The Mom Weekly Volume 23: January 2, 2024
As far as I can tell, David Allen of Getting Things Done fame, is the one who popularized the concept of “closing the loop.”
As Allen explains it, having unfinished tasks, especially ones that aren’t written down, take up valuable “real estate” in our brains, and can make us less effective and less happy, and have less energy for the things we really want to or need to accomplish. Here’s one article from his website explaining some of the concepts.
Here’s an example of this in life recently: our vehicle insurance renews towards the end of the year, and it’s been an open loop for some time for me, because we were considering moving to a different company. Even though I had it written as a task and project in my ToDoist app, it would pop into my mind every so often.
After talking about it and doing some research, Dad and I decided to stay with our current company, but change a few things about our insurance to lower the payment. Then I had to set up an auto payment for the new amount from a new account. Once that was completed, I knew I needed to get the insurance cards into each vehicle.
I like to laminate the cards so each is easy to find in the glove box. So another day, I found the insurance cards on our online account, printed them out, and laminated each one.
Fortunately, Giuliana noticed before we started to put them in each vehicle that I had mistakenly printed out last year’s insurance cards, which were to expire in December 2023. Good catch!
So, I had to go into the account again, print out the new cards (expiring in December 2024), download those, print and laminate them. Everyone was home those around Christmas, so I figured it would be easy.
It sounds like I had “closed the loop,” but I didn’t feel that satisfaction just yet. That would not happen until each of the cards were in their respective vehicles. I immediately put mine in my vehicle, and asked everyone else to do it. I left the laminated sheets (labeled with a sticky note for each vehicle to spot quickly), on the kitchen counter closest to the door, so we would all see them when we walked by.
After a day or so, the insurance forms were in their respective vehicles, and being able to “close that loop” was so satisfying for me. Now I don’t need to think about that project (and that loop) until November or December of 2024, when it comes time to renew our vehicle insurance again.
Phew!
What’s your point?
I tell that story not just to show how great I am for taking care of that project for our family (but you are welcome to let me know how great I am for taking care of that for our family, LOL).
But it got me thinking about loops.
I want to make sure that I can close the loop on various projects and tasks. The best way is to think when I start something: how can I close the loop on this?
And so I’m going to encourage you to do the same.
First of all, having a system in place to remind yourself of things, so that you don’t have to keep it all in your head, is probably the most important step of this.
I love using ToDoist to remind me to do things I need to do weekly or monthly, or even annually. For example, I have a recurring event in ToDoist to remind me to give the dogs their monthly heartworm pills. Instead of having to remember it “in my head”, I simply note when the ToDoist reminder comes up. Once I give the dogs their pill, I comment on the date, and then checking the item off moves it to a month away. It’s a great system. But one can use paper, or the Notes app on your phone, or any other system. You just have to trust that you will be reminded of things, so it can get out of your brain.
Often, projects take multiple steps—like the auto insurance listed above.
Also: creating The Mom Weekly! I might complete writing it a few days ahead (or not– It depends).But I can’t “close the loop” until I upload the text and any graphics to the website, add in the appropriate links, schedule it to go out via email. Then I can close that loop, until it comes around again next week. It’s effortful, but very satisfying. I hope you enjoy it!
Remember how much I love you,
Mom
Interesting/Notable:
Abiding in the Still Point
The women’s book group I run at our parish is reading T.S. Eliot’s “The Four Quartets” for January, and one of the members shared this beautiful article about it.
How Nine Lessons & Carols Brought a Century of Christmas Comfort
Dad was telling us about how the Lessons & Carols came to be, and this article describes it as well. The service was created was by a young deacon who had been in World War I, but “had to consider how to tend to the emotional and spiritual wounds soldiers brought home. He began to formulate a service with the suffering and trauma of the last four years in mind, a service marked by beauty, simplicity, and truth.”
As you may remember, we have often listened to on the BBC Christmas Eve morning (and actually Christmas Eve in England, where it is broadcast from).
Also, there is a wonderful documentary about Lessons & Carols and how it all comes together in modern times.
An Action Item:
Subscribe! I have added a subscribe box to each of the newsletters, as well as on each page of the website. Eventually, it will be even more interconnected, and I will have all of the old newsletters uploaded to the website. But in the meantime, you can subscribe if you are not, and you can forward this email to others, and they can subscribe using the form embedded in each newsletter and each post.
I have also begun to design the website. It’s very basic now, and I find the formatting kind of wonky. But for now, my goal will be to get all of the old weeklies uploaded, and then I can work more on design. I’ll get there, bit by bit.
What are you doing this weekend?
The Mom Weekly schedules to post on Tuesdays. One of the reasons for this is to encourage you (and me, too!) to think about weekend plans. All too often, I have let that go until Friday, and then it’s hard to get people together, or make plans for coffee, or figure out when you go to Mass (other than the default, which is what we typically do).
So, now that it’s Tuesday, what are you planning for the weekend? I’m going to suggest trying to cover four “F”s to get ideas flowing:
*faith—when are you going to Mass?
*friends—what friends will you see or connect with?
*food—any fun recipes you plan to try, or restaurants you plan to visit?
*fun—anything interesting you are going to play, watch, or do this weekend? Now’s the time to think it through, and put it on the calendar (even informally).