No one knows about an unpredictable schedule better than I do. My partner is a large scale printer technician and never knows what his schedule will look like from day-to-day. I also have a three year old. There is nothing more unpredictable than a three year old. And of course there’s my career. Social media demands an unpredictable schedule.

I have a little secret: I’m not an unpredictable schedule kind of person. I thrive on predictable schedules and routines. They allow me to be more creative and do more things.

But… that’s not my life. So I’ve had to figure out how to work with what I’ve got. Let’s talk about what I have learned.

Work ahead

If you crave that predictability, then lean into it when you have it.

For me, that includes working on evergreen content to make sure that I have as much stocked up as possible. I do a lot of housework. You can always tell when it’s a particularly quiet time because my house is clean. I just do as much as possible to give myself a cushion when things become unpredictable, and I have less time to do anything.

For example, when my daughter went back to school this month, I buckled down and worked on everything I could. I had loads of business meetings and my content was ahead by a week. And then my daughter had a four day weekend. When we made it through that, she then had a snow day. Five days of my daughter being at home without school. It was chaos.

How did I work during this time? I just did bits and pieces here and there. That was made possible because I was a week ahead. So I just needed to do check-ins rather than full stretches of work. Did that kill my cushion? A little bit. I’m only a couple days ahead now. But the unpredictable seems to be done for the week, and I’ll build that cushion back up one day at a time. Understanding that it’s a process that goes up and down is the key to staying sane in this process.

Leave room for the unpredictable

I like every minute of my day to be scheduled so I know exactly what’s going to happen and when. When we go on vacation or when family or friends come into town, I create an agenda so everyone knows what is going on. Do those agendas always end up in the trash? Yes, my partner completely ignores it and things go south from there. Is it because life gets in the way of having everything scheduled? Absolutely, but I’m gonna keep trying.

I always start my day with a list of tasks that I would like to get done rather than a schedule. I separate my tasks into those I have to get done today, the ones that can be put off and finally the ones that would be nice to get done but aren’t necessary (yes, I’m thinking of cleaning my house when I say this). When the unexpected does happen, I already have everything prioritized. I have less to think about and I can focus on just doing.

And doing it this way rather than a strict schedule leaves a level of flexibility that makes it easier to work with when everything changes. So even though I love planning to the minute, this is much easier for my life as it is now.

Protect those moments when your energy is the highest

Just because something is unpredictable does not mean that it should wreck when you are the most productive.

I preach about knowing when those moments are during the day for a reason: It’s going to make you most effective at your job. So experiment and figure it out. But also know that will change as your life changes, so be open to that as well. I was always a morning person who was always best at shoveling through a ton of work first thing in the morning. And then my daughter came, and as I juggled work with her schedule, I became better at working in the afternoon during her scheduled nap. And my best time to work is now in the afternoon. So being open to change meant I could protect my ability to work.

With an unpredictable schedule, I can’t control much, but I can say no from time to time. I am most likely to say no when it comes to interrupting my productivity. Because unpredictability is fine right up until it prevents you from focusing on what needs to be done.

How I go about that in my household is that I block those times out on our family calendar, and I coordinate it with my daughter’s routine rhythm. I only do meetings with clients during times when my energy tends to be lower. And if it seems like things will slide away from me, I do not hesitate to contact my partner to have him come home to maintain the unpredictable schedule of the toddler, so I can maintain my ability to work. At the end of the day, it’s all about teamwork so we can all achieve our goals here.

Remember it’s a season

Like I said, I thrive on predictability, so this part of my life where everything is unpredictable seems like a whole lot. But reminding myself that it’s a season of my life and not my whole life helps. Plus most of the time it’s just a day or so and I’m right back to the predictability I crave.

So yes, it’s usually temporary and then you can go back to those boundaries you need.

How do you deal with an unpredictable schedule?