For the last five months I’ve been experimenting with a Success Calendar, a time management concept I ran across in December when reading Carrie Wilkerson’s ebook: Juggling?? Time Management Tips – Strategies for Your Success from 3 Experts!.

Basically, the concept is to plan out first your time off, including vacations and free days (where you aren’t working); and then to schedule out your support/administration days and your focused work days. Everything is color-coded and marked with moveable stickers (so its easy to make schedule changes).

My 2009 Success Calendar (in January)

Since I ran across this concept at the end of December, when I was doing my whole planning and re-evaluating thing, I decided to give this a try. Right off, it proved useful because my husband and I were able to iron out what our vacation/holiday wish list and get those scheduled and start the planning/budgeting process. Definitely a first for us and so far successful.

Next I scheduled the free days, days where realistically I’m not going to get much work done anyway (too many activities or family commitments). Doing this made me realize why I was getting into bottlenecks with my work. I really wasn’t taking much for free days in some periods of time and in others was taking too many. This helped me kind of plan what I wanted to do, and then schedule around it.

Three types of work days schedule with free time and support days

Next was the work days. Now I have three types of work – magazine work (a steady client), client work (project-based), and then work on this blog and other personal projects. So I ended up scheduling those out. First the magazine work, because that’s on a production cycle and I can predict when the work is coming and how much time it will take. Then, I had to look at the client work I was doing. That was an eye opener. No wonder I was working so many late nights! I had a lot more work than I had time. (oops)

After using this for five months, I’ve discovered that 1) my kids like to come look at it to see what type of day it is (a free day or a work day); 2) I needed move things around a lot; 3) I really needed to make some changes to my habits to get this to work. 

It’s interesting moving things around; because the theory is that once the calendar is completely scheduled out, you should only swap days around. Well, it’s harder than you think. I keep wanting to add in work days, skip the free days. Now it’s getting difficult to swap out days because I’ve moved so many free days to the latter half of the year. But it is good for forcing me to really look at how much I’m accomplishing in the days that I am working and how much I’m not. 

I expect that as time goes on and I learn how to use this method more effectively and really carve out those focus times during the day (instead of the middle of the night, which has been my habit for the last twelve years). I find its good for me to go back to the interview Carrie did with Sarah Robinson and re-read how she implements it and how it works for her. It helps me keep perspective and learn more about how to make better use of my time.

For now I’m going continue to work with this method. It’s a different way of thinking about my schedule than I’ve used in the past, and it’s hard to break habits. But so far, I have experienced definite benefits to using this method, and think that over time I can make this work further.  If you are looking for a way to balance work and home, I would suggest giving it a try.  For more information, check out Carrie’s ebook Juggling?? Time Management Tips – Strategies for Your Success from 3 Experts!. The info is in the second interview. (the other two interviews are very useful too!)

Anyway, food for thought

…Shannon

Earlier I shared how I have to have at least one day (preferably two) at home during the week. Nothing gets scheduled on those days, unless I have absolutely no other choice. This is a sanity thing. There are just too many worthwhile activites that pull at our attention, but it all sucks time and more importantly, energy.

A few years ago, when I first decided that we just had to have days at home with no outside obligations, I kept accidentally over-scheduling. With 4 homeschooled kids, a business, and numerous pets, it’s very easy to do.  I had to come up with a better way.

Now, a few times a year, when it’s time to plan for the next school year or term, or sign up for activities, I use a weekly schedule spreadsheet like this to help me SEE where our time commitments are.

In Excel, I’ve created a weekly schedule spreadsheet (which you can download below), that I use as a template. Using color coding (one color per child, plus grey for drive time and whole family activities) I can very easily see where our time is commited. My goal is to create at least one to two days during school week (Monday-Friday) with NOTHING in it.

To start, I put in all the activities the kids and I wanted to do that term, then seeing the conflicts, I start whittling away (talking to the kids about it as I have to cut things.)  Sometimes, if an activity (like Ballet) has an alternate time slot I’ll insert it on the calendar like this: (see the pink slots for Ballet)

That allows me to take a closer look at really what is possible. My goal is to create activity days, where if I’m going to consume energy running about, let’s just make it that type of day and if we can schedule whatever activities we can into it.

But sometimes it just doesn’t work out. For example, my nearly 7 year old’s speech therapy is offered through the public school system, and they only offer it to homeschoolers at one time during the week. That’s just the way it is. So we work around that.

I’m also looking for conflicts – where schedules overlap. I can’t be in two place at once and I refuse to run around with my head chopped off trying to get one child to one place and another child to another place. It’s not a productive, healthy mind-set for any of us.  Using the chart, I can show the kids where there’s a conflict and we can discuss possible courses of action.

For example, my sons really wanted to take fencing this year. But fencing was only offered on Monday and Friday nights. My 9 year old son had to choose – fencing or cub scouts. He chose cub scouts. But having the visual helped him see what his choices were and how he wanted to spend his time.

Once I’ve figured out what the activity schedule is, I note each day as to whether it’s a Full schoolwork day or a Light schoolwork day. And then in the bottom part of my spreadsheet, I mark what subjects will be covered (in an ideal world) on each of those days. 

Obviously I’m looking for balance and reasonable work load. It’s not fair to the kids to ask them to do 3 hours of book work on a day where we are only home for 30 minutes. Those are light schoolwork days – which for us means they must read something, write something, and do some sort of math. Most of the time that’s all done through act of being out and about and in the car.

This system has been great for saving my sanity and keeping the HOME in our homeschool.

If you are interested in trying this out for yourself, feel free to download and use the forms that I use. I’ve included a sample for you to get a better look at what this looks like. 

Download the PDF Weekly Schedule Template

Download the PDF Weekly Schedule Sample

Download the Excel file with both the template and the sample (two worksheet tabs in the workbook)

Note: You need a PDF reader to use the PDF file. You can get one free here.  To use the Excel file, you’ll need Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice, or will need to upload the file into a web-based spreadsheet tool like Google Docs in order to work with it fully.

Sometimes I have to FIGHT to keep the home in homeschooling.  I have to plan and preciously guard that home time.

If you’ve homeschooled for more than 6 months, you may understand what I’m talking about here. If you don’t homeschool, this is is the biggest fallacy about homeschooling… Homeschoolers don’t spend all their time at home!

In fact, there are so many opportunities that pull at our attention and time. In our house, just this year, we have speech therapy, cub scouts, sports, violin lessons, orchestra, tween girls, preschool group, art lessons, and Latin. And that doesn’t count all the errands, field trips, and everything we have to turn down that we might really want to do, but I have to say No to preserve my sanity.

I realized a few years ago that I must have at least one, preferably two days where we just don’t go anywhere, where we have no outside commitments.  I adore summer months where we school, but don’t have activities…oh those days are great, because we get to stay home. There’s no drain from going from here to there.

But I digress… the point is sometimes, we just have to schedule our days at home. And guard them. A few years ago, I came up with this system of making sure when I’m planning out the kids’ activities schedule that at least one day a week is at home, with no commitments. When you have a few minutes, check out part 2 for the details and free downloadable tools and samples

In the meantime, enjoy your quiet moments!

…Shannon