Fatherhood

`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