For most of last year I had a Wednesday calendar block called "Playground, 5pm." It was meant to be sacred. School pickup, then a half hour with my daughter before dinner.

It got moved or skipped about four weeks out of five. Always, of course, I was the one moving it.

Meanwhile at work, my weekly team standup (in a different slot) didn't move once. Not because I'd defended it. I never had to. It had been there long enough that my - and my team's - week was built around it. Taking it out would have meant the week didn't work.

And it took me a while to see that asymmetry clearly.

The standup meeting hadn't been load-bearing on day one. It had started out long before as just a quick check-in, and somewhere along the way it became the thing the rest of the week organised itself around. Decisions waited for it. Meetings scheduled themselves around it. If I'd dropped it, half the rest of the week would have wobbled.

On the family side, the playground block had been in the calendar for a few months. That was it. It hadn't been there long enough for anyone, including my daughter, to depend on it. It was sitting there waiting for a quiet week, and quiet weeks are rare.

That was the gap I hadn't been seeing. The standup had become load-bearing the slow way, through effort that then became habit. The playground block hadn't had time to do that, and wasn't getting anything like the deliberate effort needed to make it stick.

You put the regular family aspiration in the diary. It's in there every week. At first glance, that looks fine. You've got one or two of these protected, you tell yourself, and that's helping take care of the parent part of your parent CEO role.

Then a Wednesday comes where work goes long and you push it. Then a week where you tell yourself you'll do it tomorrow. Then a stretch where you skip it twice and barely notice. The block is still in the diary, but somewhere along the way it's stopped being the thing that holds. It's become flexible, malleable, the first thing to give when something else needs the slot.

The block doesn't disappear in one big decision. It loses its place subtly, in a way that's hard to see until you look back over a few months and wonder where the time with your child went.

The instinct, when you spot the gap, is to put more energy into the big set-pieces. The school play, the bedtime on the day they had a tough one, the birthday weekend, the recital. The moments where the stakes are obvious.

You should make those. Of course you should. They matter to her, and they'll matter to you in fifteen years. That's also where most parents in demanding careers already direct real, conscious effort. Nothing wrong with that.

The regular weekly things tend to get what's left over. They matter just as much, but they don't feel urgent and important in the same way, which makes them easy to skip. And yet they're arguably doing more of the work in the long run.

The big events land differently depending on what regular habits underpin them. With regular weekly commitments in place and defended, the big event is the icing. Without them, the big event has to do the work of the cake too, and you can usually tell. Most children certainly can.

So the move is to keep doing the big events, and to give the regular weekly routines a similar share of your active attention. Treat it as a part of your week that holds the rest up. Probably with more care than you may think it needs instinctively, because the regular thing can slip out of place quietly. You only notice once it's gone.

A title like "Family" reads as flexible. "Personal appointment" reads as deferrable. "Standing commitment, not available" works. So does "School run, non-moveable." The title is the first thing a colleague scheduling over you sees, and it communicates status before anyone has opened their mouth about it.

A title is small, and it's the difference between someone glancing at your calendar and seeing something they could move, and seeing something they can't.

Before the block has been tried, send one short note to whoever most needs to know. Your PA. Your line manager. The colleague who routinely stacks late afternoons. Whoever owns the late-day stakeholder calls. Not apologetically, just factually.

"I have a standing commitment on Thursdays from 5:30. I don't move it. If something really urgent lands in that window, message me before 4pm and I'll handle it before I leave."

You send the message once. Then you start actually showing up on the days you're meant to be there. That's what makes the message work, because people read your week through what they see in it, not through what you've told them.

Even with everything in place, things will land in that window from time to time. Three replies cover almost every situation.

For a peer: "I have a prior standing commitment at that time. Could we do [time]?" That's usually enough.

For someone senior or a stakeholder: "I have a prior standing commitment at that time. I can join the first fifteen minutes if the critical decisions are upfront, or catch the recording. Happy to brief you in advance if useful." This one matters because it shows you've considered their problem, offers something real, and holds the line without requiring them to understand your personal circumstances.

For the request that arrives wrapped in urgency: "I can give you fifteen minutes before I leave at [time], or my full attention from [time] onwards. What's most useful?" This one needs honest judgement, because some things really are urgent and that matters. The test is whether you'd call this one urgent if you weren't trying to protect a family commitment. Most of the time the answer is no. And when it really is yes, you make the exception.

The first few weeks aren't really about other people. They're about you, showing up to the thing on the days you're supposed to be there, until it becomes part of how your week works rather than something you have to keep deciding to do.

Most of the slips in that period are self-inflicted. A late-afternoon meeting you accepted because saying no felt like making a fuss. A "quick" thing you took on at 4:45 that turned into 6. A Wednesday where you told yourself just this once. That just-this-once is the real risk. Each one knocks the routine back to where it started. Hold it three weeks running and the fourth gets easier. Skip the third and you're back at the start.

Pick the one regular family commitment during the week. The one you most want to make part of how your life actually runs. Give it a title that signals its status. Send one short note to whoever most needs to know. Then show up to it for four weeks running.

You're not asking permission. You've already been doing this kind of work on the work side of your calendar for years. The recurring things nobody touches, the standing meetings that route around themselves. Same skill, applied to a different part of the week.

The family side deserves the same kind of structure. Especially for the regular weekly thing that, after a few months, becomes part of the fabric of your week. The thing you wouldn't think to move, because you've put the work into making it stick, and showing up to it has stopped being a decision.

The Wednesday playground block I started with? It moved twice in the quarter after I changed my approach. After that it stopped. And once the muscle had been built around that one, building the next took less effort. The one after that took less still.

What you end up with, after a while, is a calendar that means what it says. The aspirational blocks that kept getting moved have dropped out, and what's left is what you actually show up to, on both the work side and the family side.

What did you find most helpful - or surprising - in this week’s newsletter? Email me and let me know - I read every one.

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