Designing a Concentration Cycle Project

Rain Barrel Notebook Page

By now, I hope you have a page in your notebook with lots of project ideas written on it. If your sheet is a little messy or unorganized, but you are satisfied with the quality and scope of your ideas, feel free to recopy it nicely, and do some simple categorizing. For example, if some ideas suit the “home” stewardship side of things and some reflect the “personal” stewardship side, now would be the time to redo the list, putting them in separate columns. If you like your page’s design, leave it the way it is!Even though you have a page full of ideas, continue to add ideas as you think of them (and you will). As you shift the ideas from your rain barrel collection page to an actual project design page, you can simply record the date it became a project next to the idea, or you could cross it out. This keeps your collection page usable for a long time to come. At some point you may need to completely redo it, but by then, I hope you’ll view the sheet as an old friend who has been giving you helpful suggestions for new project ideas for a long time.

Project Design Sheets

When it’s time to turn an idea into a project, you will want to move the idea from your brainstorming page to a project page. This is a little profitable inefficiency: the brainstorming page stays as a brainstorming page, and you know each project will have a page (or more) of its own. Moving or removing any given project page will affect nothing else except that one project.

Because we are always trying to be professional, you could certainly design a “project page template”, but at the very least give each project idea a nice fancy title at the top of its sheet—Cycle Design Project 1: Enrichment Reading Cycle, for example. Just do not combine two projects on the same page, not even front to back!

Selecting the Cycle Content and Length

But what are you going to do to turn the idea into a cycle project? Honestly, here is where the creative genius resides, so do ask the Lord to specifically help you design projects that He knows will benefit you over the long-term. Start by looking over your brainstorming page to make sure related ideas that could be one project are gathered together. Next, most ideas will offer you several different ways to become a cycle, and most will also provide a hint as to what would be the best time frame for the cycle.

George Washington’s list lent itself to a daily cycle and Benjamin Franklin specifically designed his to be a weekly cycle that could be complete four times in one year. Start with short cycles. It is much easier to regroup at a weekly oversight time with cycles that are daily or weekly  rather than one that needs six months to complete. Don’t obsess over this. If you design something clunky, you can change it at the end of your trial run, or at the next oversight time.

Most ideas will lend themselves to several different ways to set up the project. Some will require little thinking effort on your part (George was copying an already compiled list: little or no thinking on that account). Others will require major thinking on your part (Benjamin had to decide what “virtues” he was most committed to, with a limit of thirteen. Then he had to design an operational statement that would set the stage for what he was going to concentrate on whenever it that virtue’s turn for attention. Lots of original thinking on that one.)

If we were sitting with hot chocolate and cookies, wrapped in cuddle blankets en suite, it would be easy to help you group ideas and offer “variations” on your themes. Alas, we will have to settle for an example.

A Musical Example

Take playing through the hymnbook as an enrichment project. What kinds of cycles could you implement?

• The simplest cycle, would be to play one hymn each day on your chosen instrument, keeping track during your weekly oversight time of how many days you fulfilled the project, and continue until you work through the whole hymnbook.
• But you could also decide to play 4 hymns a weekend, two on Saturday and two on Sunday.
• You could plan to play only Christmas hymns in December.
• If you had numerous hymnbooks you could decide to play similar topical sections together or cycle through hymnbooks
• Or you could play the same hymn every day for a week, but play it in a different key.
• You could play or sing the same hymn each week, but on a different instrument (talented you!) or sing it as a different arrangement.
• A la Mr. Franklin, you could compile a list of 13 significant hymns and play them in order day by day or week by week.
• Or you could take that same list of hymns and design a year-project: Play them every day a week at a time for the first thirteen weeks. Memorize the words the second thirteen weeks. Make a Bible study based on each hymn the next thirteen weeks. Play and sing the hymns for the last thirteen weeks of the year.
• Like I said, the sky is the limit.

Give Yourself Check-in/Check-up Times and Check-off Helps

Finally, you need to decide how long you will cycle around your project for its first trial run. Mark this on your calendar. Make a note to yourself to check your progress at your weekly oversight times. If checking off a box will help you stick with it, put a chart on your project page, put boxes on the family calendar you can fill in or check off, or design a card to put beside your bed. If you want, you can buy a bunch of balloons and pop one every time you do the project in the day!

This is all the fun you could be having IF your brainstorming page actually has ideas on it. But what can you do if you have sat and thought and thought, but the rain barrel collector is still blank? Tomorrow, a little help for seeding the clouds.