Tag Archives: mindset shifts

Mindset Shifts: It’s All In Your Head

This month we’re going to look at mindset shifts. Mindset is a big part of productivity. 

What? It’s not just getting as much done as possible every day? Finding tweaks to be more efficient? 

No, not to me at least. And no matter how efficient you are, there will always be more to do than we have time for. That to-do list will never end. And that is ok. 

My goal is to focus on getting the right things done each day. Those tasks that move me forward, both professionally and personally. That I’m not just putting out fires every day. I’m making progress on projects and making time for myself and the things I enjoy doing (even if that means letting the laundry sit for awhile). 

In trying to keep up with house cleaning, we clean half the house each week. It feels less overwhelming this way. In an ideal world, we work together as a family. We refer back to a book we read,  The Great Zooberry Debacle. It’s all about how many hands make light work. 

Recently, my five-year-old had no interest in helping us clean. I had asked her to pick up some toys that needed to be put away. She threw a fit, I got mad. No toys were cleaned up. 

A little while later, I hear her picking up the toys. She said she was cleaning up to make mom happy and help mom clean. 

The way she said this bothered me. 

We don’t clean the house to make mom happy. Yes, I might be the one leading the troops through it. But we all work together. We all help each other. It’s not just for me. It’s for all of us. We all live in this house. 

We say it’s great when a husband or dad helps out with house chores or the kids. But the men live here too. They are parents, not babysitters. My husband is my teammate, not an employee. We may have different levels of cleanliness. One of us may be more particular about how something is done than someone else. But we are a team. 

I’m talking about a subtle mindset shift here. That it’s not one person demanding everyone else clean to his or her level of cleanliness, on their timeline. It’s not taking on this level of stress making everything happen ourselves as the women in the household. 

It’s working together as a team. It’s communicating with others in the household. 

And one way to do this is through family meetings. 

Change is a Process, not an event. mindset shifts

Family meetings are so helpful in keeping the house functioning and everyone on the same page. What you talk about will change from week to week and season to season. 

Start having weekly family meetings. Our meetings are maybe 5 minutes long, that’s all my kids can handle. And right now, all we really talk about is cleaning tasks and what one fun thing we each want to do over the weekend. We also ask the kids about what went well for them this past week and what they’d like to see us do differently next week. 

Here are some other things you can talk about during a family meeting. 

  • Division of household tasks
  • What’s going well / what’s not working
  • Upcoming schedules
  • Discussion of bigger family issues – vacations, new routines, changes to a schedule, etc. 

What would a family meeting help you accomplish?