It’s Thursday. Brielle’s practice is at 6:30 tonight. It takes 35 minutes to get there, so assume 45 with traffic and make sure to arrive early – she hates being late. I have to pick up Jordyn from practice at 4:30, and it always runs late, but we can’t bank on that so get there on time. The elementary school bell rings at 3:30; please remember to walk to the school, or at least the entrance to the neighborhood, for Violet. And don’t forget that we still have a bus driver shortage, so be at the middle school car line at 2:45, or Brielle won’t get home in time to eat before we leave. Important – do not forget! Make sure to have my work bag ready to go and in the car when I pick her up, I might not have a chance to get my things together before we leave again at 5:30. Which reminds me, I have to go to Publix after school drop offs to get something for dinner AND get it in the crockpot by 11 so everyone can eat, at some point, before all running out the door. Rob won’t be home until we have left the house – you got this!
It’s Thursday. Let me check my calendar. I have a meeting at 2 – crap! I can start it on camera and switch to my cell when I leave for pickup – it is not a sales meeting. Crisis averted! But I do have a sales meeting at 12, so I need to be at my desk and ready to go by 11:30. I sent 8 new designs into production yesterday, 5 of them rushes, and I need to confirm everything is kosher before the house wakes up and chaos ensues. I can look at the rest later, but it’s 5 AM, and I need to get started, or I won’t get through all of my work today. I’m already having anxiety for my 2:30 alarm, reminding me that I am OOO until I get to the softball field at 6:20 and can set up my makeshift office in the trunk of my SUV. And whatever I don’t get to during practice…I will finish up from my next makeshift office, while lying in bed, after the house is finally asleep.
So how do I balance everything? I shape my schedule around the choices I have already made, then keep looking for the next best choice inside each one.
I don’t see work and personal tasks as separate entities with separate schedules. I intentionally weave them together, finding the rhythm that reflects and supports my daily choices. Life is a constant cycle of unplanned choices. I didn’t choose the time my children have practice, the time the school bell rings, the bus driver shortage, or the event dates for the pin orders. Of course, there are choices within these choices: signing my children up for sports, wanting them to get home in time to eat a healthy meal, and accepting the rush order. But at what point do the choices from our choices seem less like choices and more like mandatory consequences? Can’t we view the consequence of our choice as another avenue to make another ‘best choice’?
Many years ago, when I lived in Hoboken, I struggled to get to work on time with traffic. Awful, gridlocked, northeast traffic. If I left on time, I fought traffic the entire way and still arrived late. But if I left later than I needed to and planned to arrive at 9:15, I would have virtually no traffic and often arrived at the same time as if I had left on time. Winning! But alas, my boss did not see it that way – his attitude towards it was that I made the choice to ‘live there and work here, so effectively, I must find a way to arrive on time.
On one hand, he is not wrong. I accepted the job as a 9-5 position. But we have two hands, so what about the other hand? I was not a lazy worker; I rarely took lunch breaks, and I worked well past 5 whenever needed (9-5 huh?). I did not intend to be late to work every day, but the traffic was what it was. Was there no option for a better choice inside the choice I had already made?
And that is where the balance really begins – not by pretending every choice has only one acceptable consequence, but by looking for the places where the weight can be shifted.
Balance requires you to recognize the weight on each side, and make adjustments. Maybe that means taking a meeting from the car because the pickup line is the only place the day allows it, starting dinner at 11 AM, answering emails from the softball field – changing the workday instead of forcing all other responsibilities to bend around it. If there is pressure on one side of the scale, the other side feels it. Balancing things out requires understanding where you can pull from, where you can shift, and tailoring your schedule as your needs change.
Stop treating every schedule conflict as proof that one side has to lose. Shift the gears. Change the start time. Find the balance that actually fits your life.