Scheduling Together
The most powerful tool in your marriage is your calendar. Your calendar will always show you what you think is actually important.
I keep a variety of digital calendars. I have one for personal events, one that Alison and I share, and one for my company. All of these calendars stake out time in my day for various activities. I have writing time, exercise time, and even family time blocked out. By using a calendar, I can “budget” my time. I have 16 hours awake during the day, how will I spend them?
The reason why calendars are so powerful in your marriage and family is that they help everyone get done what they need to get done. They allow you to know when family time is and when you have personal time. Everyone gets on the same page so you can all work together on the family’s objectives for the week.
Knowing what your wife is up to can be powerful in its own way. By knowing when your wife will be done working, you can plan a nice surprise. You can have dinner ready, or maybe even show up at lunch and eat with her. You’ll also know when she’s got a long day ahead of her so you can be sure to offer some extra encouragement.
Having a weekly time for planning your joint calendars together is a fantastic way to make sure everything gets time reserved. You can plan game night, date night, and any other together time that you want to share in the week ahead. This is also a great time to menu plan.
Marriage is all about communication. The more you communicate, the more your marriage will grow. By sitting down and planning your week together, you and your wife can communicate your priorities and dreams for the week.
Technology Bowl
Technology in our lives has really advanced at an amazing rate over the past 20 years. We’ve gone from a world where electronics made some things in our lives easier to a world where technology is completely immersed in our daily lives.
One of Benedict’s favorite things to do is to grab Alison or I’s cell phones. He sees us using them all of the time and so he wants to hold it. While I wish he didn’t perceive it as so pivotal in my life, I really do use my phone for everything. I use it for tracking exercise, keeping a food diary, logging all of the daily events in his life (feedings, naps, etc), communicating with Alison while she’s at work, and even running my business.
The funny thing is that with all of this new communication technology, we’ve become worse communicators. The one thing that technology sought to improve has actually created a bit of a barrier. We sit in the same room as our spouses, and we text them. We eat dinner and are checking our Twitter feeds. We go out on dates and update Facebook.
Alison and I have come up with a small solution to help us start taking back our lives. We call it the “Technology Bowl.” It’s a glass bowl that a friend gave us for our wedding. At dinner time, during date night, and during family game time, we put our phones in the bowl. These particular times are reserved for family time.
What this does is create a barrier. There’s a clear demarkation… this isn’t time for surfing, this is time for human connection. It improves our communication by removing communication devices from our line of sight… a true irony!
Sure, questions can’t be immediately answered using Google. We can’t see who texted us. But we can connect on a human, emotional level with the people in the room. We can just enjoy our family right there. We can get back to basics.
Technology is designed to be mastered. Just keep in mind who the master really is.
Golden Hour
Playing with kids all day is fun. As adults, however, we need time for ourselves. We need time to connect to other humans who can form complex sentences and share ideas. I like to call the hour after Benedict goes to sleep the “Golden Hour.”
Benedict is getting more mobile, which makes him dangerous. He constantly needs to be monitored as he squirms all around on the floor. That makes my job during the day much more involved as I chase him around the family room, kitchen, and dining room.
So when he finally goes to sleep around 8pm, I’ve got an hour before bed. Alison and I go to bed at 9pm because we wake up at 5am. That means she can get to the hospital on time and I can get 2 hours of work done before Benedict wakes up.
Our Golden Hour is from 8pm - 9pm. It’s a time for Alison and I to just be together.
It’s important to relax during your Golden Hour, but not to waste the time. The trick to maximizing this time is to find a meaningful way to spend time together with your spouse. Here are a few ideas:
• Play a board game
• Read together
• Work together
• Work on a craft project
• Plan your menu
• Have a Budget Committee meeting
• Watch a movie
The Golden Hour is your time to unwind before bed. No matter how you choose to spend it, make sure you’re both spending time together. You’ve had all day to be apart.
Game Night
Families today are busy. Parents are working multiple jobs, kids are going to school during the day and then participating in extracurricular activities until late in the evening. With all of these divergent schedules, it can be hard to have regular family time.
Like anything else that’s a priority in your life, you have to schedule time for it.
Admittedly, I don’t like board games that much. When playing games, I don’t necessarily enjoy an extremely competitive atmosphere. So Alison and I found some board games that aren’t really competitive, just fun. We set aside time each week for having a Game Night. It’s insanely fun.
A family game night is a great chance for your family to have some high quality time together. It’s also cost effective. Many of the usual “recreational” activities, such as going to the movies, can be extremely expensive for a family. With game night, you purchase a board game once that can last for years.
Game night is a lost treasure. People have almost forgotten that board games or card games are incredibly entertaining. You’ll make memories together and will doubtlessly start several inside jokes.
It’s time to bring the family together. It’s time to bring back game night.
Change One Fault Per Month
Two weeks ago, I wrote about conversion in our lives. In the post, I talked about how conversion doesn’t happen overnight, but through thousands of small decisions.
If you’re like me, you have faults that you wish you didn’t have. Changing those faults can be difficult. You may have tried in the past, but failed. We can all be more successful with focus.
Through the simple action of committing to focusing on changing one fault per month, in a year you can be a whole new man!
Make a list of things about you that you consider to be faults. Be open and be honest with yourself. Pick one and attack it with vengeance.
Don’t do this alone… seek your wife’s help. I bet she’ll want to help you in this process.
Throughout the process, you’ll fail. You’ll be working on one habit for three weeks and on day 23, you’ll fall back into your old ways. The key to success is your ability to shake it off, get back up, and move past your failures. We all fail, but only the strong persevere.
The time for change isn’t tomorrow, it’s right now.
Open to Life
In our society, especially recently, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about ways to avoid pregnancy. When did kids become the enemy?
In the days before I was a father, I knew very little about children. Being the youngest child in my family, I never really had a chance to be around them. So when Benedict came, it was truly a trial by fire. During Alison’s pregnancy, I experienced a whole range of emotions. To be honest, the only times I was stressed or scared was thinking about Alison’s safety or how the budget would bend to accommodate this new little life.
I think our real problem is that we’ve stopped seeing children as a joy and now view them as a burden, an expense, a roadblock.
Although children do require a lot of time, attention, care, and resources, they do have something to offer us. They’re a source of pure joy. They’re a reminder of the beauty in life. They help us to remember the little things. They help us to see the world with optimism.
Nothing is as amazing as making a small child laugh. Nothing is as amazing as when a child looks at you.
So let’s just agree to stop treating them like a disease.
Sync Status
Relationships have seasons. Sometimes they’re going really well and other times, well, they’re not.
Over the past few months, as Alison and I have been spending more time together, we’ve found ourselves getting in better sync. We’ll finish each other’s sentences, read our moods better, and are generally more caring. It’s a great feeling, really. We’ve been through the stress of four years of medical school and are to entering the stress of residency, but right now we’ve just been spending lots of time together.
Have you ever been at a stoplight and looked at the cars in the turning lane? Their turn signals blink at different intervals and were activated at different times. Yet, if you watch long enough, you’ll eventually see them all blink in complete synchronization, and then will fall back out. A few moments later, they’ll be in sync again.
Our marriages are just like those turn signals. The syncs happen in waves. Just as it’s unrealistic to expect to be 100% happy and satisfied in your marriage at all times, it’s unrealistic to expect complete synchronization. It’s something that doesn’t just happen. You have to work on it.
So when you want to improve your marriage, when you want to get in sync with your wife, how do you do it?
• Set non-sexual time apart for each other. You each have a morning routine and evening routine of sorts. How much of that time is you both spending quality time together? How much of that time do you reserve just for each other? If you don’t plan to have quality non-sexual time together, you won’t grow closer.
• Serve her. I’ve been beating this drum a lot recently. That’s because it’s something we all need to be doing, at all times! There are little things you can do for your wife to make her life easier. I get water for Alison each night for her nightstand. Some mornings I prepare her coffee. If she forgot something downstairs before bed, I’ll go down and take care of it for her.
• Work on your dreams together. You have your own dreams, but do you have dreams with your wife? Alison and I have dreams of being debt free. So we have a visual reminder in our dining room. That means that when I want to go buy something, she has the ability to tell me that I’m out of line. When you push for a dream together, you can accomplish amazing things!
• Take a more active role in your relationship. Your wife wasn’t made to be your butler. She’s not responsible for initiating everything in the relationship. We need to be active in our relationship. That means helping with the kids, helping with the house, and going out of our way to do things for her.
Being in sync with your wife is a wonderful thing. It takes time, it takes effort, but in the end, the payoff is well worth the effort.
Deferring Your Wants
We live in a microwave culture. We want everything, now.
A major burden for new doctors is the size of their medical school debt. Unfortunately, most medical students finance their education with loans, as Alison and I did. While the long term return on investment may be good, eventually, the repayment period is especially heavy. Since Alison and I are in the repayment period now, I’ve started to notice how many wants I really have.
We all have wants. Whether it’s cars, tech, or clothing, there’s always something out there that we’d like to have. The problem is that our wants sometimes don’t line up with our status in life. Alison and I would love to have a home with a nice yard. Right now, that’s just not a possibility. So we’re renting a townhouse. It’s a step up from our apartment, but not quite the dream.
During the times of our lives when we don’t have the luxury of getting some of our wants, we really have to dig in and defer those wants for our current needs. So while I might like a new computer, Alison and I should instead pay down some student loans.
It’s actually the mark of manliness to yield to the needs of your family. It’s the sign of true adulthood when you can defer pleasure. I know that eventually we’ll have enough for a new computer, but that isn’t today.
That’s the lie that your wants will tell you. That if you can’t have it today, you’ll never get it. The ridiculous thing is that when you finally can get that want, it will be way better than today’s version. Everything is always getting better, companies are always launching new products. So while I can’t get the computer I want today, when I finally do upgrade, it will be way better than what I would have gotten today.
In all of this, we have to make sure we don’t become materialistic. It’s ok to want things. It’s not ok to be envious of others who have it, or to let it consume us.
When you’re at a stage in life when you can’t afford wants, it’s the perfect time to be grateful for all of the things you have now. After all, Alison and I may be broke right now, but our version of broke is actually quite comfortable.
Dedicate Yourself to Wellness
We have just one chance to take care of our bodies. Are you maximizing your physical wellbeing?
Finding time to exercise can be a challenge. It’s not so much that there isn’t enough time in the day, it’s that we have other things that we’d rather be doing. So, when it’s between sleeping in an extra hour or getting up and going for a walk, the decision is often all too easy.
I’ve found a great time for Benedict and I to go grab some fresh air. Each morning we go for a walk after Alison goes to work. It’s still (mostly) cool and it just seems like the right time. Plus, I hate taking multiple showers the same day, so exercising before getting ready for the day is perfect for me.
Having good health is something that we take for granted. Unfortunately for us, health, once lost, can’t be easily regained.
So what does that mean for us and our families? We need to be proactive instead of reactive!
A lifestyle of wellness has many benefits:
• Fewer illnesses
• Better resilience to stress
• Better attitude
• More energy
I used the word “ lifestyle” for a reason. All of our decisions (activities, food, etc) add up to our overall wellness. So eat that ice cream, just maybe two scoops this time. Get that extra sleep in, just make sure you go for a 30 minute walk at some point during the day.
Our health is cause and effect. If you make good choices, you’ll reap the benefits.
Cash is King, but Not God
Money makes the world go around. Currency allows us to buy things, both needs and wants.
Cash is king, but it shouldn’t make your major life decisions for you.
So if you’re thinking about getting married, make the decision based on your intellect, not your bank account.
If you’re wanting to grow your family, make the decision based on prayer, not on your debt level.
In all things, be prudent, but don’t let money be your god.