Anticipating Disruptions to Your Daily Routine

Half the battle of managing the disruptions to your family’s daily routine is doing a better job of anticipating the disruptions before they happen. The only thing more frustrating than a screwed up routine is the knowledge that you could have prevented some of the disruptions. So here are some tips and suggestions for helping you and your family better anticipate disruptions to the routine.

Having Too Many Appointments or Meetings

Spending too many hours sitting in a doctor's office, conference rooms, or PTA meetings can really eat up time on your calendar and disrupt the routine. So to minimize the potential disruptive effect of having to many appointments on your calendar, use these tips.

Schedule doctor’s appointments way in advance so that you have more choice over the time and day.
Minimize how many appointments you have each week and be willing to push the non-critical ones to another week if there are too many.
Don't be afraid to reschedule appointments or choose not to go.
Making the most of the time you spend waiting by making sure you have things to do such as kids’ homework or work projects.

Having Too Many Errands

In addition to all the appointments and meetings on your calendar, there are errands that all seem to happen at once. Errands like dropping off books at the library, going to the bank, picking up a birthday gift, dropping of dry cleaning, or stopping to fill up your car with gas can all eat away at your schedule and routine. Try these strategies to help minimize the disruptions caused by errands.

Try to do all errands on one day to save time and gas
Keep an errand list, so that you don’t forget anything or spend time trying to remember everything you have to get done.
Buy things like gifts online whenever possible.
Keep a small gift stash on hand for those last minute birthday party invites
Use a meal planner and shopping list to minimize how many stops you need to make at the stores.

Underestimating How Much Time Things with Take

Underestimating time is a weakness of many busy parents. For some reason traffic jams, broken printers, meltdowns from the kids never make it onto our radar screen when planning our schedule and routine. So try these strategies to better manage this disruptions.

For big projects, do a quick time estimate to help gauge how long something will take. Then take a look at your calendar and try and determine if you can honestly get the task done given how much time is required and all the other commitments you have for the week or day.
Use the internet to check on traffic before heading out to see if there are any traffic jams or detours you need to account for in you travels.
Adding a cushion into all your time estimates especially when it involves getting kids ready and out the door.

Disruptions are a reality of any busy family’s life and there are times when no amount of planning and strategizing will prevent them from happening. It is times like these you just need to cope and make sure you focus on the critical things because if your routine is strong picking back up when the disruptions are over should be an easy thing to do.