I discussed with Deanna today that life has been unbalanced and too full of leisure. I want us to get back to using the hours between 8am and 6pm for being productive. So that means she can choose the following activities: learning, employment, volunteering, housekeeping, cooking, really anything that is productive and not entertainment and leisure.
She did not seem very keen on the idea when I had to leave for Calgary this morning. But when I returned home, she had chosen to act on our discussion and was productive while I was away. Along with her animal chores, she had helped Wes move cattle, did laundry and the dishes, vacuumed the floors, took the garbage out, grabbed the mail, put stuff away in the living room and kitchen. Plus she had done a couple of tests online as practice for her learners license. It was very encouraging to see her take an initiative today. :o)
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This discussion reminded me of the routines of Helen and Scott Nearing that I had read about years ago in their books. What I remembered was 4 hour blocks of time but couldn’t remember anything specific, so of course I Googled it. This is what I found (seems like a good plan):
“Helen and Scott were devoted to a lifestyle giving importance to work, on the one hand, and contemplation or play, on the other. Ideally, they aimed at a norm that divided most of a day's waking hours into three blocks of four hours: "bread labor" (work directed toward meeting requirements of food, shelter, clothing, needed tools, and such); civic work (doing something of value for their community); and professional pursuits or recreation (for Scott this was frequently economics research, for Helen it was often music - but they both liked to ski, also). They clearly honored manual work, and viewed it as one aspect of the self-development process that they felt life should be.[5] “
Quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_and_Scott_Nearing
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