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Give yourself a buffer


I forgot to have my own buffer so now I'm writing this post

Oops! I forgot to write a post for this week.

If I was smart, I would have given myself some breathing room. I would have had an extra post in my back pocket so that if I forgot to write a post one weekend, I could just use my backup.

I really would have enjoyed if this was my backup post and I got to brag about how I thought ahead. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, and I'm writing this last minute.

Buffers are important to give yourself breathing room. I use a budgeting program called You Need A Budget, and they encourage you to have a buffer within your budget. You budget dollars from this month to be used for your expenses next month, instead of living paycheck to paycheck and freaking out when unexpected expenses hit you. This buffer lowers my financial stress a ton and helps me roll with the punches a lot better when it comes to unexpected expenses.

Something that's even nicer to have on top of a buffer is when you can "set it and forget it". When you have bills coming up, do you have to manually pay them, or are they withdrawn automatically?

If I was on the ball, I would schedule my blog posts to come out on an automated schedule. In this ideal world, my backup post would be scheduled to come out automatically. If I write a post before it would be released, that means I push back that backup post by another week. If I forget, the backup post would just automatically come out.

In this perfect buffer/"set and forget" world, writing doesn't become a last minute scramble, but instead a leisurely relaxation task. I can write whenever I'm feeling inspired and skip writing whenever I'm not.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to find opportunities to build up my buffer - almost a creative writing budget. Any extra content I write is just extra income in my imaginary budget. The larger the budget, the easier I can breathe.