I was talking to this client of my cash flow program last week and she asked me “If I am flat out in my business and my time with my family is suffering, what can I do? How Do I Get More Family Time.
Great question and something a lot of us experience often due to the fast paced and jam packed lives we all live, especially when you have younger or young adult children who do not have car licences yet!
I asked her some more questions to find out what sort of advice she wanted and it was prevalent that she wanted very practical advice on how to manage herself and the tools she uses for work, to help at home.
So I shared with her 3 things I have done, I have taught and that my mentoring clients and I are benefiting from now and have for the last 7.5 years in our respective families…
How Do I Get More Family Time
1. Put family appointments into your diary to do family things
Successful people are very organised – in their thoughts and their practices. If they are not naturally that way inclined, they build systems around themselves to help them do this or hire someone to help them stay on top of this.
One of these tools you use for BUSINESS right now is some sort of a calendar or diary system, to ensure everything that needs to get done, gets done well and gets done on time. It has become a habit for you to put important dates to remember, important events to ensure you attend, important meetings you must prepare for an attend.
Right or right?
So why not do this for family time and events and for the distinction – IN AMONGST your business calendar.
That way, you can see how your business needs to fit around your MOST important people in your life. When you get your priorities right, you feel great and aligned and you produce higher quality results!
2. Set new rules of the game that are clear, specific and you articulate them to your team and your family
If you have younger children you know that between 5:00pm and 7:30pm, it is peak hour family time. This is a great time to not only be with your children, but also support your partner in getting through this time that happens EVERY single day, irrespective of you having a good or bad day!
Better relationships overall will be the result, but it is BLOODY HARD to do every week night (well at least Mon to Thurs).
If this is your case, then an example rule could be – I must be driving home by 4:50pm to live into what I really want. Therefore this means no appointments past 1600, this means the phone goes off at 1700, this means…
Share this with your team, with your clients, with your family.
You will be amazed at how many people respect you for it and respect your rules of the game. If you do not set your own rules, then guess who will – everybody else.
What this looks like is taking calls throughout dinner and into each night, working at night until 10-11pm, stressing over the weekend and doing work in the office alone, etc. I have this t-shirt, do not wear it anymore as all it did was make me stressed, tired and unhappy. If you have this t-shirt, BURN IT!!
3. Identify 3 things that are taking up most of the time that somebody else could be doing
If you are NEEDING to work more than 40 hours a week, you either need better tools, systems or resource helping you! So find out what are the 3 most time consuming things that you do every single week.
Once you have EXPOSED these time suckers, then put thinking time into how you could halve the time you need to put into them. Either hire someone to do parts of it, get the information you need another way, turn the phone and emails off between certain hours, etc.
Depending on what you expose for yourself, will depend on the solution. IF YOU ARE WILLING to participate and do this exercise, then you will not only make your business better, you will also have a VACUUM of time you can now use up for the precious family time you are thirsty for.
There are the 3 things you can do to make your life more complete, more balanced and happier overall, if family time is what is suffering and what you really want more of!