[PODCAST 283]: Catching Life’s Curveballs with a STEP System

Has life ever thrown you a curveball and totally derailed your plans for the coming days, weeks, or months? I had a recent, unexpected experience that left me feeling immensely grateful for my Command Central, and I wanted to take a moment to share it with you!

We planned a fun spring break trip back to visit family during my husband’s break from medical school, but when we got back, I found myself in the hospital for 6 days getting a couple emergency surgeries and needing to spend a lot of time recovering and prioritizing my health.

I’ve had wonderful doctors making sure that I got the care I needed, and I am so grateful that everything turned out positively. As I’ve been recovering at home, my mind keeps going to all the ways in which we prepared beforehand and dealt with all the incoming “stuff” during my time in the hospital. I’ve been able to think of 7 different ways that my Command Central allowed me to rest, have a calm mind, and take care of all my responsibilities–without feeling worried one bit!

(1) We had a very detailed Spring Break Current Project that included space for “after the trip is over” Next Actions.

My husband and I collaborated on a project throughout the month of February to plan our 2-week trip back to see family. The project included lots of Next Actions to secure our travel details, make plans with loved ones, and make sure we packed everything we needed.

We also created a section inside this Current Project called “after the trip,” and we added any Next Actions that came to mind of things we needed to do right after we got home. Things like:

Check in with the person getting our mail
Coordinate when to pick up our car from the person watching our car
Ordering some basic groceries for pickup

I was able to check in with this list before I headed to the hospital and was able to defer most of these tasks. We ordered a few groceries that a friend helped us pick up, and then I knew that I could rest and not think about these tasks until I was out of the hospital. While I was in the hospital, I was able to add tasks to this list (all the things I wanted/needed to do when I got home), and then they were totally off my mind so I could focus on my healing.

(2) My husband and I have really good home systems and routines in place to keep things tidy on a daily and weekly basis.

We created a calendar event to clean up our apartment really well before we left for our trip–so we could come home to an “almost perfect” home and feel at peace after a long day of traveling.

We also have a good daily routine of “resetting the apartment” where we clean and tidy before we go to bed so we can wake up to a clean apartment.

This routine, combined with our more thorough clean allowed us to get home and not worry about any other details–I was able to head right to the hospital and knew that we would have lots of friends in and out of our place helping out. And I didn’t worry one bit about whether or not we’d have laundry done for our son or a tidy place for him to play and spend time with babysitters.

Of course, our friends wouldn’t have judged us at all if things were not tidy, but it took a lot of the weight off my mind to know that we weren’t going to come home from the hospital to a messy home that needed a lot of TLC.

Is there something you (and those living in your home) can do to make a daily home reset happen? How would it feel to wake up to all the dishes done each morning? Or how would it feel to have all the toys at least picked up and put in their respective places at the start of each day? That’s a great project to work on with your loved ones! 🙂

(3) My husband does a Daily Review each morning and helped manage lots of details during my hospital stay.

My husband (and I also do this–but I was feeling too sick to help out in this scenario) does a Daily Review each morning that includes checking his calendar, identifying must-do tasks for that day, checking his flexible Next Actions List, and then coordinating the care for our son for the next day.

My husband stayed with me throughout my time in the hospital and did all of his medical school classes virtually during this time. He was able to stay on top of his appointments and tasks, while also messaging friends and neighbors about helping out with our son. This was so incredibly helpful to me because I didn’t have the energy or ability to help out very much. I am so grateful that he is checking in with his Command Central each day to make sure he is where he needs to be and doing what is required of him each day.

(4) I continued my daily text/email checking routine.

I check my email about 3-5 times a day and delete anything I can, handle urgent and 2-minute tasks, and appropriately save items that need my attention (flexibly) within the next week.

I also try to respond to all of my texts each day–spending a few minutes answering them in the middle and at the end of the day. I check each text as it comes in to see if it’s urgent or something that can be done in 2 minutes or less. If it can wait, I’ll handle it during those 2 “text answering” times each day.

I was able to respond to the people that offered to help with our son or bring us meals, save important emails so I could write a thoughtful response when I had more energy, and address anything urgent, such as our upcoming lease renewal to make sure that all the details were squared away.

(5) I spent 45 minutes processing and taking action on my hospital discharge papers and instructions.

I got home from the hospital with lots of papers and tasks that I needed to do. We got home on Friday, so I put everything safely in my inbox and enjoyed the weekend.

I added a little calendar appointment with myself for Monday and blocked out 30-40 mins to handle all the “stuff” I needed to look at.

On Monday, I made the phone calls, set up follow up appointments, added a new routine to my calendar, and filed away the hospital papers for easy reference. I have all my upcoming appointments safe and ready to go in my calendar, and all my papers are in easy-to-find spots, such as my Tickler File, so that I can bring them to my appointments.

And now my brain can rest! I don’t need to think about any of those papers or items any more!

(6) We stuck with our calendared routines–and simplified them!

My husband and I have several routines on our calendar that we simplified, but tried to accomplish early so that life would keep running smoothly in the background while I recovered.

We did our monthly budget check-in a couple days after I got home and made sure that all our bills were paid and that we were moving toward our financial goals. We paid our rent early so that I wouldn’t have to think about it–and so all our April financial obligations could run in the background while I recover.

We have a couple other household routines that he took on and that we simplified so both of us wouldn’t have to take on too great of a load during this recovery time. It’s been wonderful to know that our routines are safe on our calendars–and that we were able to get many of them done ahead of time!

(7) I’ve reduced my Current Projects List substantially for the month of April.

As of right now, I only have 2 projects on my list. (We recommend no more than 8 current projects total each month.) One project is for work/LearnDoBecome and is something that I can work on flexibly when I have the time and energy. The other project is “rest and recover” and is my reminder to take it easy right now and not overextend myself.

I don’t need to feel bad about having fewer projects on my list one bit–when I am feeling better and up to handling additional projects, I have them safely stored on my Next in Line Projects List.

I hope these examples are helpful to you and the circumstances that you might be currently facing (or facing in the near future).

Are there any tips you’d like to add? I’d love to hear from you in the comments about ways you’ve been able to use your Command Central or STEP principles during unpredictable times. 🙂

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