We all struggle with prioritizing our time and tackling our to-do list. Summer makes that struggle even harder! There are vacations to take, day camps to attend, church family days, reunions, and that blissful week you get to send your kids overnight to that joyous place of fun: 4-H Camp Cherry Lake! All these new temptations bring an additional challenge to setting and accomplishing everything we need to get done on our to-do list. This is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate decision making and stress management skills. Little eyes and ears constantly take in everything you do and then mimic your reactions during similar situations in their day. Let's review some decision-making techniques and learn by doing….
One helpful tool is the decision-making process model. You can find variations of this throughout the research world. This layout comes to us from Steve Keating:
Another excellent tool to help maximize your to-do list is the P.E.R.K. process. Stacey Ellison has an excellent description on her blog:
P- Procrastinate: Which things are not high priority tasks this week? Which things can be procrastinated until later on because they are not in alignment with your most impactful goals?
E- Eliminate: Sure it would be nice to write that thank you note, newspaper article, make that phone call, etc. But do you really need to?
R- Reduce: What can you reduce (or delegate to someone else this week)?
K- Keep: You should keep those things which are going to have great impact on your role...
Remember, not everything deserves a place on your to-do list. Ultimately, you have the choice. Help teach our youth that prioritizing is not only good for serving the community, but for their personal health and well-being as well. Teaching grounded decision making and prioritizing skills at an early age will build their resiliency and allow our youth to lead happier, healthier, more generous lives.
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