53 | Why Adding a Travel Buffer and Transition Time to Your Schedule is Essential
53 | Why Adding a Travel Buffer and Transition Time to Your Schedule is Essential
In today’s episode, I’m offering an easy-to-implement practical solution. The goal is to help you stop feeling frazzled, rushed, or anxious as you move throughout your days. I'll introduce a game-changing practice – adding travel time and transition time to your agenda to create a more clutter-free schedule.
We'll delve into how emotions influence your day, the importance of allocating specific moments for each activity, and practical steps to bring calmness into your schedule.
Mastering this skill is truly worthwhile, so come along as we uncover the power of time awareness and crafting a schedule that aligns with the daily emotional experience you desire.
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Intro: Welcome to A Pleasant Solution, Embracing An Organized Life. I'm your host, certified life coach, professional organizer, and home life expert, Amelia Pleasant Kennedy and I help folks permanently eliminate clutter in their homes and lives. On this podcast will go beyond the basics of home organization to talk about why a clutter-free mindset is essential to an aligned and sustainable lifestyle. If you're someone with a to-do list, if you're managing a household and if you're caring for others, this podcast is for you. Let's dive in.
Amelia: Welcome to Episode 53, “Why Adding a Travel Buffer and Transition Time to Your Schedule is Essential.” Hey y’all. First off, I want to say, “I’m so glad you’re here.” Know that I’m sending you a hug through the airwaves. Alright. A few weeks ago, I hosted a free public workshop on clutter-free scheduling. Lots of folks signed up, a few attended live, and the replay was sent out to those of you who had other commitments. I may eventually post the audio as a future episode, we’ll see. For today’s topic, I wanted to dive into a scheduling practice of mine that I mentioned on the call – adding travel time and transition time. It’s become essential for me, and I highly recommend you adopt the practice too. I find that it’s a game changer when it comes to scheduling, and the more I talk about it with folks, the more I realize how uncommon of a practice it is.
When I went through coach training, one insight that I learned was that everything we do as humans – everything we do or don’t do – is because of a feeling. Let me explain. Our emotions, or how we’re feeling at any given moment, drive our next step. Every single moment of every day. When you’re feeling bored, you may scroll social media, mindlessly nibble on snacks, drink wine, binge a show… Conversely, feeling bored doesn’t lead to tackling your sock drawer, getting into the gym, or processing the paperwork on your desk. When you’re feeling excited, on the other hand, you might reach out to a friend, buzz around your house, or breeze through a project. You’re not necessarily doing those other lower energy actions. When you’re feeling a sense of dread, you may procrastinate. In that case you’re avoiding feeling the difficult feelings of making progress on a task and instead staying in the better feelings you’re feeling now. Your emotions influence the choices you make as you move throughout your day.
So, what does that insight have to do with scheduling? I don’t like feeling frazzled. I don’t like feeling rushed or mildly anxious. I’m not at my best when I experience the emotions associated with being late, being stuck in traffic, or thinking I’m behind or underprepared. I get short-tempered. My blood pressure rises, and my breathing gets shallow. I become absent-minded. I react to the circumstances or situation in front of me rather than move with intention. I’m the opposite of grounded. My nervous system is on a higher level of alert and my primitive brain hijacks my prefrontal cortex, or logical thinking.
I’ve now connected the dots between my daily feelings and actions. I’ve learned to manage my schedule, pre-plan my time, and routinely add in buffer and transition time, to avoid feeling frazzled. I don’t like how I show up for myself and for others when I feel rushed, so building awareness of time passing and diligently adding in transition time has been my solution. It’s taken practice – years of experimenting, collecting data, and tweaking my choices – but I can now reflect to you that it’s been worth it. It’s how I find internal alignment between my days and how I’m feeling moment to moment. And since this podcast (and my coaching practice) is about making shifts that are sustainable, this topic made sense.
So, on today’s episode, I’m going to outline steps that you can take to better connect the dots between your schedule and how you feel each day. I’ll get into the specifics here in a moment, but the takeaway I’ll offer is that each activity on your schedule needs buffer or transition time - a little before or a little after. Also, note that I’ll use the two words interchangeably. Adding buffer or transition time is carving out 10-15 minutes or more (depending on whether you need to travel from one location to the next,) that you add to the calendar to give your body and brain a chance to adjust to what’s next. You’re not a robot, yet I see it over and over when folks stack calls and activities back-to-back, forget to take a break, then wonder why they’re spinning in circles, misplacing things, or losing their temper. Having a moment to transition limits multi-tasking, allows for a pause, and helps keep you present for what’s happening in the moment. Now, I know that building transition time isn’t possible in all professions, so if that’s your individual case, I invite you to apply this idea during the moments of the day where it is possible.
Before you jump straight to making adjustments in your schedule (which I will encourage you to do), reflect for a moment about the dominant feeling you had yesterday. How did your body feel? What was your mood? Get curious for a moment and consider whether your day felt rigid and restrictive or fluid and flexible. Were there lots of variations in your mood throughout the day? Take a few deep breaths and think about life before lunch, your midday vibe, your late day vibe, your evening emotional state. (And if you have young children or experience the “witching hour” between school and dinner, I see you. I’ve been there.)
Life can be busy. It can be hectic. One of my clients described hers as feeling scattered. It can also be inspiring and fulfilling. Starting with a bit of awareness allows you to tap into how you experience your days. Try to step out of your logical brain for a moment and understand the feelings and emotions that rise and fall throughout your day. You’re collecting emotional data. Perhaps you don’t need to make any profound changes to your schedule, and you can just stop here. Perhaps you have too much free time and notice a nudge to get a few more activities on your calendar. Perhaps you’re noticing that your nervous system is still on high alert from yesterday but that you didn’t realize it until just now.
What you put on your schedule matters. When you forget to schedule time for household management – laundry, grocery, tidying up – it feels like you’re always squeezing it in. Life without buffer and transition time can feel like a full-time circus: putting out fires, herding cats, screaming directions that no one seems to hear. Everything may feel urgent, like it’s happening back-to-back-to-back, because it is.
Once you’ve checked in with your inner emotional state, then take a look at your calendar. How much white or blank space is there? How many blocks are full? How many blocks are overlapping? Does your day have a start time and an end time indicated? Lastly, how frequently are you reviewing your calendar?
A few years ago, I was in my kitchen doing something, prepping a meal most likely, and I got this intuition nudge. It was that feeling that says, “Am I supposed to be doing something else right now?” Hmmm. I stopped and checked my calendar. My mom had a doctor’s appointment in 35 minutes. I’d gotten caught up in what I was doing and hadn’t planned my travel time correctly. Thirty-five minutes sounds like a decent amount of time, but in this case, it wasn’t. I’d have to drive to my mom’s assisted living community (which was only 10 minutes away), get her in the car, and then get to the appointment, which was 25 minutes away from her building. My personal window of tolerance is up to 15 minutes late. I feel that can be explained to someone, one way or another. Beyond 15 minutes, for me, that leads to too much stress.
In this particular instance, I hadn’t yet left my house. Another important fact - it’s not possible to rush someone who has dementia. My mother picks up on my energy levels, and she didn’t deserve to become anxious because I hadn’t planned my transition time – her transition time – well. I recognized that I’d messed up, and that was okay. I decided to call the doctor and reschedule her appointment. I was willing to own my mistake, and I was willing to treat myself with compassion. I should’ve planned better. I didn’t. I’m human. I make mistakes. The key here is that I took into consideration my emotions and my mother’s. I was in a good mood at that present moment, and I had a choice. I could’ve easily packed up and rushed to my mother’s, scooped her up, and rushed to the doctor. But as I mentioned at the top of the episode, I try and avoid feeling frazzled. I accepted my mistake and learned my lesson around time awareness.
So, the next step, after creating awareness of your feelings, is to practice adding travel time or buffer time to your appointments. The purpose is to be realistic and honest with yourself both about how long activities take, and how much space and time are needed in between them. I want to remind you that this is a skill. It’s something that can be learned, implemented, and practiced. Having a strong sense of time awareness and pre-planning the transition windows between activities isn’t automatic. For those of you who grew up in an environment where time was much less structured, this will be a great exercise in helping you identify how many minutes eases the stress of moving from activity to activity. It also puts you more in control of your time and your mood.
For my mother’s doctor’s appointment, typically I’d work backwards. If her appointment time was 10am, I’d assume we’d need to be there at 9:45am for check in and paperwork. The drive takes 25 minutes which would backtrack us to 9:20am. Twenty minutes is sufficient time to have her get her coat, use the restroom, and get out the door, however less time than that would feel rushed. She no longer uses the phone independently, nor does she keep track of time, so it’s not as if I could call her and ask her to be ready. So, if the appointment was at 10am, I’d need to be in her apartment by 9am for an easy, relaxed morning. Therefore, I’d plan an additional 30 minutes or so of my own travel and buffer time on top of that. My buffer would be 15 minutes (to gather my things) and an additional 15 minutes to drive to her apartment and get inside. Therefore, that’s a total of 90 minutes before her appointment that I’d need to carve out. Doing so and following that timeline would equal as calm, smooth, and enjoyable trip to the doctor as possible for both me and her. Again, I could get her to the appointment with an hour blocked off – rather than an hour and a half – but the feelings, the experience would feel much different.
If you’ve parented young children, you can refer to that experience as well. For many women, getting ready means preparing themselves, and motivating and preparing anyone under the age of 13, let’s say. You already have a sense of what time you need to get up, eat, and shower to get yourself ready. Add in talking a child through the process of getting themselves together or physically dressing and feeding a baby – that alone can take an hour and a half. (And that’s assuming all goes according to plan.) Adding travel and buffer time is the same idea. I’m simply encouraging you to do it throughout your entire day, not just in the mornings or before a family outing.
So, if you’re taking someone to a practice or event, that’s blocking off time on your calendar for the drive or transit and an additional 15 minutes or more to get out the door. If you’re working online from home, that’s noticing if your meetings are stacked so tightly together that there’s little time to get a drink of water or stretch your legs. You can log off a few minutes early or add blocks of mini breaks throughout your day to ensure there’s enough white space on your calendar to give your brain a rest.
When I’m scheduling anything on my calendar, my process is to put the event location down and block off travel time at the point of scheduling. If you’re booking hair appointments for the next six months, that means you’re adding the haircut, the start and end time, the location of the salon, AND you’re blocking off travel time of at least 30 minutes – for every single appointment. Yes, you know where the salon is located. Yet, by getting into the habit of blocking off a half hour minimum beforehand, you’ll then be able to (with a quick glance) notice that I can’t schedule something right before. I also do this with school drop off and pick up times. I actively block off transition time to close down my computer, switch my mindset, gather my things, and get out the door in time to pick the kids up from school. You know that you can’t take calls, tidying the house, driving around doing chores, or piddling around in the kitchen right up until the moment of pick up, yet – I get it - in the moment it’s easy to forget.
Adding a travel buffer and an additional 10 to 15-minute transition window is one way that you can better control how you’re feeling moment to moment in the day. You can practice testing the length of time it takes you to shift your brain between activities or get out the door and adjust as needed. With increased awareness around time, your individual needs, and your emotional experience you can pause and reflect about what feels like the appropriate amount of spaciousness throughout your day. You’re more organized than you think, and this is one strategy to practice that reaps immediate rewards. Talk to y’all soon.
Outro:: Hey y'all, let's connect and chat on socials. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook @apleasantsolution. I'm also on LinkedIn at Amelia Pleasant Kennedy. Feel free to send me a quick note and let me know what you'd like to hear more about, or what home life organizational challenges are top of mind for you. Talk to y'all soon.
