Get Everything Done

My wife finally packed her bags and left me on Friday, leaving me with a more than full time job, a large house and garden, dog, four cats and eight hens to look after.

Oh yes, and three recalcitrant teenage boys who have been very resistant to any form of direction, especially if that direction is away from MSN and facebook and especially especially if it is towards any form of chores.

So, for a laugh and thinking I had nothing left to lose, I sat them down over breakfast and we set up a list. Really vanilla autofocus with a couple of obvious rules to cope with the multiple users.

They were AMAZINGLY positive. They have a real stake in the list because they know that they can add anything they like, just as I can. And because we started with chores before the light dawned and they realised that they could put what they wanted on as well, they have been racing through the pages trying to get to their MSN and Playstation.

In the first day, we thought of 154 tasks (4 1/2 pages) and worked on 61 of them.

We are still at the early stage: Today we may start to see people signing off pages. (One of the multi user tweaks is that each of us can initial the top of a page when they've been through without actioning anything on it. We will finally break out the highlighter when everyone has initialled a page.)

I am beginning to hope that our third task, "Amaze mum on her return from holiday on Friday" may be achieved.

Oh good Will ! You had me worried, I thought you were headed for divorce by your first paragraph!

That sounds like such an awesome experience for you all - it's things like that which kids remember (hopefully fondly) 20 years down the road.

That reminds me of when I managed a team of people all with differing skill sets and interests, but a common goal and I would break down the projects by who wanted to do what. So much more motivating to do something you like and are good at (because you usually are good at things you like) than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and expect everyone to like the same things. There's always "the organizing person" or "the spreadsheet person" or "the people person" in every group.

What a great idea to associate all "your team" on AF. It's awesome how AF is adaptable.

When i used to manage people (4 teams simoustamously) it was difficult to handle and control what is done or not. These few rules may help.

1. Give responsability - name one who is responsible for ohers. The one they will accept autority. With 4 kids its ok it can be you but when have 20/30 people impossible.
2. Reserve in AF (at the end may be) a project list and list the areas.
3. Read the AF common book and gibe objective and delay report delay on your AF
generaly put on AF all the bigs roks with the objective and let them do the details.

I guess it gona rocks and when she be back your wife may be surprised.

Make sure you let us know the results on Friday, Will!

Thanks, Jacqueline and Jupiter.

I woke up feeling a bit guilty.

Anyone who has been through a breakup involving children may find my little joke painful and insensitive. I should know better, having lost my first wife 20 years ago. Took me about 19 years to admit my own contribution and start to learn from it.

And then she did an irritatingly good job of bringing up our children.

All part of life's rich tapestry.

So I hope I haven't offended anyone, and I apologise for prodding any raw wounds. I can't say I feel your pain, because I don't know you. But I am one of the wounded. Deal with it better than I did.

So, how has this been working out for your family, Will? Can you provide an update, please?

Sad admission...

We stopped because we couldn't agree where to put the book.

That looks SO lame now I've typed it.

Once more into the breach, I think.

I've just been through the list we had, struck out the tasks which were complete and dismissed the rest. Now we need to get the team together and start again...

Do you have a set "launching pad" in your home? Someplace central where things like keys, etc. get dropped off? That seems like an idea spot for the family AF book.

Is this a good idea for partners at home - i.e. to operate from a single AF list? Or is it the case that usually only one person is doing it, or separate lists are kept?

Yes, I was wondering that as well. It seems simpler to my mind, to have a meeting and discuss tasks that need to be done "for the common good" and then assign them at that point. Then each person adds the assigned task to his PERSONAL AF book and works that book along with his other personal items. It would cut way down on meetings and coordination, I'd think.

It will be interesting to see how this system evolves.

Ah, rational discussion around the kitchen table... (drifts off into happy daydream).

I'll definitely put that on the list!

I suppose the other problem with this approach is that they don't have AF books of their own. What they DO have is a healthy scepticism of their Papa's enthusiasms.

Will, I assign my 21 y.o. son jobs around the house that I want him to get done every month. I list them on ~ 3 (~ 20-30 items) of those heavy stock post-it note cards from 3M and stick them on the refrigerator. They have better stickiness than the average post it note. It's like a 1 page AF list for him for the month. We've been doing this for a few months now and it works great.

I'm not sure how he operates it, but it seems like he moves around on the list (doesn't work sequentially), so he's probably following his intuition + energy in what he's picking to do. He's not allowed to dismiss though. :-)

Will,

I hear 'ya. I would suppose conversations might be more rational the shorter they are ... and, if they have that expectation. You know, "We can wait until everyone settles down but that will just make this go longer ... OR, we can just knock all of this out in 10 minutes and get out of here." Still a dream? LOL ;-)

As to books, give them each a cheap spiral book and expect them to use it. Don't expect they will follow all of the rules, just be happy that they have a book with everything written down ... plus a lot of their own stuff which you'd have to respect their privacy about. IOW, just call them account for the jobs, not the book.

Will, I like your approach of having individual dismisses using initials. You may find interesting how I experimented with AF in a group setting, for details see: http://www.taskberry.com/2009/03/23/spinning-plates-meeting-method/

Yes: the dream is to come to a team consensus on what needs doing. If I hand out tasks, I'm sabotaging AF before I start.

Been too tired to even think about this in the evenings, though.