What worked. What didn't.
What now?
Welcome to a new week!
Hope you had some fun last week creating your Blue Zone. I will say - as I look back over my week, I hit the mark in some ways and absolutely failed in others.
This got me thinking…What worked? What didn’t? And, what now?
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SCHEDULES
For the last 25 years or so, my husband and I built our life around the traditional Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, work week. Also tangled into that was the whole school schedule madness as we raised two girls - summers off, early release days, school drop off and pick up.
We got pretty good at it. We had systems in place for household chores, meal planning, exercise, socializing and self-care. Everything had a time and place.
Of course, there was never enough time for everything (that’s life), but we were constantly revising and optimizing our routine to remove the stress of feeling like there wasn’t enough time.
We completely scrapped that schedule when my husband left his corporate job this past summer and went into real estate full-time. It’s been interesting trying to restructure our schedules without those guardrails in place.
I have never had a corporate gig. As an entrepreneur, I have always had flexibility with my schedule. But, as a wife and a mother, I have never had freedom to create my schedule. I have always built my work life around my husband and my kids’ schedules.
Our kids have been on their own for years now, but these last few years, I made sure I got all of my work done during my husband’s working hours so we could spend our evenings and weekends together.
Now that his schedule is more unpredictable, I’m realizing that my attempts to work while he is working and not when he isn’t….well, it’s just not going to work. I’m going to have to build my own schedule.
Too many times these past couple of months, I have found myself writing at the last minute and dropping the ball on different parts of my business simply because I am not adhering to a schedule that optimizes my productivity and focus.
It’s time to get some new systems in place.
SYSTEMS
As women, we tend to build our lives around others. We rarely have the luxury of building our life and schedule for ourselves. And, I don’t know about you, but I find it challenging to be accountable to myself. To show up for myself on my own schedule. If you have any tips on that, please share!
What I have noticed in the midst of our changing schedule is that we are both very systematic about our exercise and our meal planning. We have been keeping very consistent with our workouts and we have been eating very healthy despite the unpredictable work schedule.
You’d think that might be the first thing to fall apart, but it turns out that having good, solid systems in place make it easy to stay on track.
Maybe it’s time to start building some of these systems for my work life? Systems that work even when the schedule is less predictable.
What systems do I need to create to ensure things get done?
SOLIDARITY
What worked? What didn’t? What now?
I have been asking these three questions over and over these past few weeks as I try to get these new systems set up for myself.
I thought I’d share them with you because while you might not be in the same place I am right now - we are ALL in that space of returning to routines and changing schedules. It’s a vibe as fall approaches and the carefree feeling of summer slips away.
We all feel it at some level - that desire to get back on track and to prepare for the season ahead.
As I look back over my week, there were some stand-out moments of my life looking exactly the way I want it to look. How about you? Can you think of one of those? What can we do this week to create more of those moments? Or to at least celebrate them more?
There were also some moments that didn’t feel so good. Did you have any of those? What systems can we put in place to prevent some of those from happening again? Or to at least not have to feel as bad when they do?
It’s so important that we take these moments to check in and assess. To evaluate what’s working and what’s not. To set our intention and recognize where we have control in the chaos and where we allow the chaos to control us.
And to ask ourselves…What now?
What actions do we need to take today to make tomorrow just a little bit better?
YOUR MISSION:
This week, I challenge you - right now before you go - to take a quick pause, think about last week and ask yourself: What worked? What didn’t? What now?
IN SUMMARY:
I’m excited for the week ahead. I hope you are, too! Enjoy these final days of summer. Fall is just ahead.
See you next week?
Meanwhile, reach out to me anytime!
Karen Friend Smith
Instagram: @redefiningkaren
Before I left for a 7-week road trip to get my happy back I systematically worked around my husband's erratic schedule. He is a truck driver. He is at the mercy of dispatch. So I'm at the mercy of dispatch. That's what burned me out and why I had to take a step away and get back on 'Patti time' - it worked but today I'm starting from a blank page.
I've been back for a little over a week and already missed my publishing schedule, my workout suffered and my eating, well, the latter hasn't gone sideways yet. I feel too good to get back into bad habits. I faltered one day with junk food and paid the price dearly for two days plus a slight weight gain that we know in these later years takes double or triple the time to lose it.
In my particular case I'm learning to work even when I'm not motivated and in blocked mode. I do a little routine to warmup and just start. It isn't easy. It's torture. So when you figure out something that works, share, because I'm really at a loss on how to put a system in place when being married to a guy who flies by the seat of his pants definitely affects my own scheduling and productivity.
On a side note. I worked real estate for nine years. Within the first three or four months of breaking in I transitioned to commercial real estate to sell apartment buildings, mobile home parks, small hotels, and raw land... I stepped completely away from selling residential immediately after seeing what a pain it was.
Commercial you don't work weekends. Businesses aren't open, the conduct everything M-F. What a difference in productivity that made! I didn't have a degree, no prior experience in business (except behind a dice table), and flew but the seat of my pants, but made it work. It's like being on a roller coaster, but the results were so much more fulfilling. It was one of the more challenging things I had to learn but the pay was worth it, both mentally and financially.