As I’ve gotten older and my life has gone through several major changes over the past few years (moving, getting married, becoming a Christian) I’ve realized that time is the most valuable asset that I have. I’ve just started putting some thought into this, but here are some reasons why I say this.

For one, it’s a limited resource and none of us know how much of it we have left. Although many of us don’t think about time like this, it’s true. We’re here now, but we might not be here tomorrow. This means that what we choose to spend our time on is what we feel like is most important in our lives. It’s really that simple.

Also, even though we don’t know how much time we have left in our lives we still have control over what we decide to spend our time on while we’re still here. There are only 24 hours in a day and it’s up to you how you spend them. As you get older you’re going to have more and more restrictions on your time which will make it even more important to manage the time that you have free to spend doing what you want.

As a recently married man (my wife and I just celebrated our two year anniversary), I would have to say that I’m pretty bad at managing my time. Ok, that’s not the truth — I’m really bad.

This is because when I was single I had all of the time in the world to get the things done that I needed to do, but that’s changed. The minute you add a wife that you love and always want to be with into the mix things change. It’s been an incredible learning experience for me and thanks to the amazing patience of my wife I’m slowly getting better with my time and how I spend it.

We’re learning all of this together and it’s tough. It’s really tough. Bringing together two selfish people who have ideas of what they think is the best to do with their time is always going to be hard. We’re still learning how do best manage this and I’m sure we’ll still be learning twenty years from now.

One thing I’ve learned through these first two years of marriage and something that all married men should be aware of is that if you want to show your wife how much you love her then you need to show her that she’s worth your time.

How can you show your wife that she’s worth your time? Here are a few ways that I try (remember, I’m still learning):

• Watching TV together (even if it’s Jersey Shore)
• Plan things ahead of time (dinner/date night/weekend trips)
• Cards and flowers (what you write is more important than you think)
• Take the time to look nice for your wife when you go out (I still suck at this one)
• Hide notes in places that you know she’ll find later (sunglasses case, purse, clothing pockets)
• Don’t go straight home after you do something together — go have some coffee or dessert somewhere (it’s good to have time to simply have conversations with no distractions)
• Keep the phone in your pocket (that Facebook update will still be there when you get home)

I hope these help and if you have any other ways that I should add to the list, feel free to let me know in the comments below. I’m going to be writing more about these types of things that I think a lot about and anything that you can along the way is always appreciated.