When your family needs you more than your business, but you still want to work….

How do you readjust your week’s workflow when you know you’re going to catch the family bug sooner or later… but you’ve got clients and students and deliverable projects to keep in the air??

(And inside you’re resenting your kids for ruining your nice, was-going-to-be-productive week and swapping it out for taking care of sickies!)

The one thing I for-sure-for-sure know is that if you’ve got THIS one thing in place, it’s actually a really quick and easy process to rejigger your to-do list on the fly as soon as the first kid starts sniffling.

You’ve got this!

Alyssa

Love your daily life as a work-at-home mom: https://yourunbusylife.com/ 

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Transcript

This is the Unbusy Mom, and today we’re talking about how to cope when your family needs you more than your business, but you still want to work.

How do you readjust your week’s workflow when you know you’re going to catch the family bug sooner or later… and you’ve got clients and students and deliverable projects to keep in the air??

(But inside you’re resenting your kids for ruining your nice, was-going-to-be-productive week and swapping it out for taking care of sickies.)

I can’t zap away the family cold for you….

But I CAN show you how to set up your winter workflow so that you never get the “oh, shoot - and I have a client deadline this week” feeling again!

Because the one thing I for-sure-for-sure know is that if you’ve got your calendar all set up to handle your ordinary clients-and-kid-projects life - PLUS a decent amount of margin thrown in - then it’s actually a really quick and easy process to rejigger your to-do list on the fly as soon as the first kid starts sniffling.

(Because that’s half the reason why you’re working from home right now in the first place - you WANTED to be able to make sure they’re all drinking honey lemon tea and taking elderberry, not off at daycare spreading their germs around ‘cause your boss won’t let you take a sick day to take care of them! Right?)

So all you need to do is schedule in enough wiggle room to your quarterly goals (plus client deadlines and content production processes) so that you can take up that “slack week” every quarter with your just-bumped-out work timelines.

(And there ARE multiple ways to give yourself that kind of slack room in your calendar, btw…. Especially if your kids get full-on sick MORE than once a quarter, so you need way more of it!)

You could also try leaving your last workday each week blank, except for basic client management to-dos, and leave a couple placeholder line items on it that you KNOW you’re gonna use on those “kids got sick so I took care of them” or “drat, now *I* caught it and I’ve got no energy” days. 

And if nobody’s down for the count this week?

That’s right, YOU just work ahead for next week. Build in that PRE-margin by getting ahead on your content batching or backend developing or SOP for new team onboarding tasks.

There’s ALWAYS a scheduling answer to “how not to get behind in work again” - and when you’re talking family sickness, it’s usually a combo of “does this REALLY have to get done today?” plus “where’s the next blank space in my biz planner that I can shift this into.”

That’s all you need to do to give yourself the monthly, quarterly, heck - even weekly! - margin that your kids need so you can take those light weeks in the business (without dipping too low on your cash flow). 

It’s that easy.

(And believe me, you’ll use this trick time and time again to balance out your home life - ‘cause it’s not just the sick weeks that can shoot your work calendar for the day!)

I use this all the time myself on my “homeschooling readjustment research needed” week every semester to give myself the space and brain time I need to marinate on options. 

Oh, and also for when I need to do in-depth career research plus those “what major are you actually looking to aim for, and does your track record so far reflect that” conversations with my high schoolers!

What about you - would having one “nothing on the books” week (beyond your usual vacation/off to see grandparents one) every quarter really help….

….So that by the time you flip the page to it in your planner, it’s all filled up with those bumped-for-sickness tasks?

Where in your CEO schedule could you build in a half day every other week that’s just for “the family needed me” overflow?