Your Family and Time Management

"Mom, will your read to me now?" four-year-old Peter pleaded as he held up his favorite storybook.
"OK," Sally responded, looking around the kitchen with mounting dismay. Unwashed dinner dishes, a dirty kitchen floor, and laundry awaited her attention. Deliberately, Sally ignored throughts of many other projects and chores that were unfinished. With a tired little sigh, she took the book from Peter, sat down, and drew him into her lap. Right now, her priority was reading to her son.
It's not easy for us to sort out priorities as parents. After all, there are chores related to housekeeping, childcare, employment, and personal care—and all must juggled. Often we end up racing from one crisis to another, trying to resolve everything and wearing ourselves out in the process. Is there any hope? Believe it or not, there is!
Practical Solutions: Four Simple Principles
Each of us has all the time there is. No one has more than twenty-four hours a day; no one has less. You can't make, find, steal, store, borrow, or share time. So how do you make wise use of your time?
Manage Your Priorities: Understand the Relationship of Time and Goals
Decide what is important. Some tasks are very important; these are the tasks that help us focus on our God-given priorities and achieve related goals. For example, teaching our children how to live according to God's standards is a biblical priority (Deuteronomy 6:7). It follows, then, that spending time with each child and providing a strong spiritual influence by reading and discussing Bible stories, praying together, and teaching our children positive biblical values are critical parenting tasks that help us focus on this priority and achieve specific goals we might set related to this priority. Other tasks also may be important, but all tasks are not equally important.
Prayerfully setting your priorities, then, is the first step toward setting appropriate goals and discerning which tasks are more important and which tasks can be done less frequently, done less thoroughly, or eliminated altogether.
Manage Yourself: Set Limits and Boundaries
After setting your priorities, do your best to focus on those priorities by setting limits in advance. Learn to say "no" when you need to, if that is hard for you.
Decide what can be delegated or shared. Most of us learn early on in the parenting game that many tasks and responsibilities can be shared. For example, older children can read to younger siblings, children of all ages can help with chores, carpools can be organized with friends and neighbors, and so forth.
Manage Potential Problems: Practice Creative Problem Solving
Decide how to minimize conflicts. Children will argue about anything and everything, but we parents can eliminate many of the daily arguments or discussions with a little creativity. For example, on Sunday afternoons, allow the children to select their clothing for the week. They can take as long as they wish to decide, eliminating the daily arguments over what to wear.
A kitchen timer can signal when to get out of the bathtub, do homeworlc. go to bed, or give a shared toy to a brother or sister.
Develop an equitable plan for who takes a bath first on which days of the week, who rides in the front seat of the car this time, who does which chores, who chooses the evening television program, and so on.
Manage the Available Time: Get the Most from Every Minute
Decide which time wasters to eliminate. There are many things that waste time and profit little. Examples include social media, cellphones, watching television, backtracking, re-doing something the children have done incorrectly, lecturing (as opposed to effectively teaching) the children, giving instructions (for the third or fourth time), reading junk mail, worrying, complaining, wishing things were different, and listening poorly. You might be surprised how much time you can save if you avoid these time wasters and others.
Decide which timesavers to adopt. There are a number ofways to maximize the use of your available time...
Everyday Timesavers
If you took a look at your typical day, you might find that you have not used every minute in a productive way. Perhaps you could get up half an hour earlier each day, or stay up half an hour later (total = 3 1/2 hours a week). If you have a job outside the home, you probably have a minimum 30 minutes a day for coffee breaks and 30 minutes for lunch (total = 5 hours a week). What could you do with 8-plus "extra" hours each week? Here are a few ideas:
- read the newspaper, books, the Bible
- pray/meditate on scripture
- exercise/walk
- plan for the next day
- spend time with one of the children/your spouse/friends
- listen to podcasts, audiobooks
- write emails, quick notes, or even letters
- work on a to-do list
- journal
- make well-planned telephone calls
- enjoy a hobby
- make shopping lists
- run errands
- relax (Important: relaxing or resting does not necessarily = wasting time!)
If you commute to work, you may be en route anywhere from l 0 minutes a day to as much as one hour, depending on how far away from your job you live (total= 50-300 minutes a week). Some of the things you can do in the car (bus or train) include:
- listen to motivational talks, sermons, music, or audiobooks
- dictate memos, letters, reports
- think through problems, issues, or brainstorm new ideas
- sleep, read, or write (if not driving)
Most families have at least five meals together each week. If mealtime lasts at least 30 minutes, that's a minimum of 2 1/2 hours a week. Turn off the television and let mealtime be an opportunity to...
- spend time enjoying one another's company
- learn about interesting and important topics
- help children learn to say mealtime prayers
- make family decisions
- catch up on what's happening this week
- converse about one another's interests
- instill morals and values
- teach fundamental social skills
The telephone is often a big time waster. Some calls interrupt your productivity; others just take up valuable time. There are several ideas to help free you from tyranny of telephone. When making/receiving telephone calls, you can
- have and stick to an agenda
- specify at the beginning of a call the amount of time you have to spend
- group your calls at a convenient time (when making calls)
- use voicemail (to avoid phone tag and to allow you to schedule call-backs at a convenient time)
Being forced to wait for an appointment is usually very frustrating. But with planning, you can maximize this "dead" time. Be prepared to do something while waiting, such as...
- read, study, pray, listen to music
- write notes, memos, lists, plans
- knit or do other handwork
- return text messages or emails
- relax (Again: relaxing or resting does not necessarily = wasting time!)
With some planning, even the time spent on routine chores can be reduced, redistributed, or "redeemed." Here are a few ideas:
- Do chores alongside your children and/orspouse to spend time together. (Reward yourselves with a fun activity or delicious treat afterward!)
- Do all chores on Saturday morning so that weekday evenings are free.
- Do some chores each night during the week so that weekends are free.
- Do chores while listening to something everyone can enjoy
- Assign specific chores to individual family members.
- Play "beat the clock." Set a timer and try to complete one or all chores before the timer goes off.
- Think through issues or pray while you work (see 1 Thessalonians 5:17).
Time Management Basics
Here are some simple yet effective steps for improving time management in your family:
- Compare how your family spends time now with how you would like your family to spend time in the future.
- Prayerfully determine your priorities and goals as a family; then determine which tasks/activities can be eliminated, which can be reduced, and which must be continued.
- Continually seek God's guidance as you develop, follow, and refine a workable family schedule. (See James 1:5.)
- Each weekend, review as a family the events, activities, and tasks of the coming week.
- Each evening, plan the details for the next day.
- Learn to handle interruptions appropriately.
- Use unexpected free time wisely! (Begin to view waiting as free time.)
- Reschedule tasks/events that did not get accomplished but are important.
- Listen once; listen well. Learn to ask good questions, and do your best to ensure that you don't get misinformation.
- Don't trust your memory. Write things down.
As you implement the preceding steps, keep these "helpful hints" in mind:
- When structuring a workable family schedule, you will find that every person will not have priority every day—and that's okay. Remember that during a whole week, there will be time for everyone.
- Try not to go overboard and plan activities so close together that the slightest variance upsets the schedule for the rest of the day. This can lead to frustration and the abandonment of the schedule.
- Don't be too hard on yourself when you encounter initial setbacks in your schedule. Remember that time management is a skill requiring the juggling of many variables and is not learned overnight.
- Allowing feelings or moods—your own or those of other family members—to determine whether or not the schedule is followed eventually will undermine the whole process.
- View your schedule in a positive—not negative—light. Since each item you list in a plan is, in essence, a mini-goal, your schedule becomes a list of achievements as you complete and cross off each item.
The Faith Perspective
1 Corinthians 4:1-2
So a person should think about us this way—as servants of Christ and managers of God’s secrets. In this kind of situation, what is expected of a manager is that they prove to be faithful. (CEB)
Colossians 3:23
Whatever you do, do it from the heart for the Lord and not for people. (CEB)
As children of God and followers of Jesus Christ, we are both servants and stewards. We are called to be trustworthy and responsible in fulftlling our obligations to God, including managing all that God has entrusted to our care—our children, our resources, our possessions, our talents, and even our time. Left to our own abilities, this would be a heavy burden indeed. But the good news is that we're not on our own. We can depend on God to give us the strength, wisdom, and guidance we need for each day. Matthew 6:31-34 tells us that when we strive first for the kingdom of God—when we make God's priorities our priorities—then God will take care of all our needs. We don't have to allow stress and worry and anxiety to rule our lives; instead, we can live joyfully and victoriously every day when we allow God to give our lives direction and peace.