As anyone who’s trying to build a career and raise a family knows, life does not always go according to plan. Weather, illnesses, and so forth can wreak havoc on any schedule.
And yet, planning still matters even when life doesn’t go according to plan. When you know what’s important, you can make sure you get to those priorities even if the less-important stuff doesn’t happen. When you’ve seen potential problems, and identified back-up slots, you can often get to things even when troubles arise.
In this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I discuss how to manage life when life doesn’t go as planned. Certain practical strategies can help us create resilient schedules that can absorb life as it actually happens.
In the Q&A section we talk about how to handle transitions. A listener feels like she loses a lot of time moving from one task to the next, and asks for tips on either minimizing this or accommodating it.
Please give the episode a listen, and as always, we welcome a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts! We’d also appreciate if you’d consider joining our Patreon community. We have a lively discussion board where we all share tips on combining work and life.
For the question writer – audiobooks in the evening. Give your eyes a break from the screen, close your eyes, and immerse yourself in a story.
I wonder about a poem a day podcast might also be nice, the “slowdown”
My initial thought when I heard the question at the end is that they need to read a book that they want to keep coming back to… I read a lot of books each year and often get asked how I read so much. I think the key part is reading really good books and abandoning anything that you aren’t feeling drawn to read. I used to never abandon books but have changed my philosophy on this as I’ve gotten older and realized that life is too short to read something that isn’t drawing me in. I’ve also removed any judgment about what I am reading. I read more romance/rom-com type of books than I did in the past but that genre of books is usually light and easy to get into – and that’s often what my tired brain needs!
I do read during transitional periods like she mentioned but I’m like Laura/SHU and don’t have a hard time with transitions. I could probably take MORE time transitioning but I’m always rushing to the next thing, especially since having kids. Like if I have some downtime, I feel like I NEED to do something with that time, like read some of my book, do a DuoLingo lesson, etc. But I’m not on social media so scrolling isn’t an option.
@Lisa- life is definitely too short to stick with books you don’t like. We may only read like 2500 more books in life. No need to put bad ones on there!