White Rock Lake | Photo by Jennifer Melson

With two newborns at home, we’re doing our darndest to keep them on a routine and schedule. But as I’m sure every parent would agree — that can often be next to impossible.

So while we’ve managed to keep things fairly inline since I started back to work last week — yesterday morning was anything but.

The boys woke up earlier than normal and kept begging for their pacifier and then spitting it out. Begging for it and then spitting it out. Over and over again. This continued for an hour or so and ultimately cut into the normal 30 minutes I plan for getting ready in the morning.

Finally, it was time for their 5 a.m. feeding and it didn’t go quite as planned either.

• 3 spit-ups.
• 1 dirty bib.
• 1 new outfit.
• 1 nasty vomit that landed right in our poor boy’s face.

Needless to say, I left the house 45 minutes later than normal.

Luckily, I’ve scheduled in a bit of a cushion in my morning for times like these. So even after all that — I arrived two minutes early to work.

It got me thinking about the principal of adding padding in our lives.

My typical way of thinking and planning is to squeeze as much into a day as possible. I’ll even stack things on top of one another and brag about how I’m a great “multi-tasker” just to make things work. But when I do this — and I have a morning like yesterday — the wheels fall off!

Throw your typical day off by 45 minutes and see what happens.

We all know crazy things will happen.

Accidents happen. Life happens. Dirty diapers and vomit happen.

But imagine if we really valued the padding in our lives and learned to say “No” from time to time.

And rather than cramming our days with meaningless meetings, tasks and to-dos, we really focused on what we valued and then left plenty of time around each event in case the worst case scenario does occur — or in case we get so caught up in doing what we love that we lose track of time .

Just imagine how much stress we could reduce with just a few more “No’s” and a little extra planning.

For me, the extra padding, means a little extra time with my wife or boys.

Or it might mean catching up on a book or a few RSS feeds when I arrive somewhere earlier than necessary.

Or it might mean I have time to actually sit and enjoy my coffee rather than grabbing it to go.

Or lately… it might mean enjoying 15 minutes to simply close my eyes and rest for a bit.

Schedule your days with a little extra padding and then guard that time with your life. Don’t let anything creep in and take it away.

So what about you? Do you leave padding in your schedule and life? If so, how much?

keep reading...

• Simple Manifesto #70: Leave space around things in your day
• The Simple Manifesto #21 – Spend time alone
• The Simple Manifesto #18 – Free up time