a Checklist Manifested

Earlier last week, I binge-read a fun book called A Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.   Serendipitously,  this happened to be a great week for brushing up on the art of the checklist (although, really, isn't every week a good week for brushing up on checklists?)

It was a particularly good week for checklists -- at least in the MiserMom household -- because we've reached the point in the school year where N-son typically starts falling apart, and sure enough, this year he has started disintegrating right on schedule.  A quick on-line check of his grades gave  us most of the scrabble letters we'd need to write "FLAFF".  His squash/academic tutors wrote with descriptions of trying to organize his notebook, and then a subsequent home inspection showed the notebook had papers from all subjects interleaved, with a few left-over assignments from last year (a different school even) mixed in for good measure.  And his bedroom, which has always been a bit of a construction zone, was awful even for him.  (I know people make fun of teenage boys' bedrooms, but this round of mess was seriously bad.  As in, ants were crawling all over me while I was helping to clean it, and his drawers contained biohazards I won't even name here.  Really, really dirty room).

To compound all this, N-son has a real aversion to being criticized or corrected, so cleaning up with him puts him in a totally grumpy mood.  We call it the "hedgehog" -- very prickly.

Stage 1 of intervention is to clear out the mess and get things back to presentable.  We spent about two evenings going through his bedroom and then his school notebook.  Stage 2-through-whenever is trying to come up with a system that maintains some semblance of order for a while, to postpone as long as possible the next round of disaster.

Fortunately, N-son loves checklists and to-do lists.   These lists don't feel like criticism or correction to him; he sees them as a form of autonomy.  So it was lovely that I'd just read Gawande's book, because The Checklist Manifesto is more than just a love letter to how great checklists are, it also has some advice on what makes a good checklist (and what makes a bad one).

First of all, a checklist is different than a to-do list.  A to-do list is something we create with mostly one-time tasks, but a checklist is repeated every time a certain situation arises:  one example Gawande uses is a pilot's pre-flight checklist.  Another example he doesn't use, but which is probably more familiar to most people, is K-daughter's leaving-the-house mental checklist:  "keys, phone, wallet, baby".  She repeats this four-item list to herself every time she heads for a door (and yes, she sometimes would have forgotten the baby if she hadn't!)

What makes a good checklist?

• It has to be short: he suggests no more than 9 items (and preferably, fewer than 9).  If you get longer than that, people tend to start skipping the checklist, and it becomes worthless.
• Because of the need for brevity, the items on the checklist should be crucial items, ones that people are apt to overlook under stress.  He gives a lovely example of this:  a checklist that pilots use when an engine dies on a single-engine Cessna has only 6 items.  None of the items are "call the radio tower", because pilots always remember to do that.  But one of the items is "FLY THE PLANE" -- because if you're freaking about how to turn the engine back on, steering and maintaining altitude are easy to overlook.
• The items on the checklist have to be precise and specific.  "Room clean?" is too vague, but "all empty hangars are downstairs" is specific.

Gawande notes that a checklist is more than an OCD way to maintain control over your tasks, it's also a great tool for ensuring communication between various parties.  N-son now has at least 5 different adults helping with his homework at various times; his  four-item notebook checklist will help not only N-son, but also all those adults helpers plus his teachers know what his system is.   (Okay, cross fingers that what I'm saying is true).

Already, N-son has managed to maintain a surprisingly clean room for a whole week, as confirmed by my husband.  (And note that the checklist means that N-son knows what to clean, and also that my husband knows what areas *I* think are important to check, so the room has stayed clean without any direct intervention on my part).  And even more, N-son seems to be really happy about having this direction about what "clean your room" actually means.

For what it's worth, here is N-son's bedroom checklist.  We'll continue testing how well this works.

Trash 

1. Trash cans emptied; trash bags removed. 

2. Newspapers, school papers, and all other papers in recycling or put away. 

Floor 

3. Picked up. 

4. Swept and/or vacuumed. 

Closet 

5. Empty hangars downstairs (not on doorknobs or on the floor, but hanging on a rod downstairs) 

6. All shoes in the closet, on the floor 

Dresser 

7. Clothes in correct drawers (shorts in shorts drawer, etc) 

8. Clothes are all clean. 

9. Clothes are neatly folded.

Where the money goes

Now that we're getting more money than I had budgeted for, where will it go?

Well, like any good consumers, we've bought ourselves a fancy new vehicle!  In fact, our new purchase cost us three times the value of our current lovely car.  Ooh, we are riding pretty!

Heh-heh.  The new vehicle is indeed fancy, but it's a bike.  And our car is a 2001 Prius with an ugly crunchy dent on the driver's side, so its Blue Book value is fairly pitifully low.  So, while this bike is still expensive by normal standards (it costs four times as much as my SPDM did, and I think I bought a super-expensive bike myself), the cost was still just a tad under $6K.

My husband's fancy new vehicle.

The blue book value of our car.  

When the SPDM got a flat,
we could switch wheels between our bikes
while we got my tire replaced. 

The reason for getting this bike is that my husband's other racing bikes are 15-20 years old.  And while they're still perfectly good bikes from a commuter/weekend rider point of view, they are getting too old for the racing circuit.  For example, a cyclist who has a flat often just trades wheels with the race support crew, but modern racing wheels don't fit on my husband's old bikes (just like newer Microsoft Word documents can't be read by old Microsoft software.  bleah.)

Is this a "frugal" purchase?  In some sense, of course, no:  nearly 6000 times no, you might say.   On the other hand, my husband regularly rides with people who spent $10K or more for their bikes, so in comparison to theirs, his is super cheap (!).   And the bike is hardly an impulse purchase:  he spends 2-3 hours a day riding.  We're really spending this money on something that is central to how he spends his time and how he creates his identity.  It's meaningful to us, even if it is a luxury item.

Okay, but it's not like we're about to shower ourselves in material goods.  We haven't felt particularly deprived this past year, so it's not like we think our lives will be better if we start spending large parts of our days in stores.  In fact, this past year of wide-open schedules has been so nice, that it makes even more sense to put our money aside to make wide-open schedules a permanent thing in a few more years.

In fact, we're highly influenced by the Your Money or Your Life argument that increasing spending on ourselves brings diminishing--and even possibly negative--returns on happiness.  We just spent a pile of money on a bike that takes us past comfort to luxury.  If we start buying more for ourselves, the result will be clutter.  At this point, the best way to use the money to make ourselves happier is by diverting it into places where there are true needs.

What happens if we spend more money on things
is that we have to clean and take care of those things.

If we share with other people,
the joy just bounces back on us.
Yee-hah!

So here's the priority for the extra incoming money.

1. Bump up the charitable giving to pre-sabbatical levels (or maybe even higher).
2. Max out my retirement accounts.
3. Set aside money for home repair projects (there are a bathroom and the kitchen that work fine, but should probably be spiffed up before we sell, five or so years from now).
4. If there's enough extra left over, establish a Donor Advised Fund.

(A couple of people have suggested adding money to college funds.  Fortunately, those are already fully stocked (in fact, probably a little over-stocked, because my sons are likely to go to a nearby, inexpensive Tech school rather than a pricey four-year college).  And we've already started a 529 plan for my grandchild.  If we didn't have future educational expenses already taken care of, these would be fairly high up on that list.)

Goals and plans and summer and kids

Summer has arrived, and that means it's time for  . . . spreadsheets!!!

(Doesn't everyone start off the summer with a family meeting involving lists, calendars, and giant piles o' self-generated paperwork?)

Around the Miser Mom household, the kiddos have come to expect this sort of insane level of organization.  My own mom used to start us off each weekend with lists: my dad would make a fantastic Saturday brunch, and while we were eating, my mom would draw up the list of weekend chores, filling up a sheet (or two) of 8.5x11" paper in her elegant handwriting.  Over the course of the next two days, we'd all chip in, crossing items off the list as we finished them.  The list was awful/wonderful.  It was awful because it was full of chores.  It was wonderful because it was all there; you knew exactly what to do next, and you could see how close you were to being done.  After my mom died and my sisters and I reconvened to help Dad plan the memorial service, the first thing my sister did was draw up a list of household tasks that would get the place ready for the post-service reception.  We all gladly fell to working together, just like old times.

Although I don't start each weekend with a chore list, there are ways I've done my Mom one better.  My own summer spreadsheet has four or five categories (home tasks, once only; home tasks, repeated; garden; scholarly tasks; exercise).  I keep both an electronic version that I update year-to-year, and then I print out a specific year's version to share with the kids.

Late last night I pulled out the lists and the calendars and sat the boys down to map out the summer.   When I say "late last night", I mean 8 p.m. -- my brain starts to fry about 9 p.m., so this was my last mentally serviceable hour.  I chose this time so that I could bribe/threaten the boys into listening:  I cheerfully told them that if we couldn't finish planning before my brain fried, I'd just wake them up early to continue the discussion.

By the way, I have to say that this version of the bribe/threat has been my Hands-Down-Most-Successful summer parenting trick.  Ever.  The boys stay up way later than I do (theoretically, until 10:30, but actually, who knows???).  Do they make noise at night? They used to, but if they wake me up at night, I wake them up in the morning.  No more noise now. Do they leave a mess in the kitchen and living room?  They used to, but now if I wake up to a mess, I wake them up to clean it up, and so nowadays I arise to a tidy home.    Ergo, the bribe/threat of continuing the planning discussion in the morning was all that I needed to ensure we'd finish our planning session last night.

I was glad to see that, after several years of this ritual, the boys have come to appreciate the awful/wonderful dichotomy of lists.  I pulled out my spreadsheet and they grabbed for it, curious (in a semi-morbid way) about what was in store for them.  J-son asked about tasks I hadn't included on the list that he wanted to include, so I added those.  In the same way, we went through the summer calendar of trips and volunteer weeks and sports camps, noting when the boys would have open spaces for hanging with friends. N-son did a happy dance about his squash and tennis weeks.   J-son confidently pointed out weeks where he was sure his dad would take him boxing.  Afterwards, we put together a cooking plan and a grocery list.  By 9:00 p.m., just as my brain was beginning to mushify, J-son helped me prepare our latest box of CSA vegetables, and by 9:30 I was in bed.  The boys switched to quiet mode.

It's 8 a.m.; I've been up for two hours and the boys are still asleep.  Lovely.  Hello, summer!

The sticky-note advent calendar

It's not like I'm about to become the centerfold in House Beautiful or anything, but I'm pretty happy with our new advent calendar.

Yup, there it is on the fridge, right next to the "Mommy Dollar Value Chart".  And yes, it's just a list of things to do covered with sticky notes.  I totally took my Christmas to-do list and pretended like it was fun.

December 1. Put up lights.
December 2. Decorate tree.
December 9. Write our sponsored children.
December 14. Make springerli.

 I interspersed my to-do list with a couple of pre-planned events:

December 8. Christmas Caroling with youth group.
December 19. Driver's license dinner.

 I added in a couple of wacky but Christmassy sounding things (I mean, wacky for us):

December 11.  Make X-mas music together.

 So far, I give this advent calendar a big Huzzah.  N-son in particular loves peeling back the sticky notes and seeing what's in store for the day.  And then he pesters me until we do it.

It's a great way for sharing tasks with the family.  In fact, for the first time ever, I handed the decoration tasks over to the kids.

 They had a blast stringing lights and putting ornaments on our cast-iron tree.  (This time of year, it's a Christmas tree, but other times of year it's an Easter tree or a Halloween tree or some such).

And when the calendar revealed that today was the day for making music together, N-son bugged me repeatedly.  When, Mom?

 Now, I play about three songs on the banjo: She'll be comin' round the mountain, Go tell Aunt Rhody, and Will the Circle be unbroken.  N-son plays drums, with equal amounts of talent and noise (lots of both).  The rest of the family grooves on percussion, with more noise than talent.

But we got down tonight.  We rocked the house to "She'll be comin' round the Christmas Tree".  Next week we'll probably go for an encore with "Go tell the Magi".  I might have to break out the ear plugs.

Yeah, baby!

Bedtime Lists

It was the morning after the night before, and it wasn't pretty.  A bit more prudence the night before would have gone a long way to making the next day more pleasant.

I'm not talking about hangovers, I'm talking about a naked teenage boy running around the house, a boy who couldn't find his sports uniform.   I'm talking abut his unhappy dad, who needed to get him to the bus that was going to take him to the meet, who was fretting about missing the bus because the boy was STILL naked.  Sunshine and rainbows, this was not.

As our boys move into their teenage years, they're taking on more responsibility and more autonomy, but this means of course that they've got more room to make mistakes.  And mornings, of late, have revealed areas where a lot of learning still needs to happen.  The glasses that are lost.  The messes left in the wake of the fast-departing child.  The clothes that have gone missing.  All of this is an indirect result of giving the kids a lot more leeway over their own bedtime routines.

And so, after the naked-sports-debacle, I decided to give my kids more autonomy by telling them exactly what to do.

To wit: I made a list of all the things they need to remember to do pre-bedtime.  Do I love making lists? Yes, I do.  I do love lists, I do.   Do my kids like using them?  Actually, yes to that, too.  They're my kids, after all.  In fact, N-son now comes home from school and asks if he can get his bedtime list and start working on it right away.  J-son sort of prefers running around naked, but he'll go through the list with good cheer and as much goofiness as we'll let him get away with.

So far, one week in, we've had fewer late-night pleadings for one more snack (because getting a snack before going to bed is on the list).  We've remembered to apply N-son's wart medicine almost every night (ew, gross!).  The house has been less of a disaster zone than usual.  And there haven't been any naked teenagers streaking through my living room.

It wasn't until I started writing all the tasks in one place that I realized how much activity goes into getting ready for bed and for the day that follows.  Here, for what it's worth, is my sons' bedtime list.

Bedtime Checklist

___ Hang up backpacks
___ Hang up lanyard and ID
___ Toys/papers out of first floor
___ Put all shoes in closets
___ Umbrellas put away
___ (N) show Mom your glasses
___ (N) finger medicine
___ Cell phone to Mom
___ School clothes laid out
___ Get snacks
___ Clean table/kitchen
___ Teeth brushed and flossed
___ Cap on toothpaste
___ No toothpaste (etc) in sink
___ Shower, if needed
___ Nothing on bedroom floors

I've read that airplane pilots and surgeons use lists like these (well, not exactly like these) to avoid mistakes.  So I guess you could say I'm preparing the boys not only for bed, but also for amazing careers.

Go, team!

Spending time to save time

I like to be active.   In fact, I like to be so active that I'm a bit on the frantic side.  But I don't like to feel like my schedule owns me, . . . and last week, that's the way I was feeling.

I'd brought home work just about every night.  I'd brought home work the past several weekends.  And my nights and weekends were devoted to "catching up" and even (so I thought) "getting ahead".  But after the third weekend of "catching up/getting ahead", it was clear I was establishing a pattern, not creating an exception.

And so, I pulled out my trusty planner.  I stopped doing my "work".  I started making lists. I love making lists.  And I love creating schedules.

What does a bout of planning look like?

Round 1 of planning was doing a "Planner Meeting" with the family.  N-son has grown up seeing me and his dad synchronise calendars, and he has so wanted to be part of this that it's now his job to maintain the family calendar that hangs on the bulletin board.  When life gets hectic, it's easy to let communication lag, and I knew our family was in dire danger of double-booking ourselves for things.  So the family planning meeting came first.


Round 2 of planning was to anticipate events.  This phase included things as simple as deciding on a rough menu for the week.  A quick weekly menu can save a bunch of time:  for example, pulling meat out of the freezer and putting  it in the fridge  the night before a meal takes almost no time compared to defrosting it at the last minute (unless the "meat" happens to be bananas instead of kielbasa.  Whoops.)   Another example of anticipating events: in my home, now is the season for children's medical visits, and remembering to bring all the myriad forms along with me saves me time compared to mailing them and retrieving them later.

Round 3 of planning was to try to fix the problems that have been annoying me.  In this case, I decided to schedule "time with myself" each day -- to actually write that time into my planner each day.  In particular, since I'd been bringing home about an hour worth of email correspondence each night (and even more on the weekends), I decided to look to the future week and block out one hour each day to concentrate on email.

At this point, I realized my problem.  I've scheduled myself so intensely, I don't actually have time to catch up on correspondence during the day.   The reasons for my lack of e-time vary from day to day, so that each new day, I've been able to to fool myself into thinking "today is an exception".  But when I decided to plan into the future and I saw an entire week of . . . um . . . exceptional reasons, then I realized that the problem is really me.

Round 4 includes gently, but firmly, saying "no, thank you".  Or at least, "not now".  Because in the midst of all this planning and list-making, I got even more offers of cool things to do.  Life is full of cool things to do, things I want to say "yes" to.   But the weekend of planning sobered me up.  I can't do it all.

(You don't know how hard it is for me to write that last sentence, or how much I want to be Wonder Woman.  At least let me say:  I can't teach all my classes, chair the committee that's sucking up all my time, referee two math research papers, and still plan the Pirate Dinner.  Something has to walk the plank!  And it sha'nt be be the Pirate Dinner, matey!)

Calendars aren't classy.  Schedules aren't sexy.  Lists seldom inspire lust (unless they're in my husband's lap).   But I couldn't live the good life without them.

Summer schedule

June 9.  That's the day that our almost-20-year-old K-daughter heads to Virginia for two months.  The same day that my husband heads for a three-week Army Camp.  The boys will be out of school.  They are too old for summer camp.  In spite of the fact that I would rather be in my office doing math, I will be supervising these three highly energetic kids.  Solo.

Most people, I suppose, would be delighted at the opportunity to stay home with their kids.  No office responsibilities; just time to enjoy the family.  Most Miser-Moms would be delighted at the chance to save so much money on childcare (we're talking something like $1000/month).  But me, honestly, I'd rather be doing math.  Part of the reason that it's taken me so long to put together this post is because it took me more time than it should have, to realize that this staying-at-home-with-kids-issue is not really a torturous thing.  In fact, it might be a really fun month.  I should quit whining and start smiling.

As you might guess, now that my head is coming around a bit, I am preparing by making lists.  Lots of lists.  And schedules.

Here's the plan.  We'll see how it works.

Nannies first; children second.  So says Miss Manners, and I heartily live by that motto.  Because even if I've decided that it might actually be fun to hang out with my own children (really?), I know we'll all need breaks from one another.  With much of my usual help gone, I'm making sure I know where to turn for respite (either for me from the boys, or vice versa).  They'll spend a week with my sister in July.  N-son will go to a sleep-away camp one week.  I'll hire temporary help to take the boys off my hands and give them some teenage-appropriate entertainment at various times -- with any luck, at many times.  I know it's hard to find help once I'm already frazzled, so I'm gearing up, making connections now, before I need them.

Structure and freedom.  Routine and flexibility.  My current plan (and we'll see how long that lasts -- hah!) is to have a very structured morning.  Breakfast, followed by an hour of chores, followed by reading, then snack, then drum practice, then running (maybe?), then lunch.  In the afternoons, though, the play's the thing.  Pool or bike riding or such.  I'm signing us up for a family pass to our county park pool -- that ought to be good for everyone.

As far as mornings go, I figure, if the boys are actually spending time with me, they ought to get (re)trained; they ought to learn to make breakfast and weed and clean and fix things.  They're not going to like it at first, but I've learned from my many-many kids how much easier it goes in later years, if I'm willing to work hard to make the kids work hard now.

But, of course it's summer.  So the work should be fun (ish), to be followed by fun in the sun, with a dose of freedom tossed in.

Biorhythms.  It's no coincidence that I'm putting work in the morning and play in the afternoon.  It's not just that the day will (we hope) go from doing work to the freedom from that work -- a much easier progression than the reverse.  It's also that I've observed my boys are much more docile and pliable in the morning.  And I have more energy/patience in the morning.  N-son and J-son have always been willing to make breakfast (they've often fought over the privilege, in fact).  But making dinner requires a lot more arm twisting, because so much else fun stuff is going on.  So we'll do the chores first, and reward ourselves later.

Special Events.  The United Way website for our city has a page listing volunteer opportunities -- and by "page", I mean a link to a pdf document that is 79 pages long, listing all sort of places we might help out.  (Each organization describes opportunities for families and for children, if appropriate).  I'm hoping we'll take advantage of that.

I've also spent a bunch of time uncovering fun-but-free things to do in our area, ranging from summer football practice at our local high school for C-son, to music concerts, to movie showings, to art walks, to nature hikes, and more.  A month ago April Dykman wrote a post called "Be a Budget Traveller in your own town" -- it was a great list of advice that came at just the right time for me.  Some of these special events have a specific time frame (we'll observe the Transit of Venus on June 5).  But for many others, we'll play it by ear.  See how it goes.

Some people do this all the time, huh?  I am in awe.  

Surviving a busy spell: phase 3 = lists

Write it down.  That's phase 3 of my when-I'm-way-too-busy coping mechanism.

You knew I was going to say this.  You just wondered when.  I make lists all the time.  When I get busy, the lists are even more essential to me.  A list is not just some kind of security blanket for the obsessive-compulsive (although, thank goodness,  it can certainly be that for people like me -- hah!)  When people  are under stress, both memory and decision-making suffer.  So writing things down helps to avoid brain farts, minor mishaps, or even huge mistakes.

The point of a list is not to make my life conform to the list.  Just because I write it down, doesn't mean I have to DO it.  It just means I no longer have to actively remember it . . . my list will remind me.  More written on the paper; less clutter in the head.

Every time I think of something I might want to do, it goes onto my list.  (I keep all my lists in my planner).  Big or little, I just write it down.

What happens once I've got my list together is more of an art form than a science.  I know from past experience that I tend to write down more tasks than I can ever accomplish in a single day.  Some people deal with this using the "three big rocks" method (choose the three tasks you really need to accomplish, and just do those), and I understand the appeal of that.  But my day is often full of many important little tasks; if I did just three of the things on my list, my world would fall apart.

Instead, once I've got a list, I do a kind of quick triage.  I'll often read through my list quickly, marking some of the tasks with a "U" or a "V" or other symbols.

• For me, "U" stands for "urgent" -- C-son needs meds today.  I have to prepare for my class before the class happens this afternoon.  If I don't register for the conference today, I lose the early-bird discount.
• "V" stands for "vital", the tasks that are central to my identity and my values.  Getting exercise.  Doing math.  Hugging my kids.  (Yes, I write "hug kids" on my to-do list, because I'm the kind of person likely to forget to do that.  Sad but true).  
• Depending on what else is on the list, I might also mark some items with a telephone (on days I have a lot of calls to make) or an "e" (on days there are a lot of emails to send out).  This allows me to "batch" my tasks.

Given that I don't have enough time in a single day to do everything on my list (and trust me, I don't), I try to whack away at the U/V parts first.  And sometimes, "whack" means just not do it at all: to heck with that conference.  Or, I'll run tomorrow when it's not raining, but skip it today.  Crossing something off my list because I decided NOT to do it feels really good on a busy day.

I also try to ease some of the mental strain of large to-do lists by deliberately moving some big tasks into the future, when the semester is over and life will be less hectic.  In May, I'm going to review a paper an editor sent me, and I'll also work on a newsletter that has no fixed deadline.  Both of these are things I want to do, but I don't have to do them now.  So they're not on today's to-do list (try saying that three times fast!); they're on a "May" to-do list.  I can forget about them for a while.  Phew!

Having a list isn't a method for getting everything done.  Hardly!  For me, it serves more as a way of getting peace of mind -- it reminds me that I haven't forgotten to do something important.  Reminds me that what I am doing right now is really the most important (to me) thing to be doing.  That if there's something important I didn't do, at least I know I didn't do it, and can try to work around that.  That, since I can't do everything today, at least I'm making choices about what I can do today.