School-run proof time blocking with Juli Madacey

In this session, Juli Madacey, summit organiser and co-founder of Fabulous Beyond 40 teaches “school-run-proof” time blocking: a simple way to protect your priorities in a life that refuses to behave. It’s aimed at busy working mums, but it applies to any woman over 40 because perimenopause and menopause add their own brand of chaos: brain fog, fatigue, sleep disruption, decision fatigue, and that annoying feeling of being busy all day but somehow achieving nothing.Her key point is that this usually isn’t a motivation problem, it’s a structure problem. The solution is to treat what matters like an appointment, not a vague intention. Time blocking means putting your priorities into the calendar so you’re not living in reaction mode, bouncing between messages, emails, and everyone else’s demands. (Also: multitasking isn’t a superpower, it’s a stress response.)Juli shares a five-part framework: anchors (non-negotiables like school runs, meetings, meals, bedtime), outcomes (1–3 needle-movers for the day), focus blocks (single-task deep work, sized to your energy), admin blocks (contain life shrapnel like emails), and buffers/recovery (the secret sauce that stops the day collapsing when life throws a curveball).She shows how she plans using both a digital calendar (colour-coded) and a weekly paper brain dump, and she finishes with a 10-minute challenge: list your anchors, choose one outcome, block one focus session, one admin session, and add two buffers. The takeaway: calm is a plan. Protect the time you have, and put yourself in the calendar first.