Simplified Organization Audio Blog: quick actions, organized attitudes

Season 3: Personality Matters Don’t miss the free homeschool personalities reference page! When we realize that we’re trying to imitate a type totally opposite our own, we can realize why we feel defeated and beat up. Not only that, we can take a step back, value that other type’s abilities, yet shift our own energies toward what will work for us. When we know our own type and what that means for us, we can automatically filter out curriculums and opportunities that won’t work for us. We don’t have to try it and crash and burn first. We can see that it’s not going to mesh. We also don’t have to feel bad about what doesn’t work for us, and we can better understand why something works for our friend when it doesn’t work for us. When we know our personality type we can also see where we need to outsource, where we need to get help, where we’re going to have to budget recovery time and just what kind of recovery time we need. Recovery and refreshment plans for each personality type will be a post all it’s own. :) Listen: Read the original post: What’s Your Homeschool Personality? Recommended Books: Simple Sanity Saver: The Perks of Personality Just as each type has a preferred way of extroverting, of making change happen in the world, so each type has a preferred way of introverting, of living a life of the mind. Even extroverts need to think, to connect what’s happening inside and outside of themselves to previous experience and to their core values. * a Ti will connect information in order to analyze it, put it into categories and conceptual constructs. * an Fi will connect experiences and information to her own gut and values. * an Si will connect experience and ideas to her previous experiences, filtered according to what’s important to her and seeking out details that support her interests. * an Ni will connect experience and ideas to a unifying principle, her core obsessive interest, usually. This type is primarily a worldview thinker. Perks of Personality: Free Reference about MBTI Cognitive Functions

Season 3: Review Required After working to make morning review a habit, I thought I was good to go. Indeed, I was better to go.But putting a quick evening review practice into place has remarkably increased my effectiveness and my ability to carry out my plans. It’s like putting a bow on the day. In the morning, the review is a process of getting set to go. In the evening, it’s about wrapping it up and closing it out. It doesn’t take long, and it adds a note of finality and peace to the day: an ending ritual that brings calm. Follow the bibliographic trail Read the original post here: Review Required Every Evening

Season 3: Personality Matters Don’t miss the free homeschool personalities reference page! Understanding differences in personality type can drastically reduce conflict and friction in relationships, and this is as true with our children as it is with anyone else. However, typing children is tricky. Personality preferences develop over time, as people exercise more and more decision-making and observation-making abilities. Children are developing, and so we need to give them space to grow and experiment and blossom rather than box them into labels prematurely. Though typing them can be helpful, we should be careful to not do so too soon and to still always treat them as an individual rather than as a type. Finding our children’s personality type should only be done as a means to understanding and shepherding them better, seeing how different responses to a given situation might not be a sin problem or even need to be a conflict if we understand that they see things and respond to things differently than we do. Knowing their tendencies helps you understand their perspective, what they’re seeing, and how to respond to them so they understand you. Listen: Read the original post: Know Your Child’s Personality Recommended Books: Simple Sanity Saver: The Perks of Personality I mentioned in the last episode that introverts have to extrovert and extroverts have to introvert. It’s true. You are not either a total extrovert or a total introvert – or, if you are, you’re not functional. Extroverting means dealing with anything external to you while introverting means dealing with anything inside your mind – we all do both, though we each prefer one mode. And, there are multiple ways to both extrovert and introvert. For example, a TJ personality type extroverts by making decisions, being bossy, and getting things done while an FJ type extroverts by being a sort of emotional thermostat for people – sensing where people are and helping move them toward where they need to be. With the free download for this season available below, you can check what your extroverted and introverted functions are based on your type. Here’s how you might use that information: * a Te in a group will need to know things are under control – either by someone more competent than herself or by herself. * an Fe in a group will need to be dynamic, helping people understand what’s important and become better through relational connection. * an Ne in a group will be happier with a back seat role,

Season 3: Review Required A real review process will lead to enhanced and proactive new thinking in key areas of your life and work. Such thinking emerges from both focused concentration and serendipitous brainstorming, which will be triggered and galvanized by a consistent personal review of your inventory of actions and projects. Remember that this system does not remain rigid and dictatorial. Your system cannot be static, like a mechanical clock that ruthlessly continues to tick. Rather, it is a focusing tool that holds information so that your brain is free to engage in creative thinking. By reviewing your lists and materials when necessary, you keep your brain from taking back the job of Reminder-in-Chief. It is review combined with thorough collection that makes your lists trustworthy Follow the bibliographic trail Read the original post here: Review Required Every Morning

Season 3: Personality Matters Don’t miss the free homeschool personalities reference page! Those of us educating young children tend to use the vocabulary of learning styles, though current research seems to be showing that most of the learning styles rhetoric is bunk. Still, we do know that children are different. We know that there are different modes of and avenues for learning. There is value in reading, in hearing, and in doing. I believe that some of what people are describing when they speak about different learning styles can be tied back to personality. In fact, Isabel Briggs Myers has an entire chapter in her 1980 book, Gifts Differing titled “Learning Styles” as well as another chapter called “Type and Early Learning” (all quotes in this post are from this book). Type tells us what interests this person the most (that is, what do they naturally pay attention to) and how they best “catch on” to an idea through communication. Listen: Read the original post: Personality & Learning Styles Recommended Books: Simple Sanity Saver: The Perks of Personality There is no one ideal personality type. Each type serves a role that supports other types. It is only together, in a community, a family, a society, made of of multiple types, that we can have a full perspective and be in tune with what is happening and what needs to happen. None of us are complete and whole in and of ourselves. We are finite, limited. We need each other to function in a more complete and whole way. When Isabel Myers wrote her book, she called it “Gifts Differing,” referencing 2 Corinthians x – where God reminds us that we all serve different functions and it is only together that we make a whole body. Some are feet, some are eyes, and if we are missing a type, we will be handicapped. Rather than seeing other personality types as competing types or alien types, we need to see them as completing types, needed types to balance our own selves. Without the thinking, where would be the principles? But without the feeling, where would be the connection and relationship that makes us human? Without the sensing, we would be blind, and without the intuition we would be shallow. A single person can rarely gain proficiency in all eight functions, much less 16 – experts argue about whether one should even try. But we can knit ourselves in community – and even within our own families – with different types in order to better understand and function within our own roles. Perks of Personality: Free Reference about MBTI Cognitive Functions...

Season 3: Review Required Review Required Every Week A weekly review is applying common sense to our weekly rituals. What do we do before leaving on an extended trip? Clean up, close up, clarify, and wrap up decisions needing to be made. A weekly review is a time to do that every week instead of once or twice a year. It is by a regular weekly review that we can keep a clear mind and a sense of relaxed control in the midst of a crazy and full life. It is tempting to think a weekly review is feasible only in the office workplace setting. You know, someplace where you can close the door and easily have space and time alone. A place not at all like home. But it is precisely because our work at home threatens to deluge and overwhelm us at all hours and every day that we need to carve out a time and space to strategize, to regroup, and to be refreshed. I bet we can all find 30-45 minutes somewhere once a week without interactions or other demands — the difficulty is in choosing to use it this way instead of zoning out on random internet searches or Pinterest-browsing. We must be both savvy and disciplined enough to know the value of sacrificing the seemingly relaxing for the truly refreshing & rejuvenating, creating our own islands of time and space for some version of this process. The key is finding the time, and carving out that time regularly, and performing this clarifying and ordering ritual. Follow the bibliographic trail Read the original post here: Review Required: Weekly

Season 3: Personality Matters Don’t miss the free homeschool personalities reference page! If you all clamor for the in-depth justification of why I think it’s ok to use and recommend the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), even though it was based on Jung’s theory (and Jung was messed up) and even though each person is a beautiful unique snowflake, I can do that as the last post to this theory. But to kick this off, I’ll simply say that typing people into 4-12 kinds has been going on since Aristotle, and Kiersey (the one who named and described each of Myers-Briggs’ 16 types) makes a compelling argument that the ancient systems (like choleric, melancholic, etc) are observations of the same sort as those made by Isabel Briggs Myers. So, I will admit it. I am a personality nerd. I am a total Myers-Briggs Type Indicator junkie. Listen: Read the original post: Personality Matters: Understanding MBTI Typing Recommended Books: Simple Sanity Saver: The Perks of Personality When you know your personality type, you can adjust your expectations of yourself and of your homeschool to be realistic. The website 16personalities.com has a useful free test that is more accurate than many free ones available on the internet. Head over to the podcast page at http://www.simplyconvivial.com/audio to find that. However, what is really useful information when you know your type is to know your preferred way to extrovert (because even introverts have to deal with other people and make things happen in the world) and your preferred way to introvert (because even extroverts have to know with what’s important to them and make connections in their minds). Perks of Personality: Free Reference about MBTI Cognitive Functions Spread the word! Leaving a review on iTunes will help other homeschooling moms discover this podcast!

Why Moms Need a Weekly Review A weekly review is a common business productivity recommendation, and a practice I encourage in Simplified Organization: Learning to Love What Must Be Done. It is a time to reorient yourself to what you have on your plate and renegotiate your commitments. You take some time and look at your calendar, make fresh to-do lists, decide what your biggest responsibilities are this week and then make sure those stay in front of your face so they can get done. Moms need a weekly review just as much as a business executive. We have sports practices, volunteer dates, meals, and so much more we must accomplish in a week. The process of evaluating everything that’s upcoming in a calm manner beforehand helps us meet our commitments with peace and preparedness. But it is hard to discipline ourselves to set aside the time. It’s more likely that we just keep on going as we’ve been going without pausing to reflect and set ourselves up for a solid, focused week. But it is only our own peace of mind and sanity we are sacrificing when we skip a weekly review.

The completion, test, and confirmation of the work of teaching must be made by review and application. Gregory posits not only that review and application are the “essential conditions of all true teaching,” but also that “not to review is to leave the job half done.” The aim of reviewing material is threefold: 1. To perfect knowledge. 2. To confirm knowledge. 3. To render knowledge ready & useful.

Welcome to The Simplified Organization Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Mondays, this podcast gives you short and punchy action items and mindset resets. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 2: Motivation to Clean EHAP: My secret to a mostly-tidy house We have a small practice that saves the state of our house, almost every day. It’s simple and effective – as long as we do it. When I keep the time in the late afternoon regularly carved out for it, I can handle the intermittent chaos that descends as the kids work and play throughout the day. I know order will be restored, so I can take a deep breath and let them strew blankets and play food everywhere. Follow the bibliographic trail Read the original post here: EHAP: afternoon tidying to the rescue Have questions about topic? Let’s talk in the comments!

Gregory wishes us to remember that in all our planning and teaching, “there is a clear and distinct act or process which we wish [the student] to accomplish”: learning. It is primarily the learner’s task, not the teacher’s. He must drink freely and it cannot be forced. Learning is more directly the work of the student than the teacher. The work of education is much more the work of the pupil than the teacher. Learning comes by processes of interpretation. Until the knowledge coming forth from the teacher (the mother or the books), is churned and assimilated within the learner, that knowledge does not become the possession of the learner. We want to aim that our students gain clear and distinct conceptions of new facts and principles. How can we facilitate such acts? By giving them opportunities to digest their material and derive its benefits. Basically, narrate, narrate, narrate.

Welcome to The Simplified Organization Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Mondays, this podcast gives you short and punchy action items and mindset resets. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 2: Motivation to Clean How strict should our standards for cleanliness be? We are whole people. And we get in trouble when we live in false paradigms. I am one me and you are one you, and there is no separate identity in each area of our life. That’s true even with housework. How we do what we are responsible to do in the little area of home will be how we handle responsibility in wider and deeper areas. It’s practice for what we’re becoming. How we think and act in the seemingly insignificant work will affect how we think and act in all our work. We are what we repeatedly do. And if we repeatedly, day in and day out, complain and grumble, then we will be complainers and grumblers – not just in that one area, but in them all. We are whole people. Follow the bibliographic trail Read the original post here: Holistic Household Help Have questions about topic? Let’s talk in the comments!

Excite and direct the self-activities of the pupil, and as a rule tell him nothing he can learn himself.This, claims Gregory, is the most widely recognized rule among good teachers. Although there may be times to disregard this law — when time is of the essence, when the child is ill or weak, or when the child is discouraged, for example — however, for the most part, the teacher is to “make [her] pupil a discoverer of truth” — make him find out for himself.

Welcome to The Simplified Organization Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Mondays, this podcast gives you short and punchy action items and mindset resets. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 2: Motivation to Clean How strict should our standards for cleanliness be? Our homes are tools to be made use of, not display pieces to handle gingerly. Tools get dirty. Tools have to be taken care of. The point is to keep them useful and functioning, not pristine. A shovel left out in the grass all winter will rust and rot and not be much use in the spring; a home left untended will run to weeds. But a home cared for will not be immaculate. The aim in cleaning house is not to have a clean house, but to prepare the house for further functioning. Follow the bibliographic trail Read the original post here: Happy Household Help: Be a Homemaker Have questions about topic? Let’s talk in the comments!

Gregory begins with a defense of his position that children possess the innate ability to think, which I will simply assume and not summarize. If you aren’t sure if your children are able to think, you’ll have to read that part yourself. The law of the lesson has its reason in the nature of the mind and in the nature of human knowledge.