Scheduling Time To Stop And Smell The Roses


Unleashing Bold Initiatives

Being a stay-at-home dad and running a business at the same time requires some pretty serious scheduling.

There are kids to be dropped off and picked up from various schools, activities, doctor appointments and the like. There are dishes to be done, floors to be vacuumed, pets to be fed. I have emails to reply to, accountants to appease, assistants to delegate to, and funny pictures to be drawn.

There’s only so much time in the day, and, if I allowed it, I could probably schedule 24 hours a day of nothing but work and family. But that’s a pretty sure way to drive oneself nuts in short order. So I try to schedule in some fun time for myself, which, ironically, inspired the above cartoon and the work to go along with creating it.

Sigh. . .

6 Comments ▼

Mark Anderson Mark Anderson's cartoons appear in publications including Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review. His business cartoons are available for licensing at his website, Andertoons.com.

6 Reactions
  1. It’s so refreshing to hear a work at home dad write about how challenging it is to stay home, work on your business and manage the house hold at the same time. Right on! Yes, stopping and smelling the roses (or planting some:) ) is definitely a requirement to stay balance…

  2. Hi Mark. Thanks for this piece of sanity checking in an otherwise hectic world :). I suspect this cartoon describes about 99% of the people checking in on to Small Biz trends. We need to make sure we take the time out to keep sanity close :). Thanks for sharing – gave me a lift.

  3. Thanks for the reminder! Good timing too (Long weekend here in Toronto).

  4. Martin Lindeskog

    Mark,

    Carpe Diem? Or Pluck The Day? 🙂

    http://egoist.blogspot.com/2006/04/open-thread-post-pluck-day.html

  5. Theresa Bradley-Banta

    All those activities — family, pets, appointments — are life’s precious miracles. While hectic these are the things you’ll remember later with fondness. And aren’t you glad you have assistants to delegate to? So glad to read your post Mark, and to be reminded of this!