I shared a quote the other day that hit a nerve with people and got a lot likes and share. The quote was, “You will never regret spending more time with your family”. I will admit that I struggle with feeling that I don’t always spend enough time with my wife and kids due to the amount of time that I work. But I want to share here what has helped me to improve the quality of time that I spend with my family.
1 Hour a Day:
I have a personal goal to spend at least one hour a day of uninterrupted time with my kids each evening. I leave the house pretty early in the morning so I focus my attention on the time between getting home and before the kids go to bed. One hour doesn’t sound like a lot of time but if you take a closer look at the time that you spend with you kids how much of it is distracted time? Watching TV, on your phone or just having your head still at work. It takes effort to spend focused, undistracted time with you kids.
2 Hours a Day:
The same principle applies to the relationship with our spouse. Take a moment to think about how much uninterrupted time you spend with your spouse each day. At a minimum you should spend 1 hour a day and ideally 2 hours catching up on the day and spending time doing something you both enjoy. It has been said over and over again that to raise healthy kids you have to love your spouse above all. When you put your marriage first your family will thrive. Some nights it will be catching up, other nights we may watch a show together. Whatever it is we spend time together.
Plan it out:
The key to making this a success is to be proactive and intentional. Before getting home after work write down one or two things that you want to do with the kids when you get home. It could be as simple as spending a few minutes wrestling or tossing the ball or it could be making pizza together. With your spouse be intentional as well. Think of a few things that happened in that day that you can share so the conversation can have some substance. By putting in a little effort you greatly improve the quality of the time you spend with you family.
