I expected our interview to be about how to lay low and still convince our kids to homeschool our grandchildren one day. Instead, it was much more of a reminder of why we should homeschool in the first place.
I don’t know any homeschoolers who don’t have a lot to do.
Cooking, housekeeping, kids’ activities, church and homeschool group responsibilities, and outside work on top of parenting and teaching can keep you really, really busy.
No matter what your situation, you have a lot of tasks to manage–possibly more than you’ve had at any time in your life. If you haven’t found a way of managing your workload efficiently, your tasks may get in the way of your homeschooling.
This week we will focus on managing our to-do’s so they don’t manage us.
Want to watch this challenge on video instead? Scroll to the bottom.
Your Challenge for This Week
#1 Discuss task approaches and choose one to try
All work is managed with a to-do list, whether that list is in your head, on your calendar, or in a fancy app. But just as with curriculum, there are many, many kinds of to-do lists for many different kinds of homeschoolers.
Older children can (and probably should) be included in a discussion of managing tasks. They will be managing to-do’s on their own soon and teaching them how is a wonderful life skill. However, they may want to use a different approach than mom or dad because they have different personalities and workloads. The best approach to try is one that isn’t wildly different than what you’re doing now.
#2 Acquire the materials you need and set them up.
If you’re going to use a notebook and a pen or your calendar, you’re good to go. But if you want a new planner or an app, for example, you’ll need to get them and prep them for use. If you are going to use forms you download, you’ll need to print, copy, and probably 3-hole punch them.
Think about how you will use your approach when you’re away from home. Do you need a small notebook / datebook for your purse? Should you download an app for your phone? How will you make sure that tasks don’t fall through the cracks?
#3 Add a small number of tasks to your list and work on them.
Getting Things Done emphasizes the importance of adding absolutely everything you need or want to do to your list and later deciding that some of the tasks are someday/maybe tasks. Most homeschoolers could come up with thousands of tasks in no time, quickly producing overwhelm.
Whatever approach or list type you use, I recommend against adding every conceivable thing to your list right now. First, look at the upcoming quarter. Is there anything you need to start working on now? Second, look at the upcoming month. If you need to get started on something that is due in the next 30 days, add it to your list. At this point, don’t add things that you’d just like to do, but actually need to. You can add the want-to’s to your list as you find your managing your must-do’s. Third, add tasks that you have to complete this week. Finally, add things you need to get done today.
This may be the one list you work from every day or it may be the main list that you use to create a short list of tasks you want to accomplish today. Remember, that if you have a routine, you don’t have to add regular occurring tasks to your list.
#4 Continue working on your tasks and discuss your likes and dislikes.
I really enjoy buying planners, apps, and pens as well as spending time setting up new systems. That’s why I wrote a year-long series on living productively. But the point of this week’s challenge is to get more of your tasks done, so we have to get busy! Keep working on managing your to-do’s and take time to regularly discuss what’s working and what’s not.
I would love to hear about what you’re trying and whether it’s working for you. Discussing the pros and cons of your task management approach helps you remember that you’re not failing. You just need to keep working out a way to get things done that works for you–even if that means having to change it up frequently so you don’t get bored.
My friend, Tom Dixon, guest posts today. I think you will come away with new understanding, motivation, and tools for achieving your goals as I did. Please visit his excellent blog, Monday is Good.
I’ve been trying to lose weight for years. Around the first of each new year, I’d set lofty goals around how many pounds I’d drop. I’d track everything I ate and how much I exercised.
However, instead of getting thinner, I’ve ended every year for the last 20 heavier than I started. Those big goals in January were forgotten by March.
That is, up until last year.
I still have more to go, but I ended 2013 a little more than 35 pounds lighter. That’s just the part the scale says. What feels even better is:
I’m completely off my asthma medication, and am taking half the dosage of another prescription
I actually own articles of clothing that say “medium”
I went from a 42″ jean size to a 36″ – I haven’t been in a 36 since high school!
I can jog for 30 minutes (up from 30 seconds) and plan to do a 5k in the Spring
I have seventy-five times the energy I’ve ever had
So, what was different?
I got some help.
That’s it. I recognized that I didn’t have the necessary skills or knowledge to accomplish my goal. Fortunately for me, I found someone who did. That was the big difference. In the past I’ve always gone at it alone, but this time I started working with a personal trainer.
I’m not sharing this because you care about my weight loss. I’m quite sure you don’t. I’m not trying to get everyone to hire a personal trainer. However, I am asking you to identify that one goal you keep chasing.
What do you keep trying to do, but can’t quite get done?
Get out of debt or control your spending
Change careers or get a promotion
Lose weight
Improve relationships with your spouse or children
Manage your time better
I coach people to identify the “why” behind their goals. It’s only when you understand the reason behind what you want to achieve that you stand a chance of succeeding. Assuming that piece is in place, the quickest way to accomplish any of these common goals is to find someone succeeding in that area.
For me, that was a 23-year-old punk at the Y. For you, it may be a career coach or marriage counselor. You’re looking for someone who can:
Tell you what to do, and when. I didn’t have the time or inclination to learn about strength training. In fact, there was no place I felt any less comfortable than at the gym. When you get help, you skip the learning curve and go right into solution mode.
Help you set goals. This is critical to make sure you are both on the same page. I’m working on being able to bench press 135lbs, do a pull-up (yes, just one), and run a 5k in less than 30 minutes. The work I do with my trainer is to support these specific goals.
Keep you accountable. I probably would have quit about 12 times already if I didn’t know I had to show up at 8PM on Tuesday night to workout. If I slack off on my diet or don’t do my homework, then I’m going to struggle.
Take your money. Seriously – you want the kind of help you pay for. When you pay for something it becomes a priority. Free advice is okay, but generally won’t move you forward. Both sides need some skin in the game.
I’m hoping you have already set some solid goals for 2014. If not, check out my goal setting guide(which includes a worksheet) to get you going.
Who are you going to ask for help in 2014? Do it.
Tom Dixon, CPIM, is a demand planning expert and experienced career coach. He is passionate about building processes and teams to accomplish great things. Tom founded Monday Is Good to leverage his “in the trenches” experience with career transition to help others look forward to Monday. He believes that work should be fulfilling, energizing, and a source of joy in your life.
One of the things that appealed to me about homeschooling was that I wouldn’t have to have a schedule. I relished the idea of getting up when I felt like it. I also tried doing laundry and dishes and teaching when I felt like it when I started homeschooling. The problem was I didn’t feel like it very often! Something needed to change or I felt I would have to send my kids to school.
Discovering Routines
What changed is that I came across some emails by a woman named Marla Cilley — aka FLYLady. She gave me an alternative to a rigid schedule in her morning and evening routines. It seems so obvious that life runs more smoothly when you have an organized pattern of activities, but it wasn’t to me. The impact of loading and running the dishwasher each evening was huge. So was scheduling errands and doctor’s appointments on the same day of the week. There were many other benefits.
But when it came to school work, I was very much influenced by Managers of Their Homes. I wished I could be as super organized as Teri Maxwell so I initially created a packed schedule to manage my growing family. Then I was very frustrated that I never EVER followed it to a tee. I returned to a routine for schoolwork, but then managed to take the routine to an extreme, too. Today I use a fluid combination of a schedule and a routine, helped along by my children keeping me accountable. In other words, “Mom, are we going to start school?”
Your Challenge for This Week
#1 You and Older Children Track Your Routine or Schedule
The biggest mistake I have made where routines and schedules are concerned is trying to make too many changes at once. Rather than trying to plan the ideal routine, see what you’re doing right now. I really dislike time tracking in general, but an overview of what you’re actually doing is a very good idea. Older kids can definitely participate in this as time management is an increasingly important skill in our culture. Best not to let them record what you and others are “actually” doing in their opinions. 😉 You can track on paper listing the hours of the day on the left and your basic activities on the right. If you have subscribed to Psychowith6, you will have access to subscriber freebies that includes a form for tracking your routine this week.
#2 Keep Tracking and Choose One Schedule Change to Try
The book, The House That Cleans Itself, taught me to use what’s already happening to my advantage. Let me give you an example to clarify. Let’s say that you’d really like to do family devotions after dinner. But you see from tracking your schedule of actual activities that you tend to watch movies as a family instead. You could a) watch Christian or biblical films at that time, b) discuss secular movies from a biblical worldview, looking up verses, or c) you could choose a better time for family devotions. Trying to enforce more than one schedule change will likely frustrate your family and drain your energy. Pray about the change that would have the biggest impact. You have plenty of time to make more changes as this one becomes second nature.
#3 Keep Tracking and Plan a Time to Evaluate Your Schedule Change
You may not want to keep tracking (I get it!), but the days fluctuate and you may see some important patterns that have to be addressed. Implement your one change (older kids can choose an individual change also) and put a note on your calendar or use the reminder function of a smart phone to assess how well it’s working. This is the step so many of us leave out. Assessment keeps changes in the problem-solving realm, rather than the blaming realm. If it’s working, wonderful. Discussing it with the kids (if it impacts them) will teach them how to problem solve and manage time. If it’s not, it’s important to determine why not and brainstorm potential solutions. Don’t give up assuming that you’re just not organized.
#4 Keep Tracking and Choose a Schedule Format
Continue tracking today and through the weekend if you’d like. Save this information for next summer when we will be working on your homeschooling schedule in depth. Decide on how to keep your schedule or routine visible. I have my HomeRoutines app on my phone, a schedule in my homeschool planner and the kids’, and I have it posted in the kitchen and school room using magnetic frames. Are you getting the idea that I don’t want to forget? One change I plan to make is to acknowledge that the schedule/routine can be regularly updated. I have the file on Word. It doesn’t take much to update it and reprint.
I would love to know the one change you’re implementing this week!
Francis Wade is guest posting today. I was a fan of his time-management novel and he became a fan of A Year of Living Productively. If you’re a busy person, I think you’ll be rewarded by reading.
Top college students and CEO’s share a few things in common. They both lead time-starved lives which are filled with short-term deliverables. Furthermore, in both professions, the penalties for failure are high. A meeting with a shareholder that is forgotten can cost a CEO his/her job, while a college student can flunk out of school by handing in a term paper only five minutes late.
Some other symptoms these very hard-working people share are:
– a tendency to give up personal time to do work
– a need to be available 24×7 to respond to emergencies
– the real likelihood of skipping meals, sometimes without realizing it
– having the experience of moving from one thing to another without having time to breathe
– finding they have not time to “do nothing”
– a restless feeling when, after graduation or retirement, the number of time demands is radically reduced
– a willingness to work at extreme hours, either late at night or early in the morning
– a difficulty in maintaining a balanced life
Obviously, this kind of life isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Nor should it be. Those who choose to live this way are part of an exclusive club whose members place results at the forefront, while everything else follows behind. The demands they place on themselves are tremendous.
What are the techniques they use to cope with the pressures they face each day? My research shows that their primary tool is their personal calendar as shown by the following video which shows a student building her weekly schedule in real time.
Notice how packed her schedule is with activity, and the care she takes to include items like eating and bathing that she’s likely to forget. She obviously takes her college success seriously and isn’t willing to leave her schedule to chance.
Here on the Psychowith6 blog, Melanie did a monumental job in 2013 of trying out new time management techniques and sharing the results. In week 11 she wrote a post about her experience using a daily calendar entitled “Could Scheduling Tasks Help You Get More Done?“
Her positive findings echo those discovered in academic research performed by separate researchers such as Dezhi Wu, Christine Bartholomew and E.J. Masicampo/Roy Baumeister. Their separate studies have shown that maintaining a schedule of activity results in greater productivity; notably, the first two researchers did their work with college students.
Furthermore, there is anecdotal evidence gathered by Mark Horstman at manager-tools.com that the vast majority of executives he’s worked with use detailed calendars such as the one developed in the video. He has completed a number of podcasts on time management which can be found here, repeating this finding in a number of episodes.
All the evidence, however, doesn’t mean that you should use this technique. There are other alternatives.
Another very popular approach is to place most tasks on a list, while only using the calendar for appointments. (The only other alternative – to use memory – is widely held to be ineffective.) Incidentally, Melanie has also experimented with using a To-Do list and found that it was difficult to be effective without one.
The key here is to understand that there are benefits to each approach and that there’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all. You are the only one who can decide how best to proceed. Here are some guidelines.
1) Never rely on memory
Both list and schedule-based approaches are built on the philosophy that trying to use your memory to manage the demands on your time is a poor practice. While it may work for a teenager, it fails miserably when the teen becomes an adult with a wide range of responsibilities. When the adult enters middle-age and his/her ability to recall short-term memories diminishes, the problem only gets worse, making the use of memory the least effective technique (although perhaps the most common.)
2) Start by making lists
If you are making the transition from using memory, it’s best to start by learning to use a single list. It’s a relatively easy new habit to learn, although it might become hard to manage as you get busier. This happens because lists require constant checking throughout the day, and when they grow past a certain length, this routine becomes tedious.
The remedy is to find a way to avoid having to look at the entire list, and instead focus on a subset. There are a number of techniques that one can use, but the first approach that people try is to tag or categorize each task in some way, and then use the tag as a way to filter the list.
There are any number of tags that can be used, but some popular categories include physical location (e.g. home vs. office,) person (e.g. spouse, boss, coach) and equipment required (e.g. desktop computer, printer, scanner.) The choice of tags is up to each person – there is no perfect system. In general, however, people choose tags that represent their scarcest resources.
3) Upgrade to a single calendar
If, like a CEO or college student, you are time-starved, then you might consider a major upgrade: using your calendar instead of lists.
A calendar of tasks differs from a list of tasks in two important ways. When we use a calendar we are adding three pieces of information, in a single step. By placing a task on a calendar we are giving it a start time/date and an expected duration. We also show, in graphic form, the relationship of that task to all the others around it. A calendar is a rich source of information.
For CEO’s, college students and other time-starved professionals, this information is critical to have in front of them as they attempt to make the most of their scarcest resource – time. Their calendars are usually electronic and mobile, synchronized between several platforms including the cloud.
For them, their calendar is their central point of control and they only use lists in conjunction with their calendar in the cases where it’s a practical add-on: such as a grocery list, or agenda.
To repeat the point – this particular approach isn’t for everyone. It’s not easy to learn and it requires constant practice and a high degree of discipline. New, fancy technology can make the learning curve a bit easier, but the underlying practices to be mastered remain the same.
This challenge reinforces the point – one size simply doesn’t fit all. Each of us must choose the approach that fits our particular needs and consists of habits that we can learn successfully. The decision to use one approach or another is up to you, and hopefully you can use these insights to make a choice that allows you to live a life that’s as productive as it can be.
Francis Wade is the author of Bill’s Im-Perfect Time Management Adventure, (http://perfect.mytimedesign.com) and a consultant who started Framework Consulting Inc., after leaving AT&T Bell Labs in 1993. Today, he lives in Jamaica, inspired by the differences he’s discovered between productivity in the Caribbean and North America. It’s led him to continue the learning he started as a student at Cornell University, where he completed Bachelors and Masters degrees in the discipline of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering. He’s been a proponent of Time Management 2.0, a robust set of ideas that are challenging the conventional wisdom in the area of time-based productivity. When he is not working, Francis is an enthusiastic triathlete.
There is no more powerful habit for an organized homeschool than devotional time. We won’t find the peace we want in a pretty bin, but in a relationship with the Prince of Peace.
Personal Devotions
I did not devote time to prayer and Bible reading until I was very pregnant with my second son. At that time, I attended a Becky Tirabassi seminar as part of a Women of Faith conference. Becky told story after story of answered prayer and beseeched us to make an “appointment with the King” every day.
At the time, sad to say, I was on staff at my church, but had never read the entire Bible. When Becky asked anyone who was fully committed to keeping that important appointment, to stand up, I did. I bought Becky’s Change Your Life Daily Bible and her My Partner Prayer Notebook and I was on a personal mission. (Becky shares her philosophy in Let Prayer Change Your Life.) I was so motivated to read the Bible through in a year that I even did my reading and prayer time in the hospital after giving birth. I don’t remember anything I read, but I kept my appointment!
Couple Devotions
I made time for personal devotions that did change my life, but I made a big mistake. I didn’t include my husband in the process. He felt left out of my new habit of Scripture reading and devoted time to prayer. He felt better when I bought him his own Daily Bible. We have changed Bibles since then, but we continue to have a shared habit of reading Scripture in the morning.
Christian homeschoolers usually do a great job of teaching the Bible as a part of their curriculum. In our busy lives, it can be harder to find time to pray and read Scripture as a family. We’ve been inconsistent over the years in using formal programs that require supplies for fun activities and more successful reading missionary biographies in the evenings or doing a short devotion in the mornings. My husband will read Scripture and then lead discussion of it, use a regular devotional book, or will join us for our school Bible time. He is not one who likes to be locked into doing the same thing at the same time. We have used Character Building for Families the most consistently because it’s short, meaty, and requires no preparation.
The most powerful family prayer time approach we have used is to each pray about something we are thankful for, something we are sorry for, and something we need help with. We have really been able to feel in touch with our kids’ hearts. Many times I have been upset about something the kids have done earlier in the day, only to be moved by their confession of it in prayer and their request for help from the Holy Spirit to avoid a similar error.
Yet another family devotional practice that has been meaningful for us is to save Christmas cards and pray over a few of them each day. We have the opportunity to share with the children more about family and friends they haven’t met or don’t know well, and to experience answers to prayer, too. We often hear from the prayed-for family soon after we’ve lifted them up to the Lord.
Your Challenge for This Week
#1 Establish a time, place, and an approach to personal devotions
You don’t have to find the perfect time and place, but decide on a time when you are most likely to be able to meet with the Lord undisturbed during this season of your life. Now that I don’t have babies, I have personal devotions in the morning before the kids are up. I get comfortable in a recliner with a great reading light. In the winter, I snuggle under a faux fur blanket. I often have something to drink as well. I want my time with the Lord to be the most appealing part of my day.
In years past, I have had devotional times before bed, in the middle of the night while nursing, and at lunch time. I’ve been in bed, on the couch, and even in my car to connect with God. The time and place that make devotions consistent is what you should choose — not what someone else is doing.
I am currently reading through the Bible using the John MacArthur study Bible, read a variety of daily devotionals (both print and digital) as I feel led, and use Pocket Prayer Pro to organize my prayer time. I’ve changed how I spend this time with God many, many times. The ingredients that I feel are essential are prayer and reading Scripture. I have enjoyed using organized prayer calendars for my husband, children, extended family, and pastors. When I am going through a challenging time, I have been greatly blessed by Streams in the Desert. Before you buy something new, see what you have that haven’t read and just start.
Remember that if your devotions get interrupted, the Lord Himself has allowed it.
#2 Establish a time, place, and an approach to couple devotions.
Talk and pray with your spouse about the best way to spend time with the Lord together. Could you pray together in the morning, on the phone over lunch, or before bed? Would you like to use an organized prayer calendar or a couples devotion? Would you like to read through Scripture together and discuss it? Again, you may already own materials that you could use. Allow your spouse to lead in choosing the approach that is most comfortable for him.
#3 Establish a time, place, and an approach to family devotions.
Connecting family devotions to established routines is most likely to be effective. Could you pray and read Scripture at meal times? Perhaps bedtime is a better option. If you’d like to do devotions that require pre-planning, when could this planning be done and who could be responsible for it? Pray for wisdom about this. The most important thing is to cover the process with grace and be willing to make adjustments until you find what works for your family.
Be sure to share what works for you and your family. You can inspire others with similar situations.
I’m a Christian psychologist turned homeschooling mother of six. My life can be a little crazy, so I look for sanity-saving ideas to use and share. I hope you’ll read my About page to learn more.
