The Otter and the Schedule

Yesterday I saw an otter!

I know. Bear with me.

It was fishing in the river that runs through my town. I stopped and watched it for longer than I'd planned — which is to say, I hadn't planned to stop at all. It wasn't in the schedule. I was supposed to be finishing a run and getting back in time for a meeting.

But the ripples in the water caught my eye, and something in me decided to pay attention. So I did.

I made it back for the meeting. And I felt more alive walking in than I would have if I'd pushed on and ticked the box.

The efficiency trap

I work with a lot of people who want to build more resilience — the capacity to sustain good work over time without burning out or breaking down under pressure.

For a long time, I carried an assumption that most of them carry too: that the answer was efficiency. Get better organised. Tighten the schedule. Eliminate the slack. If I could just account for every hour, I'd feel more in control — and my work would be more resilient as a result.

The problem is that this gets it exactly backwards.

A system with no slack is a brittle system. When everything is accounted for, there's no room to absorb the unexpected — and the unexpected always arrives. A delayed meeting. An urgent request. A conversation that takes longer than planned. An otter. When you're running at maximum capacity, each of these becomes a disruption. You fall behind. You feel guilty. You work harder to catch up. And gradually, the sense of being in permanent catch-up mode becomes your default setting.

Resilience requires space

What I've come to understand — through my own experience and through the coaching conversations I have — is that resilience isn't about capacity. It's about margin.

The people who sustain good work over time aren't the ones who do the most. They're the ones who leave enough room to respond well when things don't go to plan. They can absorb a disruption without it impacting everything else. They can bring their full attention to what matters because they're not constantly firefighting what spilled over from yesterday.

Building that margin looks different for everyone. For some people it's protecting time in the diary that isn't accountable to anyone. For others it's the discipline of finishing work at a set time, even when the list isn't done. For some it's learning to say no — not because they're disengaged, but because they understand that a perpetually overloaded system eventually fails.

The common thread is this: space isn't a luxury. It's a strategy. More than that, it’s an essential part of being resilient.

Back to the otter

I didn't plan to stop. I didn't decide in advance that watching an otter would be good for my resilience. I just noticed the ripples and gave myself permission to pay attention.

That's often how it works. Resilience isn't about grand gestures. It's built in small choices — the decision to pause, to breathe, to be where you are rather than already in the next thing.

If you're reading this, you probably already know some of this. The harder question is whether you're actually living it.

If resilience is something you're working on — or struggling with — I'd love to have a conversation. Coaching can help you identify what's keeping you stuck and find your own version of the margin you need.

Drop me a message and lets talk.