Flow and Structure
The Challenge of Balancing Needs as a Family
School day mornings follow a typical routine at our household.
The morning frenzy of getting our son ready for school is usually interlaced with Kester’s and my (Kavitha’s) need to make the most of the precious 1-2 hours of morning light before we get to work at 8am.
At any given moment, one of us is doing yoga, silambam, qigong, meditating; the other may be putting dishes away, folding clothes, filling water jugs, all while packing Jace’s lunch box and ensuring he does not get lost in a story book halfway through brushing his teeth.
Whilst circling around these different activities, a moment arises when both Kester and I are in the kitchen and he’d ask, “Shall we plan the day?”
My reply would vary from:
“mmm, is there anything to discuss? I thought we spoke about yesterday ready?” to,
“sure, what do you have in mind?” to,
rambling a whole bunch of things I’d like to achieve for SACRED by the end of the day, only to see Kester’s overwhelmed face.
For the longest time Kester and I have struggled to find balance between our individual needs, the needs of running a family, and business needs.
When you are running a household and business together and if you are not careful, the line between work time, me time and family time can get blurred.
Sometimes, I catch myself asking Kester for an update on a collaborator meeting while climbing into bed and he’d say, “dear not now”, or waking up at 3am with a content idea and running off to our home office to jot it down.
But when we find ourselves for the third night in a row, up at 12am trying to finish that task that was just supposed to take 5 minutes, we are hit by a mix of exhaustion, burnout and overwhelm.
In those moments, I find myself wondering if my fantasy of living in a cottage on a one-acre farm land, growing my own food and painting in my spare time, would yield a better quality of life.
Then I am reminded of my mission, the bigger purpose of why SACRED exists and that pulls me back to our home office, which is space we share with the washing machine, the drying rack, and some storage shelves.
When Planning Doesn’t Work
We have tried different tactics to find balance:
• from drawing up a schedule to follow as a family,
• to creating two different schedules - a ‘his’ and a ‘hers’,
• to prioritising tasks to complete for the day - which is great for an employee, but for a business owner on whose shoulders a lot of decisions rest, every task kind off needs to be completed yesterday or you become the bottleneck.
The thing with schedules is this, it works just fine so long as you can complete a said task within a said time frame.
In reality, things don’t work that way. We are human and sometimes we can work fast and at other times we slow down.
Sometimes a task takes 10 minutes and at other times, the same task may take 2 hours.
Take this newsletter for example. It has been in draft stage for almost 10 days; I know what I want to say, but the words are just not flowing. Compare that to previous newsletters, which I’ve written in half a day.
On other occasions, one of us falls sick, or another task of greater priority shows up, or a part in pain (aka a trigger) makes itself known and all our daylight hours are spent processing emotions and resolving a conflict, and we can only catch up on work at 8pm after putting our son to bed.
There Has to Be Another Way
Frustrated, I brought the question of, “how to balance flow (the needs, wants and expectations that arise and change throughout the day) and structure (schedules and deadlines)” into meditation.
The stillness of deep meditation helps me see challenges from different perspective and it helps me gain new insights the active mind may miss.
Here’s the message that morning’s meditation brought: Create a structure around your flow. First, determine your flow for the day. Then create a structure to maximise your flow.
So far, I’ve been trying to fit flow into structure. But what if I fit structure into flow instead?
This simple switch in thinking is slowly changing the way we approach work and life.
For instance, when we planned this week, on Thursday (which is today), Kester was supposed to write the newsletter for this Saturday. My task was to draft content pieces for filming tomorrow, plus put out some stories on socials for our upcoming 6-month SACRED Relationship Foundational Course.
This morning I woke up with a fever, swollen throat and body aches.
In the past I would have been so upset with myself for falling ill and dreading how I needed to work even though I was sick. That seldom got work done, I felt sicker and more bitter by the end of the day.
Today, I decided to do things differently. I decided to fit structure into today’s possible flow.
Kester asked me to write the newsletter instead as he had other priorities to focus on.
I told him, I’d try my best, positioned myself on our tatami mat at 11am (my work day usually starts at 8am) complete with back support, brewed a thermos of herbal tea, got abundant supply of Pei Pa Kao and Yogi Kanthika (herbal medicines to heal the throat), and sat down to complete this newsletter, which was due last Saturday.
It’s 5.45pm now and I'm happy to share that not only am I wrapping up this newsletter, (yes if we use AI, a newsletter might get written within an hour or so, but Kester and I have this thing of keeping our brain neurons active well into our 80s so we simply write all our content).
I also filmed, edited and posted stories on our socials.
The only thing balance is writing content for tomorrow’s filming which may or may not happen. (How about you ask me the next time we meet?)
Overall, I am satisfied with how the day went. It seems like fitting flow into structure may work after all.
Try it and let us know.
In Love and Friendship,
Kavitha
Therapist and Founder, SACRED®
P.S. We welcome your informal comments on these newsletters, what resonated with you, what your thoughts, reactions were. Just hit reply.
P.P.S. Want to build stronger relationships? Join the SACRED Relationship Foundational Course. Registration closes 1st Feb 2026.
