Hand-me-down tools for school

We were both really struggling to keep up with the demands of 7th grade.

I swear to you, it felt like a full-time job. Add to that the fact that our son is at a new school and... well... yeah. We were both REALLY struggling.

I turned to the tools that I've used in the past while businessing to help him. What happened next was kind of awesome -- after 3 weeks of doing these things, we both agree that the stress levels have gone way down. That's a huge win:

Kanban board

Yes, the good old Kanban board. We went old school here. Bristol board, large markers and post-it notes. A big ruler and some lines later and we were setup with To-do, In progress, and Done columns. 30 mins of reviewing all his subjects and we had a fully populated to-do pile.

He looked at it, and immediately said: "Wow that's a lot." Seeing it all there really hit home.

After the first week I asked him "They make tools that we can use on our computers or phones to track this kind of thing. Do you want to use one of those?" He responded "No, I like this big board where I can see it all in front of me."

Analog for the win. He also asked if we could put a smiley face in the O of Done. 100% we can.

Pomodoro timer

We bought a little digital timer that is super easy to use, has gyroscopes in it so that flipping the timer on its face pauses it, and flipping it on a side chooses a different number of minutes for the timer depending on which side is up.

This was an immediate win. He regularly struggled with large blocks of work, so we broke down what he was doing and then challenged him for time. I'd ask him how long he thought a piece of work would take, we'd set the timer and then off he went. The countdown timer seemed to at least be partly motivating, and he knew when he could take a break.

I'll say that this hasn't been perfect, but when we have used it certainly helps him keep his focus. Maybe it helps me too, actually :)

Iterations and Retrospectives

As we've been working through this, I've asked him some targeted questions:

"You've got a lot here in to-do... how should we decide what to do next?" led to us agreeing to write due dates in the bottom corner of each sticky note.

"How do we know how much we can do in one night?" led to putting a time estimate in the top right corner for a some of the to do items, especially in the first week.

Asking him "How was the first week of doing this? Was it useful?" was met with the (paraphrased) answer "I really seeing it all at once so I know how much I have to do, and it's really clear what I need to work on" and "wow, I really need to get some of these moved over to done."

I promise you I didn't tell him what to say.

I told him that I really liked it because it means that the entire family can see what's on his plate and what he's already started working on. I also told him I was proud of him and how well he's using it to stay on top of things.

What's next?

While I'm currently the one writing up all the sticky notes, he is responsible for putting them on the board, moving them forward, and tracking what's done. We talked about it this earlier today -- the next level for him is to be the one that writes up the sticky notes every day or two. I suspect that eventually he'll be the one that comes up with ideas for improving "the system" without me prompting him.

By no means and I trying to turn our 12 year old son into a business person. I am however, going to keep helping him explore working with different systems that will be (hopefully) valuable to him in the long run.