 |
Marian Bateman
Workflow Coaching in the Home
Often we start Workflow Coaching with people in their business environment and end up coaching them in their home as well. The reason is that once you have experienced a clean inner and outer environment at work, you often begin to envision what your world would be like if your life and home office could be in the same shape.
Families today face challenges that require new ways to think about and manage our lives at home. The Getting Things Done thought process is equally applicable to managing a family as it is to managing a Fortune 500 Company. Learning how to transform your “stuff” at home into organized systems of actions and reference requires the same time and commitment as it does at work and can have an incredible impact on our lives.
Our home offices, if we have one, are often piled high with bills, cards from our kids, invitations to events, insurance papers and magazines we think we will get to in our spare time. The reason our desks are piled high is that we have not learned a new way of thinking that will enable us to make decisions around that pile of “stuff” as it arrives. The result is what we call “an amorphous blob of undo-ability,” often coupled with a heavy dose of guilt. I personally think there is a higher guilt factor with home management than in the work environment. (After all how COULD you have forgotten that birthday or that little league game?)
It is also true that if we do not apply Getting Things Done at home this quickly affects our lives at home and at work as well. You didn’t see that you needed to buy the supplies for you daughter’s field trip until the day it was due, so your administrative assistant had to make an emergency run to the store. You had to Fed Ex that late utility bill you found last night, so you were late to an important meeting. You ignored that tooth and had to take unplanned time off for a dental emergency. Most of us have experienced one variation or another on this theme.
Managing a family and a home is like a running a business. My experience is that if more of us knew about the GTD thinking process there would be a lot less stress at home.
Here’s what one client had to say, “I was extremely happy with the workflow coaching I had in my home this year. When my husband described what Marian accomplished with him at his office, I knew it would be just as useful for me. It was exactly what I'd been needing for years to help me handle the huge amounts of paper and the pressures of organizing our busy family life, three young children, two homes, lots of travel, entertaining, and social obligations.”
I have worked with men and women at home whose lists rival any of those in the corporate world in terms of volume. It is still curious to me that we think simply because it is work at home that we should be able to keep it in our heads and not apply the same skills that make our life easier at work. The result of learning the GTD way of thinking and setting up your home office is that you will have actually have more time to spend with the people you love, not less.
I have seen many people smile when they discover that there is an easier way to manage their home lives. As in any environment, the key is to choose a system that you trust to capture your actions, to learn how to collect, process and organize and to set up a home reference system, so you can easily access information.
“Marian helped me transform my small guest room/study into an efficient home office with the addition of three times more file cabinets than I'd previously had. I now know the value of PLENTY of file space to keep all those piles of paper off my desk and the surrounding floor space. Equipped with the speedy Brother P-touch labeler, she patiently guided me through my huge in-box (the former piles from desk and floor). She got me set up on Outlook and coached me through the process of listing all those tasks I'd been carrying around in my head. Now I have an efficient way to keep up with not only papers, but projects, family birthdays, children's school assignments, holidays, and play dates. She had a name for the awful feeling I had of always thinking I was forgetting something - "gnawing sense of anxiety" - and showed me a good way to relieve it. As a result of seeing how massive my task list was, I set about hiring an administrative assistant, and Marian coached me on the best ways to utilize her time and efforts. We went together to the office supply store and bought a Palm V, and she got it set up and showed me just how to use it. "Coaching" is a good term for the supportive hand-holding and gentle teaching she did. And after our sessions here were done, she has continued to be available by phone or email for any specific questions I have. I feel more "in control" than ever before, and just wish I had this coaching years ago!”
When you complete coaching at home your desk shifts from a dumping ground to a personal support system designed to manage your life at home with greater ease and elegance. The real pay off comes when you realize you are more relaxed, in charge and have the bandwidth to do some of the planning and thinking you have not had room to do up until now. You have the energy to ask and answer questions about what you would like to be doing this weekend, next month, as well as two years from now. This is when the time and energy spent to learn the GTD process at home really pays off for you, your family and everyone involved.
back to all
|
