Focus on the Family with Good Time Management

Focus on the family is about spending more quality time with your family. Here we give you tips to achieve work life balance so that you can spend more quality time with those that matter most.

Do you spend as much time with your family as you want?

Are you working long hours and want to have more quality time building relationships with your partner and children?

Focus on the family is about how you can spent more quality time with the people who matter most to you.

In a study conducted by Galinskey (1999): Ask the Children: what America’s children really think about working parents, parents and children consider being un-rushed and focused as the most important aspect of the time they spend together.

This highlights the importance of family time management.

However, the typical family day is that there is no typical day!

You have to drop the kids off to school and then when it is time to pick them up you have to play 'chauffeur' and drive them to their sport or other after school events.

Somewhere in this time, the house has to be cleaned, chores to do, and food to cook – let alone holding down a day job as well.

In today’s fast paced society, families are under increasing pressure.

Here we provide a number of strategies to have more quality time with your family. These include:

• tips to achieve work life balance
• how to incorporate time management into the family
• teaching kids time management

Achieving work life balance

Parents have greater financial burdens and spend more time at work, while kids have greater levels of distractions than ever before in history.

Personal time management for the family starts both at the home and at work. First of all, it is important to look after yourself with adequate work life balance.

This can be a hard thing to do if you are a parent trying to make ends meet.

But without good work life balance you run the risk of job burnout, increased stress, and stress-related illness.

This is not good for you or your family!

But work life balance is not just about managing your time at work to get the best results; it is also about making the most of your family time.

Are you walking the tightrope of work life balance?

OK....sometimes you fall off the tightrope, but work life balance is about making little changes today.

Achieving adequate family time can be difficult when there are so many demands on your time in addition keeping the house functioning.

The good thing is that the time management principles that you put in place in your work life are also effective at home.

This balancing work and family activity can help you to clarify the steps you need to take to achieve work life balance.

Family time management

Family time management can improve your focus on the family!

Time management at home is not a bag of new tricks, but really a refinement of the time management techniques that you already know.

It is about setting family goals and ensuring that you firmly prioritize what is important for you and your family.

Then it is a matter of ensuring that you spend quality time on those important things.

But often it is much harder to do in practice and involves changing habits. Habits around TV consumption, homework, chores, and meal planning.

Look to streamline your repetitious activities

In your chore schedule, you will likely find that you will have to do some weekly shopping. This takes me a couple of hours a week – which takes valuable time away from your family.

While I used to make the shopping a family outing, I have I recently tried online grocery shopping and found it saved me time and money.

In short, online grocery shopping gives me more time to focus on the family!

Look to delegate chores to others - it may be worth it?

If you have trouble convincing the kids to help you out then think about delegating these chores to a third party.

How much is your time worth? This time management exercise calculates how much your time is worth.

But time is much more valuable than money!

Quality time with your family is priceless!

If you are buried under a mass of jobs to do that pull you away from the people that matter most to you then here are a few options to consider when balancing your work and family time.

Family calendars can be fun and help you save time

With chores to do and meals to cook, in addition to dropping off the kids, and meeting all your social engagements, it can be tough to keep track of your schedule.

You end up losing focus on the family and just do things for the sake of getting through the day. Does this sound familiar?

This is where family calendars come into their own.

A calendar allows you to schedule time for you and your family.

Time management for kids

Time management for kids is a hands-on experience that promotes the skills of your children and also reduces the overall stress within the family.

By providing a fun, interactive and learning environment, time management for kids can develop effective habits in your children.

Some of the things that you may want to look at are:

• what do you want to happen after school?
• Setting up a schedule for homework
• how to break up assignments into smaller more achievable chunks
• how your child can organize priorities with the aid of goal setting for kids
• planning your children's time around TV
• what they love to do and how to cultivate this.

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