So, we have i have lived for 28 years, been married for 7, had 4 kids and never had a schedule. All that has now changed. In light of some recent thoughts that I will share with you I have decided to come up with a family and person rhythm. While I feel like i was able to survive without a schedule i feel like this will be a much more productive way of accomplishing our goals as a family especially on the macro level. when i say macro level i mean things that are on a week and bigger type basis.
so this is how we created our rhythm. we wrote down all of our values on little pieces of paper. there were a lot of them and some of them were written numerous times depending on how frequent we wanted them to happen. There were 2 different criteria for things that got written down.
1. Things that we consider personal or family values that will not happen unless they are scheduled on a weekly or monthly basis.
2. Things that we don't necessarily need reminders of but unless they are planned out ahead of time will conflict with us being able to accomplish things in category "1."
that is why you will not see breakfast or lunch on the schedule but you will see racquetball. There are also some things that I put on the calendar where the goal was to accomplish more specific goals within the normal task. for example with my work days i now have specific days that are carved out for organization and research instead of just doing whatever seems the most urgent.
this is the beta version. i'm sure there will be some changes and i must admit that when we first put this on our computers it felt slightly claustrophobic but i think it brings some much needed changes. i would be interested in hearing comments from others about things that they have incorporated that they find useful.
a few notes on navigation:
1. i recommend viewing it on the day view.
2. in order to find out my notes and specific purpose on most of the items just click on its title and my notes will come up.
3. check out the first sunday of every month. that is when we will have our monthly "remember" meeting.
You can view my calendar at:
http://ical.mac.com/teamcrawford/Crawford%20Rhythm
For mac users:
You can subscribe to my calendar at:
webcal://ical.mac.com/teamcrawford/Crawford%20Rhythm.ics
3 comments:
weeeeeoooooowwwww!!! Schedules!!! YAY!!! Kids NEED this kind of structure. Good job.
1) your "remembering" thing... why is it once a month? I really think it should be a bigger priority than that. Why can't you just make sure to have sit-down dinner together every night and have these talks then? Can forgiveness really wait a month? Should talks about sex? I definitely commend your attention to the importance of this sort of thing, but I think issues could be forgotten between the meetings because you'll think "we'll deal with that at the next rememberance meeting."
2) so, you each have a date with one kid a week? or did i miss something? doesn't that mean one kid could go 2 weeks without a date with either parent? do you have a rotating roster or something?
3) i LOVE that you and kami have date night.
4) tully's ben? tully's?!?! Ok, ok, you only get to go there because of the free wifi though. Tully's. pfffft. There's GOT to be a mom n pop coffee shop with free wifi in kirkland. Tully's could kill you. They don't care about you.
5)so, if I subscribe to your calendar can I pencil myself in?
6) does Dove have a more detailed schedule? She would benefit from one. Say "reading 9-10, math 10-11" blah blah blah. ALSO, the most recent studies are showing that kids do best with 15 minutes of "unstructured play" every hour. Recess, if you will. Not that you'll be slavedriving her, but just so you know.
Amy & I do (or try) some similar stuff. Would love to compare notes over coffee sometime.
rainbow, here are my responses
as far as your preface is probably disagree that kids NEED this type of structure.
1. i think that all of the things that i mention should be dealt with on an ongoing basis but the point is that they do not. this meeting is meant to address all of the things that "slip between the crack" and make sure that they are brought up. in a perfect world we would not forget anything and these things would be dealt with on an ongoing basis but since we do forget things we have meeting whose title and purpose is to remember.
2. yes, rotating roster. one lucky kid will be chosen each week. actually it will probably whoevers' turn it is or if there is a special occasion i will do it with that kid. that does mean that one kid can go 2 weeks without a date in the exclusive sense. but us crawfords were raised in a bible college context where group dating is encouraged and these happen all the time.
3. yeah, this has been pretty cool. the biggest enemy to this has been consistent childcare.
4. tully's is the obvious choice for the following reasons: they have great alternatives to coffee drinks since i don't like coffee (like matcha tea, yerba mate, and milkshakes), i get 20% off by buying gift certificates, i get an additional .50 cents off each drink by having a special card, free wifi, and all of the drink cups are fully compostable.
5. the calendars are in a read only format
6. dove will have a much more detailed schedule that we are on the process of developing now. in some ways it will look like the same process that we are doing now. choose our values for her school and fitting out how to arrange them. i'm not sure whether or not we will just add them to the family rhythm or create it's own. in some ways i feel like that could be done for my work but for simplicity reasons it's all one big thing now.
thanks for you comments
lee, i would like to hear your thoughts and what types of things you have and are implementing that are helpful
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