Second Cup: Build in life maintenance time

Managing your life and your household is a real job that takes real space in a schedule

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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 build in life maintenance time. Running a household,
or even just your own life is a real job

(00:26):
that takes real space in a schedule. You can wish
that that weren't the case, but it is wiser to
simply build in time to manage what needs to be managed,
because then you will feel less stressed about the whole thing.
So today's tip is based on a listener question that

(00:46):
we received on my other podcast, Best of Both Worlds.
A listener worked for a local government agency and needed
to be in her office from eight to four thirty
each day with a thirty minute lunch. I understood from
the question that she didn't really have the ability to
do any personal tasks during her work hours since she

(01:10):
had a house and three kids, things like teacher emails,
permission slips, making appointments, calling contractors, or even scheduling a
haircut for herself, or just stacking up, and she felt overwhelmed.
I know this is a common problem. One of the

(01:30):
real benefits of working for myself and working flexibly is
having the freedom to home from work, as I sometimes
call it, as opposed to working from home, even though
I have a home office, so I guess I'm really
homing from home. If I need to buy a kid
a coat, I can do that at two thirty PM

(01:51):
and it is all fine. Sometimes I get annoyed at
the volume of household management stuff that stacks up, but
I am not going to get fired for attending to it.
I know that is not universally the case at all.
Some jobs simply do not allow for doing anything else

(02:11):
while you are actively working. If you are doing dental
procedures or driving a bus or directing traffic, you are
not going to be purchasing that coat online while people
drive into each other in that intersection. Some employers also
maintain much stricter rules about time and place and outside

(02:32):
information than others. Sometimes this is for good reasons, like
security clearances. Sometimes it isn't, but it is what it is. Alas,
people in these less flexible jobs do not magically get
a pass from doing home and life maintenance things, so

(02:53):
when do you do them? The answer is that you
have to figure out a time that does work with
your life life and with your job, and block that
in treat this life and household maintenance time as work
hours just like your other work hours, because it is
actual work, so in the best of both worlds listener

(03:17):
case I advised her to set aside four thirty to
five pm a few days a week as official life
maintenance time. She likely couldn't do this work at her office,
but she could use her personal phone in her car
to do these tasks sitting there in the parking lot
if need be, or if there were another space like

(03:38):
a library or a coffee shop or a mall with
a seating area nearby, she could go there. She could
write down tasks as they occurred to her during the day,
or give herself assignments during a weekly planning session. Then
during her life maintenance time, she would go through the
tasks one by one and cross them off. The key

(04:02):
was that she needed to figure out how the rest
of her life could support that. For a lot of
working parents, one of the primary considerations is childcare to
cover this time. If her kids were at daycare or
after school care, or with a sitter, or with her
partner or another relative, then she needed to see if
this time could be extended to allow her to use

(04:25):
this four thirty to five window a few days a week. Now,
I know that seems not fun, it's not really happy hour,
and it's also a little sad to miss a little
family time. But kid care is both about being with
them and managing the logistics of their lives. Her little

(04:46):
bit of extra work would allow her to do both.
In her case, the four thirty to five window was
particularly nice as it was still during business hours. I
know some people work, say nine to five, I have
thirty with a thirty minute lunch or something like that.
If so, you can still do a lot of the
work outside business hours at a designated time. But then

(05:11):
you will need to make a list of anything that
can absolutely only be done during business hours and devote
say ten minutes of your lunch break to these tasks
a few times a week. Some could stack up for
a day off. Sometimes people in inflexible jobs do get
some personal days as part of their contracts. It might

(05:33):
be worth thinking strategically about how to use some of
those for longer term tasks. Life administration is work like
any other kind of work. Being able to do it
during working hours does make it easier to combine work
in life. But if that is not possible. Unfortunately, the

(05:54):
work doesn't disappear. You'll need to figure out a different
time that works for you, but do build it in.
You will feel a lot less overwhelmed as a result.
In the meantime, This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for

(06:23):
listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

(06:46):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.