A Heritage of Habits: GTD for the family
I desire to have children who are fruitful and focused for the Lord, and family that lives in a next-action mindset, ready to take whatever next steps in faith we are called to take.
In that vein, I have been thinking a lot over the past two years about how to incorporate the GTD methodology and other principles of productivity in our family's life, and how to instill these practices in our children from a very early age. I mindmapped a bunch of ideas about this a couple of years ago, including how to leverage knowledge of child development to instill next-action thinking in kids. Here is an example (.pdf) of one such map (note: it's pretty busy, so you'll need to zoom in to read small font in some parts). I have others that I hope to share as I blog more about this.
I was inspired to re-look at these old maps by a terrific post by Micheal Sliwinski that I read today at GTD Times. The article offers good, concrete advice for families based on Michael's experiences implementing GTD at home. I recommend checking it out if you're thinking about how to do this with your family. From what I can tell, Michael Sliwinski will be contributing regularly about this topic, so I'm eager to learn more from his experiences.
The inspiration to revisit my maps and ideas about GTD in the family comes at a good time. First, I am preparing to teach a three-part seminar in Sunday School at our church. This seminar will build on the pilot seminar I presented a year ago to three couples from our church. The presentation this month will have many more participants, God willing; and I suspect those who attend will be at various points in the life cycle. I know that family life and child rearing is important to this group, so I need to refocus myself on these ideas in order to be as helpful and relevant as I can be.
Second, it's a good time for this to resurface because our family is preparing to move to new home in June. So, we're in major planning and set-up mode. We're doing lots of things to try to build GTD into our new living space. For example, we've dedicated what was the dining room in the house to be a "family office," with the idea of having a dedicated productivity hub for the kids. I'm also building a home office where I'll have my own hub. It's an exciting time to think through how we want to order our lives and our children's habits.
With a move and a job change coming in the next two months, I doubt I'll blog any more than my usual 2-3 posts per month. But I'm eager to use some of these opportunities to gather and pray through my developing ideas about GTD for God's family.
