Planning with Flexibility

When I was a much newer (and younger!) mom, I tried out Managers of Their Homes, the scheduling system from Titus 2 Ministries.  Moms of large families, especially, raved about it.  And it’s excellent…for someone else.

I hated it.  The entire day was blocked out in half-hour increments, and I spent my whole life feeling behind because, well, life happened.  And as soon as an “unscheduled” diaper change took place, the entire beautifully-planned schedule was completely thrown off.

I quickly learned that I prefer routines over schedules — and if you do, too, you might appreciate the larger thread of “planned flexibility” I’ve noticed pops up increasingly in the methods I’ve found work well for me and for my family.  Let me show you some examples of this principle at work in our systems, so you can use them as inspiration for your own.

Project-Based Goals

I became most cognizant of this as a method when I set out to try something new with many of my 2019 goals.

I had a number of goals that were large projects.  For instance, I knew almost all of my organizing needed to be overhauled.  But I also knew I wasn’t going to get every space and every system taken care of in one year (it’s too far gone and my health is too poor to expect that), and it doesn’t matter which order they get done in.

In other words, I wanted to do some of what was on a specific list, but not necessarily all of it, and in any order.  The obvious answer was to set my goal as “accomplish ___ from ________ list.”  For instance, “organize 6 spaces or systems from the household list.” (I actually went vaguer than that, which is fudging it a bit for calling it a “goal.” I knew how many I got done would depend on which ones I did, since some are bigger than others, so I just chose to keep it at “make project on organizing goals from the running list” and trusted myself to work out the specifics on a month-by-month basis.) 

I had several goals set up this way, and they worked really well, so I’m continuing the method this year — except the lists obviously are ever-changing.  In the process, though, I realized we’d already been doing some other things that use a similar principle of planning flexibility.

Reading Lists

Reading lists, for instance, are similar to being “my goals” for the kids.  (Or goals I help them with setting.  Both of the oldest girls have gotten pretty good about this, and the 8-year-old is learning.)  And we learned a long time ago that it’s the best of both worlds if we set up these lists exactly like I did my goals this year.

One example is our genre list.  When my older kids started into Book-It, we struggled with setting goals for them.  The problem wasn’t getting them to read; the problem was that getting them to read was too easy!  They already read all the time anyway, and setting a goal for them to do what they were already doing seemed a little like “cheating,” and a lot like having missed the point.

What they weren’t so good at was reading a variety, so we set their goal for variety rather than sheer number.  And we did this by creating a genre list from which they could choose, rather than an absolute list they had to check every item off of.  I think that first year Sophia was challenged to read two books each month that were of genres she hadn’t used from the list yet that year.

In the bigger picture, a middle school or high school reading list can be done similarly.  It can feel really stifling or controlling to a student to be handed a list and told that this is what they have to read.  But many of the same students will feel much less constricted if you tell them you want to encourage them to be broadly- and richly-read, so you want them to make x (choose a number) selections from this particular list within this particular time frame — with lots of extras on the list so they have some choices.

That way you have some control (they have to be exposed to the classics — or whatever else it is you want them exposed to) but they also have some control (The Deerslayer sounds worse than a trip to the dentist?  No biggie; just skip that one and read Emma instead).

Ultimately, this is a good example of how the world works, too.  We have the freedom to make a lot of choices in life — but we always have some restrictions, whether they be moral, financial, legal, etc.

Flexible Homeschooling Routines

For most of our homeschooling lives, we’ve been doing what I called “planning without planning.”  The general gist of this is that instead of planning assignments, you plan a rhythm, and that way you can return the rhythm at whatever point you’re at, even when you get derailed by the rest of life.

For example, if you “do school” on Mondays and Wednesdays through Fridays (with Tuesdays blocked off for errands and other “out of the house” activities), and you know that every day you do the next math lesson, the next step in your phonics program, work on the next memory verse, etc., then it doesn’t matter when you miss a day, because when you come back, you aren’t “behind”; you’re still just ready to move onto the next thing.  (I think loop scheduling uses a similar principle.)

Even More Flexible Homeschooling Routines: We’ve decided this year to move to a more purely “unschooling” approach, which means we’re focusing more on the “I have control and they have control” model outlined above.  So far it seems to be working well; we’ll see how that holds up over the long term.

Flexible Household Routines

Household routines can work that way, too.  Given the nature of housework, you can’t be as totally flexible.  If Laundry Day gets missed too many times in a row, you have to adjust because you won’t have clean underwear or dish towels!  But blocking out a larger rhythm for days and weeks, rather than scheduling every fifteen-minute or half-hour block works much better for those of us who do better with flexibility.  (Yet it keeps us from being completely aimless and then wondering what we did all week!)

Bible Reading

I found I responded to Bible reading plans similarly to the way I reacted to schedules (vs. routines).  There are so many amazing daily Bible reading plans out there!  But invariably, I’d miss a day — or, worse, several days — and then I’d be super-stressed trying to catch up.

So first I learned to leave myself a little wiggle room.  If I wanted to remember to read my Bible every day, I’d aim for every day, but I’d write down my actual goal as something like “read the Bible 28+ days this month” (not in February, haha).  That way if I missed one or two days I didn’t feel like I’d blown the whole month.

But I also learned that I work better with a plan that isn’t that binding.  One where, like our schoolwork, I can just do the next thing.  So I’ll set my goal based on how quickly I want to be moving through.  (A chapter a day, three chapters a day, one chapter from each testament each day, etc.)  But I just keep a chart that I can check off chapters on, and read the next thing.

That way (since it isn’t dated), I’m never behind.  I can appreciate what I’m reading today, rather than stressing out over the fact that I “should have” read it two weeks ago but have missed a day here or there every month for three years and never fully caught up.  (I’m not the only one who does that, right?)

And You…How Do/Can You Plan with Flexibility?

Those are some examples of planning with flexibility in my home and family.  How do you — or how can you — implement similar principles in your home?  I’d love to hear your ideas; leave a comment and share!