Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘time management’

This month was very hectic for me and therefore for our entire family. I had many big projects to complete and I could not do them without the help of my family. Gal and the kids helped me a lot and we ended up dedicating almost 3 weekends to this work (we are still recovering from work, work and more work). All this work involved doing things I love, so it made me excited and I was in total flow and winding down was not easy. That made me think about slowing down as the topic this time.

Slowing down is a challenge for many people. The more successful you are at what you do, the more you risk being unable to slow down and enjoy the simple things. Slowing down is a challenge for me, so I am taking the time to write what happened to me in the last month and how I got over it (still doing that).

In the not-so-distant past, most people lived in small places and had to do things themselves. They grew crops, cared for animals, sewed their own clothes, built their own houses, met the same small group of people from childhood to old age and learned about the rest of the world only when strangers came to town.

When something broke, those “olden days” people had to fix it themselves or take it to a specialist, such as the blacksmith or the cobbler. Time was cheap and materials, like metal and medicine, were very expensive and hard to get. There was a lot of time, so life was slow. There was a lot of space and travel was slow, so there was little change.

The world’s culture evolved around this lifestyle. The main values taught to kids were self-sufficiency, industry, thriftiness, modesty, discipline and courtesy. When they grew up, they also learned faithfulness and responsibility.

I have a feeling your parents may have tried to instill some of these values in you too, even if your life was quite different. I know mine did, as did the parents of all my friends.

The general focus of people was on getting things and keeping them. There was little choice, so what people got, they enjoyed.

Today, life is radically different for most people. Most people live in big cities, have easy access to large amounts of food, drink, clothes and other goods and are exposed to a never-ending stream of high-pressured information through the TV, the radio, the Internet, the mobile phone, printed media and various other means.

The general focus of people should be on choosing things and enjoying them. But it is not.

One of the biggest challenges for parents in our time is, well, time. Or at least the shortage of it. Having to keep up with inflation, with the Joneses, with technology, with the news and with ever-increasing demands at work means that many parents need a place for their kids to be after school hours.

Of course, we do not want our kids to be just anywhere. We want to keep them in a safe place, operated by friendly people who like kids, where our children will be kept occupied, interested and preferably even educated. Not an easy thing to find, especially when that place also needs to make money…

On the emotional side, leaving our kids with others and staying long hours at work creates loads of guilt feelings. If you have ever put your child in childcare, I am sure you have thought to yourself, “What kind of a parent am I if my kids spend most of their days away from me and get most of their care from other people?”

This story is not just about one place. It is not even just about after school care. This story is to tell you that when you have to find a place for your kids to spend some time, you can actually find them and your kids can actually be happy there.

Last week, I met one of my clients from a few years ago and we had a great time together. She said to me, “Come on, Ronit, tell me what you’re doing now”, so I spent the next 15 minutes telling her about all the different things I was doing.

When I finished, she asked, “Really? When do you have the time to do all that?”

I smiled. Good question. I was not sure I had the answer.

“Ronit, you’re Wonder Woman!” she said, “You’re amazing. Everything you do is so perfect”.

Hmm…

Although I was flattered for a while, as I imagined myself being the perfect “Wonder Woman”, the compliment quickly faded. I do have my wonders, but perfect I am not. Everyone wants to be successful at what they do, but success and perfection are not really related.

Last week, we started the new project Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss when every blogger introduced him or herself. If this is your first visit here, check each blogger on Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (1): Introduction.

Parenting brings a lot of joy, but it also comes with many challenges. In the personal development world, we say that if you know what your problem is, you are half way to the solution. To get half way to the solution, I have asked each top parenting blogger for their list of the 5 biggest challenges parents face today.

Here is what they thought (some of the emphasis is mine).

What are the 5 biggest challenges parents face today?

In any personal development program, there comes a time when the coach asks the client to answer this question. If you have ever been seriously sick or had a chance to meet someone who had to answer this question for real, you know it is one of the biggest and most important questions in life.

Of course, I do not wish you to ever have to plan your last year for real, but playing with it in your mind may just do that thing it does to those who must do it in real life. However, this question is important for most people as a way of gaining perspective.

About 90% of people live life without direction, purpose or drive. They live life based on what they must/should/have to do or what others might think of them and feel disempowered to take the responsibility over their own life. The reason they do it is because their parents did just the same and their grandparents and great-grandparents before them. By living like this, they are neglecting to update the things that are important to them.

Every frustration, failure or problem is an indication of such neglect to update our priorities. For example, in all my parenting workshops, parents claim the most important things they want for their kids are happiness, health and love, yet most of them spend most of their energy on fighting with their kids over homework, manners and housework.

Being efficient is every parent’s dream. Time is a limited resource and the faster we do things, the more time we have left to spend with our kids. So when I meet “the girls” for an evening out, we always talk about household stuff and share ideas.

Making dinner is one particular task that takes lots of energy. I have heard many parents saying they come home at the end of a working day and start making dinner. As you know, if you do not buy fresh meat just before you cook it, you may need to take it out of the freezer and wait for it to thaw or spend valuable time to defrost it in the microwave or in tons of running water.

Last month, I visited my sisters and nephews. One of my sisters is in her late 30′s and the other is in her early 40′s and both became moms just last year. For years, they had lived on their own and managed a household perfectly, but when their babies arrived, they started dedicating most of their time to their “bundle of joy” and managing their house became a challenge.

Although it seem like a gradual progression from living on your own to living with a partner and then living with kids, the shift from managing a house as a couple to managing a house with kids is huge and can shake the most organized people just as it happened to my sisters.

As a parent, you probably remember yourself saying, “I don’t have a spare second to do the basic things anymore”. My younger sister was happy simply because I was with her baby so she could take a shower in the middle of the day. “Sometimes, I don’t have time to eat”, she said.

Time is a precious thing. Everybody knows that. Although we have had 24 hours every day all our life, it feels like every year we have less of it and the days get shorter, doesn’t it?

It may be hard to accept, but all the people in the world have the same 24 hours each day. Some of them just use it better. People who manage their time well have better control over their life. It is safe to say that people who use their time better are more successful at what they do or at least they feel that way.

If you ever tell yourself “I do not have time” or “When I will have the time, I will…” or “I wish I had more hours in my day”, this post is for you. Unfortunately, people are not born with time management skills, but fortunately, they can develop them.

Kids are not born with organizing and planning skills and do not automatically adopt them, even if their parents are planning junkies. They need to be taught how to be organized gradually, as their mental abilities develop.

My 20-year-old daughter Eden is so organized she managed to work full time in a very demanding job, study psychology full time and get 100% and 99% on two of her university assignments. If Tsoof had to do what she did, he would not have a chance.

But…

At the age of 13, Eden could not plan ahead very well, much like most of the kids and teens I work with.

Just last term, during the school break, I discussed with my busy son Tsoof how to prepare for his last term of school. Because he is a busy kid who performs and rehearses during school hours, he misses many hours and even whole days of school.

The reason I talked to him about it was that the previous term had been too hectic and there had been mornings when he had gotten up and lacked his usual spark about going to school “Yay, today I have…” He had been nearly exhausted, so I hoped that preparing for his last term would make it easier on him.