Daily Dose 48: Accounting System

I love paper, office supply stores and planner catalogs. I love the slip of quality paper; the slick, smooth scribing fine paper makes possible. But I also know the key to a writing system is not how elegant it is, but how it is used. Any account book: a 30-cent back-to-school spiral notebook, a 300-dollar planner system with calf leather case, a legal pad, even a sheet of paper, can be helpful for a home executive, but none comes with a guarantee, because using makes the difference.

But loving paper and not minding writing would not have sustained years of list making, project designing, form developing, or article writing. Other motivations made “keeping accounts” a lasting habit:

• I wanted to improve as a teacher of good things. Teachers make lesson plans (experiments) and give tests (evaluations). If this was one of my priorities, I should learn the pleasure of thoughtful recording.
• I needed to remind myself that certain tasks were important even if no one else noticed. They were worthy of careful attention and needed professional treatment.
• I thought other home builders, whether young, old, man or woman, might agree it is worthwhile to be professional with our home stewardship priorities. If I didn’t write things down, I wouldn’t remember things that might be worth sharing.
• I felt recording would keep me in my place as the Lord’s steward of time, talent, possessions, and responsibilities—not an independent agent running my own show.

Try this experiment: From memory, jot down every activity from yesterday. For good measure, do a quick evaluation of how well those activities met the Lord’s expectations. Dismal, isn’t it? But it reveals that even some simple records will keep us from deceiving ourselves about how well things are really going.

What kind of notebook?

Again, anything can work. We want to be professional. We want it to be easy to remove throw-away papers but hard to lose finished product papers. Whether computer based or paper based depends on your technology quotient. I prefer cuddling with paper until the final step, then computerize my finished projects, unless I am writing an “article.” Stick with 8.5 x 11 to start. Other printed papers can be punched and added without being re-sized. Spend more time looking at and thinking about dated agendas and other prefab charts than buying. Most are not geared to home and personal development.

Well, at least give a specific notebook example:

A simple three ring binder with 5 or more dividers: Personal, Family, Home, Ministry, Calendar, Work/School. Insert individual topic sheets within each section. Do not combine information on the same sheet. At first, you’ll mostly build lists you can expand in the future.

When to start keeping a notebook:

Right now for yourself (!). As a teacher of good things, encouraging young adults to begin compiling information is a good practice. I got my first recipe box in seventh grade and have been adding to it ever since. Young adult priorities should include personal stewardship for their spiritual disciplines, their living space and personal belongings, and their long range training plan to develop life skills. These are all helped by having a place to compile data. Building notebook and file system habits early is worthwhile and preserves information that could benefit others in the future.

When to work in the notebook:

If you have been reading regularly, you already know: during executive oversight (EO) meetings.

Start Early. Start Simple. Be Professional. Be Permanent. Get a paper punch. Create elegant solutions, don’t acquire elegant gadgets.