The “Call from the Kindergarten” Principle or how to get things done despite the worst surprises
Disclaimer — it’s a humoristic post. I love my kids :)
Kids get sick. A LOT!
When you have more than one it feels like an infinite loop.
You can’t anticipate it or be prepared for it — the call from the kindergarten will always surprise you and it will always come at the worst timing. You arrived to work, started your day, you’re ready for all the meetings, added reminders, and whatnot. But when the call comes, your plans will go down the toilet.
Hold on! There’s something you can do to make it less disruptive and still get the most important things done. Spoiler alert- it’s dead simple. Keep reading.
The Call
Nothing is more frightening than seeing your kid’s kindergarten teacher's name on your phone. You know that it’s never good, not even on your birthday. In 99% it will be something like: “bla bla bla — come and get him”.
“Come and get him”
What it means is that you need to stop what you are doing, cancel your meetings, and come and get your precious treasure who’s feeling sick and start taking care of them.
In most cases, that will ruin all of your plans, and this day (and maybe the entire week) will become yet another time when you didn’t get the important stuff done. Again.
The “Kindergarten Call” Principal
That call will usually come around 11 am to 1 pm. It means that you have at least 2 working hours. So in order to apply the principle you need to start your day with your most important priorities. It’s easy to start by reading all of your emails, working on some small and easy tasks, and having some meetings. That’s fine, as long as these are your most important priorities. Most likely, they are not. For some mysterious reason, we tend to procrastinate the important things and escape to the easy, familiar, and less important tasks of the day.
My way to fight this is first of all to have goals, then be explicit about my priorities, and lastly, to plan ahead and schedule them. I’ve written about my planning method in the past (7 years ago!) and frankly, I still fully use it. Thinking about what’s important to me and what I want to achieve this year, this month, this week, and even this day helps me to always be aware of what’s meaningful among the things I’m doing.
The main change that I’ve started to apply now when I have kids is to really schedule my priorities and start my day with the most important tasks and meetings of that day. If I need to send some critical and time-sensitive report, I’ll book time for myself to get it done first thing in the morning. If I have an important meeting, I’ll try to schedule it for the morning and not later in the day.
I know that it sounds simple, maybe too simple, but trust me it’s not easy to implement (Read about some useful tips here). You don’t always control your calendar, you can’t always clear your morning, and you aren’t always fully aware of your priorities. So yes, it’s not a bulletproof system, but when you do have control — it’s extremely helpful.
Final Words
Start by writing down your priorities and goals. Plan your month, week, and every day. Start with your most important tasks first thing in the morning. Get them done first so when you get the call from the kindergarten you have already accomplished something significant.
If you enjoyed this post, please help me spread the word by:
- 🌐 Sharing this post with a friend
- 👁 Following me on Medium
- 👏 Oh! And don’t forget to👏👏👏
Written with ❤️ to E&A
