here’s a word that has been floating around in my head a lot lately, kind of like those Word Art images that analyze text and highlight frequently used words by making them bigger—and that’s the word margin.
You often hear people talk about “balance,” or to some, the better word is “blend.” In fact, in episode 15 of this podcast, my teacher friends Joy, Christina, and Janna talked about their preference for the word blend over balance.
Anyway, as we roll into the end of Summer and start thinking toward fall lesson scheduling, while you need to consider the hours you many need to work to pay the bills—I also want you to consider building a schedule that gives you the margin you need to live a healthy life.
In today’s episode, we’ll look at the kinds of things we may need margin for—things you may not even realize—and how you can plan for that margin going into the new year.
I’m Amy Chaplin, and you’re listening to episode 162 of The Piano Pantry Podcast, where we talk shop about living the studio teacher life from organizing your studio to getting dinner on the table and all that comes between. You’ll get loads of easily actionable tips on managing your studio while balancing life and home.
There it is—I even say it in my podcast intro: “balance.” It’s an easy word to throw around, especially in today’s 95 mph world.
I totally get why my friends try to think of life management more as a blend than a balance. These days, it’s tough to separate work and home life—especially when you own your own business and work from home. We don’t clock in and out and return home at the end of the day with work behind us.
As studio music teachers, many of us feel like what we do is also part of who we are—so, it’s not about just balancing two opposing forces—two opposite things on the opposite side of the scale, it’s about marrying them in a healthy way.
What I want to do today is take this a step further and have you consider whether your work-life blend has enough built-in margin, enough room to breathe.
Like most words, there’s more than one definition. When I hear the word margin, I first think of it in relation to the whitespace or edges around text in a document, or in terms of having degrees of freedom or flexibility in a situation.
Are you packing your teaching schedule and life so tightly that you have no margin—no white space—no flexibility?
I tend to notice I’ve not built in enough margin when every moment feels so filled to completion, it’s like I can’t breathe, and I start noticing lots of little things feeling like they’re just “backing up.”
I’ve been trying to pay attention to and track of some of these little things recently I thought I would share with you today.
Here are four things that required extra margin in my life in order to make happen:
First off is sorting through old Publisher Files. So, Microsoft is retiring MS Publisher in October 2025, and I had been putting off sorting through my old .pub files ever since that first notification arrived.
It was a task I knew wouldn’t take long—but since it wasn’t urgent, and I didn’t have margin built into my schedule at the time, it was an easy one to put off for months.
It was only when I finally had margin late this summer that I finally felt I could give the bandwidth to tackle this task. I did a search on my computer for .pub files – it pulled approximately two pages of files. I went through one by one and opened every file, printed those I wanted to keep to PDF and then deleted the .pub file.
It was actually a fun little task and a reflective life moment because I came across things like old business cards from when I sold Cutco knives, a love note from my husband from when we were dating, old newspaper ads, and printed newsletters from my early studio days.
It only took about an hour, so it wasn’t a big deal once I started working on it. While these were all items that I likely would have never missed had I not taken the time to do this little task, I’m really glad I did because it was fun seeing how far life has come since those days. They represented another era of my life in a unique way.
The second thing that stuck out to me I needed margin to give attention to was troubleshooting issues with my microphone and recording software. I’ve been limping around for the last several podcast recordings as I keep getting this error when I start recording.
For a quick fix, I was uninstalling the software, reinstalling, and then it would work once, and then the next time I went to record, it would do it again.
It wasn’t until the school year was over that I felt I had the margin to finally contact tech support to figure out what the issue was. As you can imagine, it was lots of emails back and forth and troubleshooting, and I think we finally got it figured out, but it was one of those things that got put off when I didn’t have enough margin (or mental bandwidth) built in to give it the attention needed.
The third example I thought I would share with you today is watching replay videos. For me, it was replays of MTNA’s new TEMPO conference from back in April. For you, it might be watching replays of the 3 online courses you recently purchased just because they were on sale, even though you didn’t factor in whether or not you had the time to take them.
I almost didn’t purchase Tempo attendance because I knew I wouldn’t have time over the weekend it went live as it was the same weekend as my recital. However, since I was on the proposal committee and it was the first time for the new online conference, I decided to go ahead and register.
My instinct was correct, though – it wasn’t until the end of June, after my digital organization retreat event and the Texas conference, that I could even start thinking about watching any replays.
The fourth and final thing I thought I would share with you today is related to #3, and that is processing notes and materials from professional development events you attend.
This is something I have touted for a long time, ever since I wrote a blog post on tips for managing your conference experiences called Conference Management 101: Four Tips for Organizing Information.
I have found that if I do not build margin into my calendar, the day or two following a conference to process notes, handouts, and purchased materials, they will sit on my desk for 6 months.
You probably think I’m like this perfectly organized person, but this one has been a struggle for me. I am not immune to pile-ups.
I attended the Texas MTA Conference in June and since we traveled around Texas following the event, I still have a pile from that conference sitting on my desk. I’m about to head to NCKP, so I have to process that pile or I will be in trouble when I get back from NCKP.
There are so many amazing resources and opportunities out there, but if you don’t have the margin in your life to consume or process them in a healthy way, then what good is it? I don’t know… just some food for thought.
So, before you register for an event, consider if you have not just the time to attend but the bandwidth to really take in and consume what’s available.
The times I’ve been most successful with this are when I literally put an appointment on my calendar for conference processing time, the first day I’m back.
Those are just a few recent examples of things that only happened when I had a healthy margin built into my life in order to partake in them in a meaningful way. Your list might be totally different.
Maybe right now you could use more margin to manage your home life in a way that feels good to you—like cleaning out your refrigerator once a month, putting together a weekly meal plan, tracking your finances more closely, or making a trip to the recycling center more regularly.
I have found that I need to mentally take at least one half day during the week to create space for these little life things.
I’ve mentioned a lot of physical tasks as examples today, but creating more margin is not just a means for helping us be more productive or a way to get more done.
Michael Hyatt, in his book Free to Focus, says
For real productivity, we need to prioritize people… Many of the best things in life happen in the spaces between our tasks, in the intentional moments set aside for other people.
For the last several years, we’ve had my family over for Sunday lunch on the first Sunday of every month. I provide and prepare the meal. They can stay for the afternoon or bugger out after they eat if they need to. I have no expectations in that regard, nor do I expect the invitation to be reciprocated. I do it because I love it.
Lately, my husband and I have noticed how we’ve had a hard time having people over for dinner and he suggested not doing the family thing every month but I said no way because if we don’t have margin for that, we need to rethink our other priorities so we can have the time we want for relationships.
One way I’m considering building margin into my schedule in the coming year is working later than I ever have two nights a week, so I can have one more weekday where I’m done teaching at a more reasonable hour for dinner. Instead of teaching until 7:00 three nights, I might teach until 8:00 on two nights, and the third night, only teach until 5:30.
I have a lot of teens right now who are involved in sports, and also parents who work and can’t bring their kids before work ends at 5:00 , so it seems everyone wants late times right now. This might be my solution for this season!
Maybe you want to be present with your family during the week for dinner, so you have to work Saturday mornings to allow for that, or maybe you want to allow margin to take your family on an outing once a month, or have dinner with your brother every couple of months.
Perhaps it’s not packing yourself back-to-back with students and thinking of those hours as the only “work hours.” Maybe you need to consider dedicating half a day to lesson planning and studio management work, and factor that time into how you set your pricing.
Group classes or buddy lessons are another way to build margin into a teaching schedule. Maybe you do 3 students in the time of what you used to schedule 2 or overlap two students by 10 minutes so what used to take an hour now takes 50 minutes.
Don’t be afraid to try different formats and schedules in your studio. You won’t know what you like and what works until you try!
The times I felt I had the best margin built into my teaching schedule was when I did group classes every six weeks in lieu of lessons. Besides wanting to have opportunities for my students to get together, I knew I needed margin in my life that would take me out of that grinding every day schedule and allow time for those other things that life might bring—those things that we couldn’t always plan for, that needed white space and flexibility.
Last year, I moved to a more consistent, simplified schedule and stopped doing the group lessons in lieu of private lessons. There was a tradeoff though. Yes, it meant the studio schedule was simplified, but it also meant I lost that margin and I could feel it!
I’m actually still not sure what I’m going to do. As of now, I will likely continue as I did last year. I guess I feel like I need to give it another year before jumping back into the group classes – but I’m definitely aware and am going to pay attention to how things feel this year.
One way you can create margin is by setting aside an hour each week to Power Hour with other teachers. I can’t tell you how many times I hear my teacher friends say that having that accountability is huge in helping them kick-start tasks that are easy to put off.
You can join my power hour crew through Patreon. Not only will you be getting some easy built-in margin, but you’ll be taking one tiny bite out of the support it takes to keep this podcast going. It takes a lot of tiny drops of sand to fill a jar but eventually it adds up.
Many thanks to those who are already doing so, including one of my newest supporters, Carrie Purtell. Visit pianopantry.com/patreon to join today.
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Until next time, friends!
