Caregiving with a non-traditional work schedule

Build a pragmatic caregiving plan and protect your work hours.

Mary ·

Before You Start

Goal: Leave with draft of a realistic caregiving plan — including your caregiving team members, goals, and schedule — and build protected time into your own weekly work schedule.

Read: How Entrepreneurs Can Create Workplace Flexibility To Accommodate Caregiving Responsibilities (Forbes) — Members are encouraged to read beforehand, but a quick recap at the meeting works too.

Meeting Agenda · Approx. 60 mins

  • Member Updates · 10 mins
  • Icebreaker · 10 mins
  • Key Takeaways · 5 mins
  • Activities · 20 mins
  • One Action · 10 mins
  • Wrap-Up · 5 mins

👋 Member Updates · 10 mins

Go around your Circle and share personal updates. Keep them brief and focused on significant changes or important decisions since the last time you met. It's OK not to have one every month. If you have a One Action update from last time, share that too.

🧊 Icebreaker · 10 mins

Invite everyone in the group to share. Keep answers to one or two minutes per person.

Think of the last time caregiving and a paid work deadline overlapped on the same day. What happened, and how did you navigate it?

🔑 Key Takeaways · 5 mins

  • When work and caregiving collide, the costs are real. Research shows that when workers don't have enough caregiving support, it can limit their performance, career advancement, and well-being.
  • "Flexible schedule" doesn't mean "unlimited availability." Freelancers and entrepreneurs often face the assumption that they have endless flexibility to fit in child or elder care, but building a business still takes long hours of focused, uninterrupted work.
  • Building a team of helpers is critical, especially if you're a solo parent or caregiver. The guide pushes you to list everyone who could plausibly help — family, neighbors, paid support, other freelancers — before assuming no one exists.
  • Reliability beats hours logged. Clients and collaborators care more about consistent, predictable availability, clearly communicated, than about how many hours you work.
  • Silence is often read as availability. If you don't state your working hours and response times, clients can assume you're reachable whenever they need you.

🏋️ Activity 1 · 10 mins

Map Your Week and Form Your Team

  1. On paper or in a notes app, create a 7-day grid, sunrise to whenever you stop working.
  2. Mark every caregiving block you can predict and every income-generating block.
  3. Circle the collision points: where caregiving and paid work compete for the same time window.
  4. For each collision point, write down as many people as you can think of who could realistically help with caregiving.
  5. Then, for each collision point, circle the best person to ask for help first, based on what you know of their schedule and preferences.
  6. Make a plan to ask them for regular help in that timeslot, not just one-off coverage.

Discuss as a group:

  1. Did this activity help you become aware of potential help you haven't yet asked for?
  2. Are there any collision points where you don't have a realistic backup? Can you think of any other solutions, e.g. moving your work block, adjusting your budget to pay for childcare or elder care, or asking a family member to change their schedule?
  3. Do you anticipate pushback from any of the people you ask for help? Or from your partner if you want to pay for more care? How could you persuade them to agree that you genuinely need help, and it's not just a nice-to-have?

🏋️ Activity 2 · 10 mins

Write Your Availability Script

Without an employer setting expectations, clients and collaborators can assume you're always reachable unless you tell them otherwise.

Draft short scripts or emails (2–3 sentences each) for these three situations:

  1. Onboarding a new client or collaborator: Clearly state your working hours and response times.
  2. Declining a same-day or after-hours ask: Hold your boundaries while still sounding reliable and collaborative.
  3. A caregiving emergency disrupts a commitment: Communicate the disruption and a revised plan, without over-apologizing or oversharing.

As you write, aim to sound warm but brief, and confident rather than apologetic. Say what you can offer as well as what you can't.

Discuss as a group:

  1. Everyone should read one of their scripts or emails aloud. Have each person share whether they feel confident about sharing it with clients. Why or why not?
  2. Have you ever gotten pushback when setting boundaries with clients? How did you handle it?

🎯 One Action · 10 mins

Commit to one concrete action — big or small — you'll take before next meeting. Go around the Circle and share (1 minute or less per member). Vocalizing it helps hold each other accountable.

Plan to ask someone for help during a regular time slot, or communicate boundaries with a client. Come back ready to share how it went.

📅 Wrap-Up · 5 mins

Before you break, plan your next meeting and close on an energetic note. Go around your Circle one by one and finish the sentence:

Now I am feeling… (choose one word).

  • Set the day, time, and location
  • Choose the next topic or resource
  • Confirm who's leading the discussion
  • Decide how you'll stay in touch in between