Hi everyone,
Below is an excerpt from the Introduction to my new project: A Dad’s Guide to Spare Time, to be released on Amazon Kindle and paperback in the Fall.
I am very interested in hearing about your stories and challenges as dads in finding Spare Time to do the things you love.
Please hit the comments after reading and tell me what you think!
24 hours a day. 365 days a year.
That is what every single one of us gets. Some do more with it, some do less. Some use the time that they have to achieve extraordinary things.
Time is the primordial fuel of our existence. Every single thing that we do requires time. Raising a child, writing a book, working a job—it all takes time.
Sometimes I reflect back to my single days when I had all the spare time in the world.
I used to crash on the couch and have epic marathons of my favorite TV shows, or try to beat a Halo game in one sitting. Or I would go out with the guys on Friday nights and won’t come home until 3 A.M.
Ah. To be single again.
Having a kid changes things completely, of course. Ever since my beautiful baby girl was born, much of my time has shifted towards child care. In my mind, this is absolutely the most worthwhile use of my time. I have the joy of raising my own little clone. My daughter’s smile totally puts a goofy grin on my face. Hearing her laughter melts my heart and completely makes my day.
On the other hand, I have rapidly run out of my spare time due to the extra child care chores compounded with my full time job. I crave for my long-lost spare time like nothing else.
We live in a hectic world. Whether you are a financier in London, an auto worker in Detroit, or a health care professional in Toronto, it always seems like there is not enough time. So what little time we have gets burned into the things that we feel like we have to do… or else.
- We have to stay late at work to impress the boss, or else that promotion becomes ever more elusive.
- We have to shuttle each of our 2.5 kids to 2.5 activities every single week, or else they will fall behind that damn over-achieving kid in their class.
- We have to always say yes to every request, or else we will feel bad.
- We have to celebrate every commercially-driven holiday, or else we are not doing something right.
Most of these things are really unnecessary to have a thriving and happy life. In the drive to do everything and please everybody, we end up losing sight of what truly makes us happy.
The Way to True Happiness is somewhat outside the scope of this book. The greatest minds in history have tried to crack that chestnut, and most have been properly stumped. I am certainly no philosopher. I do not have the key to happiness in my pocket. But one thing that I am reasonably certain of is that in order to achieve any happiness one needs the invaluable resource of Spare Time.
Without Spare Time, life whips by in an endless frenzy of rushing to work, packing the kids off to school, and doing things that we only do out of a sense of misplaced obligation.
With Spare Time, you have the wherewithal to explore your interests, spend valuable time with your family, and perhaps even build something amazing that will help a lot of people.
At the most basic level, then, the reason for Spare Time is really to enable your search for True Happiness.
I believe that happiness is a state that humans naturally desire that has been confounded throughout history by a lack of Spare Time. When we were proto-human apes running around on the African savannah being chased by sabre-toothed tigers, we had no chance for Spare Time since we were spending all of our hours trying to eat and not get eaten. When we were poor wretches scratching out a medieval living in the Middle Ages, there was likewise very little Spare Time. And in today’s insane modern world, there is so much to do that we feel like there’s barely a teaspoon-ful of Spare Time at the end of each frenzied and hectic day.
We humans need Spare Time like we need oxygen.
There are few things as influential on your happiness and success as having the freedom to do the things you love. To be able to have this freedom, there needs to be a freeing up of spare time.
Since I became a dad fifteen months ago, I constantly looked for creative ways to find more spare time to do the activities that I love to do on my own: reading, writing, and working out. I wanted to free up spare time so that I can hang out with my wife and daughter and do fun things together, rather than simply get consumed by the basic child care tasks like diaper changing and feeding. I sought ways to free up time to pursue creative endeavors like writing on my blog, working on this book, or inventing something that can change the world.
Spare Time allows us to seek and pursue our passions and obsessions. Spare Time allows us to develop our family relationships. Spare Time allows us to work on things larger than ourselves.
Let me know what you think–hit the comments below!
‘Till next time,
-Anthony