Just realized my bullet journal saved me from a total meltdown last Tuesday

My kid got sick, the dog got out, and I missed a work call, all before 10 AM. I looked at my weekly spread and saw I had blocked out the whole afternoon as 'flex time' for surprises, which I had completely forgotten I set up. Has anyone else had a planned buffer zone actually save the day?

3 comments

3 Comments

christopher_sullivan1mo ago

Remember my wife planned a whole vacation day around a single museum visit, but the line was around the block. She had written "maybe get ice cream after" in her notebook, so we just did that instead and wandered around a park. It wasn't the plan, but having that tiny, loose idea written down stopped us from just standing there arguing.

the_cole1mo ago

That flex time trick is a total game changer once you make it a habit. I started blocking out a couple "just in case" hours every Thursday and it catches so much random stuff. It turns panic into just moving a task to that open slot. The real win is feeling less stressed because the plan already expects things to go wrong sometimes.

kevin_dixon1mo agoMost Upvoted

My calendar is too packed with kid stuff for a dedicated flex block to work, @the_cole. For me, it just becomes another slot that gets eaten up by the urgent thing, and then I'm back to square one. I've had better luck just leaving the last 30 minutes of every day totally empty as a catch-all.