What’s your winter back-up plan?

Stay productive through winter obstacles

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of My Heart Radio.
Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is to think through your winter backup plan.
Between bad weather and illnesses, much can go wrong, but
if you anticipate obstacles ahead of time, you can stay

(00:25):
on track. I'm generally an optimistic person, but when it
comes to plans, I've discovered that it's useful to be
a pessimist. For instance, in general, air travel works great,
but whenever you try to connect, you double the chances
of late flights leaving you stranded. So if there aren't
direct flights out of Philadelphia, where I live to my destination,

(00:49):
I'll often drive to Newark to get one. It's an
extra fifty minutes in the car, but that beats getting
stuck for eight hours or overnight in O'Hare. Winter presents
all sorts of chances for things to go wrong, so
as with flying direct, it's wise to ask if there
are any little investments you can make now to prevent

(01:11):
misery or big time sinks later on. Here's one. My
family doesn't get in the car for winter trips without coats, hats,
and gloves. Sure we're going from a heated house to
a heated car to a heated location somewhere else. But
you never know when there could be an accident or
some reason you might have to get out of the car.

(01:34):
That would be bad enough with winter gear, without boots
and gloves, it might be really dangerous. Likewise, here's what
I learned the hard way. If you live somewhere that
snow is a possibility, never park your car on the
roof deck of a garage. Once in March, all was
sunny when I left for Seattle. I returned after midnight

(01:58):
a few days later to find my car bury did
not only the ten inches of snow that had fallen,
but the drifts that the plow had created as it
shoveled out the lanes. I should have checked the forecast
and hunted a little harder for a spot on a
lower level. Sleet and snow can create all sorts of
issues that behoove backup plans. For instance, if you have

(02:20):
school aged children, school maybe your default childcare for much
of the day. So if there are days of two
hour delays due to weather, how do you plan to
deal with them? How about early dismissals, or if school
is closed for snow. Of course, if school is closed
for snow, your office might be too. But your office

(02:41):
doesn't close. When a child is homesick from school or daycare.
What's your backup plan for that? It should be a
robust plan, Because it turns out little kids get sick
a lot. I didn't really appreciate this when I first
became a parent years ago. My husband and I put
are yet to be born first son on the list
for a great daycare within walking distance of our apartment.

(03:04):
This seemed like a perfect solution in our minds. This
meant our child care needs were solved. Then that first winter,
our son got sick for approximately five weeks total, nothing serious,
thank goodness, just low grade fevers and tummy troubles. But
these meant we'd wake up in the morning and realize
he couldn't go to daycare. This was stressful in terms

(03:26):
of trying to plan work. We wound up with several
backup sitters who had during the day availability on short notice.
We also wound up with an understanding that if I
covered more of the work week, my husband would have
the baby much of the weekend and I could work then.
Though it turns out no one wants to schedule a
meeting on Saturday afternoon, so long term this wasn't going

(03:47):
to work. This is why we hired a nanny by
the time our second son was born. Though this turns
out not to be fool proof either. Caregivers can get
sick too, so we need backup plans for that as well.
That said, i've met families that do manage the little
kid illness as well, even with school or daycare as
the primary childcare. Children are a shared responsibility, which means

(04:09):
that childcare is a shared responsibility and backup plans are
a shared responsibility too. On my blog recently, I profiled
a family that elected to split days when the kids
had to stay home. She might take the morning with
a sick child and he would take the afternoon. This
was inefficient in some ways because both parties had to
commute and both had to get ready, but the upside

(04:30):
was that neither had to take a full day off.
They would push meetings into the half day they had
in the office and log extra hours early or late
to get their most urgent to dos accomplished. I have
also seen couple split days of the week when each
is on call, so if a snow or sick day
happens on Monday or Tuesday, one parent covers. If it
happens on Wednesday or Thursday, the other parent covers. Maybe

(04:54):
Friday rotates. This way, both parties can triage their schedules
to aim to put anything unmis stable on the days
that they won't miss. Or maybe you're lucky enough to
have really reliable backup care like grandma living next door.
A loving caregiver who doesn't mind dealing with running noses
on short notice is something to celebrate in winter. As

(05:16):
for your own illnesses and managing teams who might be
dealing with illnesses and bad weather, the best thing you
can do as a backup plan is to work ahead.
It's rarely a good idea to leave things to the
last minute in general, but it's a particularly bad idea
during winter, when leaving just twenty four hours for a
key person to review a proposal is an invitation for

(05:39):
that person to be down for the count with the flu.
Aim to be done by at least a few days
before any big deadlines. That way, if something hits last minute,
you're good. If something hits earlier, you've got a buffer
to absorb the lost time and that can make everyone
feel far more calm. So today, take a few minutes

(06:01):
to think about what could go wrong this winter. Think
about systems and solutions you can come up with now
to minimize the fallout from these problems. Maybe nothing bad
will happen, but we live in the real world. Most
likely something will. Best to be prepared in the meantime.

(06:22):
This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to
hear from you. You can send me your tips, your questions,
or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook
and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod that's b E the

(06:45):
number four, then Breakfast p o D. You can also
shoot me an email at Before Breakfast podcast at iHeart
media dot com. That Before Breakfast is spelled out with
all the letters. Thanks so much, I look forward to
staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production of I

(07:07):
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
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