What it really takes to attain quality time

May 12

Busy isn’t a badge of honor. Yet “I’m so busy” has an undercurrent of bragging. As if busy-ness = importance. It doesn’t.

Right now, I’m in Jamaica, recharging and spending quality time with my family. I’ve been thinking about how quality time requires intention.

Let’s say you decide to get up one day and say, “I’m going to spend quality time with my family.” You set aside an hour to do that and you force the idea of that time being quality. The truth is it may or may not happen.

But if you set aside something like a family vacation (say, oh, I don’t know, a quiet fishing village in Jamaica) and every day, you dedicate an hour for quality time - something as simple as building sand castles - somewhere in there the magic of quality time will show up. If you want quality time, you need intention, as well as a commitment to the quantity.

Honestly, it’s like that with everything. Let’s say you want to write a magical post on LinkedIn. No one likes or comments on your first post. You decide it’s not magic and you give up. Or you want to close an amazing deal. You make one phone call and the deal doesn’t go through… you give up.

“You’ll never achieve the quality if you don’t set both your intention and a commitment to quantity.”

You might be saying,“But I am busy, Stacy. How do I set that much time aside?”

Look at your calendar with different eyes. Start with a blank slate. Fill in your most important things first:

Vacation
Exercise
Family time
You time

Think in quarters if that’s easier. For the next 90 days, what must I do to build an amazing life? Then… what must I do to build an amazing business? Make sure you have blocks of time for the top 1 - 3 initiatives that will make a real impact. Not one block and done. Consistent repeating blocks. Because things that make an impact don’t happen in an hour. They don’t happen overnight. That type of work is very different than checking emails every 2 minutes or holding a meeting that could have been an email. Work that matters is sometimes hard. But it’s always worth it.

What other people need - or want - can get in where it fits in. After you've determined what matters most.

“Time is life’s most important currency. Spend it wisely.”

Stacy Havener

Blue-collar girl from the Berkshires who combined a lot of grit with a little glitter to become a successful female entrepreneur in the investment world. Founder of Havener Capital, raising capital ($8B and counting), stomping glass ceilings, and shaking things up.