Joyful & Triumphant

If we are honest, many of us will admit that there are those days when we just don’t feel like we accomplish much, yet feel like we were busy the entire day.  What on earth happened?  It’s not a good feeling to close out a day without a sense of at least a little bit of accomplishment.  How can we make that happen EVERY day???

A number of years ago, I learned about the OHIO principle.  When I am consciously following this principle, jobs are completed and progress is made.  I admit that it still takes a conscious effort on my part, sometimes even saying it out loud, so that I actually follow through on it.  What is this principle?   It’s a rather simple concept:

O H I O  =  Only Handle It Once

Look around you and quickly choose just 1 job that needs to be done or 1 item that needs attention.  Then simply complete that job and don’t quit until it’s finished.  Or pick up that piece of paper and don’t put it down until you have completed whatever it is you need to do with that paperwork (read it, make a phone call, grade it, pay that bill, file it, recycle it, or trash it).  Then if you still have time available, choose the next item and follow the same procedure.  Do NOT allow yourself to get distracted by emails, phone calls, facebook, texting, etc!!!!  This will destroy your efficiency! 🙁

Often, I think we tend to look at ALL the jobs that need attention which leaves us feeling overwhelmed, and it paralyzes us from accomplishing anything.  By applying this principle, it helps to eliminate those overwhelming and paralyzing feelings and moves us onward toward reaching our goal.

It’s easy to apply this for any time period whether it be a 1-minute job, 5 minutes, or an hour or two.  Just start doing and completing 1 thing, and then stop when your allotted time is up.

I know that with home schooling, it seems like there is an endless mound of papers and books that collect on my desk.  Application of this principle works wonders with that stack since many of those items do not require more than a couple minutes of my time.  So I can start to squeeze this into my day whatever my schedule may be.

Go ahead – try it just once – say it out loud (OHIO – only handle it once) to remind yourself to finish it completely!

YOU CAN DO IT! 🙂

It’s that time of year . . . again.  I used to be so on the ball and schedule all the work for an entire school year.  Yes, there were lots of adjustments made throughout the year, but it was easy to change since I keep the schedule on a computer worksheet (an MS Excel FREE look alike program that works great):

I always knew what we needed to accomplish that week to make it through the curriculum that year.  Now?  Not so much.  Now I only schedule 30 school days at a time.  That means I need to do this scheduling 6 times per year instead of once.  At this point, we are fortunate to have 90 days completed ~ half-way through the year!  So while others may be recovering from their New Year’s party and lack of sleep, I’ll be spending a chunk of time this New Year’s Day having LOTS of fun mapping out the next 30 days of school and searching the library website for books we’ll need / want to enrich our studies.

~ HAPPY NEW YEAR ~