Lessons from Dad

With Father’s Day right around the corner, I started to reminisce about my dear old dad. You may remember how I learned to organize from my self-proclaimed “disorganized” mom, but I’ve also shared a little about my dad in previous posts. Do you recognize the before and after pictures of the home office?

Yup! That’s my dad’s office. After several months, I am proud to update that the office has remained relatively neat and tidy since the big clean out. The clutter pictured in the before pic was simply a case of years and years of paperwork. With all of the file cabinets full, there was no space for new, incoming papers. Once we had cleared out the old, there was plenty of room for the new.

While my dad may have needed a little help with overflowing paperwork, I have learned plenty of other organizing lessons from my father. Like most of the lessons I gleaned from him, the organizing lessons were not taught out loud, but instead were demonstrated through his actions.

Plan Ahead

Sports was a major part of our family calendar, running in particular. All 3 of my siblings were athletes. During high school training days, the time we would run was always planned out the day before. Days of the week were assigned a theme; Mondays were speed workouts, Saturdays our long runs, etc.

Nothing too groundbreaking but everything else in the schedule was planned with a daily run in mind. Dinner was planned around running and when important activities came up, runs were squeezed in or scheduled for an off day.

No matter what project my dad was in the middle of, it was left undone for the afternoon run. Not only were runs planned ahead, but they were always followed through on. Once the plan was made it was hard to veer off course.

Of course the lesson of planning ahead extends far beyond the great sport of running. I learned early on, you will do what you make time for. I also learned the importance of setting aside time for taking care of yourself. If you plan ahead you’ll make the time, but if you don’t plan for it, you and your wellbeing will be squeezed out by less important tasks.

Set Priorities

When I was a teenager, my dad worked from home. That meant he was home every afternoon, but it also meant he had to finish a day’s work while the kids arrived home at 2:30pm. Unless he had a class to teach away from the house, I don’t remember him working in the evenings. There was a clearly defined quitting time and family activities filled up the evening.

Just as planning ahead helped to guarantee a run for the day, our other priorities were given defined time in our schedule.

Every Friday throughout all of junior high, my dad would pick me up after school to go get ice cream together. Of course I never realized as a child that he might have work to do and he had to find a way to make up that work throughout the week. I don’t remember ever missing one of those Friday treat days, although I am sure we must have.

This lesson proved invaluable during my first year of teaching when I could hardly see straight. My dad would remind me to go get a run in. When you are in the thick of the chaos you can’t see how you can make the time for anything else. “It will help relieve the stress,” he would say. Sure enough it always did and gave me the boost of energy I needed.

Whenever I would feel overwhelmed by the responsibilities of raising 2 kids under two; a time where nothing seemed to get completed, I kept exercise first on my list of self-care. I’d look at that long list of household to do’s and I would tell myself that all I had to get done that day was my workout.

I even made myself a mantra, “It doesn’t matter if the laundry is folded or the house is vacuumed, I am more important than that.” Believe me, there were days it didn’t happen, but I quickly learned a run can make or break my day.

I thought about times when my dad must have felt overwhelmed or tired at the end of the week. He had set our ice cream date as a priority and he stuck to it.

Routines

Combine the two lessons above, setting priorities and planning ahead, and routines are a natural next step. My dad never used the word, routine, but he had routines for everything!

• Early morning was always quiet time in the Word.
• Fridays were for errands.
• Friday afternoon meant a Friday treat (one that we never let him forget).
• Saturdays were for pancakes and special Sundays meant we got donuts.
• Saturday mornings were for chores and Sunday afternoons for rest.

His routines were just as strict in the summer. And while the rest of the family got a break his work continued year round.  And many of the routines continue with my own daily schedule, and the schedule I build for my family. For me they create a sense of structure that facilitates productivity.

From my father I learned a sense of adventure and determination and I learned discipline. Discipline to take small steps towards your goals, discipline to get up and try again when you fail, and discipline to do the hard stuff even when you don’t feel like doing a single thing.

Honestly, I still have many areas in my life I could infuse with more discipline, and thankfully I have a great role model to refer to. How true that you learn more from what your parents do and not what they say!

Happy Father’s Day Dad!

What is the greatest lesson you learned from your dad?