I Want More Hours in My Day!

OMG!

This past Wednesday was crazy and these days it seems like every day is similar. Up early for boot camp. Off to work. Race to my daughter’s swim meet where I’m timing. Then its home to pack for the next day, chat with the kids, play with the dog, and pack for a Boy Scout Leadership campout.

If most every day is like this, plus weekends filled with baseball games, soccer games, church, etc., when in the heck am I supposed to find time to work on my big life goals?

It seems like most everyone, I find myself asking, “How do I get more done?”

Fear not! I found the solution!

The answer lies in the time-turner necklace that Hermione used in Harry Potter and the Prisonr of Azkaban. She deftly utilized this necklace to take a double class load – to technically be in two places at once. It works great.

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What?!? You don’t have a time-turner necklace?

Hmmmm. Then I guess we all need to go at this another way.

During the course of working on our book, we realized that while The 48 Hour Relationship Retreat might be a handbook about a couple’s retreat, the underlying theme is really all about being proactive. Working together to figure out what’s most important and then making those things a priority in your life. Basically, taking control of your life instead of letting it control you.

When it comes to the problem of getting more done, the only solution is prioritizing. We can’t get more hours in our day (I’ve tried, but seems that making a larger sun dial does NOT actually slow the rate at which time advances). The key is to get more of our top priorities done during the hours we do have.

If spending time with Amanda is my top priority (and she informs me that it should be), I need to put it into my schedule and work the rest of my day around that. Time management experts all preach the same basic mantra – determine what is most important (not what is most urgent) and then schedule those items. Let the lower priorities fill in around them.

All time management books stress that it’s crucial to be deliberate. Setting our goals and hoping that the top priorities get done is not enough. We need to take a moment to put those key items into our day ahead of time. And then stick to them like we would a doctor’s appointment.

In fact, my recent doctor’s appointment is a great example. Somehow, when I need to go to the doctor so I can get my medication refilled, I find a way to fit that into my schedule and work our other responsibilities around that. If one of your highest goals is spending more time with your kids or date night or exercise, treat that like a doctor’s appointment. Schedule it, don’t miss it, and the world won’t end.

I might not have a time-turner necklace like Hermione, but what I do have is a daily to do list that I create each day before I leave work. I write down all the things I want to accomplish the next day (it includes the things I want to do and the things other people want me to do). And then I prioritize them. I put “A”s next to the things I absolutely need to get done in the day, and then “B”s and then “C”s for the things that it would be good to get to, but they are at the bottom of my list. Then the next day I tackle the A’s first, and I treat the time on my calendar that I have set aside for those items as sacred…if someone tries to grab that time I get very protective and think twice before impinging upon it.

And yes, before you ask I do the same thing for my weekends. We determine what things we want to get done around the house, or with the kids, or which friends we want to see. And we put them on our to do list. And then the other stuff fills in around that. Does it mean some sacrifice (like I might not watch all of the Nats game, but rather catch just an inning or two)? Yes, it does. But I can stomach that sacrifice when I see the results of pursuing my priorities instead of the stuff that just gets thrown at me.

Scrap the Crap Tip: Stop lamenting your lack of time. Decide what is most important, get that into your schedule, protect that time, and let the rest fill in where it will.

Cliffhanger: Tune in to my next scintillating blog when I will to try to tackle the burning question: “How do I determine what’s most important?”

Be My Guest – and Can You Fix my Transmission While You’re Here? (Amanda’s Take)

My in-laws are coming this week. They are coming to help run the house while I will be away on business travel. Awww…that is very nice you might say. While I am saying “OH MY GOD!” Not because it isn’t nice (it is very nice of them…but don’t give them too much credit – they are totally psyched about getting their time in with the grandkids). But the mere thought of having them in my house for a week without me here strikes panic into my heart. Why?!? You don’t really need to ask if you are a wife and your in-laws are coming for a week. But for the men reading this or for those of you who live next door to your in-laws and have already adjusted, let me explain the inner workings of my neurosis.

You see, if my in-laws come while I am away they are likely to see what my house REALLY looks like. They are likely to uncover the secrets hidden away behind the closed doors that even those in my “village” don’t get to see. Like the fact that I still have presents from my cub scout banquet in February hanging out in my office, or I have twenty pairs of summer shoes sitting on my spare bed waiting to be transitioned into my closet, or the fact that my pantry looks like it has been ransacked by the Pittsburg Steelers defensive line!

I spend a considerable amount of time crafting the image of a put-together business owner/mother/friend/sister/wife/coach/whatever-I-need-to-be-today. And all of that might be undone in one 7-day visit when they realize that I am really not put-together at all. That it is all an illusion. And when they find out that it is an illusion, they will most certainly JUDGE ME! And that, of course, would be the worst part of it all.

Then I realized that perhaps there was another way to look at this. I mean I don’t keep a pin-perfect house for a reason. Because it is a choice that I make (because trust me, my mother certainly taught me how to be neat and tidy). It is a very proactive choice that I make to focus on other things in my life instead of spending time making sure every nook & cranny is squeaky clean. To coach my daughter’s soccer team instead of cleaning out the guest room closet. Or to write a book rather than make sure everything in my office is in its place.

So what if my mother-in-law comes and finds that there are some shirts that need buttons sewn on. You know what she’ll probably do? She’ll sew them on! And so what if my father-in-law notices the banister than has been loose for the last 6 months. If he is bothered by it he’ll probably repair it (thank God – because it has been driving me nuts for the last 6 months).

And I have a very conscious choice on how I can react to any acts of kindness that they may commit while they are here. I can either take it as a judgment – a feeling that they think I am not doing a good enough job for their son and/or grandchildren. Or I can embrace their giving ways and be glad that someone is doing the things that I can’t get to.

My decision is already made. I have plenty of room in my life for anyone who wants to help out. Please – feel free (I can even send you a sign-up genius request if you’d like). Step right up and clean off a counter, stuff a dishwasher, or take a kid to practice. I won’t mind. I won’t feel judged. I might even reward you with a tasty margarita when you’re done. I can use all the help I can get because I am spending a lot of my time carefully crafting the image of a put-together business owner/mother/friend/sister/wife/coach/whatever-I-need-to-be-today.

And that makes me really tired.

Disclaimer: My in-laws are truly salt-of-the-earth people who are not at all judgmental. All of the neurosis portrayed in this blog can be 100% attributed to the author. Just ask Richard – he will tell you.

And here is an aside. I am going to try to finish my blogs with a little take-away. A little something that you might apply to your life. Pretty much the moral of the story (so you don’t have to work that hard to figure it out.) If you like it great, if you don’t, well as I was told as a child, “If you don’t have something nice to say, then no one really wanted to listen to you anyway.” I am going to call them my “Scrap the Crap Tips”. It works today – who knows if it will work for every blog…guess we’ll all find out together.

Scrap the Crap Tip: Identify your own priorities, and then don’t feel bad about skipping the stuff that just doesn’t make your list. When others step in to fill in the gaps, don’t spend time worrying about WHY someone did something nice, just accept that they did it, and thank them for their kindness and for their help in your life.

Amanda

Close the #$@*% Cabinet – Richard’s Take

Basically I think I’m pretty darn close to perfect (although I can’t seem to get anyone to agree with me on this – especially not Amanda). However, even I will admit that I can’t seem to close the cabinet doors in the kitchen. Putting down the toilet seat – no problem. But closing kitchen cabinets seems to be a skill that I missed somewhere along the road. And boy does that tick off my wife!

It’s often not the big stuff that really gets Amanda really angry with me.  I’d put cabinet door closing in the “not really too big” category.

Believe it or not, this topic actually came up for discussion at one of our 48 Hour Relationship Retreats a few years back. I remember the conversation because we were relaxed and we started having fun with the topic. We both tried to “analyze” my childhood to see what traumatic event had happened to put a mental block on cabinet door closing. We also “analyzed” why Amanda had such a visceral reaction that bordered on filing for immediate divorce every time she saw a cabinet door open.

While we haven’t yet solved our particular psychoses, we have moved on – for the most part.

So, in a fit of introspection, I’m taking a couple of minutes tonight with a Leinenkugel’s Sunset Wheat beer to reflect on what I learned. Here’s what I got – do with it as you wish:

  1. Inject laughter. It’s hard to be ticked off while laughing
  2. Put the problem out there for BOTH of you to work on together. When Amanda and I both find ourselves working together against a common goal (in this case the great cabinet kerfluffle) it’s easier for us to find solutions than working on one another’s faults. “We vs. it” is easier than “you vs. me.”
  3. It’s often better for us to bring up these issues while relaxed and to bring the issue up in a non-threatening, sharing manner. I’d recommend only having these discussions with a tropical drink in one’s hand while on the beach in Hawaii but that might not be too practical.
  4. It’s important to talk about how the situation affects you – rather than pointing blame at the other person. It was easier for me to chat about the problem of the cabinets when it didn’t start out as a pointed attack on me like “you’re so lazy because . . . “
  5. If Amanda and I come into a discussion with a genuine desire to work on the problem, it’s usually quite easy for the two of us to work out a compromise.

Of course, it’s easier said that done in most cases. When the cabinet doors have been left open for the 345th time that day, it’s hard for Amanda to just “put it aside” for a better time. Yelling does sometimes seem like a better option!

Well, I’m done with my beer so I’ll stop here. I’m sure there are probably more things we learned from the incredible toll that the cabinet door positioning puts on our marriage, but I got nothing else right now.

(BTW, we are still looking for that incredibly poignant/interesting/amusing way to finish all of our blog posts, so feel free to send us your suggestions.)