How to Do a Big Project in a Big Family Part 1 - The Checklist

(See the introduction first if you haven’t!)

If you can say, “Let’s clean the house,” and your siblings will drop what they are doing, pick jobs, and just start working as hard as they can at cleaning that house, with absolutely no quarrels or fusses, then you have a pretty perfect family. You might not even need to read all this!

But normal families need a plan. They need to strategize in order to get those imperfect workers to clean that house. This is the most important way to prevent social loafing. Planning the task is the foundation of the art of warding social loafing.

So plan it out.

For example, whenever we need to scrub our house from top to bottom, typically I get the whiteboard. The whiteboard can be a weapon. Use it wisely. 

I need to know exactly what we have to do, and how we’re going to do it. These are important fundamentals in any plan.

So I make a checklist. And whenever a sib gets a job done, and I look and see it did get done, I let them check the box and sign it off. If you do this, just be careful not to overuse the checklist or it will lose its charm.

But once I took it a step further and made cleaning the house into a bingo game. More on that next time.

Embracing Flexibility When It Doesn’t Come Naturally

I’m a planner. I like to get details straight ahead of time. Things are a lot are nicer when they go predictably. In my opinion, plans let the day go smoothly and pleasantly.

Schedules are a good thing. They keep you being productive and on track throughout the day. They remind you it is only one thing at a time and everything has its own place. If you jump around to different activities and pause in the middle of doing things just to do something else, you never really get everything done. Sometimes it’s important to have a plan.

If you have a personality like mine, you may mentally plan the next day in your head before you go to sleep. We know we aren’t supposed to worry about it. We have heard “do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself” (Matthew 6:34) a thousand times. And we planners don’t try to worry. We just try to prepare ourselves in a wise fashion.

But then life happens.

Things mess up plans and you feel like it’s the end.

Horrible words and what-ifs go through your head as you get anxious about all the things that aren’t happening as you take care of the unexpected problem that has come your way. Will life ever be the same again???

That’s why we need to take a breath as we start the day, we planners, and remember who is the real Planner. We need to put the day in His hands before we begin it because only He knows the plans He has for us. (Jeremiah 29:11.)

Emily, a friend of mine, gave me a piece of wisdom in a time where I was stressed and things did not seem to be going right. She said, “Remember, you are not in control, you don’t need to be in control, because God is in control.”

There are two types of people when you think about things in this respect. There are people who plan ahead (like me) and people who are flexible. There are pros and cons to each, we must remember. Sometimes I think somewhat sourly about people of the other type. For instance, I may not like how they are less likely to be on time or bother to tell you about events far enough ahead of time for you.

But really, honestly, deep down I wish I could be more like them.

I invite all of you who also can sometimes be control freaks to embrace flexibility. It is more valuable than we like to think it is. Sometimes you don’t really need an everyday-plan. Sometimes we need to remember the details will get messed up. It doesn’t come naturally, but I have to see that my day isn’t really my day.

It belongs to Someone so much wiser than me. Someone who knows exactly how it will connect with a thousand other days. Someone who rightly demands our complete trust in every second. He deserves our trust a million more times than we are qualified to trust in ourselves.

Plans never last. Look to Him who has no beginning and no end.

Correction: the only plans that last are His.