Scheduling
“I give zero fucks and I got zero chill in me” — Nikki Minaj
The above is one of my favorite song lyrics. I feel so seen by Nikki. I have no chill, and I just can’t care what people think about it. It’s the zero fucks that allow me to get out and run every day for 34 years now. Especially as women, it’s tough to give zero fucks. We want to make people happy, and some people we even should try to make happy. But you have to make yourself happy, too; you matter.
Because no matter where you are, in whatever season of your life, scheduling is hard. When you’re talking about scheduling your run, the problem becomes even harder: how, in the midst of what you want to do and what you have to do, can you make time for this activity? Running doesn’t seem to have an immediacy to it, especially if you’re just starting out. No one tells you to go, and no one builds it into their schedule for you. But, here’s the thing: you have to just go. The people who love you will learn to understand, and the people who want to control you won’t and they will fade from your life.
No one will make time for The Run if you don’t. It gets easier, trust me. As you gather people around you who care, as you care more and more, it gets easier. It gets less like saying no to people you care about and who you want to please, and more like saying yes to something everyone craves and admires. So just go. People can wait to eat or drink or watch TV. You’ll be back soon.
The trade-off:
Here’s the bad news: you’re going to miss out on things. You truly can’t have it both ways and be both perfectly social and get your runs in. When I was a kid, I chose to go to cross country practice instead of doing other kid things, like hanging out at friends’ houses, being in bands, and playing video games. In my twenties, I was told over and over again that I was affecting my fledgling design business by not being more social after work. They were probably right in that, and I did feel guilty, but I also knew I was investing in probably the only thing that was bigger to me than my design practice: the practice of returning to myself the energy that I had put out during the day.
Then there was dating. What a mess. Every man I ever dated didn’t get it. I had The One Who Wanted to Have Unscheduled Band Practice for 5 Hours, and The One Who Wanted to Watch Double Features, and The One Who Wanted to Spend 14 Hours Straight in the Studio. Every one of them just wanted me to pay attention to him (but still be thin, and hot, independent, and have my own interests) instead of allowing me to pay attention to me.
Now I’m in a parenting stage, and while I push back on the idea that parenting scheduling is harder than other parenting because, again, being single and dating was super hard, the nature of the difficulty is different: my routine is more set, so I can anticipate it, but it’s also more rigid, so I can’t change it.
Case in point: recently my husband was a speaker at a conference. For a week. In Australia. So that’s 24 hours of travel on each end, plus needing to arrive a couple of days early so he’s not super weirded out by the time change, and the conference itself. So how to run? Do I just give it up for the week? I considered it, but as his departure date drew closer, I knew I couldn’t. I would feel like flour mixed with water and left to sit. I would feel like glue. I would feel stuck, which is not a great feeling when you’re also breastfeeding one kid and chasing another one. So we arranged for childcare for a few hours every day, and I was able to run. It cost a lot, and it was totally worth it. I only ran about 2 miles every day that week, but it was something, and I felt better for having done it.
Now that you’ve accepted your FOMO and made time:
There are people who will tell you that you have to go run for 45 minutes or 10 miles or similar for a run to be “worth it”. They’re wrong. Go run for 10 minutes. Go run for five. Just don’t skip it or walk when you’ve committed to running.
There have been times in my life when I ran for 12 minutes. I don’t know why I chose 12 minutes. I think it has something to do with the fact that 12 is a super factorial, and I happen to like math trivia, but it doesn’t matter. The point is that 12 minutes was how much I had, and how emotional energy I had, and that’s how I ran for. Then there have also been times in my life when I put on my shoes and ran 7 miles across multiple bridges during rush-hour in New York City or for an hour through the tangled streets of Los Angeles, because that’s what I had time and emotional energy for. Those were great too. They’re just different points in life, but they all include running.
What to do
I like to keep this newsletter short, but I also want to provide some starter material for tough conversations you might need to manage. While clearly not an exhaustive list, I’ve rounded up a few scenarios I’ve faced and how I dealt with them. Let me know via email or in the comments if you want to talk through other situations, and I’m happy to discuss!
For Those Times In Life When You’re All About Your Friends:
Premise: your friends are all meeting up/ want to go out. You need to go run. Just say: “where will you be? I’ll meet you after I run.” And get them to text you. It’s important to include mentioning your run here; treating your run as a normal-yet-non-negotiable part of your day means other people will treat it that way, too. Will you feel FOMO? Yes. Will it be okay? Also yes.
For Those Times In Life When You’re Dating:
Premise: New Interest or Years Long Relationship wants to go eat and/or meet up with friends:
Always, always, always go run. Do not negotiate. Expand on the Friends situation above and just meet them later. Everyone will be okay, I promise. And if their egos are bruised, that’s a flag, my friend; you might want to walk away. A potential mate needs to know where taking care of yourself ranks in your life plans, and the answer is: above them.
For Those Times in Life When You Have Family Obligations:
Premise: Your kids need to be fed and go to sleep, every night. You can:
Wake up before predawn or run at midnight, depriving yourself of sleep.
Decide to give up running (not a theme of this newsletter, obvs).
Or, you can impose a schedule.
Here’s our schedule: every night, the same things happen: supper, bathtime, bedtime, in the same order, all timed. Then I go run. This means I run between 7:30 and 9pm every night, but that works for me. If you’re more of a breakfast run person, work the AM schedule around your run. The entire household does have to get behind this method, but you are part of the household, so your needs matter.
If you don’t have a co-caregiver at home to help you with this, switch to Lunch Run or an earlier work schedule, if you can, to run before picking up the kiddies at daycare or school. Use every hour of childcare you have available. It’s good for your kids to develop relationships outside of you, and it’s good for you to go run.
So, a round up: long hours working, dates, parenting obligations: yes, yes, and yes. I still run. I’m sure many runners out there do the same. But it can be hard to figure out how to make time for your run when there’s social pressure to go do other things. Running can feel like an add-on to the other people in your life or even to yourself. Other things can seem more important. But what is never more important is your tomorrow self, and the investment you can make in it. So remember that you’re worth it, and go run.
Totally empathize. They just have to get blocked into the calendar and treated as seriously as all the other must do stuff. I do mine, during a marathon training cycle, one week out, maybe two. I look at the runs required, then the calendar of work events, kid needs, gigs, travel, etc., decide if I’m running pre-dawn, lunchtime, or at night, try and balance energy requirements of hard work things or long gigs with easy recovery run days. It mostly works. Most of the time.
"Here’s our schedule: every night, the same things happen: supper, bathtime, bedtime, in the same order, all timed. Then I go run. This means I run between 7:30 and 9pm every night, but that works for me."
That's also my approach. I'm not running everyday, because I change everyday with my wife with bringing the kids to bed. Sometimes I add the extra run during the lunch break at work or I get some time off as a "present" from my wife. Usually I get 4-5 runs a week done. That's also one of the reasons why started running again, because I had only limited time at certain times of the day and it was no problem to put some running shoes on and use the 30 minutes. Due to the regularity of doing that it became more and more a part of life, I stood up for that more and it was clear to everyone else how important it was for me to go for a run.