I was at my niece’s place last week (my sister and her husband live there, too =)

She’s a happy kid and has an amazingly good life for a 7 week old–though life as she knew it has just ended–Dad’s paternity leave just ended and back to work he goes.

I went down to help my sister transition to being the daytime-only parent.

How single parents manage is beyond my comprehension. Seems like 3-4 adults would actually be a good number. Everyone would get plenty of sleep, the kid would get plenty of attention from well-rested care-takers, and each adult would be able to do their own stuff as well.

That’s my little dream world, anyways. Since that’s not how our families are set up, my sister will figure out how to make it work like millions of women before her.

There’s a moral to the story: get organized and get help.

At a café one afternoon, we worked on her schedule. I started by asking her to list all the things that she foresees happening or needing to happen during a one week period. This included everything from
o getting herself ready for the day
o feeding/changing/activity times
o laundry
o kitchen activities, daily pick up
o handling email, mail, bills
o appointments

Then we placed the feeding/changing/activity time bands across the weekly schedule (since this is pretty much the defining responsibility of each day).

This provided enough structure to place everything else relative to feeding times. (except for the appointments–parent group gatherings, story time at the library, and Diaper Days at the movies**)

This makes for a flexible relative schedule rather than a time-specific schedule that would be close to impossible to keep (being on baby-time and all).

Here’s how it starts: Dad does the feeding around 7:30/8am, right before going to work. Right before he starts, he let’s my sister (aka Mom) know. Since the baby’s been pretty regular about a 2-hour feeding schedule, my sister knows she has about 2 hours until show time.

We figured out that her personal prep time and breakfast is about 45 minutes, and prepping the bottles for the day takes about 20 minutes and unloading the dishwasher takes about 10.

So once she gets that wake up call, she knows she has about 15 minutes to get out of bed, and begin that first morning routine.

When she gets these things done before that first feeding, she feels “on it” instead of like she’s perpetually playing catch-up.

We proceeded to put all the other activities on the schedule, relative to feeding times.

Most of the stuff on the schedule is bare minimum. Once she gets all this dialed in with good habits, then she’ll know when she can add other things like exercise, play dates, self time etc.

A couple of things that might provide food for thought for someone working on improving their own scheduling:
1. Know your earliest appointment time. My sister won’t schedule anything before 11am (until she feels good about everything happening). We arrived at this by:

• knowing that she sets up the rest of her day before the first feeding, and
• knowing how much time it takes to do feeding/changing/pumping

2. Breaking down the laundry. A load of laundry

• gets started before “bed time” (lol, is there such thing for a nursing mom?),
• transferred to the drier after a night time feeding,
• folded and put away after first daytime feeding the next morning.

(I.e. we broke it up into chunks and took it all the way through to completion.)

She’s already had positive results with her new schedule. Obviously she’ll adjust as needed–planning on paper doesn’t always jive with real life (gasp!) In any case, she knows she works well with this kind of structure so I’ve full faith that she’ll get it figured out!

And if not… well, she knows who to call =)

Who says CYA is a bad thing?

This little technique is surprisingly effective at staying present and aware of your emotions/frustration level/intolerance/judgment/any-other-negative-vibe-that-feels-bad-and-looks-bad in any situation.

Here is the audio edition of our newsletter The Simplifier Issue #5.17 – “Handling the Un-scheduleable”.

NOTE: The links that are mentioned throughout this recording can be found in the web version of this newsletter.

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(If you don’t see an audio player or link above, you can access the mp3 file directly here.)

The one-hundred-twelfth issue of the Project Simplify newsletter The Simplifier, titled “Handling the Un-scheduleable”, is now archived on our newsletter archives page.

(There is also an audio version of this newsletter, available here.)

Here is a brief summary of the contents:

1. A Note from Shawn
Rolling like flaming bowling balls
2. Upcoming/Current Events
3. Lifestyles of the Natural & Professional
Designing your schedule – Holding Space
4. Current Read
Cesar’s Way
5. The Not-So-Simple Life
It Wasn’t Me! (But It Will Be)

Read the full issue here.
Listen to the full issue here.
Subscribe to The Simplifier here.
[posted by Shawn]

The Tip

Allow time in your schedule to hold space for your well-being. Your wise-self knows approx how much.

The Tip Explained
Have you ever thought that your schedule looked doable, yet your experience left you feeling rushed and bewildered about where all the time went?

It’s easy to look at availability in terms of blocked out vs. not blocked out sections on your calendar. This is only one part of your schedule.

There’s another aspect to designing your schedule that often falls under the radar: “holding space”. By this I mean acknowledging that commitments and unexpected situations take time and energy, a lot of which is not schedulable. Your well-being benefits—no, it requires—space to make sense of the world you are experiencing.

Often times, we aren’t even aware of the additional strain on ourselves—it just gets written off as “I’m tired today” or “I feel drained” seemingly for no reason. Maybe there is a reason!

For example: Think of the last time you started a new position. Even though your schedule may have claimed 10 hours for the week, it likely felt like a whole lot more. Did you feel tired or drained? This was your psyche getting accustomed to your new role.

Then, once you got used to your new role, there may have been times when working 20 hours actually felt like it took less time and energy than during that first week!

While it’s more obvious when considering the new things in your life, the same concept holds for each commitment on your plate.

Holding space also applies to any emotionally challenging situation, be it work related or not. All of us spent energy in processing the tragic event on 9/11, whether we knew someone in those buildings or not. Something to do with being human, I’d think. =)

Hold space for your personal well-being by getting in the habit of allowing more room in your schedule for processing these uncertain and rapidly changing times. It’ll actually help everything else go more smoothly!

It started out innocently enough.

Hoping for some bounce-off gems*, I went to the library and checked out Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan‘s book, Cesar’s Way.

*bounce-off gems = ideas sparked by someone else’s work or creativity. In this case, the thought that drove me to the library was something like, “Cesar works to control unruly dogs. Natural Professionals work to control unruly minds. In reading about his philosophy and strategies in dealing with dogs, maybe some ideas will spark for dealing with minds.”

Wow and how! What ended up happening was that I became totally fascinated by his approach to dog psychology. (I mentioned this to my mom and she asked, “Are you getting a dog?” “No,” I replied. LOL.)

His two big concepts really stood out for me:

1. “Most of the cases I handle involve dogs who simply need stronger leadership from their owners plus rules, boundaries, limitations, and consistency. . .”
2. Introducing a troubled dog into a healthy pack will help it heal faster.

I know he’s talking about dogs, but he may as well be talking about an undisciplined human mind.

OK, maybe I have a somewhat pessimistic view of the unruly mind. It’ll probably mellow out once I get my own under regular control.

But check it out—when the mind is going off and spinning in circles, you get it to settle down by applying firm leadership and pulling in the boundaries. We essentially say, “you do not have free rein to go anywhere you please. Come back here and focus on one thing at a time.”

And when feeling out of sorts or stressed out, you just can’t help being lifted up when being around positive and good-natured friends.

So then what about the corrective action? The trick (again, what a great parallel!) is catching behavior before it becomes a big issue. He points out that you correct a dog as his attention starts to stray toward unruly behavior. Once the dog has hit the “red zone” (bonkers and spastic or even aggressive and dangerous), it’s very difficult to get results.

Now think about getting all stressed out. While it may have felt like it happened suddenly, the truth is there were probably numerous opportunities where you made a decision to continue on the current trajectory. You actually had several chances where you could have altered your attitude toward a more peaceful course.

We don’t have anyone (I assume) standing at our side yanking a leash to keep our attention focused on peaceful and productive thoughts. It’s up to us to monitor ourselves. It’s our job to remain mindful, to keep that observers view of ourselves that can say, “Hold on! That train of thought can only go in one direction—down. Take a breath, reconsider, and choose differently.”

Ahhh, and here’s what separates us from the dogs: self-awareness and choice. We got it. Let’s use it!

: : : : : : : : : :

Photo credits:
Running Dogs by TheGiantVermin

by Lance Brown

By now, if you’ve been reading my column—where I variously brag and complain about how un-simple my life is, largely because of my overactive imagination and shaky time management skills—you’re probably thinking something along these lines:

“OK Lance, we get it. You’re a friggin’ disaster, and you know it. You’ve clearly got potential, but you’re undone by your procrastination and your addiction to adding new tasks and burdens to your already-overwhelming to-do list. So we get it—thanks so much for taking us on that sad journey into the self-built prison of doom that is your inevitable future. Again, thank you sooo much. What a joy!”

Wow, you’re almost as sarcastic as I am! And I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The only problem being that I don’t believe in doom—or in inevitable futures, for that matter. And perhaps most importantly, I don’t believe in quitting. So if my crazy-ass brain and my bad habits plan to continue their efforts to undo me, I am going to get up every day and push back.

Yes, I realize that I’m talking about myself as though I’m split in two. On the one side is my crazy-ass brain and bad habits, and on the other side is me. One nice thing about that arrangement is that I don’t have to take responsibility for what those other guys do: “No, you see, I didn’t want to do it that way, but my mind insisted.” Or: “I was totally set to get it done, but then my procrastination kicked in.” Or: “Actually Your Honor, I did know she was your daughter, but my crazy-ass mind and bad habits told me not to sweat it.”

You get the idea. I guess ever since I stopped being able to blame things on my childhood imaginary friend Egger McDonald, I had to find a new scapegoat. So instead of blaming my imaginary friend, I just blame my friend imagination. After all, he’s the one who convinced me to keep smoking cigarettes for 15 years after I wanted to quit. He’s the one who figured out how to keep me from finishing that screenplay (and those other ten screenplays). And he has come up with every excuse I’ve ever used—and let’s face facts, I’ve used an excuse or two in my time.

What can I say? My old friend imagination is a very smart, very persuasive fellow. He doesn’t always know what’s best for me, but somehow he almost always knows how to get me to avoid it. I’m pretty sure he created the whole procrastination thing from the ground up—though you’d never get him to admit it. (He tends to blame negative things on me, if you can believe that.)

But here’s the thing. You can’t tell my imagination this, OK? The thing is, I’m even smarter and more persuasive than he is, and I have gradually been turning my imagination around to my side, without him even realizing it. At the same time, I’ve reduced his ability to overwhelm me, by creating outlets (or at least storage bins) for all my crazy-ass thoughts.

The end result is that I am better poised to turn the tide in my ocean of overwhelm than one might guess from reading these e-pages every two weeks. In fact, in addition to making you feel better about your own life, laying out all my foibles and predicaments in this space has been a big help for me. The more cards that are out on the table, the less cards remaining up the sleeves of “the other me”.

I quit smoking 8 years ago, by the way. I just stopped one day, and I haven’t even come close to smoking a cigarette since. I tricked my brain into finally supporting the right side of the battle, and that was it. Done deal. 15 years of angst and strife and self-destructive stupidity, over with in one simple night of clarity.

So don’t give up yet. I haven’t, and neither should you. Between you, me, and my imagination, we’re going to turn this badboy around, and my upcoming columns will talk about how. And as I said when I started writing this column, if I can do it, anyone can.

Except Egger McDonald, because he’s not real. The child psychologist and I eventually came to an agreement on that.

—

Lance Brown can be found at http://lancebrown.org, and followed at http://twitter.com/freelancelance. Egger McDonald has not been seen since 1979 or so.