I've been experiencing a problem over the last few years and am asking for help on how to solve. I work a lot of variable hours/travel (startup) and my spouse works as a nurse so her schedule is all over the place as well.<p>We can't seem to find a way to manage our schedules very well. What ends up happening is we go extended amounts of time without an overlap in free time and then miss out on dates, time with friends, etc.<p>We both love our work so quitting isn't exactly helpful.<p>Some things we've tried:<p>Shared Google Calendar: This works well but we never <i></i>actually<i></i> update. Its tedious too. And we don't like sharing exactly what we're doing with our friends to coordinate schedules with. I'd prefer the calendar just said busy 9-9 not 9-11am doctors appointment, 12-3pm taking son to therapy,etc, etc. This is just a simple example<p>Paper/Pen - This is what we've used most often but things always come up and we always end up losing the paper. Slash leaving it in our cars, it being outdated because of a change.<p>Text - We text each other schedule updates and text other friends with similar work/life schedules a lot. This works the best in a 1:1 scenario but I always feel annoying texting 3 friends about making plans and having to do it 5 times because those 3 also are at work/out of town/unavailable.<p>I've heard some use calendly accounts. We haven't tried that but I don't generally see my less tech family/friends using that.<p>This isn't some existential crisis but we've really struggled to continually find time (and plan things out in advance when we have overlapping time) and others have to deal with this as well.<p>So any help would be appreciated. I can provide more context if needed. Thanks in advance.
I feel for you. My wife and I are sort of in the exact same place. She is in nursing school and has a full-time job. I am taking a few classes, work full-time too. We also have 2 brand new kids since October.<p>I manage our digital calendar and actually we both still use a paper planner. We take time to sync each Sunday. We sync deep though. We know what each other has, kid obligations, what is for breakfast, lunch, dinner each day, what is the grocery list, etc, etc. This lets each one of us operate with a full understanding of the week. If one of us gets extra bandwidth or a gap opens up we first see if there is the possibility of free/family time before filing it with something else. Even if it is 10 mins meeting for coffee.<p>This may sound weird but we are both obligated to making this work. If my wife gets done class early then I jet over to grab coffee at Starbucks near here. If I am out and a meeting changes time she jets over to me, etc.
> We both love our work so quitting isn't exactly helpful.<p>This sticks out to me, as it seems to be a false dilemma. Maybe you can work it out without either quitting, but having one of you quit is a real solution that you shouldn't throw out the window. After all, I'm sure you both love each other more than your work. Big life changes can be hard. (We got rid of our home internet, despite the fact that my whole employment relies on the internet.) But they're doable and shouldn't be dismissed so quickly.
Obviously you need an electronic calendar. And you need to make maintaining it more of a priority than work. We use iCloud calendar and Siri streamlines input of events. Friends either we or they make an appointment via text, voice or email. We enter it into our own calendar then share the event with attendees via whatever medium the conversation started. We share events not entire calendars.<p>But it seems to me you’re looking at the symptoms and not the root problem. I’m not harshing on you. It’s just a tough truth. If family time is more important to you, you have to MAKE it more important. I call this feeling-labor inversion. We all want the feeling and some of us avoid the necessary labor that creates the feeling (e.g., maintaining the calendar). Until labor takes priority over the feeling, the problem will continue.
When you're older or near death, will you miss the time you missed out on with each other because you loved your work?<p>As others have mentioned, it's just work; it's not going to love you back. Time is finite, and you have to prioritize what is important to you.
If you're doing a startup, you probably have more flexible hours. What I actually do is start work around 4 or 5 AM and finish at about 3 PM. My family is not awake so I don't miss any time with them. Less time on commuting, finding parking, etc, and plenty of time to work. And I have huge gaps of time to play with my kids.<p>But if possible, I'd recommend finding a way to work less hours. I find that lots of scheduled time kills a lot of opportunities.
Work less hours. You are probably wasting them at work anyway. Most research points to about 3-4 hours of good "deep work" a day.<p>If you need to work more hours because your start-up is lazy about tracking productivity and "time in seat" == "more productivity" then try and build and document an empirical way to measure your productivity. There are a ton of good books out there on this subject. I recommend "Accelerate."<p>Go ask your grandfather if he wishes he had worked more or spent more time with family. Relationships NEED nurturing. Not making time to be together can and will kill your relationship.<p>Check out "Deep Work - Cal Newport" and "It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work - by Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson". You do read and do research on how to run your company and track your productivity, don't you? Or do you just fart your way through life and are consistently amazed at how the harder you work the further away the goal-post is?
There aren't enough hours in the week for all that.<p>- one partner has a startup<p>- the other has a full time job<p>- and goes to school<p>- apparently you also have a kid<p>- and you want to go on dates<p>- and you want to do stuff with a group of friends on the weekend<p>I seriously doubt that the choice of calendar software is going to make a difference here.<p>At some point you are going to have to set priorities. I'm not saying you should work less, because you seem to love it. But maybe just accept the fact that you're going to meet your group of friends only once or twice a year, or that date night is going to happen less often.<p>I meet some of my best friends only once or twice a year now. It's not what I imagined, but when everyone has a job and family and doesn't live in the same place anymore.... I don't think changing to a different calendar app could fix that.
I have a shared calendar with just my wife that has reasonably detailed schedule.<p>With rest of my friends we just send each other a doodle [1] once every 3 weeks or so, so that we go for a beer or something. Using doodle solved the "texting everybody every update until we agree on time" problem :-)<p>Going for lunches with my friends turned out fairly well, because most people need to lunch during the day somewhere, so we might as well lunch together :) This of course requires you to work reasonably close together.<p>[1] <a href="https://doodle.com/" rel="nofollow">https://doodle.com/</a>
Do you love your wife or your work?<p>Why does your son goes to therapy?<p>I would take a step back before trying to "manage" long hours vs. spending time with loved ones, and look at the root of the problem.
Work fewer hours (not possible for a nurse, but definitely for a programmer). It'll make you _more_ productive: <a href="https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/08/10/always-more-work-to-do/" rel="nofollow">https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/08/10/always-more-work-to-...</a>
If your friends are close to you, they shouldn't be annoyed that you're texting them. Wanting to spend time with your friends is a good thing, and if they're legitimately annoyed, make certain you're communicating that you value the time that you get to spend with them (this is especially key if your time is sparse.)
Group sms works great. But you or someone should take charge and summarize the conversation/plan as last a text.<p>My friends use group texts a lot but sometimes conversation gets out of hand and I have to read through 100 messages to find out if there were any concrete plans.
I set up Google Calendar invites. It's the same way I handle getting time with a busy manager at work. Wife is super busy in the next few weeks? Set up an event on the calendar so they can plan around it.
<i>We both love our work so quitting isn't exactly helpful.</i><p>But your work doesn't love you, apparently.<p>Otherwise it wouldn't be forcing you to make a draconian choice like this.