The secret to happiness is margin.

• Margin in your budget
• Margin in your calendar
• Margin in your schedule

Don’t spend every dollar.

Don’t join every event.

Don’t book every minute.

Margin in your budget promotes peace.

Margin in your calendar promotes clarity.

Margin in your schedule promotes presence.

It’s the negative space that creates a positive experience.

How can you enjoy spending a dollar when you know that it’s your last one?

How can you enjoy events when you have no free moment to even breathe for the next 12 weeks?

How can you enjoy brunch with a friend when you know you have somewhere else to be in 9 minutes and 27 seconds?

Without margin between things, there is no space to enjoy them.

Stress takes over and the anxiety of not having enough time, money, or energy takes all the potential enjoyment away.

Here are 6 ways to create margin in three core areas of your life to ensure presence and peace.

Create margin in your finances.

When I first started earning money out of college, I started aggressively saving and investing.

And boy, am I glad I did.

The financial cushion that I built up back then would later (unbeknownst to me when I first started putting money aside) allow me to weather a job layoff, major setbacks in business, and a health crisis that had me not working for two months.

Financial margin creates peace where there would otherwise be stress, and options where there would otherwise be desperation.

Live beneath your means.

Not above, not at, but below.

If your car breaks down, it won’t be a problem.

If a tree falls down and your roof needs to be replaced, it won’t be a problem.

If you break up with your live-in partner and suddenly have to move out on your own, it won’t be a problem.

Make a monthly budget and be clear about how much money is coming in and how much is going out, and make sure the latter never exceeds the former.

Have savings with at least 6 months of living expenses.

If you lose your job, you won’t have to rush into the first soul sucking job you can find because you need a paycheck–any paycheck–to pay your rent.

If you’re extremely burnt out, you can afford to take an extended sabbatical without having to sacrifice your long term mental and emotional health.

With the money you save every month from living beneath your means, creating your ‘when the 💩hits the fan’ emergency fund should be your first priority.

Create margin in your work.

You know in the movies when the young lawyers are trying to put together the last bits of information they need to win the big case?

There’s a montage of them eating takeout while discussing inaudible details back and forth, going from place to place in the office, sitting at the desk with a pen in their mouth staring blankly at the wall in presumed contemplation, spinning around in a chair in the corner, thumbing feverishly through files, emptying box after box of papers, typing frantically on a computer as sunset turns to sunrise…all to discover exactly what they need to put together the perfect argument just in time for them to show up to court the next morning and save the day!!

This is an absolute nightmare to me.

Some people have this idea that when there’s a fire under your ass and the clock is about to run out, you’ll find the extra oomph you need to pull things off in the nick of time.

I’m not that person.

In a situation where I don’t feel like I have enough time to complete something, I will more readily collapse in a heap of defeat, perhaps also in a puddle of my own tears, before I will “rise to the occasion.”

As far as I’m concerned…

The best way to hate doing things you would otherwise love is to not give yourself enough time to do them. Insufficient time leads to diminished satisfaction.

Give yourself room with deadlines.

Allow for a 20% buffer of time for projects.

If you have a business, and you create your own deadlines, make your project deadlines 20% further out than you think they need to be in order for you to complete that project.

If you think it’ll take you 4 weeks to complete a project, make your deadline 5 weeks out.

If you have a job, whatever your deadline is, pretend it’s 20% earlier.

If an assignment is due in 10 days, act like it’s due in 8. If it’s due in 5 weeks, act like it’s due in 4.

This gives you space for the parts you don’t know or see yet to come up, and for you to get behind without actually ending up behind.

Don’t be like the college kid pulling an all-nighter in the library the night before a term paper is due when you got the assignment 6 weeks ago (hypothetically, not speaking from experience or anything 👀…).

Always be ahead with work.

For example, if you’re a content creator and you publish one post a day, instead of waiting and creating each post that same day, choose one week to create 60 posts, then resume your regular posting schedule.

Being ahead with work is like building an emergency fund in your finances.

It gives you runway to allow you to smoothly make it through times when the unexpected comes up or your resources are leaner in a season than they ordinarily are.

This way, if anything happens to get you off track (which it inevitably will), you’re not completely de-railed.

Create margin in your personal life.

You know those people who schedule their calendars to the minute every day?

I don’t see how you can enjoy or be present in anything you do when half your attention is spent watching the clock to make sure you have enough time to race to the next thing, and half your energy is spent racing from one thing to another trying to make sure you make it on time to the next event.

There’s no time to savor or appreciate the moment.

There’s no time for another thought to even pop into your head because–ope, that wasn’t on the schedule.

Leave space between things in your daily calendar.

Just because you have 16 waking hours in a day doesn’t mean you should schedule all of them to the minute.

Leave ample transition space between daily commitments, so you don’t show up exasperated to the next thing.

If it takes you 15 minutes to drive from one commitment to another (in perfect conditions with no traffic, no accidents, and all the stoplights green), give yourself 45.

And when it comes to non-work related commitments, leave more time for those than you think you’ll need.

That way, you can be fully present in your experience without unconsciously hurrying or worrying in the back of your mind about making it to the next thing on time.

If you’re meeting a friend for brunch, allow two hours instead of one, or three hours instead of two, or heck, clear the whole day.

Sure, you can eat in an hour, but you can’t connect in an hour.

And you certainly can’t spontaneously decide to do something else fun together afterwards with only an hour.

In one of my favorite books, Off the Clock, the author talks about the idea of lingering–not just rushing in and out of events and commitments like you’re on a mission, but slowing down and sticking around a little at the end to open yourself up to surprise and serendipity.

When you finish your workout at the gym, linger a little.

When you finish your walk through the park, linger a little.

Many a friend I’ve made by lingering, and many an unforgettable experience I’ve had because of meeting those new friends, whether it be something as small as an unexpected conversation or as large as an unexpected adventure.

Leave large empty spaces on your calendar.

Leave large chunks of time unscheduled–I’m talking entire days, a week, or weeks, if/when you can.

On vacation, I find the perfect balance to be having a planned activity every other day.

This serves two purposes.

One–it allows me the option to rest in between and do nothing so I can recover and be fully energized and enthused for the next planned activity the next day.

Two–it allows for spontaneity–for things I don’t yet know that I don’t know and opportunities that I can’t predict, but want to take advantage of, like…

• when the hotel receptionist tells you about a secret local waterfall hike you have to try
• when you meet a group of people who randomly invite you to do the waterfall hike with them
• or when you meet a local family that opens their home to you to share their culture’s food and customs

There is another benefit of leaving large time blocks unbooked.

It’s very easy to get stuck in routine, which stops the flow of creativity, and makes it impossible to assess the past or plan for the future.

Our minds just get focused on just keeping the machine running.

So we get stuck not only in patterns of action, but in patterns of thought, and we can get disconnected from ourselves, our truest desires, and clarity in our direction.

Leave large time blocks unbooked in order to create a blank slate mentally that allows for thoughts, ideas, revelations, and moments of clarity that didn’t previously have the space to arise in the midst of your busy routine.

Margin is a must because it allows for things you didn’t expect– good, bad, or indifferent, and it provides a psychological and emotional safety net from which to operate.

Margin improves your experience of life by allowing things to happen that you wouldn’t ordinarily experience (chance encounters, conversations, and experiences), allowing you to more comfortably weather storms, and affording you more mental peace overall and the ability to relish the current moment.

Without margin, you’re left always feeling behind in some way, and burdened with the unachievable task of catching up, or racing to get back to a baseline.