Sunday, February 18, 2007

A simple weekly schedule

I just finished reading Making Room for Life, by Randy Frazee (thanks Ben & Vince for the recommendation), and Frazee suggests and interesting way to organize one’s weekly schedule.

Monday – Saturday:
6 am to 6 pm, work (both employment and work around the house)
6 pm to 8 pm, family supper
8 pm to 10 pm, whatever (e.g., hobbies, reading, play, tv)

Sundays
Rest

The basic idea here intrigues me. Somehow this schedule would create more time for work, more time for family, and more time for rest than my existing schedule. Makes me wonder what I am currently doing!

I also like the routine, habitual aspect of it… I spend a lot of time wondering about what to do next, but if I follow such a set routine, then it seems like working/ family time/ rest would come more easily.

Obviously life is more complicated than this schedule (meetings, homework, sports, outings, etc….), but I am interested in using it as a baseline routine.

4 comments:

tina said...

Schedules like these are so frustrating, given that they so obviously require someone else to be doing the major major bulk of the household/child care work.

Anonymous said...

Tina-

I actually think that depends on your perspective on "work". I would include housework in the category and assume in most cases a split of who is responsible for what, etc.

One of my other favorite suggestions Frazee makes is, if neither party (in a married couple) enjoy cleaning--hire someone. We do this all the time without feeling bad -- I pay someone to change my oil though I could do it myself (or at least in theory I think I could)... we often pay people to cook for us.

I like cooking but hate cleaning and car maintenance. Why not spend less money eating out and then not worry about my car, etc? Makes sense to me...

Anyway, back to Tina's point -- work is not only paid "vocational" work but would include other things as well...

Brad Wright said...

You're right Tina that this wouldn't be very useful if it included only paid employment. I edited the post to more accurately convey Frazee's idea (as Ben pointed out).

tina said...

Very nice of you to modify. I can't remember who posted a tip from a scholar, who said something like "decide what the single most important thing for you to work on is, and if you're not doing that, then change what you are doing." Not the best way to get the dishes done, I would imagine. :)