The Schedule is Ticking

I am a scheduler. An early experience with death made me the sort of person who counts the minutes. I thought that that meant devising a schedule and sticking to it. The thing is, it's hard to know how long some things will take and you can't legislate life. The result of my scheduling has been constant anxiety and low productivity. The impossibility of maintaining a strict schedule didn't come home to me until I was attempting to pull it off with a family of seven. Something had to give, and it turns out the schedule was it. Not that we aren't scheduled anymore, come on, we're a family of seven, but now we are more task driven. If it isn't done on time, well, so what.

The amazing thing is that we are actually way more productive, and our speed is picking up. It is possible that we will eventually be able to accomplish the original schedule, though I'm never going back to that method of management. The kids are finally internalizing the necessary self-discipline to accomplish the tasks assigned them. This means I can get all the tasks I have to do done.

The schedule was killing us. We had to throw it out in order to survive. Don't pick it up. It's ticking.