Building in buffers for normal-course setbacks

My daughter, Astrid, started daycare in November right at the start of cold and flu season. We had heard from other parents about the inevitable slew of illnesses kids will catch the first few months within starting, but I don’t think we were really prepared for what awaited us. Several bottles of saline spray, ibuprofen, and oil of oregano later, we were officially initiated (or hazed) into the Parents of Small Children club.

What threw Ian and I off was the number of days off we had to take from work, mostly to tend to Astrid and take her to her appointments, but also to rest and recuperate ourselves. My big takeaway on this from the past few months is that next year, I will be pre-blocking off work days during cold and flu season. My aim is to schedule my November to March next year so it accounts for an estimated number of days I will be off. For example, if I estimate she’ll be sick every other week for two days each time, I’ll leave four days a month blocked off from work. 

At first glance, this seems crazy, given this period coincides with our busiest season at Threads. But thinking deeper, it’s actually crazier to not do this. Similar to how businesses build in line items in their budget for theft & damage (shrinkage), or defaults on receivables (allowance for doubtful accounts/bad debt expense), there are things in business and life that are not ideal, but fall within the normal course of events and are to be expected. Not accounting for them is just poor planning. 

Similar to how financial forecasting models are sensitized with base case, worst case, and best case scenarios, not building in these buffers is similar to planning your life only in the best case scenario. Optimistic, but not at all practical. 

When I thought about this some more, I realized there were other ways I’d already been abiding by this concept in my work and personal life. Here are a few examples:

• Leaving Friday mornings blocked off, to work on overflow work that didn’t get done as planned earlier in the week - this is bound to happen as unexpected things come up during the week that need my attention. 

• Leaving a buffer for inventory miscounts at Threads. Our “0” in inventory in a particular SKU usually means a number actually between 10-50 left in stock, depending on the SKU. 

• Coming home one day early on vacation. A couple of years ago, Ian and I decided to start coming home from vacations on the Saturday (instead of trying to “squeeze” the trip and come home on Sunday, which is what we had been doing for years before). This way, if we were delayed or jetlagged, we had the extra day on Sunday as a buffer before going back to work on the Monday. 

Do you do anything similar to this in your own life? I’d love to hear about it.