, like a potential client, oh, well, there goes that client. And I'm sharing this with you because these are the same, like, this old story, these thoughts, are the same things that I hear o- like day in and day out from my coaching clients. So I know that I'm not alone in this thinking, and I'm trying to demonstrate other ways of thinking, and that there is another approach, right? And that you have agency over that. And that when you do that, you change your entire experience of work/life balance. So I know that m- by having that mistake, right, like not having that calendar updated, and needing to reach out to that person to acknowledge it, I can recognize, again, the circumstance is neutral. Somebody booked a session on a day that I'm off. That is neutral The way that I interpret it or what I make it mean is what it becomes for me, and I get to decide what meaning, if any, I attach to it. Now, the current story, right? I gave you an example of how ex- many examples of how I might have seen this in the past. Current story is, okay, well, if it's a new client or a potential client, if it's meant to be, it's meant to be. This is me practicing. This is me m- like leading by example. This is me living the business that I want to live, like, or doing the business, running the business the way that I have decided to run it, where I have... I decide to schedule sessions or reschedule sessions when my children are sick. I do make mistakes. I now know, I believe anyway, something that I have found to be very helpful is to just allow for mistakes to happen. It sounds so simple, but especially from like an ADHD lens, when you think about like the executive functioning skills that go into everything that we do, mistakes are gonna happen. Mistakes are gonna happen even if you don't have ADHD. Like, they're gonna happen. So I just try when possible to chalk it up to, okay, well, this was one of those times where this was, this is just gonna happen, and that's okay. And it doesn't mean that I'm powerless to fix it. I can certainly change things to try and avoid these kinds of painful, relatively speaking, mistakes from happening. But also, like, even if all the things were in place and I was doing my best, mistakes are still gonna happen, and that's okay. Okay. The question then for you becomes, because I don't want this to be all about me, the question becomes, like, wh- what scenario can you think of that is actually neutral, but you might be thinking of it in a certain way? Like, start looking out for this. Whose story is that? Like, says who? Whose lens is that? Whose voice is that? Like, what's another way that you can think of this situation, right? When you start to recognize that you have the power to shift that, everything can change. Okay. Next thing on mindset Is, I lied. I'm looking at my notes. I lied. I'm gonna- it's two mindset and two strategy. See, I said bear with me. Okay. But hopefully, like I said at the beginning, if you bear with me through the rambling, there is gold in here, so. And I, I can always re-record this episode in the future, just kind of tighten it up so it's not so ADHD-ish. Okay, so let's talk strategy. Two things that I did tonight when this happened and what could be useful for you to know, okay? I've alluded to this many times tonight, but it in and of itself is an important takeaway, and it deserves to be addressed in a little bit more detail, and that is the awareness that rescheduling your day, so a day that doesn't... Whether it's a day that doesn't go according to plan and it is that day and you have to pivot and restructure, or it is a day in the future, the near future, right? Regardless, executive functioning skills are required, and they, the executive function or the cognitive load, the executive functioning demand or the cognitive load, that's like two ways that I look at this. Like the amount of effort, energy, effort, I said that already, um, like bandwidth, focus that is needed Is high for something like this. And in fact, I'm going to do an entire episode where I break down this same scenario, and hopefully in a much clearer way, coherent way, but I break down the same scenario of the, of this situation, right? And I break it down by executive functioning skills so that you can actually see what this looks like and how I do this work with clients so that you can start to understand how you could do it for yourself and why it would be helpful. But that's another episode, not today. For now, what I want you to understand is that the executive functioning load is high here. So for example, rescheduling requires decisions, right? There's a lot of then decisions that you need to make in that moment or in this period of time where you're now rescheduling. For example, do I offer options for them to reschedule, or do I offer one specific time, or do I send them to a scheduling link? Well, I just had a snafu with my scheduling link, right? Like, somebody booked on a Friday when I'm, was meant to be out of the office. How many choices should I offer? Like, how many choices are reasonable and helpful versus, like, overload, right? How do I avoid double booking if I want to, like, give this information, give these openings to multiple clients? What if two people want the same time, right? I've got the Fourth of July holiday coming up, and so that takes Friday's workday out of the equation because, again, I said I'm not working on Friday. So I have less time available, right? And Thursday will be a half day. And Tuesday is already gonna be with sick child, right? So there's limited options. So these are some examples of, like, the executive functioning work in the process, and I want you to understand that these pieces are at play because it can help you to identify what... if you start looking at, like, what in particular you really get stuck on with this, it can give you a clue as to a strategy that would be helpful. So for example, if you really struggle with working memory and you're trying to hold in your head the open times that you can offer to a client- Or and instead of having it right in your face where you can see it as you are offering it, right? Something as small and simple as that can be the make or break piece of this chain, this chain for you, right? This chain of, like, rescheduling. So that's an example of, like, identifying, well, what's the executive functioning breakdown here? Like, which one can I try s- to solve for? So if you can identify, like, working memory, okay, so now we know we need to have these options right here on a piece of paper in front of me, and I'm gonna hold it in front of me so that I can see it and keep looking back and forth at it as I'm offering times. Another thing, sidebar, this is gonna be a, another episode for the future, by the way. But I use AI to help me with this now, and it is incredibly helpful, and I'm gonna... I'm planning on doing an episode about how I u- some of the ways that I use AI in my business, because I use AI for so much and how it can be helpful for, specifically for, like, work-life balance and neurodivergent brains. But that's a topic for another time. I just didn't want to make you think... I didn't wanna portray myself as somebody who does all of this by quill, feather pen, and scroll, right? Like, this is actually, I am using technology to support myself, and that's what I love to help my coaching clients do for themselves as well. Okay. And then I said I was gonna give you one more strategy here that is a, uh, to take away with you, um, and that is this: that systems can be really helpful. They can support your boundaries, but you are still the boss You can have systems in place and scheduling tools in place to reduce the cognitive load, But there's lots of things that you can do to try and reduce the, the cognitive load and to support yourself, right? But sometimes those tools, they fail, right? Nothing is really foolproof, so progress over perfection. But when something is not working repeatedly, right, if something is failing, you can adjust the system and you can communicate differently. You don't have to make it mean anything bad about you or your system. And in fact, when systems start to struggle, use that as information. That's information telling you something isn't working here. Let's look at that. What exactly isn't working and what do we wanna do differently, right? But treating the system as the be-all, end-all to be able to work for you or work harder, not smarter, or to relieve you of the responsibility to set and hold your boundaries, that has to come from you. That cannot come from a system. Okay? So you still need to know what your boundaries are, and to be able to implement them, hold them, communicate them clearly. So three kind of core key takeaways for you in this long-winded story example is that you can be considerate and professional without apologizing for boundaries that you set or hold. Right? In fact, what would change for you if you thought about these things that I shared today as boundaries? Like, what if you thought about that as a boundary? What if you thought about me emailing or notifying coaching clients, to reschedule a session? Like, if we saw that as a boundary, would that help you feel better about boundaries? And like, yeah, like, th- these are opportunities to practice, right? They're all around us. That's what I always tell my coaching clients and my, and myself and, and my family, like, there's lots of opportunities here for us to practice, practice getting better at something, to learn, to... Yep, let's just see these as opportunities. Okay, second key takeaway, rescheduling is cognitive work. We cannot get around that, although we can really get better at it and lighten it through AI. But The cognitive demand is high, so let's recognize that. Let's give ourselves some grace, and then let's try and troubleshoot for that with that in mind, right? And don't confuse any scheduling blips, mishaps, slip-ups as meaning anything about you and your professionalism and your value in what you do as an SLP. Okay? Choose a better lens. Write a better story. That is entirely up to you, but if you want help with this, let me know. I would love to partner with you. I can coach you through exactly how to apply this type of information, these types of practices, these changes in your thinking into your personal life and your professional life so that you can start to feel the benefit of this quicker, more easily, right? So book a consult. That is it. I will see you all next time. Bye.