Episode 140: Plan a Fail-Proof Week with Laura Vanderkam
What You’ll Learn
You might think that "Motherhood" and "tranquility" don't belong in the same sentence…
Maybe your reality is so far from "tranquil" that you can't even imagine what that would look like…
But, sweet mommas, What if there were clear, defined steps you could take?
What if you had a guide to move you towards tranquility?
What if that guide was a mother of many herself!?
We're excited to share our guest today, Laura Vanderkam!
She lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband and five children, she’s the co-host, with Sarah Hart-Unger, of the podcast Best of Both Worlds, AND she’s the author of Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters (among other amazing books).
The digital Seasonally Simple Wardrobe planner works for ALL families with children…it’s the best mix of capsule, minimalist, and practical for REAL kids and walks you through the process with intention…
✨ Gives you 4 simple steps to conquer the clothing overwhelm
✨ Encourages your children to have more independence with their clothing
✨ Reduces the mental and physical load of laundry for your family
✨ Helps you prioritize your family’s clothing needs and stick to them
✨ Saves your valuable time in...choosing...searching...dressing...and laundering
✨ Offers very clear recommendations for building a simple wardrobe
With this download you’ll get a PDF file with tips for getting started, examples to inspire and help you, AND a template link so you can edit and fully customize it in Canva.
168 Hours (01:45)
People say 24/7 all the time, but they rarely multiply it out (and it does multiply out to 168 hours). This is such a better way to think about time because we LIVE our lives in weeks…it’s the unit of repeat in the pattern of our lives. For people who have a lot going on in their lives (like moms with many children) who think about ALL the things they want to do, it can be easy to feel like a failure when you don’t get to everything. When you think of life in terms of weeks, and you’re able to get to those things at least a few times a week, life can feel more sustainable.
For example, if you’re working a full time job (40 hours a week), you might think that takes up SO MUCH of your week. In reality though, 40 hours out of 168 isn’t that much (even if you’re sleeping 8 hours a night, you still have 72 hours left for other things).
Things don’t have to happen at the same time everyday, nor do they have to happen everyday in order to count in our lives. So, if you want to paint, it may not happen for 90 minutes between 4-6pm every day. It COULD happen for 45 minutes to an hour after the littles go to bed, or if you have a spouse, you could trade off on a weekend. Asking yourself, “Could I find an hour or two?” is a much more reasonable question, and the answer is almost universally, “yes.”
Rule 1: Give Yourself a Bedtime (06:20)
This rule hits a lot of people like a ton of bricks. There ARE times when it’s hard to be consistent with this rule (with newborns, littles who are waking frequently), but during the times when we DO have more control over when we’re sleeping, being more disciplined about getting the amount of sleep you need every night can go a LONG way toward making life more sustainable.
If you look at a whole week, most people do get enough sleep. The issue for most people is that it’s disjointed. They’ll stay up late one night, crash the next, hit the snooze, sleep in on a weekend, or take a nap, then stay up too late Sunday night…so they get the same amount of sleep over the course of the week, just in varied amounts.
Life feels much more orderly when you have a consistent sleep schedule. Most adults can’t change when they must wake up, but they CAN adjust the time they go to bed. So, when figuring out how to get the sleep you need, start with your wake time and work backwards. For Laura, who’s children are (usually) in bed by 9pm, which gives her 2 hours of time before her 11pm bedtime.
The great thing is that you might find space in your schedule for the things you enjoy…this works particularly well if you’re making active choices about what you do with that time (rather than just scrolling online).
One of the people who tried this rule during the research phase of the book (153 people tried the 9 rules over 9 weeks) said that Rule 1 was, “The least sexy, but most impactful” of all the things they tried. Sleep IS life changing!
For those with teenagers, this is a great rule to share with them (and it is SO hard). When kids sleep in on the weekends, it will make it harder to get up Monday morning.
Rule 4: Three Times a Week Is a Habit (12:35)
As a time management expert, Laura is having conversations with people all the time who are talking themselves out of good things because they can’t do it at a “perfect” time every day.
One of the occupational hazards of writing about time management is that people want to tell you about their awesome daily habits…waking up at 5am, meditating for an hour…but Laura would realize that by “daily” they actually meant “Monday through Friday.” So, it helped her back into the fact that when people do something 3-5 times a week, they’re doing it quite frequently. So why not aim for 3?
When Laura surveyed the individuals in the Tranquility by Tuesday project about things they did want to do more frequently, she found that most people had done these things in the past month, and many had done them at least once in the last week. When you start there, it isn’t hard to add in two more opportunities to do the things you want in the course of the week (which we can now think of as 168 hours)…it becomes a reasonable, doable goal.
For moms, when you look at things in relation to three times a week, it can release you from the “daily or it doesn’t count” trap (of all or nothing thinking). This counts with family time, reading with your kids, which is still fantastic three times a week!
Rule 5: Create a Back-up Slot (17:17)
Anyone can create a “perfect” schedule, but TRUE time management masters create a RESILIENT schedule. They are still making progress toward their goals, still making time for their priorities, even when life happens.
If you take the perspective that life WILL happen, things WILL go wrong, but how can I make time for the things that matter to me…REGARDLESS. One way to think about this is the idea of a “rain date,” there’s no question whether this event will be rescheduled if necessary—it will—on the rain date.
For Laura, who does regular one-on-ones with her kids, she’ll schedule a rain date (back-up slot) for these events (because storms, sickness, etc. can get in the way). While this may seem a bit unreasonable to schedule several events more than once, but you can solve this by leaving more open space in general.
If you create more open space in your schedule, you’ll be glad you did.
Laura has seen work schedules with meetings stacked up every hour of the day, and she asks, “What happens if a meeting runs over?” People tend to estimate the amount of time things take…so she recommends building some extra time into the schedule to account for these things.
In the book, Laura writes that so many things that come up are entirely forseeable (traffic, rain, etc…). Having layers of back-up is helpful (childcare, the back-up slot…) for the things that you REALLY want to do.
As Laura plans out her weeks, she plans the beginning of the week a bit more tightly, so the latter half of the week can be more open. This helps her get her priorities in earlier in the week, and leaves time when the inevitable happens and something needs to be rescheduled, without borrowing time from the next week.
Next week will have crises of it’s own…people tend to punt things forward, but here’s the thing…
Why do you think next week’s going to be more calm? What in your previous experience has led you to believe that next week will be ANY different from this week?
Each week will have it’s own crises, so don’t keep pushing stuff forward. FIgure out what can fit into this week, with a buffer, do that, and then set your priorities again for the next week.
With children, who can get very upset if something is cancelled, when you (as a parent) create a track record of making sure you’re utilizing the back-up slot if necessary, it can build trust (because eventually, kids will know that if a one-on-one day needs to be rescheduled, it WILL happen).
Blocking Time (26:00)
Laura has always tried to keep designated work hours. In her experience, the kid who naps religiously at 1:30pm, will NOT nap on the one day you need them to. When her children were smaller, she had childcare for a certain number of hours and was able to fit her work *mostly within that.
These days, she fits her work between 8:40am and 3:40pm (which lines up nicely with school). In reality, there ARE things that still happen during the work day (that moms usually wind up dealing with), so she will make up for that time at night, while kids are at practice, or fitting it in when she can (getting her 35 hours of week in per week).
Introducing Children to Time Management (28:04)
Even if mom is a time management expert, teenagers don’t always want to avail themselves to mom’s advice. They DO have conversations about the importance of sleep, feeling rested, getting to bed at an appropriate time.
Looking forward, not just to tomorrow, but developing a bigger time horizon. She helps her kids work on the skills of breaking big tasks into smaller steps.
Laura plans her family’s week herself (the rough structure), and then takes input from the older children (she will always try to work in their plans if possible). Her kids have gotten good about working through their own schedules and making reasonable requests.
Laura writes up the week’s schedule, prints it up, and puts it on the counter for everyone to look it over (this helps them know who is driving who-so they can get to that person). She’s found that giving the older insight into the schedule has helped.
For the weekends, she’ll create a draft schedule a few days beforehand and send it to her husband and her older kids asking for input. In every house, there needs to be a master planner who will take the reigns and THEN get the others involved.
Laura plans for the upcoming week (she does this Thursday or Friday and includes the next weekend)…this winds up being 8-9 days. If she gets to a season that’s particularly busy (like May or December), she’ll keep events on her radar a bit more in advance so she can work though any conflicts beforehand.
Final Questions (33:54)
The book that Laura has shared with the most people is “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” because it’s one self-help book that’s actually helpful.
Cal Newport’s, “Slow Productivity” and Laura May Martin’s, “Uptime” are two books that Laura has read recently.
Pasta is her go-to back-up meal for dinner in a pinch! There’s always sauce in the pantry, and she keeps vegetables in the fridge that are easy to make for a side.
Laura almost always makes her to-do list for the next day either at the end of the work day or after the kids go to bed. This helps her know how to organize and make better use of her time the next day. For example, if she has a 1.5 hour gap, she can make a plan for the BEST way to use it (perhaps by practicing for an upcoming speaking event instead of clearing out her inbox).
Laura’s family has a culture of adventure (big and little), and this is because she likes them (which is a GREAT reason). Now that the kids are older, they aren’t always required to participate, but occasionally they CAN be bribed. As an example, this past weekend, the family went tulip picking, and the older kids may not have gone for the tulips, but the lobster food truck that was nearby. The goal is to have one big adventure and one little adventure each week (sometimes Laura does this on her own and sometimes the family will come!)
More from Laura Vanderkam (39:08)
Check out Laura’s new book, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters
She co-hosts the Best of Both Worlds podcast with her friend Sarah Hart-Unger (a mom of three), where they discuss issues of work and family from the perspective of people who TRULY enjoy both. They talk about parenting, adventures, making time for yourself, reading…check it out!
You can find Laura on Instagram @lvanderkam
Or on her website LauraVanderkam.com
If you subscribe to her monthly newsletter here you’ll receive a free time makeover guide!
Finally, remember sweet momma…
YOU are doing beautiful work!
