Fatherhood and Parenting Advice: Schedule Time To Think

 

 During a recent business conference, I had the opportunity to hear a speech from a very high-ranking director of the agency I work for. During part of her presentation, she said something that caught my attention. She said…

In order to keep myself sane, I try to do two things…

1. I try to stay on top of my email. I try to have fewer than 20 emails on my computer screen when I leave the office at the end of the day. And I’m pretty good at doing that.

2. I schedule time to think.

It was item #2 that caught my attention. She schedules … time … to think.

When I heard that, my mind turned to the constant, flowing, dynamic To-Do Lists that fill my work days, my nights and my weekends. But where in my massive To-Do Lists have I reserved time on my daily agenda to think? Nowhere. And that’s a problem.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the go-go-go atmosphere of the typical American day, especially for dads. We fathers are on the go at work, we are on the go when we come home to our wives and kids, we are on the go until our heads hit the pillow at night. The alarm clock buzzes the next morning and we do it all over again. Go! Go! Go! 

This evening, I set aside time to think. Before I could do that, however, I knew I had to do something to clear my mind. So I went to the gym. After a good workout, I went outside … sat in a chair … looked up at the stars in the night sky … allowed everything to drop off my radar … and started … to think.

As I focused on the mere act of thinking without taking my mind in a specified direction (which usually directly relates to my To-Do List) … and just allowed my mind to wander … I found myself thinking about a number of things. Some of these included:

 

• My family (I thought about my loving wife and my daughter, my parents, my sister, my extended relatives … ones I see often and ones I haven’t seen in a long time.)

 

• My faith (I thought about God and how blessed my last 31 years have been. He has always kept me safe. He reassures me when I get stressed out or don’t know what to do when I need to make a tough decision.) 

 

• My friends (I thought about my long-time friends from my childhood years, my junior high and high school friends, and my fraternity brothers and other college buddies. I thought about my best friend in the whole world, which is my wife. I thought about my daughter, who is my other best friend. I thought about how I’ve always been able to make my friends laugh – or at least smile – no matter what rocky circumstances they are going through, and how that is a gift I’m fortunate to have.)

• My health and my family’s health (I thought about how healthy I’ve been in my life, although I haven’t always made healthy choices. I thought about how healthy my parents are right now, despite my dad’s smoking habit and my mom’s struggle to beat Cancer a few years back. I thought about how my dreams of having a healthy, happy baby came true. I thought about how health is truly one of the most important factors in our lives, because if our health goes downhill then everything else is affected. I thought about how I need to make healthier choices, eat better and exercise more because I want to be around for a long time for my wife and daughter.)

In other words, I found myself thinking about the big things in my life. The important things. The things my life would not be the same without.

At the same time, I started to realize how petty and insignificant most of the things on my regular, daily to-do list really are. And how these seemingly never-ending (ever-pending) items are some of the very things that add stress to my life.

I began to realize why this one particular high-ranking official schedules time in her day to think. From now on, I plan to do the same. (After all, she must be doing something right. She started working for the agency with the same job title that I started with. Now she reports directly to the commissioner of the entire organization!)

Scheduling yourself time to think and reflect upon yourself and your life will likely lead you in an unexpected direction. For me, the process pulled me into a state of thanks. I began to concentrate on all my blessings and the things I’m most thankful for. This is kind of cool because I didn’t set out to do that when I entered the stream-of-consciousness thinking mode that began my little session.

Many self-help gurus talk about how numerous successful people say “thank you” when they first roll out of bed in the morning and again when they first close their eyes to go to bed at night. Simply giving thanks for the good in your life helps you to focus on the good more than the daily struggles that each one of us — rich or poor — inevitably has.

Do you schedule yourself time to think? Do you plan to schedule yourself some time to do so daily, now that you’ve read this blog post? I would love to hear your thoughts.

P.S. I’ll be getting my very first fishing boat soon. I plan to do plenty of thinking while I’m on the water!

Tags: advice for dads, advice for fathers, faith, family, fatherhood, God, health, introspection, My Friends, parenting, parenting advice, parenting tips, reducing stress, relaxing, thinking, time to think, to do lists, to-do list, unwinding