Going Paperless for Family Management
By KC Brothers
November 14, 2023
No, you don’t need to keep that paper schedule.
We are a part of larger communities. PTAs. Carpools. Congregations. Neighbors. And everyone loves to print out announcements, calendars, signups, and more. It’s what’s easiest. Hive brains just aren’t a thing yet (and maybe that’s ok…).
But just because you get it doesn’t mean you have to keep it. There’s a more efficient way. James Clear, best-selling author of Atomic Habits, said, “You don’t rise to the level of your goals [or paper communications]. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Building a System
The best place to start is gathering and dumping your thoughts, content, to-dos, worries, and information. Put a pile together of all of those floating papers and calendars. Now, don’t hate me, but you’re going to add to it. But only physically.
Your pile is actually so much bigger than what is currently stacked on your kitchen table. Where is it? Your brain. You are asking your brain to do something it’s not meant to do, believe it or not. David Allen, best-selling author of Getting Things Done (you can see we’re big fans of experts and best-selling authors), said, “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.”
So stop asking your brain to hold on to everything. Get some sticky notes and dump everything. And I mean everything. Things you need at the grocery store. The password for your Netflix account. Birthdays. School schedules. Extracurricular events. Family parties. This step is called Capture.
Once everything is captured, you begin to clarify (step 2). Split your pile into two: actionable or not actionable. If it is actionable, decide the next action(s). If it is not actionable, determine if it can be let go of entirely (trash that sucker), kept for reference (information, thoughts, ideas, quotes), or something that you want to do but can’t do now.
Organizing Your Life
Now’s the time to download Pixie.
You have two piles– actionable and not actionable. Start making piles of items that are related. You could have a pile for each family member, a pile for cleaning (kitchen, garage, laundry, etc.), a pile for projects, and so on.
Open your Pixie app and make a board for each pile. Keep in mind you can have as much board inception as you want– boards within boards. If you have a couple of large piles, that’s ok. You can organize it as granularly as necessary for you and your family.
You can either create all of your parent boards (the first folders seen from the home screen) first or do all of your sub-boards for one and then move on to the next parent board. For example, a parent board you could consider creating is "Kids." Underneath, set up sub-boards for each child in your family. From there, brain dump all the things you manage for that child even further organized into their own sub-boards (e.g., sports, music, health, school). Your child’s board could look something like this:
One such sub-board might be "Kindergarten," where you finally have a place to save the class list to arrange playdates or your child’s login info for their online portal. It could look something like this:
Repeat this process as needed for additional kiddos or other categories!
Notice that in our example you can create notes and add pictures or files. You can also share these boards with your spouse/other half/partner; in fact, we recommend you do. Tiago Forte, another one of our favorite best-selling authors, said, “You will be more balanced and peaceful, knowing you can step away at any time because you know it’s all being stored safely outside your head. You will be more trusting because you learn to trust a system outside yourself. It will be incredibly humbling and reassuring that you are not solely responsible for all of the remembering that needs to happen in your life.”
No Such Thing As a Perfect System
Lastly, it’s important to understand that there’s no such thing as a perfect system. If this is a barrier to entry for you (i.e., you’re simply not starting because how in the world can you create a perfect system on your first try), then get over it. Remind yourself what you want from building a system. Less anxiety. Greater punctuality. More collaboration. Less nagging. Greater satisfaction. Deeper thinking.
Nothing will be perfect. But you can create something that serves you, that supports you in life, instead of you feeling like you’re on life support. We even challenge you to set a timer. Only take 20 minutes to start this process. You can’t sit down hoping to boil the ocean. Baby steps.
You’ll build your system through consistency. The same way you lose weight, dig a hole for a trampoline, or grow hair. Be consistent. Set an alarm or reminder at a convenient time or habit stack. And, sure enough, over a week, ten days, and a month, you’ll have built the beginnings of your second brain, freeing you up for deeper thinking, greater connection, and more fun.
Have fun pixie-ing!
