Hey, homeschoolers! I love systems. When I started my series for A Year of Living Productively, I thought I would come up with the perfect productivity system for me and my readers. I have also looked for homeschooling systems, parenting systems, and cooking systems to make my life easier.

I know I’m not the only one who loves systems. They sell. If you search for system and its synonyms like approach and program, you will find thousands and thousands of options that promise to deliver a blissful life of ease.

But I recently read an article that changed my mind about systems. In this episode, I want to share why we search for systems, why they so often fail, and what we should do instead.

Why do we search for systems?

First, we want to change or improve. We want an easier way to homeschool. We want a meal-planning approach that takes less time. We want a step-by-step plan for getting into shape that guarantees success.

But what drives us to want to change or improve? The same thing that drove me to beg for an epidural for my first labor: We have some kind of pain that we want to do away with. We are struggling to motivate ourselves or our kids. We feel like we’re failing. We or our family members are unhappy. Or we feel that we lack in comparison. Our friend’s child got a college scholarship. Comparison may lead to fear of the future if we don’t change direction. If we don’t increase the rigor of our high schooler’s courses, study prep, or extracurricular activities, they not only won’t get a scholarship, they won’t be accepted, we fear.

So we seek out a system that promises to help us change or improve and alleviates the pain or our fear for the future.

But systems often fail—not always but often.

We think it’s the system’s fault. And sure, some systems aren’t realistic or sustainable. I’m thinking about the 75 Hard system that has you working out twice a day (once outside), eating clean, and drinking a gallon of water for 75 days in a row. Most systems we attempt, however, are not this obviously unrealistic. We’re pretty sure the system will work for us. But therein lies the problem.

As soon as we contemplate using a new, shiny system, we feel better. The pain decreases. That’s true even for my system—The Organized Homeschool Life. When you think about using the plan to get your homeschool and life in order (15 minutes at a time), your stress level goes down. You know what to do. And you can easily organize for an hour a week. Whew! You buy the book and that’s one more stressor you can cross off your list.

You don’t need to buy anything to make The Organize Homeschool Life system work for you. But many systems require products. You need the equipment, the apps, the books. When you purchase or acquire products, your anxiety goes down. You not only have a plan; you are putting it into action.

Sometimes when we choose a system, we feel we need to spend time planning how to implement it. We need to decide when and where to work out and with whom. We need to decide which area needs the most organizational help. We need to get the new curriculum lesson plans entered into our planner and our kids’ planners. We may spend time thinking about this and even working on it, with more stress relief as a result. Or we may wait for the perfect, uninterrupted time to work on our implementation time. I’ve had moms tell me they need to make time to read The Organized Homeschool Life at some time in the future.

The problem with this as with any system prep is that it isn’t meant to be read in one sitting. In our effort to eliminate pain by choosing a system and planning to use a system, we may find that we never actually use a system. Of course, no system works if we don’t use it. The bottom line is we decreased the stress of our situation without taking action.

Eventually though, the problem will reoccur and is likely to be worse. We look for a new system that will work this time and we begin the cycle all over again.

Before I share what we should do instead, I want to thank CTC Math for sponsoring this podcast.

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I’ve shared why we look for systems and why they don’t tend to work. Now let’s talk about what we should do instead.

Let’s do that with some examples. If you want to get into shape, you can start researching fitness systems. That Couch to 5K one sounds interesting, you think. Off you go to the app store and to running shoe reviews. You can spend hours watching YouTube videos on the topic. OR you can go for a walk now. Today. As soon as possible. Perhaps you can only go 10 minutes. Maybe you won’t be able to fit it in tomorrow. But it sure felt good.

If you want to get organized, you can order The Organized Homeschool Life and look through the challenges to determine the very best place to start. You can look for the best bins to organize your school room and kitchen. OR you can look around you right now at something that could be decluttered and organized. Use Dana White’s approach and set a timer for 5-15 minutes. The gist is to throw away trash and put things away in our spaces as you pull them from the space. Don’t wait and make a mess. Maybe you’ll declutter again tomorrow or this weekend. But either w