Your Bare Minimum Recipe For A Good Enough Day

Welcome to Month 25 of 2020—the year that would never end.

January is here. It's technically a new year. The holidays are often tough for parents, because childcare and school are limited, and colds & illnesses abound. Omicron is coming at us like a firehose.

Mike Tannenbaum wrote that the “holiday break” is always rough for parents: “I personally did not have a break. I had perhaps the most exhausting 2+ weeks of my life caring for a toddler whose daycare teacher was exposed to covid, which caused us to isolate at home over the whole break instead of being with friends and family in safe environments. No holiday celebrations for us.”

If you're right there with so many other parents—exhausted, worn out, defeated, spent—you're not alone.?For me, the kids have been out of school since December 23rd, and we just got notice that our little one’s preschool classroom is closed until January 18th. That’s a long time to be without childcare, and it means that I’m still behind on, well, everything.

Rather than get angry about what I can't do—and to be very clear, this is a huge work in progress—I try to focus on what I can do, and what's possible within the conditions we're in. Right now, this is the framework I'm using for adjusting to what's possible:

• Adjust expectations (and communicate them).
• Ask for as much help as possible.
• Delay/defer/delegate/delete.
• Do the basics for my own mental health and sanity for the long-term.

A RECIPE FOR A GOOD DAY

Lately I’ve been using the analogy of a “recipe” for a good day. The key to this recipe is that you have to be able to remember it. It's not a complex 25-step recipe for the fanciest day you've ever had. It's a short, sweet, 3-ingredient recipe for having a decent day with as little work as possible. It's the ripest, shortest, easiest recipe for you to have a chance at a good day.

For me, the basics are:

1. Taking a walk, preferably outside.
2. Talking to friends, at least for 30 minutes.
3. Getting one thing done that ideally takes less than 90 minutes.

That’s the list for the day. I’ve found that if I skip the walk, or I don’t talk to people enough, I start to get a little wild-eyed and frenetic (more than usual, at least), and that these basics keep me steadier. I also learned that if I can get just ONE small thing done each day that’s related to my dreams or my work, I feel less despair at it all going down the drain.

Sometimes I write down a list of what to do that day, and I leave the room, get trampled on by my children, and I cannot for the life of me remember what I was trying to do. I've taken to texting two friends with my "one thing" just so that I can look back on the thread and say, "what was I trying to do here?" Ah yes, I'm trying to write a newsletter.

A BETTER day includes a shower, a brief 15-20?minute workout, and spending time focused on my children exclusively to enjoy being with them and fill up our hearts. A GREAT day includes a long night of sleep and the space to read a chapter of a book.

What's your recipe for a good day? Leave a note in the comments.

So much is beyond our individual control right now. Schools closing, illnesses coming—there is only so much we can do. Keep breathing as best you can, and if you get delayed, you get delayed.

Day by day, friends. I'm going to go walk on the treadmill and try to get my first ingredient cooking.

— Sarah Peck CEO, Startup Parent

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