Having the right mindset and focus is key to having a productive week.  If you want to accomplish your goals you need to have a plan and focus on achieving said plan.  Yesterday we divided our priorities or goals into three categories.  Today we will give tips on how to successfully balance the three categories and how you can best be successful in accomplishing your week’s goals.

Necessities – The aspects or our week that must be done for our families to function at all.

These task are the kind of tasks that get accomplished without much planning because we always have to get them done.  The issue is that if we don’t actively plan for these then our other goals and task will suffer because we will have inefficiently accomplished the necessities.

These tasks are sometimes unique but would comprise at least some of these:

• Preparing Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
• Grocery Shopping
• Managing Children’s Hygiene
• Laundry
• Doctor’s Appointments
• Sports/Activity Commitments

Tips for Management & Planning

• Prepare a laundry schedule and even have your older children help out.
• Pick a couple of days where you do your grocery shopping.  Keeping it as consistent as possible will help you plan other things around it.
• Meal planning can be very difficult to start.  But it has a lot of long-term benefits.  It saves you money and if you plan a meal ahead of time it will save you time during the week when you prepare and clean up the meal.
• Older children can help manage the younger children’s hygiene and morning routine. This does take practice and mentoring but it will have long-term benefits for you if done well.

Essential Tasks – These tasks are necessary to provide the family life that you want.

These are the tasks that have to be managed around the ones stated above.  These suffer if you are inefficient in planning for the necessities.  The essentials would include:

• Household Chores. Bathrooms, living rooms, bedrooms etc.
• Organizational Projects
• Family Time. This could be game night, family devotions, backyard fun.
• Date night for you and your spouse!  This is very important for the health of your family and for you!
• Church and other volunteerism.

These activities are very important to the mental and emotional health of the family.  These are not as necessary to “keeping your family afloat” but they are necessary to seeing your family flourish.

These activities are also part of creating a “family culture.”  A family culture is very important to WinterPromise.  Every family has one.  It is the rhythm of your family life.  It is your traditions, how you have fun together, how you learn together, when you create memories, how you interact.  Every family is unique which means every family culture is unique to that family.

We want our materials to be a vital part of creating and enjoying your family culture.  The list above are all aspects that contribute in a central way to your family culture.

Here are some tips to help you plan and prioritize these things!

• Take initiative in creating family traditions. Find the time during the week that is most free and make something happen!
• Plan a consistent night each month for you and your spouse.  Date Night can get lost in the priorities of life, if you plan for it and fight for it in your schedule then you will have a much higher rate of success.
• Don’t plan to organize more than once or twice a week.  Sometimes you need to do some “crisis management” when it comes to organizing but try to keep your time spent doing an organizational project to an appropriate number.  You could organize all the time if you wanted because there is always something that needs it.  Don’t lose other important things because you want to organize.

The closeness of your family matters most.  Prioritize things that grow your family together and closer rather than activities that pull you apart.  You cannot do everything as a family, nor would you want to.  But making sure your family works together and interacts often is key to creating a family culture.

Tomorrow we will touch on your families “Unique Ventures” and see how those can be best incorporated into your priority list.