The Sunday before last, at about 7ish in the morning, my wife gave birth to (fraternal) twin boys. Willem and Winston join two year old Von to form a healthy all-boy family. My wife is now soundly outnumbered by us four dudes.
So, life has changed dramatically for our previously small family. We have blasted through the two kid ceiling to join the ranks of those who lead more vigorous lives simply by virtue of having to chase more offspring around.
During the two week self wife-imposed paternity leave I’ve been on, I’ve had a chance to reflect on what it is that I’m doing with my time and how I could better serve my family and, I’m not trying to be cheesey here, all of Creation.
In the weeks preceding the birth of the twins I moved my office back home. Even though she was mobile up until the morning she gave birth, she wasn’t exactly what you’d call spry. I wanted to be available to help her if necessary. (Chasing a two year old around in that condition can be a challenge at best.) Being back home and re-learning to work effectively in this environment has been good. Actually, thanks to the Pomodoro Technique, I’ve had some of my most productive days in years.
But what has been most excellent has been the chance to reconnect with my wife and son and just be in proximity to them throughout the day. That in turn has challenged me to start optimizing how I spend my work time. I’ve realized that, although I enjoy work and entrepreneuring things, I want and need to serve my family by being present in their lives and being an compassionate CEO of my family. There’s also so much need surrounding us every day. It’s just way to easy to have our “everyday” blinders on and breeze past it. I want to start being a better (and hopefully more selfless) friend and minister to those around me.
Here’s what I’ve already started to change.
Some of this stuff may be remedial to you but this is probably the first time I’ve earnestly practiced it.
- Plan my work and track how I perform. Wash, Rinse, Repeat: I’m not lazy, I just haven’t historically been good at focusing on important work. The Pomodoro Technique is the first time management system that really makes sense to me and is working.
- Focus on the good opportunities I have today. Stop wasting time wasting time: It’s soooo easy to get caught up in work for work’s sake. I’m talking about stuff that could easily be done away with or outsourced. Bookkeeping, hardware/server management, aimless net surfing – among things that should not occupy much of your time.
In my opinion, the only work worth doing is the work that is adding a ton of value to the growth of your and your customer’s business/life. Interpret that for your own situation. - Work fewer hours: It turns out that you can accomplish a lot more in fewer hours if you’re focused. Thank you once again Pomodoro Technique.
We’ll see how all this goes. My mother-in-law has been an AMAZING help by being here full-time since the boys were born. That all comes to an end soon and I’ll be sleeping even less while my wife will have one less set of hands available to her during the day.
I think I’m going to start sharing some of the things I work on during the day with you from here on out. Why not? I’ll start with my involvement in Rocketship in my next post.
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