Well, well, friends! My husband and I are getting wild over here in the Foster-Whiddon household! We have the house almost empty; two out of the four kids are gone to camp. So basically, we feel childless. Anyone else with multiple kids feel that way also? Just leaving one kid behind makes life a 100% easier! Right?!? We have a stupid amount of stuff to do this year. So, Eric and I took advantage of our kid-break and created what we are calling Parent Retreat. Oh, how I wish that meant we were sitting on the beach with our feet in the sand and drinking out of a coconut! As much fun as that would be, it would not be preparing us for all the things to come in the next weeks, months and the year ahead. And… you know what is better than toes in the sand? A plan. A plan is better.
So here we are planning. We are not just planning all the tasks that we need to complete over the next few months. We are planning the environments we want to create in our hearts, our minds, and our home. Doing a task for the sake of “getting stuff done” rarely motivates me. I really need to know the “Why?” for the task and think about the emotion I want to create by doing it. So here we are, creating. What does that look like so far? Well, we kicked off Parent Retreat with dinner at our favorite restaurant. We took a spiral notebook with us and as we were eating we wrote down one long list of all the things that needed to happen this school year. We put big things and small things on the list, unordered, unprioritized. My husband is finishing his Masters of Divinity degree in May of 2020 and we are looking at relocating that summer to the UK for him to pursue his Ph.D. That’s a big step to plan for, so this year is extra full of fun and unusual things that need to happen. We put as many of those things as we could think of on our big list.
After dinner, we headed to good ole TJ Maxx to buy a paper planner for each of us. We like shopping for journals and planners (among other things) at TJ Maxx. They have cool stuff! Yes, we bought old-fashioned planners made of paper. And you might be thinking, “Aren’t you supposed to do this kind of stuff in January?” Actually, we used to do that. For several years we would take an evening to get away and plan the year. At this point in our lives, planning fits best at the beginning of the school year instead of the calendar year. Plus, summer (and summer camps) gives us some extra space to make it happen over a few days instead of a few hours.
Back to the planners… I know, most of us have great calendars in our hands every day on our phones, but there is just something about a paper planner that helps me think and see more clearly. Also, there’s something super helpful about writing it down (in pencil, of course). Once we found the right planner for each of us, we headed home. At home, we got all set up in my office… AKA my bed! From there we started moving all the things on our big unordered list to our calendar. When we were running our business, we did goal setting and project management on a daily basis. Eric learned some simple strategies that work for us. First, make a big list of stuff that needs to get done. Second, prioritize the list (some things need to go to the top because they’re most important, others because they’re time-sensitive). Third, move stuff from the list to the calendar. Once it makes its way to the calendar, it gets taken off the list… not because it’s done, but because it now has a deadline and is listed on the calendar. With a list as big as ours, we couldn’t do that in one sitting. We have spent the rest of the weekend prioritizing tasks and putting them on the calendar. Parent Retreat is not all work, though. We have watched movies, gone out for coffee, and took a nap. Ok, I took the nap.
- Make a big list of stuff that needs to get done.
- Prioritize the list.
- Move stuff from the list to the calendar (and off the list).
- Get stuff done.
There have been several other things that have made our Parent Retreat successful. Having a few days of space from the kids has been necessary. If you have kids, I’m sure yours are like ours… as soon as an adult conversation starts, they’re all up in the middle of it! Another thing that was super important – we gave it a few days. This type of planning takes more than one sit-down meeting. Also, we kept each other’s personalities in mind. Eric can rock a super-focused, get-down-to-business type of meeting. I need something more relaxed, something with some space to talk freely, think, process, and breathe a little. He’s detail-oriented, I’m a free spirit. He has learned that when I’m ready to make lists and get organized, take advantage of it. But when the organization gets so deep I have smoke coming out of my ears, it’s best to stop for a while and do something else. It has also been good to change locations for different parts of our retreat. We have talked over dinner at a favorite restaurant, in our bedroom, over mid-morning coffee at Starbucks, while driving to run errands, over lemonade at Chick-Fil-A, while cooking dinner, etc. We haven’t done almost any planning independently. And in the middle of it all, we have done a few other things that aren’t related to Parent Retreat.
So, if you find yourself feeling like your time is out of control and that you have too many balls in the air, I strongly encourage you to take time to come up with a plan. You don’t have to be a parent or even married to have a lot going on. Life is full (as it should be) but it should be full of the things that matter the most. For us, that means creating a schedule that brings peace to our household. Our days will be full, but we know we are saying “Yes!” to the things that will feed us spiritually, physically, intellectually, and emotionally! At the end of the day, what matters to you?