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When you’ve got school drop-offs, piano lessons, math tutoring, soccer practice, and dinner
all crammed into a single day, something’s got to give. For a lot of families, that “something”
tends to be free time—the kind that lets kids lie on their backs and daydream at the ceiling.
But as much as productivity matters, downtime isn’t just nice; it’s necessary. Balancing
both isn’t about perfect scheduling—it’s about knowing when to lean in and when to ease
off the gas.

Understand the Difference Between Busy and Productive

Being busy isn’t always the same as being productive. You know this from your own
life—running from meeting to meeting doesn’t mean you’ve actually accomplished
anything worthwhile. Kids are the same. Just because they’re booked solid doesn’t mean
they’re growing in ways that matter. Take time to look at what each activity is really
offering: is it a skill, a social outlet, a joy-bringer—or just calendar filler? If it’s the latter,
you’ve got your first clue that something can go.

Let Them Get Bored—On Purpose

Boredom gets a bad rap, but it’s actually one of the best developmental tools out there.
When you step back and let a child have unstructured time, you’re giving their mind room
to wander, wonder, and figure things out on their own. That’s when creativity starts to
bloom—right in the empty spaces. It’s tempting to fill every silence with something
“enriching,” but there’s real value in letting the enrichment come from within.

Make Digital Schedules

Creating digital schedules for your kids can make daily routines feel less chaotic and more
collaborative. Using color-coded calendars or simple spreadsheet templates, you can map
out everything from homework blocks to downtime in a way that’s easy for everyone to
follow. Saving these schedules as PDFs adds an extra layer of accessibility—they’re easy to
pull up on any device, and they won’t shift formatting like editable files often do. If you’re
interested in finding out how to make a PDF, an online PDF creator can help you convert
and share schedules from a variety of file formats with just a few clicks.

Create a Weekly “White Space” Zone

You probably schedule meetings or errands—but do you ever schedule nothing? White
space is the unscheduled time that belongs to nobody but the child. This could be a Sunday
afternoon, a weekday evening, or even just an hour on a Friday. The trick is not to treat it as
back-up time for missed chores or homework. Protect it like you would any other
commitment. It’s a sacred reset point that reminds everyone what breathing room feels
like.

Reevaluate Activities with Your Kid’s Voice in the Room

It’s easy to assume kids love all the things you sign them up for, but their actual opinion
might surprise you. Sit down and ask what they actually enjoy and what they’re just
tolerating. Sometimes a child is sticking with a sport or club just because they think they’re
supposed to. You’ll get a clearer picture of what’s working when their voice is part of the
planning. You might even find that what they really want is just more time to build Legos or
ride bikes around the block.

Establish Transition Time Between Activities

What happens between the stuff on the schedule matters just as much as the events
themselves. Racing from school to violin practice without time to decompress turns every
day into a marathon. Build in small buffers—ten minutes in the car to snack and stare out
the window, or a quiet walk instead of a rushed drive. These soft landings keep nervous
systems from going into constant overdrive. And they make the next thing feel less like a
chore.

Say No Without the Guilt Trip

You will be asked to do more—more playdates, more weekend tournaments, more
enrichment. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is say no, full stop. The hard part is
ignoring the guilt that tries to convince you you’re holding your child back. But you’re not.
You’re making room for something else: peace, presence, and maybe even a night of
spontaneous laughs and pancakes for dinner.

Lead by Example—Model Balance in Your Own Life

Kids are watching more than you think. If you’re always glued to your phone, rushing from
one task to the next, and never taking a breath, they’re internalizing that as normal. Show
them how you unplug. Let them see you reading on the porch, taking walks without a
destination, or turning down an invitation because you just need space. It’ll help them learn
that life isn’t just about doing, but also about being.

You don’t have to choose between burnout and boredom. There is a sweet spot in the
middle, where your child can stretch their talents and still come home to a space that feels
calm and unscheduled. Striking that balance isn’t always neat, and it won’t look the same
every week. But that’s okay. The point isn’t to master a perfect routine—it’s to create a life
that has enough room for both movement and rest. When you do that, you’re not just
managing time—you’re teaching your child how to live with rhythm, intention, and ease.

Emily Graham
Emily is the creator of MightyMoms.net. She believes being a mom is one of the hardest jobs around and wanted to create a support system for moms from all walks of life. On her site, she offers a wide range of info tailored for busy moms — from how to reduce stress to creative ways to spend time together as a family. You can email her at emilygraham@mightymoms.net. She lives in Arizona.

Visit Dr. Doug Green to unlock a world of knowledge and inspiration where you can
explore insights on virtual communication, self-confidence, AI, and more to transform
your personal and professional life!

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Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working by Dan Heath shows how you identify leverage points that can improve any organization. He encourages you to look for bright spots, reallocate your resources, start with a burst, recycle waste, tap motivation, and let people be more autonomous. These principles apply to any organization so school leaders should take note and get a copy.

Introduction

• Dan starts with a story about a hospital mail room that went from taking three days to deliver packages to delivering all packages the day they arrived. They went from dysfunction as the natural state of affairs to resetting and getting unstuck. Sometimes it takes more resources to sustain a bad system. The key thing is to look for and find a leverage point to transform the way you work. Part one will help with this. Learn how to shake off bad habits so you can go from spinning your wheels to rolling forward.

Section I – Find Leverage Points: 1. Go and See the Work.

• If you are a manager of others, or a school administrator, you need to go see what people and students are doing in person. Sitting around a table and talking about something is not the same as seeing it up close. (Doug: As a principal, I prided myself on managing by walking around, which allowed me to see what students and teachers were doing.
• In some cases, the work people are doing may not be visible. This is when you have to get creative and make it visible. Be sure to check out the links in this book at Reset-Links.

2. Consider the Goal of the Goal

• Before you sink effort into a difficult task, make sure it’s the right task. If you lock into a goal too quickly, you may be blind to the bigger picture and alternate routes. Dan introduces the concept of the miracle question, which helps you identify the first productive steps to take. Be skeptical about the goals you select. Asking what’s the goal of the goal helps identify your destination and why it is important.

3. Study the Bright Spots

• Bright spots are your most engaged employees. You need to analyze them and do what you can to replicate them.

4. Target the Constraint

• Constraints are limiting factors or bottlenecks. They are standing in the way of greater success. As you deal with one constraint, the constraint will shift to somewhere else. Dan tells the story of Chick-fil-A and how their constraint shifted from ordering to food prep as they worked to maximize their drive through business. If you don’t direct investments at your constraint, they may be wasted. If you change your goal, your constraint may also change.

5. Map the System

• Sometimes you have to take a big picture view of a situation to improve things. One approach is to look at multiple silos at the same time to see if a change in one can help the other. There is a story here that shows how this can work. There is another story about how a methane monitoring satellite launched in 2024 is helping the industry find and plug leaks of this greenhouse gas. Be sure to ask questions like why do we do that and can we do it better?

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Tony Blair on Leadership: Lessons for the 21st Century summarizes what Tony has learned as prime minister of the UK from 1997 to 2007 and consulting with leaders in many other countries as head of the Tony Blair Institute. Although this book is written for aspiring politicians, I believe that each short chapter contains timeless lessons for leaders and potential leaders in any field.

Introduction

• When leaders take over, most listen carefully as they know they have a lot to learn. The second stage occurs when they have become acclimated and start to think they know everything. In the final stage, they realize that what they know is not the sum total of the necessary knowledge associated with their leadership scope.
• Tony has concluded that the key attributes of leadership are the same whatever the leadership position. While politics has its place, it isn’t the same as leadership. Giving people what they want is not always what they need. Leaders need to do what is in the best interests of the lives they touch.

Part I: Taking Power – 1. Be the Leader with the Plan

• You must have a plan. It needs to contain your destination, milestones, and priorities and accurately describe the essentials of what you want to achieve. Priorities are essential as if you try to do everything, you just might do nothing. Change takes time and you will need to consider mid-course corrections as you move along. Not all of what you plan is likely to work as intended.

2. Make the Center Strong

• The skill set you need as a leader is not the same as the skill set that gets you the job. A strong center is needed to initiate and carry though on a change. The most important person is the one who runs your schedule. Leaders are constantly being asked for their time and if they can’t say no, they need someone who can. Meetings and events can be real time suckers. Leave them as soon as you can. Be sure to make time for yourself to recharge and time for your family.

3. Prioritization: Try to Do Everything and You Will Likely Do Nothing

• Once you get your leadership position, ask what you would like to accomplish the most. You can work back from these items to set your priorities. Tony sees five as a good number. Your followers will all have their pet projects. While they may not be at the top of your list, they don’t need to know that. Priorities have to be doable. Be sure to perform a feasibility check on each one. This process may not be easy, but it deserves your attention along with all of the uplifting rhetoric of hope you can summon.

4. Good Policy Is (Nearly) Always Good Politics

• Always put policy first and politics second. Avoid maters of ideology and convenience when crafting policy. Policy should be evidence-based. Work hard to do research so you know what you are talking about. Always think about a topic as if you were the person most impacted. Good policy strives to make change that will last rather than a quick splash. Be sure to look outside of your organization (country/school) for bright ideas and be sure to think ahead.

5. It’s All About the People

• The people Tony refers to here are the people who directly report to you. They need to be smart, hard working, loyal to you and to each other, and able to handle stress. Internal debate is healthy, not disruptive. Don’t reject someone just because they are smarter than you. Be sure to promote your most talented people. They are more likely to challenge you if you don’t. Effort you put in to finding the right people may be the most important thing you do..

6. Curb Your Bureaucracy by Cultivating It

• As a leader, you will have a bureaucracy to deal with so you need to get to know what it does and doesn’t do. bureaucracies tend to be permanent while the leader tends to be temporary. They are not known for creativity or innovation. Be clear about results, delivery, and on getting things done and the system will adjust. Look for opportunities to re-skill and retrain it. Don’t expect it to be a substitute for a leader and a team.

Part II: Delivery – 7. Democracy or Not, It’s All About Delivery

• As a leader, your success will be judged by what you deliver. The real test of government is making change that works, which is delivery. If you can deliver a higher quality of life with improved health care, education, and security, you should be reelected. Governments turnover due to instability, which is caused by the failure to deliver. People sometimes accept a strong man because the know that something will get done. Corruption is the enemy of delivery.

8. The Supreme Importance of Strategy

• Strategy assists in the long-term fulfillment of your overall plan. Without a strategy, failure is likely. Tactics are the smaller decisions that you make on a daily basis. It’s important that they align with your long-term strategy. You have to reconcile your day-to-day tactics to your core strategy. When fundamental facts change, but sure to see if you need to adjust your strategy. You should seldom discard it altogether.

9. Be a Change-Maker, Not a Place-Holder

• The world is changing fast. If you are standing still, you get left behind. If you are an elected leader, you probably got elected by promising to make some changes. Appointed leaders may have the same expectations. You need to create a constituency for your change so you have some support. Consider how you can break big changes into a series of smaller ones and take them incrementally. Consider how changes will benefit the consumers rather than the providers.

10. Le Suivi: Delivering

• Two things are necessary here. The priorities you choose must be measurable and you must be able to harvest reliable data so you can show that you accomplished your priority. When it comes to delivery, the leader needs to be actively involved. The leader need not do all of the work, but the leader must know what’s happening.

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