The demands on fathers to be providers and great parents is huge. -Believe it or not, there is a way to do both without burning out… (i.e. finding the elusive, almost mythical, work-life balance).
This is an article for the men out there. The fathers specifically. It’s for us because only we really know the weight that sits on our shoulders to be providers for our family.
I don’t know about you, but I think if there was one message that got handed down from my father (and perhaps from society in general), it was that we, as men, have a responsibility to be successful and provide for our families.
We are told we should work to provide every advantage to our kids so that they can be more successful than we were in their lives. It is our obligation.
As a result, we tend to work too hard at being the best providers we can possibly be… and in doing so, tend to forget what really matters in life… and what really matters to our kids. Work-life balance is about us working so our kids can have a life.
I was reminded of what really matters to kids in a bit of magical time I spent with my kids yesterday.
Moments define work-life balance
It was around 6pm and I was spending some time outside with my son and daughter. My son likes to ride his scooter on the street and my daughter… well, at one and a half years old, she sort of toddles around. A normal evening… until I had an idea.
I asked my son to grab some chalk from inside the house. He came outside and I decided to draw a racetrack in our cul de sac, which you can see above.
Now for my 4 year old boy, racing is about the most exciting thing there is on the planet (note the striped racing pants and the Lightning McQueen racing helmet), and this chalk racetrack was about the most amazing thing in the world.
He raced himself. He raced me. He raced his sister. He added new colors to the racetrack.
His sister, for her part, loved the track too and smiled and laughed with joy as I cheered for her at the finish line.
And at one moment, when I was cheering for my kids to cross the finish line, I realized that I was about as happy as I could be.
What did it cost me? About $1.67 worth of chalk… and one other more important thing: my time and attention.
Yes dads, what kids want more than anything is your time and attention. Not your presence in the room while you are periodically looking at emails on your phone or reading the news. Not all your attention for a moment here and there when they ask demand it. -But a prolonged period of your full time and attention.
And as I’ve said before (see Executive Coaching: How are you investing your time), the way you choose to invest your time will determine the dividends that you receive in terms of the relationship you have with your kids and the relationship they have with the world.
But it is more than just time. It is your attention and your energy. It is about being energetic and highly engaged when they need you to be. High quality time with focused attention can create work life balance (see Executive Coaching: Work-life balance and time for you).
For those of us who are corporate executives, business owners or just hard working kick-ass employees, our professions usually take almost all of our energy, attention and time. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The Secret to a Better Home Life
The secret to having more energy at home, more time for your kids, and still performing at work comes down to 3 things:
- Developing your mind
- Training your body
- Optimizing your use of tools (i.e. electronic devices and software)
Now, I don’t have time in this article to go into all the details on the above, but I would invite you to consider this: In this day and age, time management isn’t enough.
Time management made sense in the industrial age when everyone needed to show up at the assembly line on time, and it still makes sense for many roles today. -But for knowledge workers, the separation between work and home life has blurred.
We are expected to work a full day at the office and then come home and work some more. In fact, the most ambitious among us push hard into this, doing whatever is requested of us and then more.
We also incorrectly assume that we will have energy to meet the demands that come up.
But does that make any sense? Think of it this way: Imagine you are a runner. Each and every day you run a long distance. A distance that is at the limit of your endurance but still enables you to run each day.
Then the request comes in. You need to run 5 miles further tomorrow. If you were rested you could certainly do it, but you’re not. -But you will give it your best, because that is what you do. You will push, assuming that you will have the energy to meet the demand.
Only you don’t have it. The runner crashes, pulls a muscle, or otherwise injures himself.
-And you, the provider, the performer, the guy who is amazing at work each day who needs to push for that big board meeting, that big sales call, that big presentation, just don’t have the energy to really perform at your peak… and you certainly have nothing left for your family when you get home (see Career Coaching: The One Critical Sign that it is Time to Quit Your Job).
There is a better way. It is about managing your attention and energy strategically. It is about taking care of your body so that it takes care of you. It is about training your mind to focus on the right things for longer periods without distraction. It is about investing your time and attention where it pays the most dividends… in the office and at home.
If you are interested in learning how to do this, send me an email at [email protected] and let’s talk about how. It is time to start performing at a higher level in the office and having more of the moments that matter with your kids at home. In other words, more work-life balance.