One thing that I have really been working on is spending quality time with Ben. Now, I say this all the time. Its always about wanting to spend more time with him and continue to build on our relationship. But in reality I have never actually made any progress on this topic. Why? This is because I was going about it the wrong way. One book that has been a big inspiration for me is The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller. It has helped me understand that I am not prioritizing my life the right way to support the dreams of what I really want. I took the time to list out what is important to me and Ben was at the top. What this made me think about is that I am constantly trying to get things done. I’m always worrying about the kitchen or the laundry or taking time and scanning all my documents so that the household runs well. But that is not spending time with Ben. Yes, it makes our lives a little bit better. But spending time together is much better than having scanned documents in place of that. It had become too easy to take the time to “get something done” and not spend time together and it was hurting our marriage. But then I started focusing on making him a priority and nothing else. The dishes and laundry be dammed, even though it made me cringe and feel like a failure. If that meant that I spent time with him, watching TV or talking in the back patio then I accomplished my most important thing for the day. It was and still is the only thing that I have to complete on my check list of things to do each day. I even took this a step further and started ranking my other items in life to help support that goal. With this being the last semester for both of us before we graduate, we definitely have our days blocked out for us by school and out other obligations. But that just means that we have to cut out time each day and make it count. I am not trying to make this sound easy. It is something that I have struggled with for years now. But the system that I have implemented is definitely making it easier.
What is the ONE THING that I want most in life? It’s to spend as much of my day as possible with Ben. So then, I started working backwards from that idea. So that means taking the time to spend it with him each night. But that doesn’t means that magically everything else in my life has suddenly disappeared because of magical elves. (Although, if you know some that are looking for extra work….) It just meant that I needed to become really efficient with my non-Ben time. If my day included getting my homework done, grocery shopping, miscellaneous shopping, laundry, dishes and cleaning the floors. That just means that I take everything and put it into an Evernote list according to importance. Homework is first, since it has a non negotiable deadline. Grocery shopping is next, because we like to eat. Misc shopping is next, and so on. But I have taken this even a step further and make sure that when I am shopping I use a timer. It is too easy for me to get lost in Sam’s club looking at all the goodies that they have. But if I put a 30 minute timer on my self and make it so that it’s a really tight time frame to get a week’s worth of grocery shopping done and in the car. You can bet your butt that I am moving fast throughout the store. What also helps with this type of scheduling is that if I get interrupted in the middle of my day, it normally around my lower priority items and I can always come back to them another day. It also give Ben the freedom to be spontaneous and say let’s go out to dinner or go and watch a movie. Even though I didn’t plan it into my day, nothing earth shattering is effected by moving it to the next day. Which gives us so much more time together since I am not constantly saying, “honey I can’t. I didn’t priorities my day correctly and have just started my homework and won’t get done until 5 pm.” That time together has made a huge difference. I am so much more relaxed knowing that I have accomplished something REALLY Important and that I get to spend quality time with Ben. Hitting both of the main items on my one thing list.
