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“How you spend your time defines who you are.”

  
“Tim, I can tell you have a really great Dad.” This disarming compliment was given to me by someone who out to know. Larry Bilotta helps save marriages for a living. We had just met at a marketing meeting in Green Bay.

So as I reflected on why Larry said what he did, Oprah’s words gave me pause because my Dad spent a lot of time with me. Her words resonated further because I’ve been having the feeling I was getting sucked too far “working in” my business, rather than spending time “working on” my business.

Anke and I just attended our first Parent-Teacher Conference at Kid’s Express, a milestone to be sure, and my comment to Anke afterwards was, “If they all go like that, then we’ll know we’ve done a good job with G.”

Seeking answers, I was referred to Tim Ferris’ excellent “4-Hour Work Week.” Two tiny tweaks I implemented were to set my email to check for messages every 4 hours and to return calls only twice per day. Now that I’ve taken back some control, what happened? People are complaining—Including the person who referred me to the book in the first place! Oh well, they will learn and a balance will be struck.

I’ve also committed to reading less. I realized that although I’m a sponge, I didn’t have the time to execute all the great stuff I’m absorbing. So (and this is really hard for me), I will have select my reading even more carefully or else my stack of books will get too tall. I’ve done this once before when I cancelled “recreational” magazine subscriptions to MIT’s Technology Review and Small Times, a nanotechnology rag.

So if I’m trying to define my business self, it’s getting back to that more strategic role and becoming a worker bee only in carefully screened circumstances, where the opportunity is maximized.

I often work from home and my “14 step commute” isn’t often a transition that works for me, so what I’m trying to accomplish as a parent is to be a dad whose mind is clear enough from “work detritus” that I can focus 100% on Griffin when we are together.

What I’m trying to accomplish as a spouse right now is to spend more time with Anke doing fun things.  At last report I was succeeding.

So that’s some of my thinking on time and what you can do with it. What do you do with your time and who does it say you are?