The 100x Family-Time Strategy

1. Family time is limited—cherish it.


2. Friend time is limited—prioritize real ones.


3. Partner time is significant—never settle.


4. Children time is precious—be present.


5. Coworker time is significant—find energy.


6. Alone time is abundant—love yourself.

In his book 30 Lessons for Living, gerontologist Karl Pillemer interviewed a thousand elderly Americans looking for the most important lessons they learned from decades of life experience. He wrote: No one—not a single person out of a thousand—said that to be happy you should try to work as hard as you can to make money to buy the things you want.

Maybe you can’t keep your current job while also seeing enough of your children; maybe making sufficient time in the week for your creative calling means you’ll never have an especially tidy home, or get quite as much exercise as you should, and so on.

The trick is to utilize your time effectively. To value every minute of the day equally, regardless of how many other minutes are attached to it. Once you have chosen to value every minute, you can begin to create systems by which those precious minutes can be used.