The Myth of Quality Time | Hacker News Reader

The Myth of Quality Time

nytimes.com

160 pointskareemm24 comments

We will find out in the years to come that presence (non-distracted, non-judging, authentic presence) is like sunlight to whoever you give it to.

You want your child to grow (intellectually, emotionally, etc.)? Be present. Watch them (with silent happy interest) while they're playing. Look into their eyes. Talk to them and be interested in what they're telling you.

Presence is so deeply important in a way we still can only guess at. And the lack of it is so much more harmful than we yet know.

Not disagreeing with the premise (far from it) but how on earth can you be simultaneously completely sure about this and claim it is also something that is largely unknowable ('so deeply important in a way we still can only guess at')?

As with many things, I think time spent is best a balance of the two sides (quantity vs quality). Quantity means little if you're constantly distracted, and quality means little if you don't have enough to warm up the engine.

Agreed, I think the author is saying quantity has a quality of its own

I guess the every family is different. The key is to being present, either physically, or virtually via one of the many social networks. Just being able to reach out is important.

I just finish Scott Berkun's frank novel [1] about his relationship with his father. It pains me to see how Scott's attempts to reach out his father goes unanswered. Unfortunately, he was not successful is forming a close bond with his father. One takeaway I got from Scott's book is to create access for you and your family to connect. Without this access, communication is not possible even if you want to. Obvious but easy to forget.

[1] - http://scottberkun.com/the-ghost-of-my-father/

I felt like a major point of the article was that it didn't consider being available on facebook/instagram/twitter as being present, since you're likely doing something else - you actually being with someone physically is very different from someone being able to look at an html page you curated and message you while your brain is occupied with work/life. You'd have no context around that person reaching out to you. You wouldn't know their mood for the last few days. In all likelihood, they wouldn't feel comfortable pinging a cousin far away in the first place.

Thanks for sharing this link. I purchased the book and am reading it now.

My father and I are both very introverted, and do not share feelings easily. As a result I feel like I have never really known him. I was going through a very difficult time a couple of years ago and I remember sitting with him and sharing my problem - the first time in my life that I had done that with him. It was a really tough thing for me to do, but I was hoping that not only could he offer me some advice, but it would be a way for us to finally have the relationship we never had.

Sadly he was not able to respond. He asked some factual questions, and then there was nothing, and he suggested I talk to my mother instead. I was sad that we could not communicate over something like this, but sadder still that I realized that I would never really know him. I don't blame him for this, since I recognize so much of him in myself, but I do envy men who are able to have close relationships with their fathers.

Could you elaborate on creating access?

I am far from an expert in creating access for communications.

I know that it must be handled with deliberate diplomacy and tact. If not, the other party could see this action as imposing and could shut down any attempts on your part to create that access. This is even more important when it comes to family members because the emotional investment is a lot higher.

Good luck!

I find the quality of the writing quite impressive. Probably because it is vocabulary rich, with very well built sentences, while avoiding being pompous.

What I like about this is it's basically advocating that quality time is a 'flow' activity, that requires adequate time, and the right environment, for flow to occur.

Wow. I expected some pointless 'mi mi feelings' garbage but it actually had content and conveyed a message. He has to realize, though, that this is not possible for all families because some people just don't get along (or unforgiveable things happened between them), and then such a week together would be a torture. While I agree with him on how bonding works, I want to carefully select the people with whom I spend this amount of time. Because social interaction is very tiring and ultimately unrewarding if I put up with the wrong people.

Also, klean92 is right, the quality of the text is good and it was a pleasant read.

Agree, to get quality time you need quality people. This is hard to achieve with a group larger than, say, 3 people.

Seriously? One week is too long to spend with those you love? Seriously?

One week per year is barely 2% of your time!

One week is too short!

I thought the same thing. It almost bothers me that though out the whole article he makes it seem like it's above average.

You should be spending a lot more time with your family IMO.

>Seriously? One week is too long to spend with those you love?

The author was talking about "extended" family and not the core family of blood relatives. It's understandable that nieces & nephews don't necessarily look forward to spending A WHOLE WEEK with Uncle Bob's annoying 3rd wife. A lot of extended family members can only tolerate each other in small doses and forcing themselves into a week-long retreat in a confined space would be torture.

Every family is different and unless there's some external circumstance (e.g. military deployment), the relatives settle into their own rhythm in the quantity of contact. For example, some adult daughters talk to their mothers every single day, multiple times per day. This would drive some husbands crazy and they're happier with a wife that chats with her mom once a week along with the annual Thanksgiving dinner at the mother-in-law's house. At that frequency, there is genuine peace and harmony. Any more than that and people start plotting murder.

For a great many people the overlap between "those you love" and family is very small indeed.

Let's not assume our feelings about things are universal. That way, we won't be surprised that there are people in the world who don't feel exactly the same way we do about things we consider important. While we're not assuming that, let's not assume that our way of doing things is normal or correct, so that we're not tempted to say things like "you seriously don't do [this thing I do]?" which serves no purpose other than to make our beliefs seem more important at the expense of others'.

Not everyone feels the same way you do about their family, their loved ones, or their social bonds. Your comment makes it seem like your way of doing things it the correct or normal way, and only crazy people or weirdos would even think about doing it any other way. Which has the potential to be very alienating for a good deal of people in a community that encompasses many diverse people all over the world.

But there the author is talking about people he loves.

I perfectly understand that not everyone is loving all of one's family members. But love is probably one quite universal sentiment, is it not?

I mean, maybe it's a cultural thing (I'm from Eastern Europe), and I certainly approve of parents spending more time with their children and vice-versa, but I personally don't see my extended family getting in a group of 20+ people and spending more than a couple of hours together without a major fight starting in less than half a day.

It's either fights about who's going to inherit what (and we're not talking about the Taj Mahal, but about a stupid piece of agricultural land in the middle of nowhere), or some grand-mother accusing her only daughter who went to college of "you could have done much better! and why did you have to marry X?" (with X, the son-in-law, being present, together with said couple's kids) followed by the grand-father from the other side of the "family tree" accusing X of marrying "bellow their family status", and so on and so forth.

Could be an aspect of the time in the article, "many years" of these parties and a full week at a time, frictional points would be burned out a long time ago.

I don't do the annual prison term from the article, but at family get togethers my MiL somewhat annoys me; I know the feeling is mutual; I probably cared about that twenty years ago, not so much now, other than as a source of comedy.

I guess the programming analogy would be springing unit tests suddenly on an ancient codebase is going to result in a terrifyingly huge pile of errors after the first run of a complete set of tests, yet if unit tests were run throughout the life of the code, even if the total amount of failure were higher (which it probably would be) the peak amount of unit test failures at any given moment would likely be rather low, mostly zero or one failure at a time.

I was on vacation in SE Asia and met a Swedish family of five that was ~30 days into a YEAR-LONG family vacation traveling around the world. Incredible on a number of levels- the father had taken six months "paternity leave" (though he had no recent kids) plus another six months leave of absence. The most unbelievable thing though was how happy this family seemed to spend every waking moment together, and their willingness to continue for another 11 months.

Nice. I recognize the feelings/experiences he describes. My grandmother's birthday used to be the weekend we all got together with the extended family. She had 8 kids, who each had three kids, some of whom had their own, etc. so the group was quite a bit larger (80+ including her great-grandkids). She passed 4 years ago at the age of 96 and the get-togethers have stopped. I kind of miss them. It was a great way to experience "the circle of life." Have a few nice "4 generations in one picture"-shots.

awesome

Reply on news.ycombinator.com