What's your winter back-up plan?

I wrote this essay on a Thursday, shortly after receiving word that my children’s schools would all be closed for snow on Friday. Winter delivers up all sorts of productivity-killing variables from weather and travel delays to illnesses — yours, your family’s, your colleagues, your caregivers, etc.

This can be frustrating, but it’s not exactly unexpected. It’s not like it’s never snowed before! So if you’d like to stay (mostly) on track with deadlines and goals it’s worth taking a little time this week to shore up your winter back-up plan — so you can put it in place when you need it.

Building a resilient schedule

In my years of writing about time management, I have learned that anyone can create a perfect schedule. True time management masters create a resilient schedule. They create schedules that allow them to keep making progress, amid all the normal woes of life.

For winter, this plays out in a few ways.

First, if you have kids, you should assume that their normal childcare arrangements might not be available at some point. Maybe school will be closed for snow. Maybe your toddler will wake up with a fever and can’t go to daycare. Or your babysitter will wake up with a fever. Even if your spouse generally covers childcare, your spouse might get sick enough that he or she really can’t care for small children. Or your spouse might get stuck in O’Hare after coming back from visiting a relative for the weekend. If any of these scenarios happen, what will you do? Even though all my kids are in school at least part-time, we still employ a full-time nanny so we have back-up. And I have a roster of a few well-vetted back-up sitters too who can sometimes fill in if needed.

Whether you have kids or not, the same snow that can shut schools can make commutes dangerous. If your work can be done from home, do you have the tools you need to do that? Do your colleagues or employees? Could that big meeting become virtual, and if it does go virtual, have you thought about how you’d still keep people engaged?

Colleagues can get sick, or get stuck elsewhere due to winter travel problems. Especially if your work can’t be done remotely, how will you provide coverage? Does every key role have an “understudy” — someone who can step in and perform when needed?

Also, have you given yourself enough space to perform well? Waiting until the last minute to finish a project pretty much guarantees there will be a snow storm, or a key colleague will be incapacitated with the flu. Best to create a buffer and work ahead.

Increase the chances of success

Winter woes are inevitable, but that doesn’t mean that work needs to grind to a stop until spring. Smart individuals and teams figure out what can go wrong and they figure out a back-up plan. As I’m writing this, here’s my back-up plan: I got everything that had to be done for Friday finished before the snow started. I had a few other things I wanted to get done, but those were nice, not critical. I could do them during some down time on the weekend. Life stayed on track, at least for the time being.

I find that having a plan makes me feel more calm and in control. There’s a lot in life we can’t control, but when you make a back-up plan you feel more able to attempt big things. Winter woes won’t always win — and that’s a good feeling indeed.