Robin Gilman

“Robin’s Rule” or “The First Two Things”

I have discovered a sort of Law, not a law that someone made up, but a “this is how things work” sort of thing -such as “the law of gravity.” It’s not a rule, although I call it “Robin’s Rule” for alliteration – it’s just something I discovered. It could be called “The Law of the First Two Things” (but don’t you think “Robin’s Rule” sounds better?).

It goes like this: The first two things that you plan for your day get done, the rest…maybe.

What happens is that we make a “to do” list, or a great schedule and we begin, but life happens and invades our plans. By “life,” I mean perhaps a call from a distraught someone that you need to help, perhaps character issues in a child, or a sibling issue that takes an hour to deal with, perhaps someone is sick.

Or maybe you planned math as the first subject, but it takes four times as long as you thought it would because it took extra long for your child to get the new concept you were teaching.

Or maybe you planned that you would read one chapter of the book that you are reading to your children, but everyone was so into it, you read five!

So things number 3, 4, 5, and 6 of your plans may or may not get done. Knowing that, you don’t have to sweat it.

Some years ago, math and piano practice were the first two things on my schedule. When I noticed that day after day we didn’t get to language arts, I just switched it up and began with language arts for a while.

Simple. When you’re consistently not getting to thing number 3, 4, or 5, just remember “Robin’s Rule” or “The Law of the First Two Things,” and change a couple of those things to thing #1 and thing #2. Robin’s Rule.

Because life happens.