You work all day. What you do is important…and more important, it’s what pays for your whole life. And it’s alright that it takes up such a big chunk of your day because your kids are at school anyway.

But what happens when you get home? Who or what gets the rest of your day?

Because it’s far too easy to let email creep in…and social obligations…and errands…and stuff you’ve been putting off. Especially if you are important or much in demand.

This is why boundaries and priorities are necessary.

Theodore Roosevelt’s evenings were “set apart for his literary work, his reading and social converse with his family,” according to a 19th-century journalist’s quote in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book The Bully Pulpit (copies available here), “the Roosevelt youngsters having a decided claim, even in the midst of the most pressing affairs of the State.”

Evenings should be for them—for your kids. Dinner. Bath. Bedtime. Playing in the yard. Watching TV. Reading. Prepping for tomorrow. They get first dibs on this. They get time with us and we get time with them…otherwise, what’s the point of working so hard?

P.S. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of our greatest living presidential biographers. She joined me on a recent episode of the Daily Stoic podcast to talk about Abraham Lincoln—his self-education, emotional discipline, and how he managed anger, ego, and public pressure without losing himself. Check it out here: Lincoln’s Secret Weapon (It Wasn’t Power).