Conquering the Chaos Part III – Creating a Family Schedule that Works

Conquering the Chaos Part III - Creating a Family Schedule that Works

Congratulations on making it this far in our Conquering the Chaos series.  This is the final installment of our three part series and before getting into the details of making a family schedule let’s recap what we have done so far.

If you have followed along in Part I and Part II in our Conquering the Chaos series you should have the following things completed:

• An inventory of how and where your family spends their time
• A good understanding of the bottlenecks, habits, and patterns that are causing problems
• A list or understanding of things you want to change
• A list or understanding of the things working well
• What areas or activities are causing the most stress in your life as well as which areas are consuming the most time
• What areas of your life need more time
• What areas or buckets of your family life that are the most enjoyable
• A Family Life Vision - A well thought out articulated statement of how you want your family life to look and feel

We will use all of these things to create a solid family schedule, so if you haven’t already go back to Part I and Part II and work through them before continuing on with this segment.

Setting Anchor Points

To finalize your family schedule you need to begin by setting anchor points to your day.  These are the ideal start and end points to your day in which everything fits in between.  Using the family life vision you wrote in Part II as a guide, set an ideal start time of your day and an ideal ending time of your day.  For example, let’s say you would love to start your day no earlier than 6:00am and be in bed everything night with lights out by 10:00pm.  6:00am would be your start time and 10:00pm would be your end time and all the family life bucket activities need to fit within these two times.  These times are the anchors to your day and need to be realistic.  If you are unrealistic in setting these anchors then your family schedule will soon start to fail after implementation, so put some thought into them and be sure to keep in mind whether you are a morning person or a night owl. 

Establishing Priorities

Okay now that you have the anchor points to your day set, it is time to start establishing priorities.  This part may be difficult for a lot of people, but without it you will find yourself and family scattered and overwhelmed. 

Using the family life vision statement you created in Part II as well as questions you answered in the Family Life Bucket exercise, you need to go through all the family life buckets and sort them into three categories - High Priority, Medium Priority, and Low Priority.

High priority buckets are buckets in your life that mean the most to us or are “requirements of living”.  These are the things we do throughout our day that are either necessities for living like eating, showering, homework, or that are intrinsically important to our family.  These are the “must do’s” and “want to do’s” of your day.

The medium priority buckets in your life are the “should do’s” of your day.  These are the things that we may or may not enjoy doing, but have to be done to avoid negative consequences and to function normally in life.  For example, house cleaning for many people may fall into this category.  It isn’t something we must do to survive and isn’t necessarily something we enjoy doing, but if it isn’t done can result in unhealthy living conditions and distractions to the family life.  Other things that may fall into this category are things like laundry, bill paying, lawn work, or visits to the dentist. 

The low priority buckets of your life are things that are not critical to everyday living and you do if you have time or energy.   For some people this may be things like making beds, washing windows, or fixing a squeaky door hinge.   These are the buckets and activities that we will assign the least amount of time in our schedule. 

Creating a Family Schedule that Works

Now that you have all of your family activities and buckets prioritized it is time to put everything into a family schedule.

To do this you will need some type of blank weekly schedule and a pencil.  You can use our family schedule printable or create your own.  Just be sure to have one with all seven days and one in which you have room to write. 

To begin, start with your highest priority items and your anchor times and go through each day assigning a block of time for each high priority item.  Much of how you allocate time for each high priority activity will depend on the hard points in your schedule such as when school starts or when you need to be at work.  To avoid making this step too tedious, start by just blocking off chunks of time (see the weekend example in our printable) for each high priority item rather than trying to assign specific time slots.  Over time you can refine the schedule and make it more detailed by assigning specific time slots if you need them to help you stay on track.  Once you schedule in the high priority items, go through and fill in your schedule for the medium priority items and the low priority items.  When you are done you should have a schedule with time each week or day for each family life bucket on your list. 

Sticking to the Schedule

Now that you have your family schedule created here are some tips to help you stay on track.

• Post the schedule in a central location so that you MUST look at it every day.
• Add reviewing the family schedule to your daily routines.
• Work on anticipating disruptions and managing disruptions so that you can stay on track
• Don’t be afraid to change the schedule if you find something isn’t working. Most if not all families will have to make some changes to the schedule and this is okay!
• Use the family schedule as a guide and learn to be flexible when it comes to making changes and deviating from the schedule from time to time. Letting the kids stay up an hour later occasionally isn’t going to ruin the schedule just as long as you don’t let it become a habit.
• Practice delegating, deleting, and simplifying certain activities so that you can fit everything in at a comfortable pace.

Remember, there will be days where no amount of scheduling and planning will help.  On days like these, just accept the disruptions for the day while being careful not to use the bad days as an excuse to abandon the schedule.  

Good luck!

Conquering the Chaos Part II – Organizing Your Life into Buckets

Now that you have gone through Part I of our Conquering the Chaos segment and have a time inventory of a typical week, it’s time to begin to understand what all that means by sorting the activities and tasks that occupy your days into buckets, so you can more easily understand where you spend your time, where you want to spend more time, and things in your life that are just right.

Begin this exercise by printing off the life bucket printable and begin sorting all the tasks and activities from your family life inventory into one of the appropriate buckets:  School, Extra-Curricular, Household Cleaning, Laundry, Household Maintenance & Repairs, Lawn Work, Volunteer Commitments, Faith Commitments, Administrative, Meal Planning, Household Finances, Fun Stuff, Personal, Auto/Transportation, Family Commitments, and Other.

For example, let’s say you look at your family life inventory for Sunday and found you did the following things (click picture to enlarge):

You would then go through this list and sort each of these items into the appropriate bucket making sure to include the time as well so that your bucket list looks something like this (click picture to enlarge):

Go through your family life inventory day by day and add each activity to the bucket list.  For tasks you do every day, for example making dinner, enter it once in the Meal Planning and Prep bucket with an average time from the week it took you to plan and make dinner. 

Once you have gone through your family life inventory and added everything to your bucket list, then go through and add anything you didn’t do the week you took your family life inventory but know you need to do.  For example, you may have done a family life inventory during a week in which you didn’t need to mow the lawn, but you know it is something that is typically done, so go ahead and add it to your bucket list along with a time estimate.  You want to have as complete a list as possible.

Understanding What It All Means

Now that you have your life divided into buckets, it is time to understand and analyze what it all means.  To do this, go through your bucket list and ask yourself these questions:

What buckets or activities are taking the most time?

On what buckets or activities should we be spending more of our time?

What buckets or activities are causing the most stress?

What buckets or activities are the most enjoyable?

What buckets or activities are the least enjoyable?

Starting With the End in Mind

Now that you have a good picture of what your current family life looks like, it is time to spend some time on what you WANT your family life to look.  This is a mental image or written expression of what you want your family life to look like most of the time.  The point of this exercise is to articulate how you want your family life to be by asking yourself these questions:

What things do I want to spend less time doing?

What things do I want to spend more time doing?

I want our family life to be less………?

I want our family life to be more…….?

I personally want to be more…..?

Here is an example to help better understand:

I want to stop rushing and having to yell at my kids to hurry up.  I want to have time to exercise a few days a week and to sit down in the evening and spend time reading to my kids, playing games with my kids, and enjoying my family rather than running around getting things done.

I want a clean house, but minimize the amount of time I spend cleaning.  I want to have all the clutter, toys, and stuff picked up every night before bed so that I don’t have to look at it in the morning.

I want to know in advance what I am making for dinner and I want the dinner to be healthy.  I want to spend a maximum of 90 minutes each day making and cleaning up after dinner.

I want to find more time on the weekends just spending time with my family rather than running to soccer games and sports events.  I want to find time to do the things we say we want to do, but never seem to find the time.

I want to stop paying bills late and want to spend a maximum of 60 minutes each week doing bills and financial work.

I want the kids to be in bed by 9 PM every night.

I want to be in bed by 10 PM every night and get up an hour before the kids every morning

I want to find more time for date nights with my husband and nights out with friends

I personally want to be less stressed, less worried, and more fulfilled.

Remember no family or family life is perfect.  We all have good days, bad days, and points in our lives where no amount of planning analyzing, or preparation can make better.  The point of this exercise is to articulate a vision and goal not make yourself perfect.  Sometimes things are out of our control but that shouldn’t be a reason to not try at all.

Once you get through this exercise save all your notes along with the notes from Conquering the Chaos - Part I for next month’s segment - Conquering the Chaos Part III - Creating a Family Schedule that Works. 

Good luck!

Conquering the Chaos Part I – Taking an Inventory of Your Life

With the start of a new school year we thought it fitting to take some time to talk about how to create a family schedule and routine.  Most families start out with good intentions to create a more harmonious family life by vowing to cut back on the running, stress, and general chaos of everyday life, and for a variety of reasons abandon the commitment and plan shortly into the new school year partly out of exhaustion and partly out of an inability to overcome the hiccups along the way. 

With this in mind we are beginning a three part series on Conquering the Chaos.  Over the next three monthly newsletters we will tackle three aspects of creating a sound family schedule - Taking an Inventory of Your Current Family Life, Organizing Your Family Life into Buckets, and Creating a Family Schedule that Works.  By dividing the topic up into three segments we hope families will have a chance to take some time working on each aspect and be ready to move on to the next topic the following month.  So let’s get started!

Taking an Inventory of Your Current Family Life

The secret to any good family schedule is to understand in detail the current situation and being honest about what your family needs and wants to change.  This is the hardest part for many families because it takes the most time and often forces parents and kids to face some of the reasons behind the current craziness of their lives.  Without this step though, you run the risk of not addressing the root causes of your chaotic lives and eventually “fixing” the wrong things. 

Understanding Where You Spend Your Time

Have you ever gotten to the end of a long day and asked yourself, “What did I do all day?”  This happens to many families who have become overwhelmed with the general craziness of life.  Parents know they did something, but their accomplishments and efforts have become overshadowed by the chaos of the day and for the life of them, they can’t remember anything they did throughout the day.  To get a true handle on your schedule and the current state of your family life, you first need to take an inventory of where you spend your time and how long everything takes.  In essence you are doing a mini time study of your family’s habits, schedules, and time so you can better understand where your time goes, the bottlenecks, poor habits, and patterns of your family life. 

To get this step started you will need a copy of the Family Life Time Inventory for both parents, one week of your time, and a little dedication and persistence.  Begin by printing off the family life time inventory for yourself and spouse.  You also may want to print off additional copies to post on your refrigerator or keep in your briefcase or desk at work. 

The time inventory has sections for each day of the week and is further divided by morning, afternoon, and evening sections.   Begin by choosing a week that is fairly typical of your everyday life and then begin making notes each day about the things you do during the morning, afternoon, and evening.  Be sure to keep enough detail so you can actually pinpoint the specific tasks you did as well as how long they took, but not so much detail that it becomes burdensome to keep up.  Also be sure to keep any notes regarding bottlenecks, habits, or patterns you have noticed.  Feel free to expand any notes or thoughts you have on the back of the paper. 

If you work outside the home, it will be your choice as to whether or not to include details on your work activities.  If you just want to keep notes on your family life activities during the day while at work, be sure to have one handy at work.  Some examples of things you may do while at the office are, making doctor’s appointments, picking up birthday presents on your lunch hour, or updating your work calendar with the kids’ activity schedule. 

Understanding the Bottlenecks, Habits, and Patterns

After a week of doing the time inventory you should begin to notice bottlenecks, habits, and patterns to your family life.  For example, are the mornings crazy because too many people are using the bathroom at once?  Is the TV distracting you and the kids in the evening?  Is your toddler having meltdowns every time you try and leave the house?  It is important to understand these because these things are often the culprit of a disruptive family routine and sometimes can easily be changed or fixed with minor tweaks.  So take some time to make notes on these things and experimenting with making some changes.  We will discuss them further in Step III - Creating a Schedule that Works.

Evaluating What You Want to Change and What Works Well

Your last assignment is to sit down as a family and discuss the things you want to change and the things that are working well.  For example, some parents may want to make it possible to get more sleep for themselves and their children.  Another example may be to sit down more often as a family for dinner.  Just as important as noting the things you want to change is making note of the things that are working well.  For example, Friday night family nights may be something that are currently working well and shouldn’t be changed.  Another example may be parents taking time every evening to read to their children.  If it is something you enjoy and something that isn’t causing any current stress to the family then it is probably something you are doing well and shouldn’t be changed.  Use our printable, a notepad, or better yet a table top flip chart (kids LOVE these) to make your notes and document your conversation.  Save everything for use in Parts II and III.

If your kids are old enough it is important to do this step as a family.  Put one of your kids in charge of making the notes and be sure to give everyone a chance to voice their opinions and concerns. 

Good luck!