Now that we’ve made the move abroad, my businesses are more automated than ever, and I’m more used to my 4-hour workweek lifestyle, I wanted to do it again and see how things have changed. I’ll share the results with you here.

A lot of people seem to think that if you only have to work a few hours per week, you must be spending the rest of your time relaxing in a hammock drinking piña coladas. I mean, what else is there to do? Actually, everything!

I do spend my fair share of time relaxing, being with family and friends, and even doing “nothing”. But I can’t do “nothing” for very long before I get restless and want to do something more productive. I’ve found that tracking my time really helps me be aware of what I’m doing in the moment, and feel less pressured doing tasks I don’t enjoy. I also realize that time will keep moving on, no matter what I do. As long as I’m enjoying life, growing, and helping others where I can, I feel like I’m living my life well.

Disclaimer: Even though I have these tasks recorded to the minute, they’re not always accurate to the minute. Sometimes I forgot to switch my timer right when I switched tasks, so had to modify it later with a little guess work. Being off by a few minutes for several things has led to being off by a couple hours overall. But it will have to do. For this exercise, I used SlimTimer, a free on-line time tracking tool.

Work Time

I define “work” as activities done specifically to help produce income. This week I “worked” a little more than usual because I was getting some video tutorials written for one product, and launched a special offer with another. I also planned some important new features to work on next. For me, it’s normal for this category to be under 5 hours per week total.

• Music Teacher’s Helper: 5 Hours, 18 minutes. This includes advertising/marketing (1:35), checking programmer’s work (1:30), customer support (0:48), and the rest in business planning, finances, and checking stats.
• Studio Helper: 2 hours, 1 minute. This includes working on video tutorials (1:27), business planning (24 min), and the rest dealing with feature requests and checking stats.
• Other: 33 minutes. This week, I started researching a new business idea, and that’s what this time was.

Total Work Hours: 7 Hours, 52 Minutes

Family Time

One of the things I like most about my lifestyle is that I have so much time to spend with my family. We’re together pretty much all day, even if we’re not doing the same thing. I’ve only included my personal time with my family here, so this doesn’t include the time my wife homeschools the kids, or the time they spend playing together. Driving them to their art class should probably be included here, but I put all driving under Personal.

• Playing with kids: 11 hours, 32 minutes. I try to play with my kids a little every day. A lot of this is computer or iPad games with one daughter while my wife is doing homeschool with the other one. But it also includes reading to them, playing hide and seek, “restaurant” and other imagination games.
• Watching Movies: 6 hours, 51 minutes. We watched a few movies with the kids this week, in the evenings, including the 1969 Doctor Dolittle, and Tarzan in Spanish.
• Family Outings: 5 hours, 15 minutes. This includes a little hike up the mountains behind our house, and a trip to the park to ride ponies and bicycles. We also spent time together with our friends, which I’ve included in the Personal: Visiting with Friends section.
• Talking with Jen: 3 hours, 56 minutes. Jen and I enjoy just sitting and talking, as well as reading together. We want to make even more time for it this coming week.

Total Family Time: 27 hours, 34 minutes

Personal Time

Even though it looks like I have a lot of time left over for myself, I don’t really feel like I have much “free time”. I guess that’s because I try to fill my time up with things that I like to do and am passionate about. I still have a full to-do list, and do spend time on things I’d rather not, but I try to work on the most important items first each day. Overall, I’m doing what I love with the majority of my time.

• Sleep: 57 hours, 21 minutes. That’s just over 8 hours per night. This week, we’ve been sleeping in a different room where the sun hits us warmly every morning around 6:30 through the windows. It’s not conducive to sleeping in, but is a very relaxing way to get up.
• Visiting with friends: 11 hours, 22 minutes. We had some friends over for a late lunch one day this week, and we spent an afternoon out with another friend.
• Meals: 11 hours, 2 minutes. We ate out a lot this week (almost every day), and took time to enjoy our food. The meal with our friends is included under “Visiting with friends”.
• Reading: 9 hours, 8 minutes. I have some really interesting books I’m reading right now, although half of this time was spent reading articles and blogs on-line.
• Personal Email: 8 hours, 13 minutes. I had a LOT more time-consuming e-mail than usual this week. I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails from people starting businesses who want advice. I’ve really enjoyed being able to help people in this regard. Maybe soon I will have to start charging for consulting and move this into the “Work” category. :)
• Writing: 4 hours, 31 minutes. This was time I spent working on my new book about how to create an on-line business. I suppose this could also be considered “Work” since I will eventually sell the book, but that’s not my main purpose in writing it.
• Daily Hygiene: 3 hours, 27 minutes. It’s amazing how much time this takes. But I do love a hot shower.
• Sex: 3 hours, 9 minutes. Ahh… Having a pregnant wife has some nice hormonal advantages.
• Meditating and spiritual time: 2 hours, 41 minutes. I have a great place to sit for my morning meditation overlooking the hills and the city view. Very relaxing.
• Finances: 2 hours, 3 minutes. This is higher than normal because I’ve been working a lot with my accountant trying to figure out taxes, and have been looking at other investment opportunities.
• Exercise: 1 hour, 47 minutes. This includes my daily stretching and tai chi, and a little weight lifting. This doesn’t include all the hiking and walking we did as a family this week.
• And I spent anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 hour, 30 minutes on each of the following: cleaning and organizing, house maintenance, driving, facebook, games (pool, and angry birds), journal, playing the piano, shopping, time tracking, vacation planning, writing on my blog, and selling stuff on Craigslist.

Total Personal Time: 128 hours, 52 minutes

Now that I’ve gone through all the effort of tracking my time for a week, it would be a shame to simply write a blog post about it and not use the data to see where I can improve. In the weeks ahead, I would like to make the following changes:

• More time with my wife, especially reading and talking with her.
• More family time together with the kids at home. We spend a lot of time together outside the home, but when we’re inside, we tend to do our own thing. I also want to take a more active role in homeschool, helping the kids with their blogs, music, as well as math and reading, etc.
• More time working on my book. I’m excited to complete this project and hopefully it will help a lot of people looking to create a business.
• Less time reading on-line. I want most of my reading time to be focused and intentional, not jumping from item to item.
• Less time on e-mail. I had built up a practice of checking e-mail just twice a day and leaving it alone the rest of the time. But I didn’t follow that so well this week, and found my productivity waver because of it.

Have you ever tracked your time? If you’ve ever charged per hour, chances are you’ve tracked your time working, but have you ever measured what you’re doing with the rest of your time? Yeah, maybe it is a bit fanatical. But I think there is value in it at least every once in a while.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts below, and what changes you’d like to make in how you spend your time.

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy

balcony

Last night, after a long 2 days of travel, we cleaned and re-organized the house, then stayed up late to watch one of my favorite old movies on my laptop, “The Three Amigos” – a very silly but entertaining show. This morning I got up around 7:30am, a full two hours before anyone else, and enjoyed a lovely morning, reading quietly on our balcony which overlooks the garden and views of the valley below. It was so relaxing. I also did my morning exercises, tai chi, and meditation there, like I used to. It felt great. I then made a list of some things I’d like to do today. Writing on my blog wasn’t one of them, but I suddenly got the urge, so here I am.

During the past few months, the list of books I want to read has continued to grow and I plan to dedicate a lot more time to reading in the months ahead, and hope to post some reviews here as well. I’ve really missed my morning reading time while we’ve been traveling. In fact, I’ve missed a lot of things.

Back to homeschool

Traveling to South America and the United States for the past two and a half months has been a wonderful and rewarding experience in so many ways. We were able to see and experience new and excited places, meet wonderful people, learn about several cultures, both ancient and modern, try new foods, give of ourselves, and receive so much more. But I think we’ve all decided that we went at too fast a pace for too long. We were flying to new destinations every week! Staying constantly in hotels (except in Utah), eating mainly at restaurants, trying to fill our days with interesting activities. We didn’t necessarily feel rushed, and sometimes even took full days to recuperate. We also feel like we got to see and do everything we wanted to. But after a while, I found myself missing the routine of productive living. I wanted to get back to working on my book and composing music, to evenings at home with my family, and to home cooked meals.

Praying mantis

That isn’t to say that I don’t love travel – I absolutely do! But I think I prefer the type of travel where I just get a one way ticket and live there until I feel like leaving. In a week or two, you can get a nice whirlwind tour of a place, and a good overall feel, but you don’t really get to immerse yourself in the culture or the language, get to know the people, and really be changed as much by the experience, to the same degree as when you stay longer, and with the intent to make it more permanent. We’ll still probably take a few shorter trips here and there (like with visa runs), but generally, I think we’d like to spend more time in a place before moving on.

A lot of people have asked me what my favorite place was in all of the areas we recently traveled to (Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Nicaragua, Florida, and Utah). I love each of them for different reasons, but if I had to pick a place to live, it would definitely be Costa Rica, where I am right now. I’m a sucker for warm and green, and so far I haven’t found any place with as perfect temperatures, and as green and lush as Costa Rica, not to mention the relaxed people, affordable quality health care, and low cost of living. Sure, it’s got its problems, but every place does. That said, we like change, and we certainly won’t be here forever. But for now, it’s the place we want to be.

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy

The past couple weeks, I’ve found myself with quite a bit of extra time on my hands. Somehow, I’ve usually been able to finish up work-related tasks in under an hour a day, and less than that on tracking finances or doing household tasks. Now that we don’t have a house or so much “stuff” to worry about, I’m magically finding myself left with lots of time to fill! This is a good problem to have, I think.

As much as I’ve heard how it’s good advice to have “down time” to just relax and do nothing, I still find that a challenge. I try to play pool, or sit around and relax, which is nice here and there. But sooner or later, I feel like I’ve just got to be up and doing something “productive”.

I continue to make lists of things I want to accomplish during the day, or the week, and work to accomplish them, but the lists are less stringent than they use to be. I only list a few tasks, and I try to make them things that are truly important to me – not just mundane stuff that needs to be done anyway. This week, my list has included things like “Play Mario Kart with my kids”, “Study Spanish”, and “Make videos of our Panama trip”. But the two things I’ve probably spent the most time on the past few weeks have been composing music, and typing my old journals.

Composing Music

I have enjoyed playing the piano and singing since I was young, and wrote a number of pieces in high school, but just haven’t had (made) the time since. Well, now I’m making the time! I’ve written a couple hymn arrangements for piano, and am working on a vocal arrangement of “Away in a Manger” for Christmas time. It’s been loads of fun, and I really enjoy sharing this part of me. I hope these arrangements will lift others’ spirits as well.

To hear a recording of me playing my arrangements, click the links below.

How Great the Humble Birth

I Am a Child of God

Note: These were recorded in Garageband through a MIDI interface, so the piano sound isn’t as nice as a real piano, and it misinterpreted how hard/soft I hit some of the keys. Anyway, I made some sheet music for them, too. If you want it, let me know, and I can send you a pdf you can print.

Typing Old Journals

I’ve also been typing my old journals into Google Docs (which is the only word processor I use these days). I started writing in a journal when I was 12 years old and now I’ve typed almost to the end of my 15th year. I’m now 29, so I have a ways to go (I wrote a lot), but I started typing my journals in 2003, so I can just read once I hit that point.

It’s been really interesting to look back at who I was and how I thought, as well as the ways that I’ve grown, and the lessons I’ve learned and sometimes forgotten.

One thing I noticed about my younger self (we’re talking Jr. High and High School days) was that I was surrounded by so many more people. I wrote a lot about how I’d care about someone who was having a hard time, and would pray for them throughout the day, how I’d visit friends who were sick, how I’d sing with friends, serve with friends, and play with friends. I was filled with a lot of love for others, and felt a lot of love from others. It was a great time, and I’m surprised to see how much of that I’ve lost!

Now, working from home as I do, I can go for several days without seeing anyone but my wife and kids. Even when I did work in an office, being a computer programmer, I was usually alone. Likewise, most of the activities I do now, I do alone. For years, I chose to put a lot of outside activities on hold to have more time to build my business. And I’ve realized that all of this loneliness has taken its toll on me socially and in relationships.

I haven’t been one to make much time to be with friends. I usually go to events or parties if someone invites me, but there have only been a handful of times when I’ve initiated these types of events. I’m not sure why, but the consequence has been that I don’t feel as close to people outside my family as I used to. That’s okay in some ways, because my family relationships are the most important to me. But I realize friendship is an important part of my life I’ve been neglecting lately, and I’d like to take more time to build friendships in the years ahead, and go out and serve a little more. And, especially because we’re home schooling, I want to make sure I provide this opportunity to my kids as well.

So, a big apology to any of my friends out there who have felt forgotten over the years. And a big thanks for all you’ve meant to me in my life. It’s amazing how many great experiences I’ve had, and how much help I’ve received from friends – that I had forgotten. I’m so glad I wrote them down in my journal!

A Balanced Life

I now have a lot more spare time than I used to, which is wonderful. But I think if I really put my mind to it, I could have made the time to compose music or review my journals, at any time during the past 15 years. It may have taken longer, but I still could have done it. It’s just not where I put my focus. But really, if I had tried to raise a family, go to school, work at a job, build a business, hang out with friends, compose music, and more, all at the same time, nothing would have ever gotten done well, and I would have been stressed out – not fulfilled. Actually, I did all of that for a while and it was pretty crazy.

Sometimes I think it’s necessary to reduce or eliminate certain activities from your life, so you can focus on what’s most important to you at the time. I guess I cut out some social activities and some music in order to build my business. Now I’m focusing more on those, and less on the business (because I have so much help that it almost runs itself). Maybe a “balanced” life doesn’t mean doing everything all at once. Maybe it’s more about doing what’s most important and fulfilling to you, right now, while temporarily saying “no” to other things.

Well, I’m going to go work on that hymn arrangement now.

How do you spend your spare time?

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy

I like being productive. And I like being able to look back at how I spend my time and see how closely it aligns with my ideals. That’s why I track my time while I’m working.

Because I run my own business from home, I’ve had some people ask me recently how much time I spend “working” each week. I define work as doing activities that directly relate to producing income. For me, that’s running my business. Things like mowing the lawn, or planning my next vacation are certainly work, but I don’t count them here (although I do track them, which I’ll show you below).

So, in answer to the above question, I usually spend between 8-15 hours per week on activities specifically related to producing income. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes less. It depends on how excited I am about what I’m doing, or what other things I have going on. When I was in Panama, I averaged about 5 hours per week.

What About The Rest?

But much more important than the question of how much time I spend “working” is the question, “How do I spend the rest of my time?” And am I spending my time how I really want to? It’s possible to spend all day reading blogs, watching TV, or just sleeping and eating. But is that how I want to live? No sir. Well, not usually…

I’m a very project-driven person. If there’s something I’m passionate about accomplishing, I can focus on little else until I have accomplished or achieved it. It’s just how I work, and it’s how I get things done. There was a time I was spending 12 hours a day (roughly 70 hours/week) working on producing income. I doubt I’ll ever put that much effort again into making money, but I don’t think I’d have a successful business today if I hadn’t been so committed to making it work.

I think there needs to be time for work and time for relaxation and play (Eccl 3:1-8). But what is the right balance for you? And when you’re working, what do you want to be working on?

Try Tracking for Simple Improvement

I’m now going to share with you today how I spent my time this past week. For over a year now, I’ve been tracking my time using a free tool called Slim Timer. I started using it because I wanted to track the hours I was working on web projects, back when I was billing hourly. But have since realized how useful it is to track how I’m spending time in other areas of my life, and the habit just stuck.

I’ve learned that once I start diligently tracking something, whether it be every bite of food I put into my mouth, every penny I spend, or every minute of how I use my time – I start to become more conscious of what I’m doing and almost instantly start seeing improvement, even if I haven’t been trying to improve. At different times in my life, I’ve tracked all three (food, money, and time) and with each one, I have been amazed at what effect such a simple exercise (tracking) had on me.

For example, in my 8th grade health class, I had to write down everything (and I mean everything) I ate and drank for a week. If you’ve never done that, I recommend you try it! I couldn’t believe how much garbage I was feeding myself and I instantly started eating more healthy. I don’t know why – I just did! The same thing happened with tracking money in my teen years. Every penny I spent I recorded and categorized in MSMoney, and I instantly started saving more and spending more wisely. Now as I’ve tracked my time over the past while, and have reviewed it regularly, I have seen a lot of improvement and I know I’m spending my time now more in the way that I want to, than ever before in my life. If you’ve never tracked something like this, try it! It’s amazing what even a simple log can show you that you just don’t realize otherwise.

I should say before showing you this report, that I certainly don’t have time management mastered. I still end up wasting time on things that really aren’t that important to me, or creating an imbalance of too much of one thing. I’m also not always perfect in remembering to track my time. But I am improving, and most importantly, I am happy and I love my life!

So, here are the totals for the past 7 days. (Note: I’m posting this on a Thursday, so it’s from Thursday to Thursday, although I usually review on a Sun-Sat schedule, if that matters.)

Working Hours

• Web Projects: 4 hours, 47 minutes. This includes creating proposals, assigning tasks to my programmers, checking their work, and discussing projects with clients. I currently have about four projects going.
• Music Teacher’s Helper: 2 hours, 28 minutes. This is my main source of income. I spend so little time on it because it’s very streamlined, and I have great teams to help so much with it. Tasks involved here include advertising, support, correspondence with my teams, blogging, checking stats, finances, and a little programming. (I have each of those tracked to the minute). Next week will probably be higher here as I’ll be writing some more marketing content and maybe creating another video tutorial.
• Studio Helper: 5 hours, 32 minutes. This is a newer project which is just starting to take off. In addition to making sure the programming is going smoothly, I have been working hard on some marketing, planning, did a little programming myself, and launched a special offer this week, that resulted in a number of new subscriptions. Yay!

Total Working Hours: 12 hours, 47 minutes

Other Hours

So how did I spend the rest of my time? Well, contrary to what those who know me may think, I don’t (anymore) spend all day in front of the computer. I do carry my iPhone most everywhere, but I don’t usually track my time as diligently when I’m not working. I bet if I did, I’d start spending it better, though!

That said, a lot of these numbers will be estimates, whereas some will be more exact.

• Sleep: 60 hours. Everyone needs sleep. Some more than others. I almost always get 8 hours per night, and a couple days this week I slept in an extra hour or two because it felt good, so 60 hours is probably about right for the week. I don’t use an alarm anymore, unless I have an early meeting or something. I usually just get up when my body tells me it’s time. However, if I sleep too long, I get a headache all day, so I try to get up before I feel the headache coming on. I usually go to bed between 10pm and midnight, and wake up between 6am and 8am.
• Time alone with my wife: 23 hours. Our kids currently go to preschool twice a week for 3 hours, so we automatically get 6 hours per week of date time for that – we love our lunch dates! Plus, last Saturday night we went out to dinner and to Opera premier of “Little Women” (first time in a while that we’ve had an evening date without the kids). We love spending time together! Then, every night after we put the girls to bed around 8, we stay up and talk, watch movies or travel shows, or read (she’s been reading “Harry Potter” to me). This is usually for 1-3 hours per night. So I think I’ve estimated about right for this week.
• Time with kids: 17 hours. This is one I really wish I was tracking better, because it’s so important. I will often come up during “breaks” while I’m working to play catch with the girls in the front room :), play imaginary games with them (or dolls), wrestle, or this week, teach Emily how to ride a bike without training wheels! Sometimes we’ll do these things before or after meals as well. We have Family Home Evening every Monday night where we sing, pray, and have a lesson, games and a treat. And every night we have a little devotional where we sing, pray and read together as a family. I also threw in a couple hours of driving time this week as well, when we were all together, since that sometimes turns into conversation. This also includes meals together, and evening time after dinner when we just “do nothing” together. We have dinner together almost every night, lunch together except when the girls have preschool, and occasionally we’ll have breakfast together. Usually, I eat with the girls, and Jen eats later.
• Church: 10 hours. We go to church for 3 hours each Sunday. I also study the gospel for about 30 minutes every morning, which I count here. This also counts the time I spend doing my calling (making appointments for our bishop, or updating the ward website), and time attending the Temple, which I did once this week. I counted Family Home Evening and devotional time as family time, but it could just as easily be counted here. Time spent on “church stuff” is generally very fulfilling for me because I feel like I’m being of service, or at least feeding my soul some good spiritual food, which keeps me going in other areas of my life.
• Personal: 39 hours. This week, this includes writing this blog post (1 1/2 hours), visiting relatives (6 1/2 hours), cleaning (30 minutes), morning and evening rituals: shower, etc. (4 hours), exercise: daily morning tai chi and yoga routine (2 hours), fixing an old computer my grandma gave me (1 hour), cast meeting for Joseph (1 hour), personal e-mail (2 hours), reading (1 hour), personal finances (1 1/2 hours), planning (1 hour), mowing the lawn (1 hour), and working on a video of our Panama trip (7 hours) – that’s been my big project lately.

Okay, so you math experts out there will notice that this totals up to about 162 hours (if my math is right). But there are 168 hours in a week (24*7). So that leaves about 6 hours unaccounted for!! What happened to those other 6 hours?! You know what? I don’t know! I told you there might be some inaccuracies. :) It was probably spent mostly reading on the web, or resting on the couch or something – I don’t know.  But that does makes me curious. Does this mean I could have an extra 6 hours in my week if I could find it? Or did I just do a bad job at tracking what am I doing in that time?

Ah… but I must remember the more important question from the beginning of this post. Am I doing what I want to be doing, and am I spending the time I want on the things that are most important to me? I can answer yes to that. The point isn’t to squeeze as much into our day as we can, and do as many things as possible. The point is to make sure we do those things that we love and that bring us fulfillment. (Although, now I’m tempted to start tracking every minute on Slim Timer through my iPhone next week just to see where that time went… See how I am?)

I wanted to go on and share with you some of the other tools I use to track my time and appointments, but this has gotten pretty long, so I think I’ll save those for another post.

But before you leave, I want you to get something from this post. Rather than it just being an interesting (or not) post to read about the weekly life of Brandon Pearce, why not take a look at yourself, and your own time, and ask yourself if you’re spending your time the way you want to? You may not want to spend your time at all like I do, but figure out how you do want to spend it and see how close you’re living to that. You may be surprised.

Or start tracking it using Slim Timer or another tool and see what happens. Even logging part of your day, like I do, is immensely helpful. Set aside some time to think about what your ideal day might look like (a topic which deserves at least a whole post to itself), and how you can reach it. You just may have an enlightening experience (such as, you’ve lost 6 hours of your week and don’t know where to find it…).

Happy living!

(May 3, 2009: Update: I think I figured out where the extra hours went. I forgot to calculate in my Oratorio Society rehearsal (practice for Mendelssohn’s Elijah, which was 2 hours), and my weekly Tai Chi / Yoga class, which is 3 hours. Plus driving, I think that accounts for about everything. Yay!)

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy

The first few days at home were wonderful, and we still had what we feel was a healthier mindset. We were still productive, we were happy, and we loved being together. We adored our kids, and always had time for them. We didn’t realize what we had been missing all along until we experienced this – it’s hard to describe how much closer we became being together in Panama. But after a week or two (10 days now) of being home, we feel an immense pull from all our commitments, and with so many distractions, we have found it very difficult to stay in that mindset.

Even though I work from home, it doesn’t seem that we’re spending much time together, and when we are, we don’t feel as close – like we’re too busy with things we “have to do” that we forget what’s really important. We have even become short-tempered and impatient with our kids again – emotions that we just didn’t have much on our trip. Interesting, isn’t it?

An Onslaught of Commitments

We had virtually no responsibilities or commitments while we were on our trip. I still had to run my business, but I could do that on my own time, and I made sure I limited myself to just a few hours a day. Since coming back, however, I’ve had a lot more going on – much of which has been very good, but it’s kept me busy.

For example, in the past ten days, I’ve had two lunch appointments (one for business, one with an old friend), several scheduled business phone calls, tai chi classes, Toastmasters meetings, church meetings (including a fun talent show that I performed in, and responsibilities with my calling), Oratorio Society of Utah rehearsals (which required a lot of piano practice since I accompanied this week), house maintenance (see my last post), a lot of e-mails to answer, programmers’ code to review, and I migrated my music teacher website to a new server to meet growing demands for performance.

The girls have had preschool and dance classes. Jen has been busy taking care of things at home, cooking, cleaning (a bigger deal when you have a bigger place), laundry, entertaining visitors, grocery shopping, doctor’s appointments, visiting teaching, babysitting other people’s kids and babies, and a lot more.

With all of these things going on (and I’m sure this list looks mild compared to some families), we have found it difficult to find time to spend together or with our kids. For example, we have been wanting to go to the “Frog” exhibit that just opened at the Natural History museum, but so far, haven’t found a single day free to go do it! We finally had a couple hours open Saturday, so took the girls to the park, which was fun. But it’s just not enough to keep the feeling of unity and love as strong as it was on our trip.

Is All This Really Necessary?

I’ve started to wonder which of the above commitments are truly necessary. Of course there are many of the above commitments we wouldn’t want to give up, especially ones relating to people we love. And of course there’s joy to be found in the self-improvement, service, and work-related commitments. But as I look at the list of what we’re busy doing, I wonder why so much of it has to occur outside of the family. Isn’t the purpose of family to teach us “self-improvement, service, and work”, and to make us better people? Are we neglecting our most important and rewarding responsibilities by bringing so much else into our lives? I’m starting to feel like some of these things are just distractions, taking me away from what I value most.

Is it really a requirement to do so much all the time, in so many different areas of life? Does it really take going to another country, away from everything, to experience a strong feeling of family unity? Is it really unrealistic to have that kind of feeling in our fast-paced society? Can I really avoid getting sucked in to all that’s going on around me? I experienced a special feeling with my family in Panama (and even a bit after we returned), and I want it back again.

I wonder what life was like in the days of Adam and Eve, when there were no governments, schools, law, or even churches – when family and the law of God was all there was. We’re told that the main reason Jesus Christ even established a church was to help fathers and mothers teach and take care of their families. Families truly are central to God’s plan for His children. (See The Family: A Proclamation to the World). Are families central in our lives?

The Power of Less

A few days ago, I checked out a book at the library called “The Power of LESS” by Leo Babauta, author of the popular Zen Habits blog – one of my favorite blogs. I have hardly been able to put the book down, and I highly recommend it to anyone trying to simplify their life or get more done (especially important things). The basic idea of the book is that you can be happier and more productive by eliminating the non-essential from your life, and doing/keeping only the essential. Yeah, a simple idea – but very profound when applied.

I certainly found this true in Panama. When we focused on what was most important (our family), and let almost everything else go out the window, we were much, much happier. I’m not saying that we should take our families and go and live like hermits, shutting out anything but each other. But there has to be a better balance than what I’m currently experiencing.

Finding the Balance

How do I find this balance again? Should I take my family on another 6 week trip? Or how about a year or more? Or maybe I should just start to cut some of the clutter out of my life as it is now, making sure I reserve time every day and every week for my family. Maybe we can have a “Family Day” a few times a week, and try to keep out other appointments and commitments on those days. Maybe I can allot specific hours of every day to spend with my kids, and make sure I leave my computer off during those times. But then I think, “How can I possibly get everything done if I do that?” Then again, do I really need to get “everything” done? What’s truly essential?

How do you find time to be with your family among all the pressures of life? And do you feel like it’s enough time? Do you feel as close in your family as you want to be? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Share and Enjoy

I’m talking about RSS Readers. Don’t let this name scare you. It’s a really simple idea (in fact, RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”). So, rather than visiting each and every website to see if there’s anything new posted, you just look at one website that tells you which of your favorite blogs have new posts. And then you can either read the posts from there, or go to the actual website of the blog. It aggregates all your favorite blogs in one place.

Can you see how this would save you a lot of time spent going from site to site, especially if you have a lot of favorites? Also, this isn’t just for blogs. Most newspapers, magazines, and other websites have RSS feeds that you can easily pull from to see what’s new.

There are many free RSS readers out there. I use Google Reader, which is attached to my Gmail account. If you have a Gmail account, then you already have Google Reader. Just go to http://www.google.com/reader and you’ll see it. It works kind of like e-mail in that it shows which posts are new, and which ones have been read. You can also “star” posts, e-mail them, and put them into different categories. If you’re interested, Google Reader also keeps track of your “Trends” so you can see which blogs you read the most, which are most popular, and how many posts you read per day or week, etc.

To add your favorite blogs to Google Reader, click the “Add a subscription”  button at the top, copy and paste (or type) the url of your desired blog, and click “Add”.  Or you can search for new blogs this way here, too. Some blogs will have an “RSS” button, or even an “Add to Google Reader” button right on the page that you can click directly and it will add the blog to Reader for you.

As I mentioned earlier, you can categorize your rss feeds (blogs). For example, I have blog categories for “Family”, “Personal”, “Programming”, “Music”, “Travel” and more. So if I’m in the mood to read about travel, I’ll look at my travel category. I’m subscribed to four travel blogs right now. Two of them post every couple days, but one of them only posts every few weeks. So it’s nice to see the new posts there without having to visit the sites continually.

Who knows when I’ll write my next post. If you don’t want to keep checking back on my site every day to see if I’ve posted anything new, just add my blog (http://brandags.wordpress.com) to your Google Reader account, and it will tell you when I’ve posted something new.

If you’ve never used RSS feeds or Google Reader before, why not give it a try? Or check out some of the other free rss feed readers out there (for example, http://www.feedreader.com). If you have used them, feel free to share some of the things you like or don’t like about them. I know Google Reader can do a lot more than what I use it for, and I’m sure others have even more features. Happy reading!

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This time, however, we really felt rejuvenated, and have a renewed energy to get back into life. I didn’t have a big pile of things to do because I’d been taking care of the important ones while I was gone. And I realized that most of the things I thought I needed to do so urgently, really weren’t urgent, and that much of my to-do list could just be wiped out without any major effects.

What’s More Important Than Family?

Before I left, I seemed to base much of my happiness on how much I got “done”, and how well I cleared my to-do list. I would work to accomplish what I had planned to do, at the expense of enjoying time with my family, even if the things on my list weren’t very important. In fact, I often didn’t enjoy time spent with my family because I was worrying about the other things I hadn’t accomplished. Pretty sad, isn’t it? I hope I can remember this lesson, and put my family first. It makes life a lot more enjoyable. Who cares how much I do if I’m not enjoying the more important areas in my life?

It’s also much easier to and more enjoyable to deal with kids if you can give them your main focus and play with them, rather than trying to accomplish something on your own while expecting them to entertain themselves. Yes, this takes time and commitment! But what better way can you spend your time?

The day we came back was a busy day that normally would have been a bit stressful. Emily and Marie had both preschool and dance classes, we needed to go shopping for food, and I had some unfinished business to catch up on. But we had a great day and almost no stress! Yes, we ate out for two meals and didn’t get to the store, but we were okay with that! Jen and I enjoyed our date while the girls were at preschool, and we even went to a children’s musical theater that night (“Honk Jr.”) in which my dad had directed the music. What a fun day!

I accomplished what I needed to do that morning (and a little bit in the evening), and spent the rest of the day with my family – just like when we were on our trip. I’ve lived like this for the past six weeks – why shouldn’t I be able to continue doing so? Do I really need to be working or focusing on my own interests for eight hours a day?

Productivity vs. “Wasting” Time

Just being home for a few days now, I already feel a pull to go back to my old habits of working hard to be productive, and to get as much done as possible each day. Productivity is great, but I’m realizing that I was placing too much emphasis on it. I am a naturally productive person. I have trained myself not to “waste time” and to make sure whatever I’m doing is bringing me closer to my goals.

What I’ve learned on this trip, however, is that “wasting time” is often necessary to truly rejuvenate, clear your mind, and connect with yourself and others. Sometimes it’s more important to “do nothing” than to get something accomplished.

How Blessed We Are!

I didn’t think six weeks would be long enough to forget so much about what life is like at home. But we were amazed when we walked into our house because it looked so clean, and new and nice! Even though it’s just an average home around here, comparing it to where we came from, where they have a different standard of “nice” and “clean”, we were blown away. Our home seems so comfortable, is always the perfect temperature inside because of central air and heating. We have soft carpet instead of hard tile (except in the kitchen), comfortable couches to lay down on, and pure water to drink from the faucet. How blessed we are!

The streets and stores of Salt Lake City are also extremely clean (comparatively). In Panama, we got used to seeing more garbage on the side of the road, run-down or abandoned buildings, and lots of pedestrians. But everything here is very clean, new, orderly, and people generally follow traffic rules. How nice! :) (I do see a lot more sloppy dress here, though. Interestingly, Panamanians generally dress really sharp.)

We’re very happy to be home, to see family and friends again, and to be enjoying the comforts of a 1st world country.

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Share and Enjoy

I’ve always loved the idea of automation. I remember when I was about twelve years old, I loved dreaming about how, in the “future”, we’d simply press a button, and we’d have our food. We’d press another button, and we’d be dressed. We’d press another button and we’d be clear across the world. Well, that hasn’t really happened, and arguments could be made about why these wouldn’t necessarily be good things. (Note: I just saw “Wall-E” for the first time yesterday, and had to laugh. Yes, pushing buttons all day would probably just make us all fat!)

While constant and never-ending leisure wouldn’t make for a very fulfilling life, I still like the idea of “minimal effort, maximum result” – leverage – mainly because it frees up our time to do things that are more meaningful to us (if we choose to). 

I’m not one to say that every moment of our lives should be spent only on activities that we deem “most important”, just as it all shouldn’t be spent on leisure. We need regular periods of work and stress, as well as periods of renewal – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually – in order to keep happy and healthy.

And I believe that value and enjoyment can even be found even in the “mundane” things of life, such as daily hygiene, getting from one place to another, preparing food (some people really enjoy this), or working at a repetitive task. This all depends on our attitude. Are we grateful for what we have? Even still, I find my greatest fulfillment in working toward accomplishing some goal, and eliminating as much mindless or unproductive repetition as possible.

Endless Possibilities

As a child, my only aspirations for a career centered around becoming either a music teacher or a computer programmer, both of which I’ve done to some degree. But after a while, my eyes started to open up to other possibilities. I realized that there really are no limits to where we can set our sites. And I began asking myself some questions, which you may want to ask yourself as well.

What would you do if you had all the time and money you could ever want? Would you travel the world with your family? Would you buy mansions and yachts and play all day? Would you move to the country and live a simpler life? Would you fight poverty and hunger? Start foundations to preserve peace or protect the environment? Would you improve your talents or skills? Learn to play an instrument or paint or build something?  Increase your knowledge in an area of interest to you? Invent something? Run for political office? Spend more time serving neighbors and friends? Would you teach others? Would you serve a mission?  Would you do a combination of all these things?

Again, if you didn’t have to work 8 hours a day to make a living, and had time to pursue whatever you wanted, what would change? Or would you choose to do the same things you’re doing now?

This is a personal question and everyone’s answer will be different. I still don’t fully know my own answer, but it’s beginning to form.  I certainly don’t have an unlimited supply of time and money, but I have begun to realize that you really don’t need it, in order to begin accomplishing what’s most important to you. And even better, if you focus on doing what you feel most driven to do based on your values, time and money will take care of themselves, or at least, they won’t matter as much to you.

Gratitude and Persistence

I feel so grateful for what I have been given, in so many areas of my life. It seems much more than I deserve. I want to make the best of what’s been allotted to me –  living my life to the fullest – not wasting it, but putting it to good use in ways that bless others as well as myself. It’s a constant learning process, and I feel like I’m just at the beginning. And who knows what the future will bring? So right now, I’m taking advantage of opportunities while they’re available to me, and giving my family an experience we’ve been dreaming about. 

So, let me ask you – if there is something you want to accomplish in life, are you taking steps to accomplish it now? If not, ask yourself why. Determine what the next step would be for you, and do it! Then take the next step, and keep moving. Persistence does pay off.

P.S.  Speaking of work/renewal cycles, I have to promote another great book. Check out ”The Power of Full Engagement” by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. It talks about the importance of these and other cycles in our lives (among other things). For example, how we work so much more productively if we take regular breaks throughout the day, where we completely separate, mentally and physically, and in all other areas, from work. Then when we come back, we’re more refreshed, and have more energy to enjoy the rest of the day. And how pre-determined routines can help you reach your goals. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.

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Share and Enjoy