Daily Dose 43: Baby Steps Building Benefits

Accrued benefits, compounded interest, and passive income. . .who cannot be impressed with how much money a ten-year-old might have at retirement if they would only save a thousand dollars a year? The drawback is the people seeing such charts are usually forty-somethings who still have not saved a thousand dollars a year and are often heard saying, “If I had only known this twenty years ago…”

Late Start Rather than No Start

What should the someone who is already responsible for home and work oversight do when they have apprentices but need apprenticing themselves? As with money, better a slower start than no start. A slower start still accumulates benefits, whether money or time. A child who starts saving at ten will have greater savings for less initial input than someone who starts saving at 45. But the 45-year-old should still start saving.

Work Together

Younger apprentices certainly can help an older apprentice develop better habits. Once motivated to start saving themselves, the older can often learn right along with the younger, or be ahead of the younger by mere years, or months, instead of decades. The time between learning to teaching shrinks, but that may well be a blessing in disguise, helping some of us not to forget what we need to teach! Our slow start, coupled with their solid start will be good for all.

What late bloomers must accept is that life tasks can’t stop while reordering personal habits. Requiring a slower start would be the worst reason not to start. The building process is the same: we regularly oversee priorities with schedules designed on cycles of concentration,we  automate routine activities, and we attend to vital activities. Why not try building and automating one of these tidy up routines into your life? Within a couple of months, you’ll have something to train an apprentice with yourself!

Developing a Routine

1. Select a project by asking questions:

• the front door fix-up: standing at your home’s entry, ask these questions: If someone walked in at 8:00 a. m., how do I want the living area to look? What can be done in fifteen minutes to bring the space up to that level?
• the 10 minute bedroom tidy: sitting in your personal space, ask, When I leave this room each morning, what level of tidy does it need to demonstrate good stewardship of what God has given me? What can I do in ten minutes every day to keep it at that level?
• the work area tidy up: select your office, a study space, the laundry area, or a small bathroom and ask: What can be done every time I use this space to keep the area ready for action the next time? How little time can I spend to maintain it?

2. Make a task list for your chosen area:

• Record every task you feel should be done to show good stewardship: what needs put away, thrown away, put somewhere else, dusted, organized, scrubbed, straightened, vacuumed?
• You will probably need two columns: one for tasks that fit the time limit and one for necessary tasks that either take too long for the time limit or are occasional tasks.
• Prioritize the list: The single task that will make the most difference and/or the most important to do regularly usually goes first.

3. Time yourself:

• Do as much as you can within your deadline. Don’t work longer. STOP.
• Think about the order you are doing things: did the “most important” task take the longest amount of  time or not?

4. Evaluate what happened:

• Did you get less or more done than you thought you would?
• Any one and done tasks? (Occasional tasks requiring more time, but once done, can be maintained a long time with relative ease in any tidy up process package. A clean, organized desk drawer that, once put to rights,  can be straightened in seconds, for example.)
• What task took the most time? Could it be broken down into smaller parts?

5. Attend to the work package every day for a week:

• Work from one EO meeting to the next, of course!
• Vary the order of doing the task list to determine what works best.
• If it is an option, try different times of doing it during the day (or night).
• Time yourself every day: total and each task.
• Think about ways to improve your time and how each part of the process fits together.

6. Evaluate again at the end of the week:

• Can you add in another task or two and still meet the deadline?
• Is there a best time to do the package?
• Could you afford to follow the tidy up process every other day, and insert one of the “too long to do” tasks into the day in between?
• What part of the package do you like doing the least? Did you make yourself do it? Or did you find excuses to put it off?
• If you missed a day, what happened? Was it something completely beyond your control? Something that will never happen again? Something that will often interfere? Can you make an adjustment?

Once you solidify the tasks that meet the time frame AND give the desired finished result, put your newest “process package” on automatic. Processes become automated when:

• you give it a preferred time to do it on the schedule you decide is best
• you have selected an alternate time to do it if the preferred time won’t work
• you have put it on an evaluation schedule (new process: once a month for several months, then either a six month or one year check-up usually works).

Note: An in-depth look at cleaning principles starts here. Discussion about developing a cleaning routine starts here.