Whoever came up with this saying “Like a chicken with its head cut off”? What a random way to put craziness. And yet we all do it. So, it’s very fitting and true.
Without fail, everyone will run around at least once (gosh, wouldn’t you be lucky if it was only once) trying to do all the tasks at one time. A lack of planning and human nature will drive us to a state of crazy. And overwhelm will be right on the heels of crazy.
Homestead life can quickly devolve into chaos. Just a few too many chores and our world falls apart. Off the rails as they say. But before chaos reigns, we can often solve the problem with a small bit of planning.
Ashley and I try to sit down each Sunday and plan the next week. What are the big things we absolutely need to get done? These are added to our planners. Then the small things get filled in. I also sit down each night, crossing off the tasks I finished, moving the missed to the next day and building a general daily plan.
The act of writing down our tasks clears the mind, so we both use a physical planner. I prefer the planner model of RocketBook and my phone for some digital reminders. Ashley uses a different RocketBook, that she created templates inside to track things.
When we take the chaos out of our heads and put it to paper, we free up mental bandwidth. Sure, there are random bits that pop up each day. And sometimes the weather changes, so we throw our whole plan out the window to finish a different set of plans.
But we track what we do. Because accomplishment helps to reinforce the habit of using a planner and staying organized.
Planning on a yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily basis gives our lives direction. Yearly we can set some big goals, monthly we can choose the key tasks to focus on, weekly gives us action on those tasks, and daily keeps our lives in check.
It’s a habit that takes time to get into. Every single day. Eventually it gets easy. You remember to pick up your planner morning and night. And life calms down.
No longer are you going stir crazy trying to do everything in a single day. And getting frustrated at yourself when you forget something. No longer a chicken without a head.
Amazingly you can accomplish so much more when you plan what you need to do rather than living life on a whim. Now if you can only get everyone else to stop living on a whim and plan the interruptions that effect your day…