Category: essay

Quality and Quantity Time With Your Kids

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In church one day, I heard a woman say that quality time mattered more than quantity time. My mom happened to be visiting, and whispered to me that quantity time definitely still mattered.

I was looking at a journal entry when I had little tiny kids, and I wrote that I found it very difficult to sit and entertain my two-year-old every day. I felt too much guilt because I couldn’t always make the quantity time into quality time. I’ve been a stay-at-home mom and a homeschooling mom, and for a white, I spent basically every moment of my life with my children. It was hard, and to be honest, I didn’t love it. But I still think it was valuable to be there, even if I wasn’t always enjoying myself.

Because often the quality times don’t happen unless there is quantity time first. I try to plan out quality family time, but it often implodes on me, and all I get is kids who complain because it wasn’t near as fun as we expected. But then quality time can sneak up when I least expect it. The other day, I discovered an impromptu dance party in my living room.

There isn’t a tradeoff between the two–they work together, and to maximize quality time, I maximize quantity time first. But I’m going back to school full time in the fall and I won’t be home as much. My kids will all be in school full-time. We also like running around to various sports and activities. How do we keep spending time together as a family?

First thing: turn off screen time and increase green time. The impromptu dance party only happened because it was a no screen day. Many studies show that screen time can have a negative impact on mental health and green time increased mental health outcomes. So going outside more, particularly as a family, is really beneficial for all of us.

Here are some other ideas:

  • If I’m not physically home, I can put up a camera that allows me to check on home and talk to those that are there.
  • I can write and leave notes for my kids.
  • I can wake up earlier and get ready before the kids are away so that I’m present before the kids go to school.
  • I can use the random minutes here and there. Car rides together. Late evenings. Intersections. Cooking dinner and doing dishes.
  • And I can involve my kids with what I am doing and what I am thinking.

And instead of looking only at days, I can look at weeks and months (I got this idea from Laura Vanderkam). I’m not maximizing time spent with my children on a daily basis; I’m maximizing it over weeks and months and years. I may not spend six hours with my kids every day, but I can spend three hours with them on the weekdays and 10 hours with them on the weekends. We can make up time with each other by going on vacation during summer break and using weekends for family time.

What are your ideas to maximize quantity and quality time with your kids?

3 steps to better use social media

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Sometimes I waste a lot of time on social media. Honestly, it’s scary that these companies know so much about me and regularly use algorithms in order to steal and keep my attention. I know a few people who have deleted social media accounts, and I strongly support people doing that if they are only using social media to consume.

But social media can be a positive force in your life. Here’s how:

Create First.

Before you log on to social media, create something to share. It’s okay to just share a little bit about your life and what you are thinking. You can share a photo of your life or something you’ve seen that is beautiful. You can ask a question or do a short status update. You can also use Canva to make a social media post. I like to share quotes from books and articles I’ve read, my own blog posts, projects I’ve completed, and insight from my life.

You might think this takes a lot of time–but so does scrolling through social media! If you don’t have time to create a post, you probably don’t have time to be on social media in the first place.

And don’t worry if your posts are good or not. Just make them. Try things out and experiment. Your friends want to hear from you, not just from influencers and commercial creators.

Again, let me stress that you do this before you go on to social media. If you go onto social media first, you will be too distracted to create something.

Connect Second.

After you post something, spend time connecting with other people. This is not just looking at posts. It means interacting with posts: Share them (and say why you are sharing). Comment on them. Answer questions. You won’t want to interact with every post you see, but try to find something that resonates with you and then respond to it. If nothing is inspiring you in your feed, than change your feed–unfollow people who don’t bring you joy. And send personal messages to people you know and love.

Set limits to resist consuming.

I don’t have social media on my phone. Sometimes I will install Instagram to make a post or a story, but then I often uninstall it. And I use two apps with time limits on them: Digital Wellbeing (which is standard on Android) and YourHour. On my computer, I use FocusMe. But there are lots of other apps and programs to use. You don’t have enough willpower to not waste time on social media. Social media is designed to suck away your time, so you need backup to tell you when you need to look up and do something else.

Create and connect instead of consume. Social media can be a good force in your life–and if it isn’t, get rid of it.

On Confidence and Humility

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Confidence and humility are not opposites: they are the same thing.

When I am feeling proud, I want to be better than everyone else. I want to pull people down in order to lift myself up. I can place a lot enmity between myself and other people: Sometimes I want what another person has. Sometimes I compare myself to others. I think I’m better than I really am. This brings a huge amount of insecurity, because I’m not actually better than everyone else. I am imperfect, and the work I do is imperfect.

I can’t be confident when I really want to be the best at something. Because I’ll never be the best, so I’ll drown in insecurities.

When I am more humble, on the other hand, I recognize that other people have a lot of worth. I can learn from them. I want to celebrate their accomplishments and support them. I’m looking outwards and seeking to connect instead of compare.

When I am humble, I am okay when I don’t know the answers. I am aware that I can always keep improving. And I want to improve more, because I see my capacity for growth.

In humility, I find confidence. Because confidence is when you are okay with being bad at something.

Confidence is when you are okay with being bad at something.

Think about going and talking in front of a group: if you are worried about having every word right, you are going to be terrified, because you know that it is very likely you will get some words wrong. But if you know you’re going to stumble sometimes, and say “um” way too much, and that you’re going to press onward no matter what, then you can walk up to the front of the group with confidence. You are confidence not that you will be perfect, but that whatever you attempt is good enough.

Don’t worry about confidence: it will come once you are comfortable making mistakes. And you become more comfortable with making mistakes when you increase in humility.

We all make mistakes. But we keep trying anyway.

Another post about humility. And another.

The Right Time

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In 2018, I put a book I had written (One Thing is Needful) in a figurative drawer and thought I would never look at again. But in 2020, I got it out again and started working on it. Two years later, I’ve basically finished it. I’m working on sharing it more soon.

I try to follow the Lord’s will about when to do things. Sometimes I do the right thing, but it’s not the right time yet. Sometimes it takes me a whole lot longer than I want it to.

In the end of 2018, I moved to this home in the mountains and I thought I would live here for forever. But I didn’t stay more than a few months, and when I moved away, I thought I would never come back. A year later, at the end of 2019, we owned this house and it’s been my home for almost two years now.

I really worked to get a novel published before I had kids, but it didn’t work out. I thought I wasn’t good enough to be a writer and that I failed. But years later, I went to a conference, surrounded by authors and people trying to write, and I realized that I didn’t fail because I wasn’t good enough. I failed because it wasn’t the right time for me yet, and I had more things to learn.

The right people will be in your life at the right time. I have felt very much alone and I thought no one was there–but those times forced me to reach out to people who needed me. And then people came when I needed them to. I was led to people who I needed to connect with. I learned from others when I needed to learn those things.

I still don’t know the timetable for many things in my life. Some things will be a lot slower than I want them to be. Some things might happen a lot quicker.

But if I trust in the Lord, I can do His will.

And His will is much more about becoming the person I need to be than just getting things done.

There is no better time because it is your time. -Boyd K. Packer

Running as fast as I can

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Kids running GIF

I don’t like to run. I did track in junior high, and my best event was the 400 meter, which is a horrible event. You have to run fast and long. (It is slightly better than the 800 meter.) I wasn’t fast. And I don’t like going on long runs. The longest I have ever run is a 5k, and I did that once.

But I do like to pile things onto my to-do list. I want to work on everything now. My current projects include finishing my inspirational self-help book, writing a new novel, writing a new inspirational self-help book, leading a writing group in my community, beta reading for another writer, building up my Instagram account, doing a writing workshop, and updating my blog. That’s just writing stuff. Then I am working to finish the Khan Academy calculus bc course, keep learning how to code in R better, and read nonfiction in the areas of rationality, philosophy, and economics, including finish reading that macroeconomic textbook because I didn’t do well in macroeconomics in college and it bothers me. I am also renovating a house, and today I painted the laundry room walls and flooring, and I need to put that room back together. I need to mud and tape my whole house and paint it. And I need to prune my apple tree and work on my yard, including taking care of my birds. I am trying to be a good neighbor and want to go visit others more. I volunteer at the school. And I need to keep my house clean, which includes dusting on occasion and doing a lot of laundry. I also am trying to touch my toes, do more push-ups, and drink 64 ounces of water every day.

And I want to be a good mom, pay attention to my kids, teach them piano, and read with them. And I have a husband whom I really like.

It’s sort of a lot. But not really. Because I don’t have to do all of that at once. I can only do one thing at a time, after all.

Sometimes I need to simplify and slow down. But that doesn’t mean I need to give up on my goals–a lot of them can be pushed to later. I can prioritize by realizing what season of life I am in right now, and then being patient with myself when I can’t do everything right now, but I can do everything over time.

Do not run faster or labor more than you have strength and means provided to enable you … but be diligent unto the end.

Doctrine and Covenants 10:4

I don’t need to remove things from my to do list for forever. Just for right now. I want to pace myself by not trying to do everything every day, but just a few most important things every day.

Today, I’m not worrying about my novel, or my writing workshop, or reading my macroeconomics textbook. Those things can happen later. Today, I am focusing on working on my laundry room, finishing the draft of my inspirational self-help book, and taking care of my kids, one of whom has pink eye, and another one who threw up last night (but he’s fine now). I’m writing this blog post as they happily play with Duplos.

In the evening, I’m going to watch one of my favorite TV shows with my husband and work on the Semantle and Nerdle puzzles for the day, because I don’t need to be productive all the time. But hopefully things like entertainment and spending time doing nothing on my computer can be minimal: because while I want to avoid running too fast, I do want to keep running instead of getting distracted and forgetting what direction I’m heading.

Where are you running to? Are you going too fast? Do you need to pick up the pace a bit? What can be put off until later and what needs to happen right now?

Performing yourself

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I recently went to a writer’s conference, and I sat in quite a few panels and classes. At one panel, we were told all about figuring out your audience and being aware of them as you write and market a book. At the next panel, we were told to be ourselves and to not worry too much about what other people think.

So do I write to an audience? Do I need to figure out who I am writing to? Do I need to change and tailor my words to fit into genre conventions?

Or do I write what I find fascinating? Do I just put myself out there and see who wants to listen? Do I write trying to create art instead of trying to sell books?

I don’t think I have answers to all of those questions. For a long time, I hated thinking about my audience. I just wrote. And to be honest, no one listened.

I’ve been trying to write more, but I’m writing again because I want to connect with other people. I don’t write a story down just because it’s a good story. I write it because I want to share it.

I can be myself, be genuine, and not really care what other people think. I don’t perform for an audience; but I do present myself to them.

I don’t need to change who I am and what I write to fit into conventions and to satisfy an audience. I don’t want to write for others as much as I want to write to others, connecting with an audience who may be interested in what I have to say.

Who is listening?

Life Lately

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I wonder if I’ve been busy, but not really. I have things on my to-do list, but not many deadlines. I take my kids back and forth to activities–basketball, library, coding. My afternoons and evenings sometimes have more going on, but my mornings and afternoons can be empty.

I finished coaching a basketball team with first and second graders. Their skill levels had a very large range: some of them were afraid of the ball; some of them could dribble down the court and make a layup on a fast break. In some ways, it was unfair to everyone, and yet we played anyway and I did my best to coach them, yelling from the sidelines. I both loved it and was very glad when it was over.

I started a writing group and I’ve been meeting twice a week, and again, there is a very large range in skill levels and interest. I want to be encouraging, and yet I remember that when I was young and really wanted to be a writer, people encouraged me and I took it too far and became too confident in my own abilities. Where is the balance in telling someone that they are doing okay, but that they still need to improve a lot?

We finished putting the drywall on our ceiling. We’ve had our ceiling open for such a long time. I thought it would make a big difference, but it turns out you don’t really look at your ceiling that often. I love all the progress we have made on our house. For so long, we were working on things behind walls. It’s good to be working on finishing those walls.

So much of the work we do will never be seen, but it is still so necessary.

Encourage

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There will always be an endless list of stuff you can do better. But the most important things is small improvements and not giving up. If you don’t give up, you will succeed in life and you will be okay.

You do not need anyone’s permission to value yourself. You do not need to satisfy any one else’s version of yourself. You are okay. You are okay in your own skin. You are okay to take time for yourself and to have slower moments in life. You are okay as you are right now, because you still do many good things and your efforts are not wasted.

You could have always done something different that might have worked out better. You can say you should have done this or should have done that, but there is literally an endless list of things that may have been better if you did something differently. You did what you did. It is okay.

Distractions

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I get distracted easily and sometimes I have a hard time focusing on the right thing.

But as I was sucked down rabbit holes and wasting my time the other day, I realized that I don’t need to stop getting distracted.

Not getting distracted is not a good goal to have. Because I will get distracted. And then if my goal was to never get distracted, I feel guilty and miserable and I don’t want to do the right thing anymore.

A better goal is to come back as soon as I can after I get distracted. To learn how to refocus myself and remember the task at hand. To close out of the rabbit holes and go back to work.

I’m never going to be always focused. But when I find myself unfocused, I can let go of guilt and simply make the right choice in that moment.

I am not a problem.

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I am not a problem to be fixed.

Life is not a problem to be fixed.

I have been repeating those mantras to myself lately. Sometimes, I think of myself as broken and I want to fix myself. But I am not broken, and I don’t need to fix myself. I have problems and struggles–sometimes I get depressed. Sometimes I get distracted. Sometimes I don’t make great decisions. I may have problems and struggles, but I am not a problem or a struggle. I am a person, and for all my weakness, I also have strength.

My life has many good things in it. It’s mostly good, really. I don’t want to change everything. I don’t need to fix my life–it’s not perfect, and I can work on making it a little bit better. But my life isn’t broken. My life is beautiful and wonderful.