As simple as it can be.

Hi, and welcome to today's episode.

My name is Tom Rolley of systemio.dev, discussing the power of systems and processes in business.

I'm right now just got five or 10 minutes before I pick up my kids from school.

I've been working this morning, and I've chosen to have a six-hour day basically from 9 am to three, or eight, nine, from nine till to really so five hour day, and then come and get my kids now this week, there's nothing going on.

And the question might arise in your mind, well, why don't you just work a full day? Because next week, I've got to do an early pick-up and take my son to his fortnightly or twice every second week, sex fun lesson.

And the question came up in my mind as well, Hey, shouldn't I just work a short day, on the weeks that He doesn't and work a long day when He does.

And what I want to what would the discussion in my own mind was that this is not a documented structure, this is not something that's written down anywhere in our family.

And for that reason, that's why I've chosen to keep it simple, which is, it's the same workday, every Wednesday because, on those ones, where I've got a pick up him for saxophone lessons, hey, I'm ready to go.

But when I don't, I get an earlier day, I get an early Mark, I get to pick up my kids, and then get them home.

And if I chose to, I could do another hour to them.

But the system stands every week, nine to two, and then opens up pick up my kids.

And that allows it to be something that doesn't need to be documented.

This is not a complicated system, the actual finish time on my work, go pick up my kids doesn't need to be documented.

It's part of my family anyway.

Is there a role for documentation and families? Yes, there is.

There certainly is.

Doesn't make it easier for everybody.

Like I know how big your family is.

My family is my wife plus my three kids.

So there are five of us.

And we live pretty good lives.

Like there's a lot going on.

We got basketball training, we got soccer, training, what saxophone we've got band, we've got dance, we got gymnastics, we've got tennis.

And that's just my kids.

You know, like there's a lot of movement around.

And so is it beneficial to have it documented? Yes.

My experience on this is that it's best that each person has their own kind of a4 or letter-size sheet that's documented.

Hey, what's going on in the morning? What's going on in the afternoon? What's going on at school? What's going on in the evening.

And this allows for two things.

Number one, the actual person who's formulas can actually look and go, Hey, that's what's coming up tomorrow, I can prep.

And if they get really fancy, they can have a checklist for each day.

Perhaps that's too much.

Perhaps it's enough just to go okay, yeah, I've got these things.

But as things get more complicated, suddenly checklists and documentation become far more critical.

The second thing is that having everybody documented, it allows first of all for what's going on, everybody knows what's going on.

You can actually go Oh, yeah, okay, cool.

You're doing that tomorrow, you're doing that tomorrow.

Second, it allows for complications that arise when changes happen, hey, I want to do this instead.

And we can see the impacts that change will have on other people.

So there's a lot of benefits.

As you move into a family, perhaps you've already got kids, and you're like, Oh, my goodness, is there any benefit to mastering a systems mindset in my family? Well, yes, I would say there is.

And perhaps that's a simple one that you could start with just documenting all of your members of the family, actually, hey, what's going on each day, and then you can cope with changes.

And hopefully, you actually deal with less stress and more functionality in your family because it is documented.

But coming back to the decision.

Why am I choosing just to have the same day each fortnight each week, because once a fortnight, it's more complicated, and it means that I don't have to remember no one else has to remember which week it is.

I hope you found that benefit.

I hope you can see how thinking systematically about the consequences of decisions is important and the more complicated or more complex a task, the more critical that functional documentation is.

Alright, thanks so much for joining in today.

I'm going to go pick up my kids and head home.

Look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode as we continue this discussion the power of systems and processes in business. See you then.