Failing to plan is planning to fail

People often think of Young Women leaders as having everything planned out and running perfectly, at least compared to Young Men and Scouting leaders. I would have to do a survey of some kind to tell for sure, but I'd almost guess the ladies would edge out the men on this one. I think they like sitting around talking more than the men do, so they have more meetings.

I don't always have everything planned out myself, but many times I'll have three to six months planned out. When I've planned out a whole years' worth of weekly activities, the plans change so much after a few months that it's not really worth going out that far. One of the biggest problems actually comes when you do plan way in advance and the Young Women come up with last minute things that throw your plans off. It always seems that when they are in charge of the combined activity, it's moved to a different week than normal, just because they can move it.

One Tuesday night a Young Women's leader made a comment about me not having a calendar when I mentioned that I didn't know a certain activity was coming up. I said that I did indeed have a calendar. She asked if it had anything on it. I happened to have a copy of it and showed her six months' worth of activities all listed out. She had no response to that.

So we've been struggling along a little the last few months, having finished our old calendar and not having made a new one. We finally have a solid three months planned out, and it feels so good. It really doesn't take too long to put together. I highly recommend it.

In my old ward, we would have all the boys get together and have an overnighter to plan for the coming year. We would meet all together to talk about combined things, then break out into our three classes to plan class activities and talk about summer camp ideas, and then get back together to go over what we came up with. We would play games every half an hour or so to keep everyone interested. It was great, because the boys were involved in choosing the activities and we coordinated with each other.

I haven't done as well at involving the boys in the planning in my current ward, because they're more ADHD in this ward than my last one. I mean, I've tried, but they end up just running around, not paying attention. One of these days, one of them will understand that when I ask them what they want to do, I really want them to tell me.