How To Spend More Time With Your Family
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This article assumes two things:
Firstly, that you have family, and secondly, that you actually want to spend time with them!
I apologise if you have neither. If you don’t fall into either of the two categories above, let’s substitute “family” with either friends, hobbies, or even yourself.
So in reality this Blog is actually going to focus on helping you to get more time for yourself to do with it what you wish. Wouldn’t that be lovely?
As a father of an 8 month old daughter I know just what it is like to feel like to have no time. I lose track of the amount of times I have wished for more hours in the day. Until I came to a realisation that this was obviously never going to happen! There are just 24 hours for us to work with.
I thought back to my life prior to us having our daughter and I was extremely productive. My day was all mapped out and I knew what I was doing, when I would do it, and there was rarely a minute wasted. I prided myself on spending up to 20 minutes each and every day performing soft-style Tai-Chi and Qi-Gong exercises. I was initially challenged to do 100 days in a row without missing a day, but eventually made it to well over 700 days… that is until Tabitha Joy was born. That day was the first day I missed, and I then missed many more after that. I tried to get started again but struggled to find the time and the motivation until recently where I have now begun another 100 day challenge. Maybe this will turn into more than 800 this time.
But what changed recently to allow me to get on a roll and move towards my goal of having more time for myself AND not lose precious time with my family?
I went back to basics.
1. Take out your diary and plan out your perfect day. Exactly what you want to do, how long you want to do it for. Be realistic and include everything from eating, showering, sleeping to family time and hobbies.
2. Once you’ve got your diary all filled out, if you’re anything like me you’ve probably filled out two days worth of stuff. Now condense it down to the essentials. Remove the unnecessary.
When I analysed my day I thought to myself, “Ok, what is the biggest drain on my time?” And low and behold (very obvious answer coming up here!) my workday took up the most time for me. So I decided to change my work and business model and Laurie and I are now building our fortune through network marketing where our full-time hours are between 20 and 30 per week, with the potential to dramatically exceed our incomes that we were previously earning. Kind of ticks all the boxes doesn’t it?
When removing the unnecessary, start with your biggest time thief and then work backwards eliminating the activity if you want to, or can. When you have a family to take care of just gaining back a few hours a week can be life-changing!
3. Last but by no means least, the best way to spend more time with your family is to actually be present when you are with your family. This might sound very cliche and “alternative” but when someone is speaking to you actually take the time to listen to what they have to say. When your children want playing with, make sure you are not thinking about work at the same time.
You will enjoy the experience so much more, and so will they.
Plus, you’ll feel like you have had a lot more time with them too!
What other ways do you spend time with your family? And how do you make it quality time? I’d love to hear your thoughts…
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