Being organised is all good and fine – if you use your lists!!

I have thoroughly enjoyed my Control Journal this week – more than I have ever done so before.  I think that is because it is mine – it has my charts, my routines, my systems.  These things were already developed in my home, I’ve just put them all in one place – a binder!  I think this is the key to maintaining any system – that it eventually becomes yours, not a copy of some one elses.

But… With making a concerted effort to be responsible with my time, with making wise decisions (we are studying discretion at the moment) then I have been a little more atuned to what is really going on.  And I have found that my afternoons are not as productive as I think they are.  If I have a major project happening then my afternoons are great – adrenaline works wonders but…. if life is just ticking over then my afternoons are wasted.  Well, maybe not wasted, just not as I would like them.

So this week I have learnt a good lesson – I’ve got to use my lists!  They are there for a reason.

Over the years I have established a good routine for my mornings.  Many mornings this routine is tweaked, changed or completely ignored but I always hone back into it when the interruption is over.  That is the beauty of routine.  The coming weeks I will be working on my afternoon routine.  It is a good, do-able routine, one that gives time to the things that both need to happen and the things I want to do (they aren’t always the same!!).  But in order for a new habit to form I need to keep reminding myself what it is that I need to be doing – that is where my control journal comes into it.  I need to refer back to my daily list so I know what it is I have planned to do.

As I’ve been typing this up I’ve just had an insight – the reason why my morning routines are so well established in our family life, compared to our afternoon, is because the morning has been consistent for many many years. The afternoons are our discretionary time, the afternoons have been the times that have varied as our children have grown and had different needs.  So it isn’t a bad thing that my afternoons aren’t so established, it is just now is the season of my life to make them so.