Fatherhood

`4:06:38`

It took meeting the right woman and letting her convince me That this was the right idea before we even got started. I didn't have starting my own family on the list of priorities in my late 20s or even early 30s. It was really the impetus of meeting my wife Jamie and her telling me this is what I want. I wanna have a family. I wanna get married. I wanna have kids. I wanna have three. And me going for a second like whoa, whoa, whoa. And then eh, all right, let's do it. And I think that's the kind of happy accident where some parts of my life have been very driven, where I knew exactly what I wanted and how to push forward to it and what the payoff was going to be. But when it comes to having a family,

`4:07:40`

that always felt like a very fuzzy abstract idea that sure, someday, maybe. And then it became very concrete because I met a woman who knew what she wanted. And looking back on it now, it almost seems crazy. Like there's this fork in the road of reality. Where if that hadn't happened and I had been sitting here now, not being a father, not having a family, the level of regret knowing what I know now about the joys of having that family would've been existential, would've been... I don't know if they would've been devastating. I think men have a little bit of a longer window to pursue these things than women do. There are just certain biological facts. But ending up with the family I have now,

`4:08:42`

ending up with my three boys have been just a transformative experience in the sense that here's something that turned out to be the most important thing. And it was an open secret. Not even an open secret. It was an open truth through all of history. You listen to anyone who's ever had children, they will all say, "My children are the most important to me." Yet somehow that wisdom couldn't sink in until you were in the situation yourself. I find those truths fascinating when you can't actually relay them with words. I can tell you, Hey Lex, what are you doing? Get a wife, make some kids, get a move on it. And these are just words. They're not communicating the gravity of what it actually feels to go through the experience. And you can't really learn it without going through it. Now of course you could be influenced and whatever, we can all help contribute and little sparks and little seeds can grow in your your mind about it. But it still has to happen.

`4:09:42`

And now that I am in this situation and just the sheer joy on a daily basis where you think your level of life satisfaction is on a scale of one to 10, and then the satisfaction of seeing your children understand something, accomplish something, learn something, do something, just be. Just goes like, oh my god, the scale doesn't go from one to 10. It goes from one to 100. And I've been playing down here in the one to 10 range all this time. And there's a one to 100 that has been humbling in a way that is impactful in and of itself. This whole idea that I thought I had a fair understanding of like the boundaries of life in my early 30s, like what is this about? I mean, I've been on this earth long enough now here to know something. And you realize, I don't know, I did not know. I did not know that the scale was much broader.

`4:10:46`

And I've often talked about joys of having kids and just seeing your own DNA, which is remarkable to me because literally that's been the pursuit of humans since the dawn of time. I am here today because whatever, 30,000 years ago, some Neanderthal had the same realization that I should procreate and I should continue my bloodline. And that that all amounts to me sitting here now. But it didn't become a practical reality to me before meeting the right woman. And I think that that's sometimes not part of the conversation enough that there's something broken at the moment about how people pair up in the western world. And it's at the source of why we're not having enough children because there's not enough couples, there's not enough marriage. There's not a lot of these... There's not enough of all these traditional values that even 50, 60, 70 years ago

`4:11:47`

was just taken for granted. We're in this grand experiment of what happens if we just remove a bunch of institutions? What happens if we no longer value marriage as a something to aspire to? What happened if parenthood is now seen in some camps? It's almost something like weird or against your own self-expression. It's a grand experiment that I'm kind of curious how it turns out. I prefer to watch it as a movie like the "Children of Men," I'm like, that was a good show. I kind of wish that wasn't reality. But we're seeing that reality play out while I'm sitting here in a very traditional two parent loving household with three children, and going, this is now at the top. I've done a lot of things in my life. I've built software, I've built companies, I've raced cars, I've done all sorts of things, and I would trade all of it in a heartbeat for my kids.

`4:12:49`

That's just a really fascinating human experience that the depth of that bond is something you can't appreciate before you have it. But I also think there is a role to play, to talk it up. Because we're being bombarded constantly with reasons why not to. Oh, it's too expensive. Well, you could get divorced and then you might lose half. There's all these voices constantly articulating the case against marriage, the case against having children that those of us who've chosen to do the traditional thing to get married and to have children have an obligation to kind of talk it up a little bit, which would've seen ridiculous again 50 years ago that you'd have to talk up something so fundamental of that. But I have become kind of obligated in that sense to do just that. To talk it up, to say, you know what?

`4:13:51`

You can look at everything that I've done and if you like some of those parts realize that to me in this situation, the kids, the family, the wife is more important than all of it. And it sounds like a cliche because you've heard it a thousand times before. And by becoming a cliche, maybe you start believing it's not true that it's just something people say, but it is reality. I know almost no parents that I have personal relationships with that don't consider their children to be the most important thing in their life. — So there's a lot of interesting things you said. So one, it does seem to be, I know a lot of parents, perhaps more interestingly, I know a lot of super successful people who are parents who really love their kids and who say that the kids even help them to be more successful. Now the interesting thing, speaking to what you're saying is it does seem for us humans,

`4:14:52`

it's easier to articulate the negatives because they're sort of concrete, pragmatic, you know, it costs more, it takes some time, you know, they can be, you know, crying all over the place. They're, you know, tiny narcissists running around or whatever. — Which is all true. — Yeah, pooping everywhere, that kind of stuff. But to articulate the thing you were speaking to of there's this little creature that you love more than anything you've ever loved in your life. It's hard to convert that into words. You have to really experience it. But I believe it and I want to experience that, but I believe 'cause just from a scientific method, have seen a lot of people who are not honestly not very capable of love, fall completely in love with their kids. Like, you know, very sort of... let's just call it what it is, engineers that are very like boop bop. They just fall in love. And it's like, all right, people who just like you said, they don't really want, they don't really care

`4:15:55`

or don't really think about having kids that kind of stuff once they do it changes everything. So, you know, but it's hard to convert it into words. — One of the reasons I think is also difficult is, I mean, I like kids. Not that I actively disliked them, but when I was around other people's kids, I didn't have a emotional reaction. Some women have, right? They see a baby and they go, "Oh." I never had any emotion of that. I mean, I could appreciate, I'm glad for you that you have children. It did not provoke anything in me. The emotions that are provoked in me when I look at my own children, this doesn't exist in the same universe. So you don't have something, you don't have a complete parallel, or at least a lot of men, or at least me, I didn't have sort of a framework to put it into what would it be like to have my own child? And then you experience it. It's like the poof. And it happens so quickly too. This is what I found fascinating. It happens before that little human is even able to return any words to you

`4:16:55`

that the love you develop to an infant, it happens quite quickly. Not necessarily immediately, I don't know, different people have different experiences, but it took me a little bit. But then once it hit, it just hit like kick of a horse. And I love that it's also just such a universal experience. That you can be the most successful person in the world. You can be the poorest person in the world. You can be somewhere in the middle. And we share this experience that being a parent, for most of them, turns out to be the most important thing in their life. — But you know, it is really nice to do that kind of experience with the right partner. But I think because I'm such an empath, the cost of having the wrong partner is high for me. But then I also like realized, man, I have a friend of mine who's divorced happily and he still loves the shit out of his kids. And it's still beautiful. It's a mess, but there's all of that love is still there

`4:17:56`

and it's, you know, you just have to make it work. It's just that, I don't know, that kind of like divorce would destroy me. — You should listen to The School of Life. He has this great bit on YouTube. You'll marry the wrong person. If you accept upfront that you will marry the wrong person, that every potential person you can marry is gonna be the wrong person on some dimension. They're gonna annoy you. They're gonna be not what you hoped in certain dimensions. The romantic ideal that everything is just perfect all the time is not very conducive to the reality of hitching up and get making babies. Because I think as you just accounted, even when it turns to shit, I find that most of the people I personally know where things have fallen apart and have turned to shit, never in a million years would they go like, "I regret it." "I would rather, my children did not exist because a relationship turned sour."

`4:18:57`

I mean, I think you should try very hard. And I think this is also one of those things where we didn't fully understand those fences. And when we pulled them up and celebrated how easy it is to get divorced, for example, that that wasn't gonna have some negative consequences. I'm not saying you shouldn't have divorces. I'm not saying return to times past. I'm saying though that civilization over thousands of years developed certain technologies for ensuring the continuation of its own institutions and its own life that perhaps we didn't fully appreciate. I mean, again, this is something Jordan Peterson and others are far more articulate to speak about, and that I've learned a lot to just analyze my own situation. Why is it that this incredible burden, it is to be responsible for someone else's life that you brought into this world is also the most rewarding part of existence? That's just curious. Before I heard Peterson articulate the value of taking on the greatest burden you know how to carry,

`4:20:02`

I always thought about burdens as a negative things. Why would I want the burden of a child? I might screw it up. I might be a bad parent. They might have bad... all this stuff, right? All the reasons why you shouldn't. And so few voices articulating why you should. — Yeah, but there I should also add on top of that thing you mentioned currently, perhaps in the west, the matchmaking process is broken. Is broken and technology made it worse. Yeah, it's fascinating. This whole thing that that hasn't been solved. So hiring great teams, that's probably been solved the best out of matchmaking. Finding great people to hire. Second, finding great friends. That's like, that's also hasn't been solved. — And it's breaking down. — It's breaking down. And third is matchmaking for like relationships. That's like the worst. And in fact, technology made it even worse. It's fascinating. — It is. It's a great example again of how all the greatest intentions

`4:21:04`

still led us straight to hell. I really enjoyed Louis Perry's analysis of the sexual revolution not being an unqualified good, which was something I hadn't thought about at all before she articulated it. That of course women should be able to have freedom and self determination and abortions and all of these things. And Louise Perry is not arguing against that either, of course. But there are second order facts that we don't appreciate at the time and we may not have ready-made solutions for. And that's just interesting. You make life better in a million different ways and somehow we end up more miserable. Why is that? Why is it that humans find meaning in hardship? And I think some of that is that it's a difficult question to answers through science. And again, Peterson articulates well

`4:22:05`

this idea that you have to find some of it through art, some of it through authors, some of it through different... I was just about to say modes of knowing before I stopped myself, because that sounds like woo bullshit. But there are different ways to acquire those deep lessons that sort of paper is not gonna tell you. — I mean, this is really, the point also applies to religion, for example. If you remove from society the software of religion, you better have a good replacement. — And we've had a bunch of bad replacements, especially over the last few decades. Religion is one of those things I've struggled with a lot because I'm not religious. I sort of wish I was. I can now fully appreciate the enormous value having an operating system like that

`4:23:06`

brings not just at the individual level, but rather at a societal level. And it's not clear at all what the answer is. I think we've tried a lot of dead ends when it came to replacements and people have been filling that void in a million different ways that seem worse than all the religions, despite their faults in a myriad of ways have been able to deliver. — Yeah, religions like the cobalt code. It's just... — Yes, it's the institutions where we don't fully understand the rules and why they're there and what's gonna happen if we remove them. Yeah, some of them seems obvious to me are just bullshit of the time. Oh, you should need whatever shellfish, because in that region of the world. There was something, something, something, okay, fine. But there's a bunch of other things that are pivotal to keeping society functioning for the long term, and we don't fully understand which is which. What's the bullshit and what's the load-bearing pillars of society. — Can you speak to the hit on productivity that kids have?

`4:24:09`

Did they increase your productivity, decrease it, or is that even the wrong question to ask? — I think it's one of the reasons why ambitious people are often afraid of having children because they think I have so much more to do and I barely have enough time now. How would I possibly be able to accomplish the things I wanna accomplish if I add another human into the mix? Now, A, we've always worked 40 hours a week, not 80 or 100 or 120. I think that's very beneficial. B, kids don't exist in this vacuum of just them alone being entered into your life. Hopefully there's a partner. And in my life, I'm married to a wonderful woman who decided to stop working her corporate job when we got together and have been able to carry a huge part of that responsibility. I was just about to say burden. And I think that's exactly how it often gets presented, especially from a feminist perspective,

`4:25:10`

that carrying for your own children is some sort of unpaid labor that has to be compensated for in some specific way beyond the compensation of what bringing life into this world, racing wonderful humans. There's something screwy about that analysis that I actually think the modern trad movement is a reply against. Whether they have all the answers, I'm certainly not sure of either. But there's something that's just not right in the analysis that children are a burden and that if woman chooses to stay at home with the kids, that that some sort of failure mode of feminist ambition. I think that's actually a complete dead end. Now depends on different people, different circumstances. I can just speak to my life being married to a wonderful woman who have decided to be home with the kids,

`4:26:11`

at least at their early age and taking on a lot of those responsibilities. Now it doesn't mean there isn't plenty of ways that I have to be part of that and have to chip in, but it's allowed me to continue to work the 40 hours a week that I've always worked. But it's made the 40 hours more strict. I have a schedule where I wake up, whatever, 6:30 and we have to get out of the door a little before 8:00. I usually have to play at least one or two rounds of "Fortnite" with my youngest and sometimes middle child. Then take the kids to school, get in, start work at, I don't know, 8:39. Didn't work until 5:00, 5:30, sometimes six o'clock. But then it's dinner and I have to be there for that. And then I have to read to the kids and by the time that's done, I don't want to go back to work. So my work time really is 9:00 to 5:00, 9:00 to 6:00,

`4:27:12`

depending of whatever is going on. Sometimes there's emergencies and you have to tend to them, but it's made it more structured. And I found some benefit in that and I've found some productivity in that, that I can't goof around quite as much that the day will end at around 5:36. That's just if I didn't accomplish what I wanted to do today, if I get to that time, it's done. I'm over, I have to try again tomorrow. Whereas before having a family and before having kids, I could just like not do it and just make it up in the evening. So in that way it's made me more structured, but it hasn't really changed my volume of work all that much. I still work about the same amount of hours. And that's, by the way, enough. This is one of the key points we make in. It doesn't have to be crazy at work. The latest book we wrote is that there's enough time. 40 hours a week is actually a ton if you don't piss it away. Most people do piss it away. They piss it away in meetings. They piss it away on just stuff that doesn't matter

`4:28:13`

when even three hours, four hours of concentrated uninterrupted time every day would move to goals they truly care about way down the field. — I think kids do make you more productive in that way for people who need it, especially people like me. They create their urgency. Lik if you have to be done by 5:00, it's a maybe counterintuitive notion, but for people like me who like to work, you can really fill the day with fluff of work. And if you have to be done by 5:00, you're going to have to do the deep work and get it done. Like really focus singular work. And then you're just gonna cut off all the pressure. — It keeps you honest. It keeps you honest because you can squander one day, you can squander two days. But if I squander a whole week, I feel terrible. Now that's just some drive I have in me

`4:29:15`

where I feel content and full meaning if I actually do stuff that matters, if I can look back upon the week and go like that was a nice week, really. We moved forward. Maybe we didn't get done, but we moved forward and everything got better. And I think kids really helped just time box things in that way. And a lot of people need that because I find just so much of the celebration of overwork to be so tiresome. Oh, I work 60 hours or 80 hours or 100 hours a week and just like, first of all, no, you don't. No, you don't. Like those 80 hours are full of all sorts of fluff that you label work, but that I would laugh at and that most people laugh at. That you would laugh at if you actually did the analysis of where's that time going. Most of the important stuff that has to be done is done in these uninterrupted chunks of two hours here or four hours there or five hours there. The hard part is making sure you get them in the whole piece.

`4:30:15`

So don't give me that. There's time enough. And also what's so important that it ranks above continuing your lineage. I think there's just some ancient honor in the fact that, again, this DNA that's sitting on this chair traveled 30,000 years to get here and you're gonna squander all that away just so you can send a few more emails. — There is something that's also hard to convert into words of just the kind of fun you can have just playing with your kids. I don't know what that on the surface it's like, I can have that kind of fun just playing video games by myself. But no, it's like there's something magical about it, right? — I have a thousand hours logged in "Fortnite" since 19, I think, all of it with my kids. I'd never be playing "Fortnite." Well, I don't know if I never would be. I wouldn't be playing a thousand hours of "Fortnite" if it wasn't for my kids. The enjoyment for me is to do

`4:31:16`

something with them that I also happen to enjoy. I really love "Fortnite." It's a phenomenal game. I don't have to force myself to play that with them. I often ask like, hey, do you wanna play "Fortnite?" But still, it's an activity that I get to share with them. It's a passion that I get to share with them. I've started doing go-karting with my oldest. I've been driving race cars for a long time and now they're getting into go-karting and just being at the go-kart track, seeing them go around, seeing them get faster, seeing them learn that skill, you just go look at like, what else would I be doing with my life? At my age, 45, I'm standing here truly enjoying life. I brought into this world. What else was so important at this stage that I would otherwise be spending my time on? — All right, like you mentioned, you like to race cars and you do it at a world class competitive level, which is incredible. So how'd you get into it? What attracts you to racing? What do you love about it?