Jeremy:
How often should you reevaluate your weekly rhythms? One of the things that you will hear Jeff and I talk a lot about is that one way that you can be a multi-generational team on mission and try to figure out how in the world you actually get stuff done, how in the world do you manage a family, raise kids, have a job, do all these things. And our idea there that really comes straight from Genesis 1 is to live in a seven day rhythm. And so one of the things that we really want to encourage you guys to think about is establishing a weekly rhythm and then beginning to refine that over time.

And so one of the questions that came up in our homeroom Facebook group was how often should you reevaluate those weekly rhythms? And this is, for us, a constant thing. And so we have really three tools that we’ve implemented for this.

One is the weekly meeting. And so one of the most important things to do during a weekly meeting, and this is if you have no kids or young kids, you can do this just with your spouse, but a weekly meeting where you’re talking through all the different issues that are coming up around the household. But I think one of the most important things to ask in that weekly meet as a standing agenda item is how is our weekly rhythm, are there any tweaks we want to make? So you’re constantly tweaking, like maybe we shouldn’t do that on Monday, let’s do that on Tuesday, or let’s do that on Thursday, let’s do that in the evening instead, okay, that’s not working, we tried that for three weeks, let’s go ahead and tweak… that kind of constant refinement of the things that repeat is what really causes you to have longterm efficiency and effectiveness as a family team. We really encourage living in re weekly rhythm and also constantly tweaking it. The weekly meeting is one place that can happen. We do that also now with our kids. We have older kids.

The second place this could happen, the second tool that’s really critical is an annual family summit. We really recommend you guys that every year, usually around the first of the year, maybe between Christmas and New Year’s is when we do this, is to actually go away and really spend time evaluating what happened over the last year, and the most important thing, again, we look at is the weekly rhythm. What are things that feel like they’re just missing? Are there nutrients that the family really needs? Are we not having enough fun? Are we not really getting into the word? Are we not really relationally connecting? Are there rhythms that we can establish that would really address some of these systemic problems in the family? Let’s figure that out and let’s really evaluate that and talk as a team about that. So an annual summit. This could just be like a 48 hour kind of thing.

And then what we try to do is really check in quarterly and do more, may half day conversations around evaluating the rhythm and really looking at how we’re doing against the goals or the rhythms that we implemented during the annual summit. Do that on a quarterly basis.

Those are the three tools. One is a weekly meeting that’s maybe an hour long one that’s an annual summit that goes on usually for about two days, once a year, and then some kind of quarterly check in where it’s just a longer more detailed, more relaxed conversation about how things are going, making sure you’re tracking things. It’s really difficult to stick with more than 90 days before you should reevaluate it, so those quarterly check ins are really critical. But Jeff, have you thought about this one?

Jeff:
Yeah, and I think what’s funny is that we are almost identical and exactly the same kind of ones in ways that we kind of hedge and protect and guide and reevaluate, so I would say all those. Amen.

So then I guess I’ll just add one more thing. I would say to those listening is also know your own personality because I think there can be kind of opposite ends of the spectrum that can kind of happen and play out in different ways. And what I mean by that is if you’re the person that constantly wants certain things to deliver very, very quickly, then I think you need to be careful of evaluating so much and too much to the point where you’re not actually allowed to let them be and actually serve you and actually let them kind of lie in the ground, more like a tree. Let them lay, let the seeds be under the ground and let a tree or a plant slowly but surely grow. I think some people need to hear that.

But I think that’s different though than iterating and tweaking ,because I actually think me and you and I think… and a tip I always tell people is that should be happening every second of every day. So there’s a difference between saying, “Let’s try a new rhythm. Let’s throw it off. Let’s try new rhythm. Let’s throw it off.” And people doing that too quickly to actually know what does it do for you guys? Does it serve you guys? Does it help you guys? Does it allow you to flourish? That I don’t think should be happening very quickly. Tweaking and iterating, meaning adapting and doing, re-evaluating small changes upon a rhythm you already have, I think should be happening all the time.

And that’s actually the fun creative part, because then the pressure is off because then you start having sabbath and you start having family meals and you start doing date nights or whatever and instead of saying, “Oh, that wasn’t perfect this week, we’re just, we’re done, we’re done. We’re not doing it. Kill that rhythm.” You actually say, “Oh, let’s iterate that one step. Let’s do it an hour earlier. Let’s do it later. Let’s make sure we pull out these plates, make sure the kids do this activity.” So then it actually is less pressure. And so I would say really check yourself and everyone knows their own personality and what routes they go down quicker. But I would say that was what I would end on, is give the rhythms themselves a little bit longer time than you think, but then actually also be quicker to iterate and change them in the sandbox that you’ve been given and play around and mess with them until they keep getting better and better.