Snow Days Aren't Strategy Days
It's 3 degrees. School's closed. The house is loud. Your inbox is full. And the idea of "deep work" feels like a joke written by someone who's never had a kid yelling about Minecraft while you're trying to build a company.
Here's the truth: you're not going to ship your best work today.
And that's fine.
The mistake isn't accepting that reality, it's pretending you can force a normal Monday when nothing about today is normal. Founders who try to power through chaos end up context-switching into oblivion, then spiraling because they "wasted the day." You didn't waste it. You just played the wrong game.
Reframe the Day Around What You Can Control
When deep focus isn't available, shift to surface work that still moves the business forward:
Clear low-stakes decisions. Approvals, small budget calls, vendor follow-ups. Knock out 10 things that have been sitting in Slack.
Tighten one process. Document something you keep explaining. Write the onboarding doc. Record a Loom. Turn repetition into leverage.
Do the ugly admin work. Expense reports. Contract reviews. The stuff you avoid when you have momentum — do it now.
Prep for tomorrow. When you do have focus time, you'll want a clear run. Set up tomorrow's win today.
None of this is heroic. But it's real progress. And it preserves your energy for when conditions improve.
The Trap: Guilt Over "Lost Productivity"
Founders treat every day like it should be equally productive. That's not how humans work, and it's definitely not how parents work.
A snow day isn't a failure. It's a constraint. The best operators know how to stay in motion within the constraints, not pretend they don't exist.
You're not behind. You're adjusting.
Speaking of adjusting: if you're buried under Q1 chaos and need a clearer path forward, let's both bundle up and talk about your project. Grab 30 minutes this week: https://calendly.com/fuzzywenzelconsulting/30min
This week: when deep work isn't available, choose shallow progress over paralysis.