The oft quoted “He who fails to plan is planning to fail” is credited to Winston Churchill, and the man obviously knew what he was talking about. So regardless of your lifestyle and the schooling method you choose, even if it’s unschooling, a certain amount of planning is essential. In order for any goal to be reached, one must define the goal, and head toward it.
There’s good and bad in the fact that there are so many organizational tools at our disposal. It seems as if we are a nation obsessed with making our spaces bright and orderly. There are bins of every size, shape, and color, along with a variety of ways to label them. Books, magazines, and tv shows on how to organize your time and space abound. Calendars and planners to meet every conceivable need can be purchased, or downloaded and printed.
Why do we sometimes feel that we aren’t accomplishing as much as we’d like? Why do our hopes and dreams still seem to be beyond our grasp?
- We don’t prioritize properly.
- We aren’t honest with ourselves.
At the core of any system is the need to order our priorities. The problem is that too many of us don’t know how to do that. We constantly look beyond our God-given responsibilities to activities that seem more rewarding and enjoyable. If we do this, however, we are sacrificing far too much on the altar of self-gratification, pride, and sometimes downright laziness.
For far too long the idea of ‘duty’ has had an unpleasant connotation- that of doing something by rote, without joy or pleasure, and only because it is required. This is a mistake. Our duties to our God, our marriage, our children, our loved ones, our employer, and our church need not be undertaken with an apathetic attitude. The first step to a fulfilled life is to find one’s rightful place in God’s plan and embrace it. Our priorities will, whether we realize it or not, reflect who we love, and what we value.
Because our hearts are inherently deceitful, being honest with oneself is quite the undertaking. We must candidly evaluate our strengths and weaknesses, and acknowledge where our abilities meet our limitations. Much time and effort is wasted trying to be someone we are not, while our own unique talents remain untapped for their potential. Your standards can’t be anyone else’s, because no one else was given exactly the same aptitude and capacity as you, nor are you meant to be a carbon copy of another person.
Unfortunately, we are able to find many excuses as to why we can’t “find the time” to take care of ourselves, our family, or to educate our children. Time may be marching on, unrelenting, but time is not beyond our control.
Blaming time for our stress is really just a handy way of avoiding discipline. It’s also self-sabotaging and will always lead to more busyness and more stress.~ Tell Your Time: How to Manage Your Schedule So You Can Live Free by Andrews, Amy Lynn (Kindle Locations 205-206).
I’ve read and used many resources to help me find that one Special Something that would cause my life to fall into place, as if by magic. It isn’t ever going to happen that way, especially not if I have to spend an inordinate amount of time and money on books and systems and shelves and bins, and then even more time trying to maintain a system that looks great but requires time and energy that needs to be spent on actually doing the things I’d planned to do!
Condensed into a tidy little e-book is a great resource to get your priorities in order for you. It’s Tell Your Time: How to Manage Your Schedule So You Can Live Free by Amy Lynn Andrews. You won’t spend hours reading it, or trying to figure out complicated charts, and you won’t have the urge to go to the Dollar Store and buy 40 plastic shoeboxes. Controlling your time is a huge part of learning self-control, and ordering your time to your necessary ends will eventually and quite naturally result in an ordering of the other stuff of life.
But don’t stop there- add this book to your homeschool curriculum list. Do your children need to learn how to order their priorities, plan their time, move toward fulfilling their dreams? Give them the tools they need to be independent, self-motivated learners. Teach them (while you are teaching yourself) how to create a productive but flexible routine that encourages them to make right choices about the best uses of their time and talents. It won’t be the first time you’ve learned something right along with your children, and it won’t be the last. In a very real sense, time control and self-control will be a gift that keeps on giving, long after they’ve graduated from your homeschool.
