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How to Create Effective Incentives for School Work

May 22, 2015 by Esther Filbrun · Leave a Comment

22 May

Sometimes, it is hard to get school done. Almost as hard as pulling hen’s teeth. This is where incentives for school work are needed—with simple rewards, your students can learn to work faster and harder.

Near the beginning of the school year, for a week or so anyway, it’s fairly easy to get the work done fast. Past the first month or so, the momentum starts to slow down—until it’s only a fraction of the original speed, and we’re all tired of how long it’s taking to get anything done.

How to Create Effective Incentives for School Work

Photo courtesy of Pixabay/Hebi65 | License: CC0 1.0

A few years ago, after seeing how slow we were going, Mom decided to implement a rewards system where if we got a prescribed amount of work done by lunch time then we could get a treat. It worked—and we used the system for several months, before we all got tired of eating the same reward every day.

Three Ways to Create Incentives:

  1. Find simple rewards. They don’t have to be very fancy—they just have to be effective. For a while, we were using simple peanut butter balls (see recipe below). Everyone who got done in time received a peanut butter ball, and those who didn’t just missed out.
  2. Find simple consequences. Sometimes, a child does not get his work done no matter how many rewarding incentives you give them. For example, say a child is way behind on his math. Since he is so far behind, and not catching up—even though he could have easily finished within an hour or two—a simple consequence could be digging a bucket of potatoes the next day for Mom if he doesn’t get done by a certain time. This is an easy enough chore, usually done in fifteen minutes or so.
    (Note: I am not encouraging enforced labor simply because a chore is not done in time. This kind of incentive is only used when there is an ongoing problem, and when the student can easily catch up by applying himself.)
  3. Create heavier-duty rewards for habits. Recently, Mom has been trying to teach my brothers some life-long habits. Instead of just telling them to work on them, she decided to help them keep track of how they’re doing. Each day they successfully complete a job associated with the habit, they earn 5¢. Every day they miss, they lose 5¢.

Consistency is a key to making incentives work. For busy Mothers, though, it is hard to remember who gets what reward.

One way Mom has combated this problem is by giving a universal reward to everyone. She also has a set consequence for those who particularly struggle. For example, one of my brothers loves to sleep outside. He is normally allowed to sleep outside, but on the days he doesn’t finish his school work in time he has to sleep inside. This is a very simple consequence, but most of the time it does the job—his work gets done early.

Peanut Butter Balls RecipePeanut Butter Balls Recipe

  • ½ cup peanut butter
  • ¼ cup dessicated coconut (+ some to coat balls in)
  • ¼ cup raisins
  • 1 tsp. honey (or other sweetener)

Mix well, roll into roughly 1″ balls, roll in coconut.

For variations: I’ve sometimes added cocoa powder, or cinnamon and cloves, to give different flavors. It is also possible to add vanilla, almond, caramel, or other essences to give different tastes. Chocolate chips and dried mixed fruit are good replacements for the raisins. Feel free to experiment—this is just the base recipe!

Even though the rewards for school work well done can be very small, they are effective. Mid-school blues are hard to push away, but by being creative, the work can become more fun again.

How have you used incentives before? Did they work?

Midweek Mix-Up: 4 Books I’m Reading Right Now, and Useful Randomness

May 20, 2015 by Esther Filbrun · Leave a Comment

20 May

I love fun, not-always-stiffly-serious blog posts. And yet, at the same time, I want to make sure you have something helpful to take away from every post. Hopefully, I can find a balance of that today.

4 books I’m reading right now . . .
Give Me This Mountain, an autobiography by Helen Roseveare

Give Me This Mountain, an autobiography by Helen Roseveare

I’m roughly half way through this story. Helen is very transparent when it comes to sharing her spiritual life at different stages, and I’ve found that very encouraging because often I see myself in her shoes. Knowing someone has been there before really gives a new perspective on things.

The Eagle, by Rosemary Sutcliff

I don’t like this cover. Underneath, it is a great story—I just hope they haven’t changed it to go along with the movie. Our version is the previous edition of this one.

The Eagle (previously Eagle of the Ninth), by Rosemary Sutcliff

This was first introduced to me as part of our school curriculum. Mom recently read it to the boys again, and I heard bits and piece—enough to make me want to read it again, but not enough to hear the whole thing! She’s been reading the two sequels to the boys lately, and they are loving them, as well. I’ve only read the first chapter so far, but hope to get back to it soon!

More Than a Carpenter, by Josh McDowell

More Than a Carpenter, by Josh McDowell

Another “school” book. This small volume is both incredibly challenging, and incredibly reaffirming. Josh presents the facts without any apology, and seeing the pure truths of who Jesus really is—in all their beautiful glory—is very encouraging. This book is a great devotional, and even just reading one or two pages before bedtime is enough to give you much food for thought.

Ready or Not, by Chautona Havig

Ready or Not, by Chautona Havig

This is by far the most favorite book I’ve been reading lately. Mom finally convinced me to read it after all her ranting, and I’ve got to say I’ve fallen in love with the story too. Aggie, mother of eight inherited children, is so real in all her struggles of learning to be a mother—let alone learning to deal with her inherited mother-in-law! Even though Ready or Not is a long story, I’m enjoying every word—and glad to know there are two more books in the series waiting for me to read them! Oh, and did I mention I love the humor in the story?

Most exciting event this past week . . .

We had this big brush pile out back, and now that the fire ban has finally been lifted (we’ve had a bad drought all summer, so we were not allowed to burn fires for quite a while) the boys finally were allowed to burn it. Did they ever have fun, too!

Fire 01

From the yard, just after they lit it.

I got a few pictures of the proceedings, but soon had to get back to work—leaving it under the watchful eye of the firefighters.

Fire 02

I didn’t get any very good pictures of the main firefighter, because he was almost always running to put out small patches of grass that caught. This was the best—he was working very hard!

Most useful posts this week . . .

A random collection of posts I’ve found interesting and helpful this past week.

  • Why Everyone From Beethoven, Goethe, Dickens, Darwin To Steve Jobs Took Long Walks and Why You Should Too — Both challenging and thought-provoking. I’d like to get more exercise, but actually getting out there and doing it is the trouble. What do you think? Is walking worth the time you spend doing it?
  • How To Only Share Your Written Gems, Not The Rough — Interesting take on sharing your writings with others. Some really good tips here to remember.
  • How to Work on Multiple Long-Term Creative Projects at Once — Must. remember. this.
  • Don’t Do These 12 Things When You Write Your Draft — Too many of these strike home. Especially 2, 3, 5, 6, and 12.
  • The Foolscap Method — Not technically a blog post—instead, it’s two teaching videos, but powerful all the same. Basically, Steven Pressfield is teaching you how you can hold your entire story on just one page. This has the potential to completely change the way I look at plotting my stories—and has already proved to be very useful!
  • How To Make Cappuccino Using French Press — Also not a blog post—a video. And the only reason I was interested in it is the fact that it tells you how to use a french press to make a latte! That is like . . . the neatest thing all week! Now, to figure out what to turn into a latte next . . . .

This week’s resource . . .

I’ve been using this little calendar for three months now, and it has proved to be the most effective tool so far for tracking work chains—I can see at a glance what days I was very productive, and what days I was . . . shall we say, not so productive.

2015 Work Chain Tracker

Seeing how well (or badly!) I did last week is encouraging, and challenges me to do even better this week. It is also a great way to keep a quick record of what I’ve been doing. At the end of each month, I tally up how many hours I’ve done on a particular project all together, and sometimes average that to each day I’ve worked, to see how many hours minimum I should try to do per day to beat that. (Side note: Time Calculator is very helpful for the calculation side of things—just input your times, and it will do the rest for you.)

I’ve been using this tracking system for almost three months now—tracking three different projects—and it’s still proving to be very helpful.

If you’d like to try it out for yourself, see the links below. I usually print it four-up (four pages per page) and just one-sided, so it’s a handy pocket-sized calendar that fits easily on my pin board. Do whatever works for you—I’d love to hear if it helps!

Download the free printable:

  • Unmarked Version
  • Marked Version (basically the first version, but with phases of the moon and a few select holidays—I like this one best, mostly because I like seeing what’s coming up next)

The idea for using a calendar like this was inspired by a passing mention in a blog post by Raychel Rose, so all credit goes to her. 🙂

Have you found any easy hacks for tracking the time you spend? Also, what’s the most useful post you’ve come across this week? Feel free to share below—I love hearing from you!

Why You Need a Simple Atmosphere for Writing (+ free program!)

May 18, 2015 by Esther Filbrun · Leave a Comment

18 May

A year and a half ago, I wrote my first novel. Along with many other writers, I had taken the NaNoWriMo challenge, an incentive program designed to help you break through your writers block and simply get words out on the page. During the month of November, I challenged myself to write 50k words.

That was completed within three weeks, and one program that helped me immensely to get the words out on the page was FocusWriter. FocusWriter provided a superbly simple atmosphere for writing — and I was able to focus much better on content creation, rather than being distracted by fancy formatting.

Why You Need a Simple Atmosphere for Writing (+ free program!)

Photo courtesy of Pixabay/Unsplash | License: CC0 1.0

Today, I’d like to introduce you to FocusWriter.

But first . . . .

What Happens When You Have a Simple Atmosphere

  • Your productivity soars. When you work in a clutter-free environment, your targets for the project are clearer. You also will have a happier attitude because you can’t see the other—perhaps not as important—work you need to attend to.
  • Perfection becomes a non-issue. When you can forget about having it just perfect, you can focus on the content instead of the container. (P.S.—Simple often also equals elegant, even though we may not realize it right away.)
  • The process becomes more important that the end goal. When this happens, you can enjoy it more. Yes, you do want to keep the end goal in mind. But if you can focus more on getting words on the page than on what you want the polished masterpiece to look like, you’ll make more progress than you do dreaming about the end goal.

I’ve been using FocusWriter for several years now, on and off. At times, I prefer other writing environments better, but as far as a simple atmosphere I can’t beat this program. If you’re looking for a distraction-free writing environment, check FocusWriter out—it may just be the tool you need to get your work done well.

(Disclaimer: I recieve nothing from recommending FocusWriter. I have just found this tool very useful in my own writing life, so I’m sharing it in the hopes that you will find it helpful, too.)

You Aren’t a Failure

May 11, 2015 by Esther Filbrun · 2 Comments

11 May

(A letter to my mom. I hope you other mothers out there will also be encouraged. You’re winners, too.)

Dear Mom,

I know you’ve said before—many, many times—that you sometimes feel like you’re a complete failure. I’m sorry. I know I’m probably one of the ones that made you feel like that the most.

Even though I’m not a mother, I know it must be tough at times—especially when I, as the oldest, am grumpy. I know the others copy my example, and I try to have a good attitude. I’m sorry for the days that aren’t so good. And for all the days I complain to you.

You Aren’t a Failure

Photo courtesy of Pixabay/PublicDomainPictures | License: CC0 1.0

I’d like to encourage you, though—don’t give up! You are making a difference, even if you can’t see it right now. We’re learning. We’re growing.

Each day you show us more of what it means to be like Jesus—yes, even through your exasperated sighs. Even though you’re annoyed—and yes, even a little cross when we break one of your jars—we know that underneath you still love us. A lot.

That love can only come from Jesus, because I can’t see any other way you’d ever be able to put up with us.

We love you, Mom. Yes, we hardly ever say it, but we do love you—and couldn’t imagine our lives without you.

Even if the laundry is still in that huge stack in the corner, we have plenty of clean clothes to wear.

Even though you still have no idea what we’re eating tonight, you somehow always manage to find something delicious to fill us with.

Even though we don’t want to do our schoolwork (I’m sorry, I still hate spelling), in later years we’ll be thankful for all that hard work and sweat you poured into each of us.

Even though we don’t always take your advice (yes, I’m thinking of that time I decided to make that huge Purim meal and didn’t have enough time), we still value your input.

Thank you for being the encyclopedia and dictionary for the family. That discussion on the gestation period of donkeys and whales was fascinating.

Thank you, too, for being a good example of stewardship—even when those apples and blackberries look like a lot of work.

Also, thank you so much for encouraging me to read and enjoy stories from little up—I still have fond memories of reading books before nap time. And exploring Grandma’s Attic together.

Above all, thank you for being a good example—even on those days when you’re feeling less than perky. I hope some of that can rub off on us children one day.

You’ve done a lot to mold us children into the people we are today, and I’ll be forever thankful. Thank you for your creative spirit, your humor, and your down-to-earth practicality. I wish the world had more people like you.

Thank you, Mom. You aren’t a failure — at all. You’re a winner who should have a crown.

Thank you for everything.

Esther

3 Resources to Help You Work More Productively

May 8, 2015 by Esther Filbrun · Leave a Comment

8 May

I don’t think there’s anything I like better than a free program that helps me work more productively. And, being somewhat of a program maniac—I usually end up trying out just about every free one I hear of—this is the kind of post I love the most. If you’re interested in free, time-saving resources, then this post will fit you as well.

3 Resources to Help You Work More Productively

Photo courtesy of Pixabay/condesign | License: CC0 1.0

Today, I’d like to share three valuable l tools I use to work more productively. Two of the resources below were ones I mentioned in the two previous posts in this series—How to Prepare for a Productive Day and 7 Effective Ways to Get Unstuck Now. The other is one I’ve come across in the last month or so, and it’s been so helpful to me in this area that it deserves its place as well.

Let’s get started.

1. Workflowy—“Organize Your Brain.” WorkFlowy is a notebook for lists. Use it to be more creative and productive.

A few months ago, I was feeling pretty stressed out over the sheer amount of work I had to do yet, so I sat down and had a brain-clearing session that was (at most) 30 minutes long. In that one session I wrote down over 50 things I needed to do. As soon as they were all written down it was much easier to focus on the project at hand and finish it. Workflowy is perfect for jobs like this—you can nest tasks as deeply as you like, and you can view them all together as one good-sized to-do list. Below is an example of how it looks:

WorkFlowy Screenshot

WorkFlowy Screenshot

(Note: If you sign up to use this task-management site, use my referral code here or above. By using my link, you will get 2x the amount of free space (500 monthly items instead of 250), and you will also be giving me an extra 250 per month. Thank you!)


2. Action Item Catcher—A place to capture action items for processing or doing later. (Scroll almost to the bottom of the page to get it.)

I find this simple “catcher” extremely helpful. It takes less than a minute to write something down, and is also very handy when I’m trying to remember what I need to do and/or figuring out what I should be doing the next day or week.


3. Momentum, Browser Extension for Chrome—Daily motivation and focus on your new tab page.

Momentum is a free extension that controls what your New Tab page looks like. Some of its main features include:

  • A beautiful new picture each day
  • To-do list
  • Main focus of the day
  • Daily inspiring quotes
  • Current time (helpful if you tend to lose track of time like I do)
Momentum Screenshot

Momentum Screenshot

I love this extension. It’s basically a personal daily dashboard. It is simple, yet elegant, in design, and instead of distracting from what I want to do each day it constantly reminds me of the next step I need to take. This is one of my main to-do list programs. I love the motivation it gives each day—whether the beautiful picture, or the quote, or both—it makes getting jobs done that much more fun.

Extra: I just found out that this extension is also available for Safari—check it out here in the Apple store. It’s also available for Firefox and the Edge browser. 🙂

For Opera—I’ve heard you can use Chrome extensions on Opera. If you install an add-on named Download Chrome Extension, you can install Chrome extensions as well as Opera extensions. This means that if you use Opera instead of Chrome, there is a chance you might be able to use Momentum. I haven’t personally tested this, so I can’t tell you about results, but it may be an option for you.


I hope you’ll be able to find something to help you work more productively. I also hope you won’t feel obligated to try anything that I recommend, simply because it works for me. If something is helpful, great! If it doesn’t help–maybe you’re already doing as well as you can, or perhaps there’s something else out there that would be better.

Whatever you do in the end–stay productive, don’t give up, and glorify God!

What are some of your favorite programs for making your workload easier to manage?

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