For many years we have sworn off swim team for our son because we heard about practices five days a week and four-hour swim meets on weekends. We thought it sounded like too much commitment.

As a project manager, I’m very thoughtful and protective of how we spend our time as a family. We have set up our schedule to match our main priorities of family time, church, careers, and health. I work part-time so I can be more available to our son and pursue my writing projects. We’re also cautious about scheduling too many activities and usually stick to no more than two a week.

As a result, we have continued to resist swim team, despite having close friends who participate and neighbors ask us to join. However, this spring my husband (Jeff) and I were discussing how to support our son in learning how to become a stronger swimmer. We had tried three different swim schools plus private lessons, and he wasn’t making much progress, plus the break during COVID delayed his learning. We talked about doing swim lessons again, but that just sounded like repeating something that didn’t work before. 

My son is very competitive, and we started thinking that being on swim team may be more fun than lessons. The minute Jeff mentioned there were swim races, our son was in! We talked it through and decided to sign him up. He started on the developmental team and quickly moved up to the competitive team. In the first week he was copying other kids in backstroke and breaststroke! I had never seen him do breaststroke before. Several weeks in he was trying butterfly too! Along with learning strokes, he got to hang out with kids from school and the neighborhood and make new friends. Jeff and I started to volunteer at the meets and get to know the other parents on the team.

It was a big time commitment, with daily one-hour practices and meets that were 3-4 hours long. Fortunately it worked out with our schedules. For example, Jeff was able to take him to daily practice and work on his laptop by the side of the pool. Sometimes we went to meets twice a week because our son qualified for A meets!! We were so proud. He started getting ribbons and he was motivated and having fun. It was time-consuming, but we were outside, he got to hang out with his friends, and we got to know our neighbors better. It was also a great local community that I dearly missed during the last two years of the pandemic. It took up time we normally used for other things, and I got behind on a few things around the house, but it was totally worth it.

That got me to thinking about how we spend our time, and about learning and readjusting our family priorities. This past school year I volunteered as the board secretary for a community organization. I thought this was a perfect fit for my skills as a project manager, taking meeting minutes and helping organize events. But it was very time-consuming, and wasn’t having the positive impact that I thought I would. I found it draining, not energizing. I went in so enthusiastic but finished my term wanting to do something else. 

It was a lesson in needing to try something to experience it and making adjustments. In project management, and in my book Project Management for Parents, I talk about the importance of prioritization and lining up work and family schedules to them. The book contains exercises and tools to help rank your priorities (Chapter 3). Sometimes those priorities turn out to be different than expected, and it’s important to change them (Chapter 4). If I had continued in that Board position for a second year, I would have been really exhausted. Continue to have those conversations with your partner and family to see if your schedule is lining up with your values and supporting you as individuals.

It has been a lesson to me as a project manager who is usually focused on efficiency and the critical path (the quickest way to get things done). Some things that take a lot of time can be worth it, and it’s good to invest in people and the community. We plan to sign up for swim team again next year and will go in knowing how much time we will be investing in it and reprioritizing other aspects of our schedule to make it happen. Go team!