Hello friends and Happy April! 
As you know, April 1st holds a special place in my heart, especially as it relates to this blog.
Sixteen years ago tonight, I sat down at my MacBook at 9:55pm and started a blog. My mom had died ten days earlier. My son was asleep down the hall. The house was quiet, and my grief was the loudest thing in it.
I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have an audience. I didn’t even use my real name.
I just had a feeling to write. So I did.
That blog, started in secret, is the reason you’re reading this today. It eventually led me out of anonymity, into coaching, multiple certifications, making history, and building Berta Lippert, LLC. That one, small, secret action grew things I could have never imagined. One hundred percent organically. You can learn more about it here.
Fast forward to today, 16 years later, with more than a decade of faithfully sharing content to help people live happy, and healthy lifestyles, full of purpose and meaning on the first of each and every month, that decade long streak almost came to an end.
You see I live in Minnesota. In Minnesota, the spring equinox doesn’t really bring, um, SPRING. It brings a roller coaster of the most unpredictable weather you can imagine that always, ALWAYS, includes snow and below freezing temperatures. With that, we still need heat. And March ended with me unexpectedly not having it. My furnace went out. It almost eeked out a full heating season, but nope! It just couldn’t hang on any longer and left me out in the cold.
It took multiple days and multiple visits to secure the right parts, but thankfully with the help of two wonderful technicians, she’s up and running again. But not without a major disruption to my schedule and my bank account. Today, let’s focus on the schedule piece.
You know how I just fondly reminisced about my decade long streak of sending these messages to you every month? Well, between the repair calls, the troubleshooting, the scrambling, the energy and time it took to secure alternate sources of heat to keep my pipes from freezing, the time I had set aside to write to you just disappeared.
I briefly considered skipping today’s message (GASP! I know, right?!). But instead, relied on the system I created to manage this very situation that knocks on every one of our doors from time to time. Life just keeps on lifing and we all experience disruptions or impossible to plan for moments.
Or are they impossible to plan for?
I have built a custom time management system for myself, grounded in research (Yes, grounded in research because, duh, have we met? 🤓) on how people actually manage their time well. One of the concepts I saw across multiple meta-analyses I refer to as ‘Adapt’.
For me, Adapt also includes Adjust.
Here’s how I define it in my own system:
“Flexing intentionally when conditions legitimately warrant it including low energy, poor sleep, or genuine reprioritization. If real, adapt without guilt.”
The furnace was real. So I adapted. I protected what absolutely had to happen, my commitments to my coaching clients. I let other things slide without beating myself up about it. I stewarded my energy as the limited resource it is.
And I kept this commitment to you too. While I no longer had the time required to share what I originally intended to, I adjusted and decided to write this blog post to still share something to help. Something I hope inspires you to come up with your own custom, healthy way of handing life’s interruptions.
For example, I have a weekly planning process where I capture my weekly goals, behaviors, and what I refer to as my Lead Indicators. My system has this reminder built right into my weekly planning process:
“This schedule is a draft. I am allowed to lower the bar or slide a block within the same day without quitting the week.”
I love that. A draft, not a contract. So even though I’ve got my week and month mapped out, I know it’s fluid if need be. I can adapt and adjust when and where needed.
It’s easy for us to treat interruptions as failures when our plans don’t go accordingly. We abandon the whole week. We tell ourselves we’ll start fresh Monday and so on.
But adapting is not the same as quitting. It’s actually a skill. And like any skill, you get better at it with practice. The first step in building that skill is learning to tell the difference between adapting and quitting. I use one question to do that:
“Is this a real reason to change the plan, or does it just feel urgent?”
That question alone has saved me more times than I can count.
To put this into practice in your own life, think about the last time life interrupted your plan, your routine, your goal, your good intentions. And ask yourself honestly: did you adapt, or did you quit?
If you quit, that’s okay. Sometimes that’s the right answer. Other times it’s not. For the times quitting isn’t warranted, you can adapt and adjust.
Be proactive and think about how you might craft your own response in the future. How might you adjust and adapt when something disrupts your plan?
I know not every situation will have a plan B ready in advance. But I’ve learned that we don’t need a perfect schedule to navigate disruptions. We simply decide ahead of time that imperfectly following through still counts.
love, b 
