Choose a spot for spillover work

How to keep busy work weeks from disrupting your life

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to choose a spot for spillover work. Many
people will have weeks that either feature extra work that

(00:24):
doesn't fit into their normal work hours, or else we
might lose some chunk of our usual work hours to
personal obligations. When that is the case, choosing ahead of
time which extra slots would work best can make these
weeks feel more calm. You can also make sure that

(00:45):
the extra work doesn't displace important personal priorities. So during
a recent week, I wound up doing a multi hour
work session on a Thursday night. I tend not to
do much work in the evenings, but I was in
a hotel room and I had planned to work during
the day, but I had the opportunity to spend time

(01:06):
with people who were in town. In general, I believe
that people are a good use of time. So I
saw those folks in the afternoon, knowing that I had
eight to ten thirty pm open that night for work.
I knew it was better to work then then to
try to fit those tasks into the weekend, which was
going to be full of kids stuff. The time in

(01:29):
my hotel room would just be spent scrolling or maybe
watching TV. Better to use that time. It was the
least disruptive spillover spot. Few people enjoy working at night
on weekends, But if work sometimes doesn't fit during regular
hours and it needs to get done and you have

(01:51):
some say over your working time, then you have a choice.
You can identify a time in advance that won't be
disruptive to the rest of your life and use that,
or you can wait until things become more dire and
use whatever time is right there, which might require canceling

(02:11):
plans or losing out on sleep. I think the former
is the better option. So even if work isn't particularly
busy right now, look at your weekly schedule and identify
a slot or two that might be available for spillover work.
For people with young kids, the time after the kids

(02:33):
go to bed at night would be an obvious one.
If they are down at eight and you go to
bed at ten thirty, you could make up two hours
on any given night during a rough week. Choosing two
to three nights for the second shift would buy you
an extra four to six hours without giving up time
with your kids. If you don't think you'll have the energy,

(02:57):
try going to bed earlier and waking up early and
using these quiet morning hours a few days a week
to get the extra work done. For some people, the
weekend might be better. If you have a co parent,
you might work out a trade where each of you
takes the kids one morning or one afternoon. You use

(03:18):
the time to work and the other person can use
their time to do whatever. Or perhaps there is another
weekend slot that would work without causing much disruption. For instance,
maybe someone needs to take a kid to swim practice
and generally hangs out there during the practice. You could
bring your laptop and use that time while still doing

(03:38):
the driving. Or in my family, on Sundays, the usual
activity schedule means I'm home and done driving about an
hour before my husband gets back with our youngest. It
is pretty easy to use that hour on a usual
weekend to work if I happen to have some spillover.
Even if you don't have kids, maybe you and a

(03:59):
significant other normally hang out on the weekends. If that
person has some time that they normally do something else,
like going for long bike rides on Saturday mornings, that
is a very easy spillover time. Knowing that ahead of
time means you don't have to change your weekend plans together.
If you've got extra work that has to get done,

(04:21):
you know you will be able to use that time.
Many of us have some spillover spot we could use.
If you know when this is, then you can plan
to use it when you need to. But if you
haven't thought about it, you'll get to the weekend and
be facing down a huge Monday deadline and you will

(04:42):
have to start canceling things. This will make your family
or friends far more annoyed with you. This is the
sort of thing that leads to resentment and then to
people feeling like work and family or work in relationships
are inevitably at odds. But plan ahead to identify a

(05:02):
non disruptive spillover spot, and maybe they don't have to be.
It is not necessarily fun to work at night or
on the weekend, but when you choose which night or
which weekend spot you use, it can be far more tolerable.
In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and

(05:27):
here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for
listening to before breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback.
You can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.

(05:52):
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