Posted in book reviews

My daughter has been meeting with her tutor on Friday evenings at Borders bookstore. As you can imagine, this is a real hardship for me: an hour wandering around millions of books with the scent of coffee wafting through the air.  The baby does not always cooperate; usually, he nurses when we arrive, and then spends the rest of the hour fussing to sleep, falling asleep just as it's time to wake him up by putting him back in his car seat to leave.  One evening, a book called The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family by Patrick Lencioni caught my eye.  It took me three evenings and 14,152 steps pacing with a fussy Brogan to read it. (Just kidding, I didn't count my steps.)

Obviously, it's a easy, short read.  I took some notes and have been applying it to our lives, and I do think it has clarified things for me somewhat.  I still don't think it is worth $15 (from Amazon) or $25 (from Borders).  So that all of you don't have to spend the money or spend three nights pacing in the store, I will now divulge the three big questions.

Well, two of them anyway.  I only have two in my notes.  I think I can figure out the third though.

1. What makes your family unique?

2. What's your family's top priority right now?

3. What are your family's objectives?

The first question is very much like a mission statement.  Its purpose is to define what the priorities in your family are.  After some work, I came up with this for our family. (Incidentally, the book suggests doing this as a couple.  Since I value my husband's sanity, I didn't make him sit down and do this with me.)  "Our family is a large Catholic homeschooling family that wants all of its members to develop their God-given potential by supporting each other while following our individual interests."

The second question is pretty straightforward: what needs to get done right now?  Last year at this time, it was getting Robert through the college application process.  This should be a goal that will last 2-6 months. 

The family's objectives are broken down into two kinds: defining objectives and standard objectives.  Defining objectives are the components of your top priority.  You should have five or six.  For example, if applying to college is your priority, then some defining objectives are: identifying colleges to apply to, completing applications, completing the FAFSA, and assembling a transcript.

Now, while you are working on those objectives, you can't let the world fall down around you.  There are other things that also have to be done. Those are standard objectives.  I identified five ongoing objectives for our family: basic housework, decluttering, homeschooling, outside activities (ballet, tutoring, speech therapy), and our faith (Rosary, family prayer, and going to Mass).

Then he suggests having a ten minute family meeting (I meet with myself) once a week (or when I think of it) to rate how you are doing on all the objectives.  Give yourself a red, yellow, or green on each item. Red means you're really not getting that done, yellow means it's going OK but could be better, green means it's going fine.

Having this all thought out helps you make those spur of the moment decisions.  If your top priority is to save up $1000, then when the neighbor's children knock on the door selling overpriced stuff, you can turn them down because it doesn't fit your priority right now.  If your priority is getting your child into college, then you can turn down the request to organize the homeschool group's science fair because you know what your priority is, and you won't have the time to do the fair justice.  That's better than feeling guilty, saying yes, and then doing it badly while missing deadlines for college and letting your house be buried by Mt. Saint Laundry.

And that's pretty much it.  The rest of the book is a filler story (which he calls a "fable") about a fictional family learning this and applying it to their family, and then teaching other families about it.  It's actually somewhat annoying, but hey, he needed to fill up a whole book!  Especially annoying was that he said that this family had decided to live below their means so the mom could stay home.  "Below their means" meant: school-age children in Catholic school, annual vacations, babysitter on call, gym membership, etc.  I don't know many people that could live like that and still be below their means! However, even if your family isn't frantic, it probably couldn't hurt to sit down and figure out where you are going and what you are doing.