Hours in the Day
There are only so many hours in the day.
That’s a hard truth I keep coming back to. I want to be building my business, but I also want to be a great Dad, have a great marriage, be a great friend and I’ll just throw in some personal development for good measure. Each of them on their sounds doable, but when you add them all up you realize that you’ve got more great aspirations than you have time.
I’ve spent the last 20 years working mostly on my marriage and work. And by marriage, I’m lumping together both time getting to know each other and time where we were married before kids and so actually knew each other — sad but true. I spent the next 10 years working too hard for other people’s companies, but also building up a very useful skillset. Now I arrive at this point in my life realizing that I’ve not spent much time on my marriage in the last 10 years and that I’ve developed work[aholic?] habits that aren’t conducive to success in building relationships outside of work.
So… what now?
I think the short answer is to focus less on work for a while, but the longer and more important answer is to use those same great work habits of planning and accomplishing goals to build my relationships. All of them. Marriage. Children. Friends.
What makes a great relationship, though? I’ve got some research to do here, but I think the fundamental truth underlying the research will be that there needs to be depth of experience. That could be shared experience as in the case of an old friend, it could be new experiences as in the case of a child, or both as in my marriage. I specifically use the word “depth” here because I don’t believe the experience you share can just be shallow / surface / 5 minutes a day kind of experience. Don’t get me wrong, that probably can develop a relationship of some sort, but it’s not the kind of relationship that I want to develop with those individuals in my life.
I would much rather have an evening with one of my kids — just the two of us — with them feeling like it’s a very special event, than I would 20 minutes eatching. The catch is that first line of the post — there are only so many hours in the day. If I spend 2 hours making and eating dinner with just one kid, then that’s time not spent with the rest of the family and establishing that “normal” family routine of eating dinner together. So I’m forced to ask, which is more important?
It’s just one example, but something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
Any advice or thoughts on how best to build deep relationships with those around you while working within the very finite world of limited time?
