The Weekly Forge #131
On building in margins
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
John F. Kennedy
In recent issues we’ve talked about building systems to help fight overwhelm and also the need to rely on simple systems rather than overcomplicating them. (Which a lot of us are probably guilty of)
Although Christmas time is always a cause for more mayhem and also with a very busy period at work currently, I’ve felt more on top of things than in a long time. Not less pressured, just more aware of all the demands placed on my time and energy every day. (If you’d like help with that for yourself, please just reach out).
However, there is another major piece to the puzzle that I’ve been neglecting. And when we are not conscious that void will always be filled by ‘something’.
And that piece is: building in margins.
No matter how good we get with time-blocking, saying ‘no’ and staying organised with our projects and to-dos, it can still feel overwhelming, very quickly. And in order to avoid that, we need to plan in time for “nothing”.
Unscheduled evenings
Time before meetings
Time after meetings
Free mornings
Buffers
Because life will always throw curveballs, which for us often means: another meeting, kids needing to be picked up from school or a broken dishwasher.
But even more importantly, buffers are needed to let us process what we have just done. Reflect on that conversation. Prepare for the report that we need to write. And also allowing us to mentally switch from work mode to parent mode.
Are you building in slack in your day or are your days crammed to the brim?
Last night I had a rare night without any next-day deadlines or meetings, so I tinkered around a bit to create a new intro for my YouTube videos, would love to know what you thought of it:
And of course, there’s no point in having a new intro, without a new video… so after following my own advice above, I built in some buffers this week to get out of the office, stretch my legs and think.
Come join me for a walk in the hills whilst talking about 2 common goal-setting mistakes:
(Btw, closing in on 100 subscribers, which is super exciting. In case you enjoy the videos, I’d love if you would follow the channel as a subscriber too 🙏)
And lastly, it was nice to see a positive uptake on this piece of some of the parenting lessons I’ve learned over the past few years:
Link to Parenting post here.
This Week’s Picture of Scotland
And if you’d like help putting systems in place to help you achieve your personal goals amidst the competing demands of work and family life, please get in touch here.