Better Quality Time

We have run across a couple things lately that made us think about how we approach our time with Xavier. We like many people are extremely busy and time crunched. I have a full time career, Angela is a full time student, and we are in the throws of starting our own business together. So for us time is at a premium. If we are not working on something, we are fighting off sleep depravation. On top of all of this we are raising an energetic little girl. So finding the right balance of time devoted to X and time spent working can be a struggle. 

We try hard to spend quality time with Xavier, but it does get hard. There are many things that ‘need’ to get done or should get done, but much of the trick is making sure that you focus. We were looking through a new book Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar (Harvard Prof. of Psychology) and came across something interesting. He discussed a survey about things that make people happy and found that moms did not enjoying spending time with their kids. The finding wasn’t about not loving their children or not enjoying being parents; but rather, the constant levels of stress and multi-tasking our days hold. Parents reported not enjoying spending time with their kids because they were constantly distracted by getting work done or talking on the phone or cooking or cleaning up….

This made me think of another book I read The Corporate Athlete by Groppel and Andelman. It was an interesting book that had a couple of valuable nuggets. They devote a lot of time to the concept of focusing. Sounds simple, but in today’s world of multi-tasking focus tends to get lost.  Having always been a competitive athlete and still competing now, I liked the sport analogy. In sports it is easy to understand how important focus is. There are pre-game rituals, visualizations, practices, walk-thrus, training, all of which are designed to help you perform at your best. Athletes don’t do well if they are distracted. So why is parenting treated differently. Why don’t most parents practice or train. Why don’t they approach ‘quality time’ with their child with a similar focus? While we may not ever get to the level of focus a fighter has as he steps into the ring, but moving in that direction could certainly help.

Focusing will help you to enjoy the moments that you have with your little person and end up getting more of the stuff on your list done. It will also reinforce to your child how much they mean to you. Fighting the multi-tasking temptation can be hard, but from personal experience, refining a business plan or writing a marketing plan with a 21-month old trying to climb in your lap really isn’t that effective. In the end, you will be doing yourself a favor as well as your little person by being there, fully there, when you are spending time with them.