What's a piece of advice you would give to families who are struggling to find time for quality time together? What strategy has worked well for your family?

One of the biggest shifts for our family was realising that quality time doesn’t have to be planned, productive, or instructional — it needs to feel safe and attuned. When children feel pushed to “make the most” of time together, connection often disappears. We started slowing down and listening to their rhythm instead: adjusting plans, following their interests, and allowing space for rest or play when needed. Some of our most meaningful moments now come from going with the flow — a swim instead of another activity, a museum that sparked curiosity, or simply being together without pressure. What matters isn’t how much you do, but whether your child feels seen and comfortable enough to be themselves. When safety and flexibility are present, connection happens naturally.

Pick one daily moment that is protected from distractions and stick to it. In our family, we made meals a no devices zone, which opened space for language development and simple emotional check-ins. It turned a routine part of the day into reliable quality time.

Hi, I'm Jeanette Brown, a relationship coach in my 60s and a mother of three grown sons. The advice I give families who feel they never have time is to stop trying to add more togetherness and instead protect one small, non-negotiable pocket. In our family, that pocket was Sunday night dinner. Phones stayed out of the room, the meal was simple, and the only rule was that everyone answered one question: what was the hardest part of your week, and what helped? Some weeks it was quick, some weeks it turned into an hour, but the consistency mattered more than the depth. It gave us a rhythm to return to even during busy seasons, sports, exams, and travel. Quality time grows from reliability. When people know there's one place and one time they'll be seen without rushing, they show up differently. You don't need more hours. You need one moment that belongs to everyone. Thank you for considering my thoughts! Best, Jeanette Brown Founder of jeanettebrown.net

The most effective way my family has maintained meaningful connection is by scheduling consistent, one-on-one time. As a founder and CEO who moved to the San Francisco Bay Area while my parents live abroad, I commit to a 30-60 minute call each week with each of them individually. Having these conversations scheduled in advance removes the friction of "finding time," and keeping them one-on-one allows for deeper, more focused conversations than group calls typically allow. Despite the distance, this routine has helped us feel closer than ever. When life makes in-person time difficult, intentional, consistent one-on-one conversations can create real quality time.

One family tip I would definitely suggest is to stop waiting for the big, perfectly planned moments and instead focus on the consistency of quality time. Quality time doesn't necessarily have to be in a different week or on a vacation. It may be something as simple as eating a meal together without any phones or taking a short walk after dinner. By lowering the pressure, it becomes easier to show up more regularly, which is definitely more important than the length of time spent. My family's successful strategy has been to reserve a small, tightly guarded time slot every week that everyone considers non-negotiable. For us, it is a straightforward weekly ritual when we cook a meal together and then sit down without any distractions. Because it is foreseeable, it does not feel like another thing to plan, and therefore, everyone is aware of it. Small moments grow to be substantial over time. They open up opportunities for conversation, creating memories and bonding that naturally extend into the rest of the week. When families decide to be present rather than perfect, quality time becomes less about finding extra hours and more about a conscious decision about how to use the time they already have.

One thing I've learned is that quality time usually doesn't disappear because families don't care. It disappears because everyone is tired and waiting for the perfect window that never shows up. My advice is to stop trying to add more to the calendar and instead protect one small, predictable rhythm that belongs to your family. It might be dinner at the table three nights a week, a walk after church, or a set bedtime routine that doesn't get bumped for emails or screens. Consistency matters more than duration, and kids feel that stability even when life is busy. What has worked well for our family is anchoring our time together around normal life instead of special events. We try to be fully present during the things we are already doing anyway, like meals, car rides, or winding down at night. Phones stay away, work talk waits, and we focus on listening. It isn't always long or elaborate, but it is intentional, and over time those small moments have added up to real connection.

As a lead dentist and a busy practice owner, I see this challenge in my own family and with many of my patients as well. My advice: don't aim for more time together aim for protected time. Quality time doesn't have to be long, but it does need to be intentional. What has worked well for my family is setting one non-negotiable family ritual each week. For us, it's a simple device-free dinner followed by a short walk. No phones, no work talk, no rushing. Even on the busiest weeks, we treat that time like an important appointment. That small, consistent habit has made a big difference. It creates a predictable moment of connection, reduces stress, and reminds everyone that being present matters more than being perfect.

One piece of advice I always give families is this: don't aim for more time, aim for more intention. As a practice owner, my schedule can be unpredictable. Long clinic days, staff management, and patient care don't always leave big blocks of free time. What worked best for my family was protecting small, non-negotiable rituals instead of waiting for "perfect" free days. For us, it's a daily 20-30 minute device-free window in the evening. No phones. No TV. Just sitting together, talking about the day, or even doing something simple like having tea or a quick walk. It sounds small, but consistency is what makes it powerful. Another strategy that helped was planning quality time like an appointment. Just as I wouldn't cancel a patient without reason, we block one family activity each week sometimes it's a meal out, sometimes a game night, sometimes just errands done together. What I've learned is that children don't need constant entertainment or long hours. They need presence, predictability, and attention even in short bursts. When families stop chasing quantity and start focusing on intentional moments, quality time becomes much easier to sustain.

One way that has helped us manage time and connection is that we combined daily responsibilities with our connection. Rather than saying quality time is a separate event, when we had busy calendars we began doing parallel time where both people worked on separate tasks but were still in the same space, talking together as needed. Working on homework, planning or even folding laundry together was a great way to create low pressure moments for conversation because it did not put pressure on either person to focus on connection. We were able to create an environment for a more relaxed type of conversation by removing the need for quality time to be long or special. By creating a routine of sharing daily responsibilities, trust and openness developed naturally over the course of our relationship. Additionally, this changed our mindset from trying to be intentional about finding time, to being intentional about being fully present in every moment we had together.

I used to think burnout came from "too much work." For me, it was the opposite. It came from no structure. Remote work made that obvious fast. Once I locked a routine, my energy stopped swinging and my family got more of the real me. My baseline looks like this: 7 hours of focused work, notifications quiet after hours, gym 5x/week before bed, and a steady sleep window from 10 to 11 pm through 6 to 7 am. Then the good stuff. A weekly walk with my wife where we actually talk. Pool days with the kids. McDonald's once a week with them, just us. And a family barbecue every week or two. I wrote a post about it on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/igor-lavrenenko_work-on-100-how-a-set-routine-beats-activity-7366405890322653185-BCfo

One night a week is nonnegotiable. No plans, no phones, no distractions. We pull an activity from a jar and spend the evening together. Some weeks it's a fun activity. Some weeks it's work. But we always have that one night to commit to each other.

Pick a daily window for family and shift your work around it. I moved my work to early mornings or late nights when no one needed me, so I could be fully present with my family and give my son my full attention before he left for college. Protecting that time kept us close without derailing the business.

Schedule it! You follow a schedule for work, school, dinner...why not schedule "together time" also? At the end of the day, nothing else matters if it leaves you no time with the ones you love. Treat each "together time" as an important meeting you cannot miss. For the kids - make sure it's something they can look forward to all week.

The best thing we ever did was commit to Sunday dinner. Our schedules are a mess, but that hour is sacred now. It didn't start out that way. For months, it felt like just another task. Then something shifted. Now it's the one time we all actually talk. Just pick one thing and keep doing it, even when it feels like nothing is happening. That consistency is what makes it real.

Sounds a little silly possibly but we ensure that every single day, we "play" in some way as a family. Even if that's a 15 minute game of cards before school, or something longer like a walk to the beach and a game of tag. We are all kids inside, and playing is great fun once you allow yourself to be free of "what people think", and it happens to be the best way to spend time with your kids!

My best advice is to stop planning big family events and start scheduling a daily fifteen-minute unplugged overlap. We often skip quality time because we assume it needs to be a two-hour movie night or a day trip to the zoo, and nobody has the energy for that on a Tuesday. You simply pick a short window, like right after dinner. Everyone puts their phone in a basket in the kitchen. Then you sit in the living room together. You don't even need a specific activity or a board game. We just ask a simple question like, "What was the weirdest thing you saw today?" It removes the pressure to be entertaining. We found that fifteen minutes often turns into thirty because we are actually connecting without distractions. You do not need a free weekend to bond. You just need a quarter of an hour where you look at each other instead of a screen.

The advice I'd give to families is to stop treating quality time as something that comes after everything else is done. It won't. There's always another email, another case, another crisis. You have to block it on your calendar and protect it like you would a client meeting. So we made Sunday dinner nonnegotiable. No phones, no work talk. Just family. That single commitment changed everything. My kids know I'm there on Sundays. No exceptions. We actually started having honest conversations instead of surface-level updates. We actually knew what was happening in each other's lives, rather than just living in the same house. What worked for us was to take the pressure off and let it be perfect. You don't need an expensive vacation or elaborate plans. Consistency is more important than ambition. One family dinner a week beats three weekend trips that require months of coordination and stress. Start small. Pick a time slot that works for your family, put it on your calendar, and protect it as you would billable hours. When you have kids, the days go fast. You miss the moments if you're not intentional about creating space for them. Financial success doesn't mean anything if you're building it at the cost of the people you're building it for.

What finally stuck for us was treating it as something we don't negotiate with. Sunday mornings became "no phone, no plans" time. It started out pretty simple--pancakes and a board game on the floor--and over time it turned into a routine we all look forward to. Even when work at the spa gets hectic or we're on the road, we save that window. It's never been about doing anything elaborate; it's just the fact that we show up for it every week. A guest once told me their Friday game nights kept getting canceled, so they shifted it to Thursday mornings before school. It was shorter, but it actually stuck because they guarded it. That's really the lesson: the amount of time matters less than drawing a clear line around it and keeping that line intact.

Contrary to the popular belief that families need more time together, what they actually need is time that is intentionally planned. Quality time is often treated as a luxury which one will magically come across. However, it is something that has to be planned, scheduled, and executed like a product roadmap. One of the ideas that brought about significant positive changes in my family is the one that we have termed "connection anchors." Instead of trying to have a long family night, we decided to attach micro-moments to the routine activities that are already there. For example, breakfast time is never rushed; it is always device-free and shared. Even 10 minutes, when done consistently, can become very meaningful. Additionally, we have a weekly "sacred hour," which is our non-negotiable time, put on the calendar, and no rescheduling unless it's an emergency. The activities vary from time to time such as hiking, playing board games, or just driving for ice cream and talking. The activity serves as the reason while the conversation is the real purpose. The little secret is, to drop the expectations a bit. Grand plans are not what make the difference. They simply require your presence. When families stop trying to dazzle each other with great moments, they actually begin to see each other in the ordinary ones and that is where genuine belonging is found.

Spending time around boats and RVs has shown me how powerful shared experiences can be for families. Many of the families we work with are busy, juggling work, school, and packed schedules, but the ones who seem the most connected are the ones who plan time away together, even if it is simple. My advice is to build quality time into something you are already doing, rather than trying to add more to the calendar. For our family, RV trips have worked well because they slow everything down. When you are traveling together, cooking meals in a small space, and sitting outside at the end of the day, conversations happen naturally. There are fewer distractions and fewer places to rush off to. Even a short weekend trip can create memories that last much longer than a typical week at home. What I see again and again with boat and RV families is that it is not about how far you go or how long you are gone. It is about being present. Choosing activities that bring families together, whether it is a day on the water or a quiet night parked somewhere new, gives families the chance to reconnect in a meaningful way.