P.D.F — Playtime, Downtime and Family Time matter for everyone!
Today, my family sat down watched an quite lengthy educational video (The Well-Balanced Student) represented by Dr. Denise Pope from Stanford University Graduate School of Education about how as a family in US we can and should help our kids esp. teens(I have two lovely teenage daughters, 13 and 15 now) to live a well-balanced student lives in this fast-paced, high-pressured environment.
I and my wife are totally bought in (and really hope the girls, too:) with the PDF concept incl. Playtime, Downtime and Family Time as the three types of activities today’s teenagers really needs to make their live well balanced to build a solid foundation for their coming adulthood real-world challenges and difficulties.
While after my post-lunch nap, an idea suddenly hit my brain — “PDF is not only needed for teens but also every adult, right?”
It’s a little A-HA moment. YES! We adults definitely need PDF, too! Because aren’t you facing the exactly the same challenges that our teens are dealing with everyone?! Let’s go through it one by one here:
- PLAYTIME
The majority of the work in developed countries and areas like US, Canada, Germany, UK, Japan and the top tiers cities in China like Beijing and Shanghai, is NOT 9~5 work any more. Since we are so called knowledge workers, it only requires a laptop connected to the Internet as the only tool to work at your full capacity, which means it could be always ON, hence it’s really hard to be detached from your work esp. mentally. While we all know that creativity and new ideas for innovations are mostly from totally different domains and areas, so if you are constantly locked in your own domain, the possibility for you to make a breakthrough in your work is very low, what you do is just repeating the same work in a little bit more efficient way every day.
SOLUTION is more “plays” and try something new always. This is the best and most efficient way to keep your brain “young” and “soft”, try a new sport like kiteboarding, a “new” console game like Minecraft, pick up an “old” sport you haven’t played for years, golfing, basketball, tennis, try a new hiking spot, a new board game etc. If you have teenage kids, they will be the best buddies to feed you all the new stuffs, and guide you through the new fun experience. What you need to do is pretty easy, but also super hard for grown-up, settled-down adults — be open-minded, play like a kid, and enjoy it without any judgement!
2. DOWNTIME
Same reason as knowledge workers, that it’s very hard to detach from the work since it’s so easy to stay attached. Ask yourself, how often your brain already started working mode from Sunday afternoon autonomously. What I can say about myself is more then 50% since systematically our brain are trained to try to get ahead of the game, and do all the key preparation for the coming week seems a “good” idea to lots of knowledge workers.
SOLUTION is consciously designed and disciplined downtime through out the whole week incl. , book a regular time slot for 10m+ meditation. Some ideas like:
- Detach: Do not take working laptop back to home as much as you can
- Prioritize offline time as high as those you think can get you next promotions, because it is that important esp. if you want a sustainable long term growing career path.
- Secure enough and good sleep time: 8hour+ sleep time is really necessary for most of adults, so go to bed before 10pm (10pm-2am are the “golden” time to get you the best quality of refreshment and recharging for your body and your mind)
3. Family TIME
Not only the kids, the teens. We the adults, the “parents” in the room also need qualified family time for our own health, growth and well-being. As a core part of the humanity, Family is such a special unit which is the “strongest” one for all the human beings naturally, won’t you agree?
SOLUTION is simple and not easy to implement in this “fast-paced” environment, some ideas from me:
- Have family dinner together
- Friday movie night with the whole family
- Weekend family outdoor activities, like hiking, shopping, game watching etc.
- Share your new learning, joke, challenge with the family
- Prioritize family vacation planning ahead — esp. if you have 2+ more kids, you really need to plan it ahead since there are so many factors you need to count in, school off time, interest, any planned fun time with their friends etc.
So for your own well-being as a grown-up adult, remember P.D.F!
