More On Training: "What's The Plan?"

"Every incomplete promise, commitment and agreement saps your strength, because it blocks your momentum, inhibits your ability to move forward, to progress and improve. Incomplete things keep calling you back to the past to take care of them.” ~ The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson

Last week I shared some thoughts about working to train my kids on the how to's of some basic household chores. Today's post is a follow-up (by request), to give you some thoughts about another area of training we are working on in tandem with the chore training.

This particular activity is something my husband does daily and is great at, while it is something I fully resist but know that I need as part of my daily routine. Naturally, I see the importance of teaching our kids about its value. So what is it that's so simple anyone can do it – but few will take the time to make it part of their daily routine?

Making a list. That's it. Simple, huh?

There is power in making a list. For years, I have tried to convince myself (and my husband) that having a mental list floating around in my head was just as good as a physical, handwritten list. NOT!! Invariably important items get overlooked, forgotten or abandoned altogether on my mental list. I mean, I'm pretty good at keeping up with most things, but it's true – I'm not as productive as I could be and things do have a way of falling through the cracks. By not having a written list to remind me of my priorities for each day it's easy to allow the urgent to overtake the important.

So how does making a list bring me to the quote I've shared above? Why is it so important to me that I would teach it and implement it with my children? I realized this week how not having a daily list of tasks (you might call them priorities or goals), has allowed me to be easily distracted from what needs my attention and focus today. Many times I'm distracted by the tasks I've left incomplete in the past.

The incomplete tasks that got abandoned weren't unimportant at the time they were deleted from my mental list, but somehow they got overwritten by the urgent and then forgotten for a time. Simply stated, what I've left undone in the past renders me less effective in completing what I need to be focused on TODAY because yesterday's work (or last week's – or yes, even things dated 2009!!) keeps calling me back to take care of it.

Teaching my kids to prioritize their day and their tasks is a skill that not only serves a useful purpose now – but also helps to establish a habit that will serve them well as they move on to college and adulthood. By establishing a habit of making a daily list in the evening prior to going to bed, it allows them to have a preview of the day ahead and to have input. To make the list practical and realistic, each child writes down three to five of the most important tasks they personally need to accomplish the next day. You can make this age appropriate for your own children, but because my kids are older – they do not get to list items like, “make the bed” or “brush teeth”. Those things are a given! After making their list we work together on prioritizing each item, now they have a preview of what to expect the following day.

My kids are always asking me, "So, what's the plan?"

Now, they can see for themselves.

(Goal setting goes hand in hand with the list and there are some pretty jaw-dropping statistics about the connection between people who not only set goals, but who also write them down - that's a post for another day.)