The Seven Habits That I Don’t Have

Now that Fall is on it’s way and summer break is over, it’s time for me to reflect on all that I accomplished this summer. Since I don’t work in the summer, I use the summer to get my life back in order, spend time with the kids, and do those things that I enjoy doing.

My goal at the outset was to catch up on my fiction reading and add several self-help books to my list starting with the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People because I need to know what they are so that I too can be all effective and stuff.

I went to the library several times and avoided the self-help section simply because I wanted to focus on other books that had nothing to do with me making myself a more effective person or better person.

Who has time for all that self-helpy kind of stuff when I’m home with all three kids, alone, for those long hot-dog days of summer? It was a chore just keeping the kids from hurting each other and entertained all at the same time. (Sidenote- everyone is going to camp next summer, that’s a promise!)

Finally, in July when the kids were shipped off to my parents for three weeks, I dragged myself to the self-help section and came across the self help audio books.

Brilliant! I can pop in the CDs while I’m running around town or cleaning the house, etc. Surely multi-tasking is a highly effective habit, right?

Well, I never made it past disc one. Sure, I listened to disc one several times, but I never got around to switching out disc one with disc two and moving past the summary of what I need to do to become more effective.

The reader’s voice was so monotone, I couldn’t focus or get engaged. I had to keep rewinding, back-tracking, or I would find myself completely tuned out to the disk.

I eventually completely forgot about this goal and the discs because last week I got a “friendly” reminder from the library that my audio book was three weeks over due.

This means I’ve had this audio-book for six weeks and have not made it past disc one of seven. That’s pretty pathetic.

The email was like a big fat reminder that I don’t exemplify these seven habits otherwise I would have one, listened to the CDs, and two, um, returned it on time.

So this is a wake up call for me. I need to buckle down and start focusing on living the seven habits and using my time effectively.

First thing I’m going to do is renew the discs and give myself a week to listen to them.

Okay, maybe two weeks.

Wish me luck, I’ll check back in!

We are all back in school and it’s back to homework for Oldest and teaching for me. On top of that we have all three kids in Taekwondo and Oldest will start violin lessons in two weeks. PLUS, he has to memorize states and capitals and place them on the map. So this book comes right on time!