You could spend every minute of your day on recruiting and still not have enough time. As you are building a career, also remember to build a life!
As you budget your time and earn to say no to requests that aren’t important, be sure to schedule quality time with your family: your parents, your spouse and your children. Quality time can make up for quantity of time in terms of family time. Coaches kids and spouses are usually used to the lifestyle, but there are ways to improve the limited time you feel you have with your family. They’re making sacrifices for you and your career, find small gestures or family rituals that show you care and can be active in their lives too.
• Be present when you’re having family time. Date night is not date night if you are on the phone half the time (or more)!
• Find pockets of time each week that you can work in family time: a day you can get home early, a morning you can take the kids to school yourself, a family dinner at a campus restaurant, evenings when your kids can come to the end of practice, a lunch date with your spouse, a pre-game or post-game tradition.
• Cut your commute down and live close to campus. Be more accessible to home so they can visit you more often or you can sneak home to tuck the kids into bed or eat dinner together.
• If you are able to, take your kids with you on local evaluation trips. Let them see what you do.
• Try to spend individual time with each child occasionally. An ice cream run, a Sunday breakfast, a quick shopping trip to the mall for a good report card. Children value one-on-one time and attention!
• Show genuine interest in your spouse’s day. A simple, uninterrupted 10-minute conversation, starting with “How was your day?” can do wonders for a marriage. Sympathize with their daily load, they are putting in more household work than the average marriage.
• Go home when you can. There will always be a week or two here and there when you can get out of the office early, make calls or watch video from home after the kids go to bed. You can’t stay cooped up in your office.
• Although the last thing you probably want to do in your off time is travel, a mini-vacation (or staycation) is a great way to spend quality time with your spouse and kids. Schedule an overnight out of town or nearby every month or two.
• Encourage your children’s hobbies (and spouse) and take an active interest in their progress and participation.
