This part two of a series no attempt is made to explain the contents of part one.
Something had to change. The change I made was two fold: 1)I stopped expecting myself to do all of the things on the list so that I stopped missing quiet evenings with my wife. 2)I sought accountability and created a means to report my behavior to my tier two brothers.
Both of those changes came from a reviewing of my goals. I discovered a lot of the things I was doing to supplement my education, were good and useful, but not as aligned with my life goals as time with my wife, budgeting, and receiving mentorship. Also, in looking at my goals, I saw how crucial sharing is to me. I want to resonate with integrity so that “those who know the best respect me the most.” It’s important to me to be transparent with those people I have decided to trust so that I can have input based on who/what I really am instead of who/what I pretend to be.
So, I simplified my schedule. I would still start my working day at 9, but I would do what I wanted (from that list) as long as I wanted until lunch with my wife. So, I started being more effective at fewer disciplines. I also devoted more time to afternoon tasks which included mentorship, budgeting, and school work. The new format meant that morning tasks, never crossed over into a catch up list, because there was no expectation.
However, there was still a problem (and I’ve yet to resolve it). Sometimes, afternoon tasks just took longer than I wanted them to and I still left quiet evenings to finish last minute homework. The good part is that happened a lot less and was more acceptable to my wife, because she saw me really putting in effort to make that happen less. Ultimately, towards the end of the semester as assignments built up, I shifted my start time to 8 instead of nine and I switched morning tasks with homework so that I could be there for more evenings. I really like this model. I’m sure though, I fall into the temptation of creating a new ideal schedule for the spring semester… hopefully, I can keep expectations lower and under-commit so that I do everything a little better and have more time for the things that really matter to me.
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