Scheduling with Lists and the three card rule
Taken from here Our objectives:
- Make planning a daily homework schedule quick and simple.
- Get one step ahead, so we’re never rushed.
- Ensure there is time to relax each day.
- Keep weekends completely homework free.
There are two points in the day when the board is used. Straight after school, but only if new homework has been set, and at the end of the evening for ten minutes in preparation for the next day. Straight after school, new homework needs to be dragged into one of two lists. Either it’s To do this week or it’s not for this week and so belongs in the To do soon list. That’s it, two minutes, no typing, a quick swipe on any device that’s to hand and we are done. With this first stage of planning done we have our priorities for the week bang up-to-date and there’s space to relax for a while, get those all important selfies posted on the interwebs. Fed by the To do soon and To do this week lists are the To do today and Prepare today for tomorrow lists. They have a strict rule, there should never be more than a total of three cards in both lists. That is, if there’s two cards in To do Today then there can only be one card in Prepare today for tomorrow and vice versa. The three card rule is something we use a lot to help schedule our work day, especially if we are feeling a little overwhelmed with the amount we need to get through, and it’s based on an excellent article we read a little while back. We used this idea to try and give our son a sense that there is time enough to do homework and have time for the other important things in his life. It’s also a trigger for conversation. If more than three cards end up in those two lists, we need to talk to our son about why. At the end of the evening homework session, all completed cards from To do today are dragged into a _Done_list. Any cards in Prepare today for tomorrow are dragged into To do today. The Prepare today for tomorrow list is there to help get us one step ahead. We need to understand where the homework is. Is it online? In a textbook? Crumpled up in the bottom of a school bag? Missing in action? It also helps us measure the size and shape of the homework that’s coming up next so we can plan accordingly. Using the three card rule, if there is space for any more cards once we’ve done our sorting at the end of the evening, we drag the next round into To do today and Prepare today for tomorrow. If there is no room for any more for some reason, we do a quick review and check there is nothing due which breaks our schedule. The three card rule can be broken but we always do so very reluctantly and review what went wrong. That’s it, the board is all set for our return tomorrow and we have a sense of how much time might be needed for homework versus time needed to practice tail whips and no footed cans (yep, we had to search for cool sounding BMX moves). As we worked through this scheduling plan it got us thinking. What would it look like if you could remove the school’s VLE, Google Calendar and Zapier and have something native to Trello?
