One of the best pieces of advice my therapist has given me is that my husband and I should have weekly staff meetings for our homestead. She explained it like this: whether or not we are actually running a business with our homestead, it's like a business, and successful businesses have regular staff meetings in which all parties sit down, share what they've been doing, figure out what still needs doing, and keep it professional. While we haven't implemented it perfectly yet, staff meetings have really helped us in so many ways.
We've been going over a set agenda for the staff meetings this week in hopes of making them even better and more effective. We have been talking about ways to make sure that all key areas are getting hit and, more importantly, ways to make sure we really do share everything that each of us is doing and planning on doing. It becomes so easy for each of us to live and work in parallel lives on the homestead with Robert doing all the stuff he has to do (which is just so very much) and I doing all I have to do and us only checking in on stuff we need the other's help for. That's a quick way to build up resentment, we've found, and that's not healthy. So, we have worked up a basic agenda, making sure to put space on there for how each of us is feeling, what we've gotten done that week, what still needs doing in each area, what deadlines we're up against, and finances check-ins. Both of us feel so much more solid going into a new year with a better agenda to weed out any negative feelings, find ways to be more realistic about what's actually possible, and keep am even tighter rein on finances than we already do. We also are putting a second meeting for the week right before the weekend on the calendar, as just one meeting a week leaves too much out, especially as our health stuff changes or kid stuff comes up. Hopefully, this will help us stay more on top of things, too. Our agenda is thanks to Robert's employer. We used their staff meeting agenda as a base, and I think it's really solid.
It may seem long, but we will likely be able to go through it in an hour or so, especially if we both keep each other on topic, as we both have a tendency to go off in the weeds. This way, we have a set agenda every time, and it depersonalizes so much of it to help us stay professional as we communicate. It's not personal: it's just homesteading. |
CarinaI'm a 40s something disabled mom living the life on our small urban farm. Archives
April 2022
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