The importance of a daily routine @ home
Do you also know the problem? Now that everyone needs to stay home there are plenty of distractions, whether you live alone or in a large family. In my family of 6 (which is already an illegal number of people gathering in most countries) all of us have serious problems to be productive.
There is always something to do other than work. Shopping, cooking, laundry and cleaning needs to be done, much more of it now that everyone is at home. And it is a constant issue who is doing how much of it, everyone feels at a disadvantage. The kids claim to have finished their assignments early and want to get more screen time. The dog also wants constant attention now that we are at home all the time.
Discipline.
So how can we be as productive as we need be if there is always something else needing our attention? The answer to this question is of course discipline. Unfortunately we also need it from others not just ourselves unless we live alone.
However, in our family we have found discipline to be subjective and individual. What it means to be disciplined has to be defined for every person individually. It is something else for the parents and the kids. The teenager will anyway disagree with the necessity in his case..
Still, in order to get anything done, we have to make a plan and then stick to it. And this will only work if all people in the same household synchronize their plans to be compatible, and then respect each other’s plans so they can be executed. This needs a lot of constant coordination and planning, which, again, teenagers will most likely not do with you. Is this mission impossible?
Understanding and compromise.
The workaround here is a bit more complex and it needs not just the understanding of our own needs but also the needs of all others. We have to be able to articulate our needs without sounding selfish. And we need to find out actively what all others need, even if they have trouble expressing it. This is really difficult work, especially with your own kids. But it is really a question of mindset and providing a common goal. Our approach as parents was the following:
- Understand the needs of each other (the parents) first. Who has to do what when? Are there times where we are simply unavailable and must not be interrupted? Are there times where we can be called upon or even deal fully with household work? We ended up filling up the calendar with items, shifting some time slots to make it work among the two of us.
- Understand the needs of everyone else in the same household. The best way to do it is to get the information one by one, sitting down with each of our kids and first explaining to them what we tried to do, out of necessity. This had a great effect, as having shown what we have to do, they all reciprocated by explaining their tasks from school and work. We could work in all of their fixed times into our family calendar.
- Create a plan with the aim to make it into a routine, but iteratively.
- Iteration culture. Make sure everyone is willing to improve this plan for a routine. Just like in a high performing team, it is important that everyone trusts each other to want to make this work, and everyone can give positive feedback openly without fear of retaliation. This has to be explained and stressed repeatedly.
Creating a routine.
With the understanding of each other’s needs we had the basis to set up a weekly routine framework. We also explained to everyone how we just start with a first plan and then improve based on everyone’s ideas and feedback. The initial starting point was easy, but I think nobody understood yet what I meant by ‘positive feedback’, so staying calm and objectifying emotions was the most important aspect for us parents here.
Anyway, the first iteration was easy. We could see who is available on what day for which meal and when. This simplified the timing for cooking and even choosing the meals based on preparation time. We could also list fixed times when to walk the dog and who is able to do it with least impact to their needs. We could assign times to various household duties and request all household members to sign up for them. By having the visibility of who does what when, we were surprised how eager our kids were to help. We found it very important to have fixed times at that point because we feared otherwise things get easily forgotten, which is a problem when something else depends on things to be done (like we need shopping before cooking).
Improving the routine.
The problem is, the first iteration is always wrong, and our kids who are not used to agile ways of work, got really frustrated quickly, especially with each other. Here we as parents need a lot of patience and mediation skills so we can build compromise and consensus on how the routine works for everyone. It is also important to go with it for at least a few days to see how it really works. This again needed a lot of work on the parent’s side to remind everyone of the plan. For me it was really hard to do it nicely after having said the same thing for the umptieth time, but I have the power of dad jokes on my side!
Setting alarms for everyone is mandatory. We have set alarms on ourselves as parents also for the alarms of the kids to be able to check up on them that they really start their tasks at first. But this has to be done subtly and responsibility needs to be delegated, otherwise they will quickly rely on you to do it always.
Perseverance paid off and there is safety to be found in the routine. After a while a few things just klick into place and suddenly I found that I don’t have to repeat myself, yeay! We are still in the improvement loop, but there are already signs that productivity is actually increasing for everyone.
The routine also helps to just get used to do things and get things started at fixed times, as opposed to not start things or miss doing important things due to lack of routine. Stop doing things is just as important, so that nothing gets forgotten.
Empty spaces in the plan.
It is really important not to plan things end to end and to stick to a high granularity. Hints are good, but over-specification is bad because then if something unforeseen happens, the cascade effect is too big. Flexibility is important, and flexibility can only be achieved if you have a buffer.
The buffer for the routine is unplanned time that can be used for anything, mostly for much needed breaks or just to chat. And if someone needs help, this is very welcome to do so without an impact on your own routine.
Planning meeting.
The improvement suggestions are made continuously, we collect them as they come in, discuss them with the involved people and then communicate it in our weekly planning meeting. Again positive communication is important, re-stressing that we all want to do better and our well-being is important to each other.
Sometimes we need to decide, either to do or not to do something or on multiple options. The decisions are valid until the next meeting but often we want to stick to them for longer, to see that the effect is positive. Each decision needs to have a clear outcome that is measurable so that we can keep or discard the decision based on actual data. That is also easier said than done, because a lot of that data is just subjective impressions. But at least it is being collected so we can see what works and what doesn’t.
Outlook.
So far this is a very positive experience and hopefully the kids learn something about teamwork also for their future, how it can work and what they can expect from it. But it requires rigorous discipline and patience, especially on us parents. Kids just take the fast and easy path more often than not, but it does pay off to stick to it and find the right times to re-discuss individually when they are receptive. Again, not easy, but the alternative is even more work, which I used to remind myself why I need to do another round.
Maybe you take a few ideas out of this to try to improve productivity as well! I’d like to hear back thoughts and comments.
