What We're Reading Now
Help Your Kids (and Yourself) Limit Screen Time and Optimize Momentum
10 February 2015
Allison read How I Limited Screen Time by Offering My Kids Unlimited Screen Time by Narrowback Slacker and enjoyed great advice for this particular parental challenge as well a useful strategy for helping anyone to get more stuff done and have a better day.
Tags: allison read, balance, time management and prioritization
I started following Narrowback Slacker’s blog last spring when a friend shared one of her posts on Facebook. She describes herself as an imperfectionist, low strung parent and her explanation of what it means to be a narrowback slacker makes me smile with statements like this, “I do not have sweeping aspirations for my children, beyond teaching them to make good decisions and to be good people. In general, I do not ‘Lean In.’ But I am, at the most basic level, happy and content. Slacker? I’m fine with that.”
As someone who spends a lot of time helping people figure out what balance means to them and then supporting their efforts to choose balance and leadership, I’m glad to have this kind of approach to life out there on the Interwebs. And while I get how this blogger cheerfully thinks of herself as a slacker, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how she and her family get just enough done to feel satisfied about their lives.
This particular post, How I Limited Screen Time by Offering My Kids Unlimited Screen Time, is a great example of what I mean. She was concerned about her kids’ screen time, but didn’t want to argue and nag about it. She realized in her own life that if she “gets going” on her work early (she’s a morning person), that she’ll generally have a productive day. “I think of it as Newton’s Law of Personal Momentum, for I am an object that will either stay at rest or stay in motion, based on where I am at 5:30 am.”
So she decided to use this principle to help her kids get essential stuff done early. Once The List is completed each day, they can enjoy as much screen time as they like. The List is quite reasonable and leaves a lot of time left in a day so you might find yourself wondering (like she did) if, “…these two vidiots will devolve into pasty, nearsighted dunces.” It turns out that once her kids got moving on the good stuff on The List that they often stayed in that more productive zone and chose much less screen time all on their own.
Narrowback Slacker calls this the Momentum Optimization Project (MOP) and I think it’s fabulous for kids and grown-ups. I’ve been working on my own list for each day and have found that if I do those things every morning that the day is much more productive.
Comments
Our Comment Policy:
Our blog posts are only half of the conversation. What our readers have to say is equally important to us, and we're grateful for all the comments that continue the dialog.
To ensure that the discussion here is as useful as possible to all of our readers, please be respectful of our contributors and refrain from harassing, threatening and/or vulgar language. We reserve the right to screen and remove any comments from the site. If you have a question about a comment or want to discuss our policy, please contact us. We'll talk it over.
There are no comments for this entry yet.