How Can My Family Pursue a Deeper Life?

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00:00:04.840 | Our next question comes from Kevin.

00:00:08.480 | Kevin asks, how do you apply some of your ideas

00:00:11.000 | to make sure your family can pursue a deeper life?

00:00:16.520 | He elaborates that he is a director of engineering

00:00:19.200 | at a SAS company, but he also has a wife and three kids.

00:00:23.640 | And he says, while I feel that my professional life is

00:00:26.360 | amenable to productivity techniques and systems,

00:00:29.040 | I often struggle to feel in control of the day-to-day

00:00:32.160 | aspects of my family life.

00:00:33.520 | I would love to hear more about any techniques and systems

00:00:37.400 | you and your wife use to get your arms around all

00:00:40.160 | of the obligations and chores that come along with family

00:00:42.520 | life, and how you free up more time to pursue a deep life

00:00:45.360 | together as a family.

00:00:48.880 | Well, Kevin, it's a good question.

00:00:50.440 | I think the intersection of family life and deep life

00:00:52.480 | is something that a lot of people

00:00:53.600 | are thinking about these days, especially

00:00:56.200 | on the other end of this pandemic and all the disruption

00:00:59.480 | that it created.

00:01:00.920 | I will start by saying I'm not an expert on this topic.

00:01:05.680 | I think organizing and making the most out of family life

00:01:08.840 | has unique challenges to it.

00:01:10.600 | So you can't just take ideas that

00:01:12.400 | might work in the world of work and directly port them over.

00:01:16.640 | Trust me, I've tried to get my three-year-old to be

00:01:18.760 | a better time block planner, and his management of his Trello

00:01:22.000 | boards is really quite horrendous.

00:01:23.680 | He's not doing a good job of capturing task lists

00:01:26.720 | on the back of the digital card.

00:01:28.120 | So it really just doesn't work.

00:01:29.800 | I'm going to recommend a couple of books,

00:01:31.480 | and then I'll mention a couple of things

00:01:33.140 | that we do do in our family.

00:01:34.400 | And again, I can't say it's the best advice,

00:01:36.200 | but some things we do.

00:01:37.040 | But let me start with some books from people

00:01:38.860 | who know more about this.

00:01:40.560 | One is Emily Oster's new book, The Family Firm.

00:01:45.320 | Emily Oster is an economist at Brown.

00:01:48.480 | She applies really interesting data-centric,

00:01:51.880 | hyperlogical approaches to questions

00:01:54.960 | that take place in life outside of the world of work.

00:01:58.120 | So obviously, for nerds like me or like you

00:01:59.920 | as a director of engineering at a SaaS company

00:02:01.680 | might appreciate this.

00:02:02.580 | So The Family Firm is applying a data-driven approach

00:02:05.280 | to try to make lots of decisions about family life.

00:02:07.360 | I haven't read it yet, but I like Oster,

00:02:09.120 | and I'm sure it's a good book.

00:02:11.200 | You might also want to check out the work of my friend Laura

00:02:14.040 | Vanderkam.

00:02:15.120 | She's written quite a few books that are

00:02:17.760 | at least close to this area.

00:02:19.400 | Probably the book that is most in this area

00:02:21.880 | would be 168 Hours.

00:02:23.960 | It's based off of a lot of interviews and time

00:02:27.160 | logs she did with people.

00:02:28.280 | And she has some really interesting ideas in there

00:02:31.320 | about what to do with the time in your week.

00:02:34.520 | One of the big headline ideas from that book

00:02:36.840 | is basically to the extent that it is at all financially

00:02:40.240 | possible, basically outsource and automate

00:02:43.120 | as much of the more drudgery-focused household work

00:02:47.400 | that you can, that this is actually

00:02:49.080 | a really good strategy and something

00:02:50.540 | that we shouldn't think of as unusual or elite,

00:02:53.720 | but actually should be at the core of it, especially if you

00:02:56.220 | have two working parents, what can we hire someone else to do

00:02:58.320 | that we don't actually care about doing ourselves?

00:03:00.400 | So check out that book as well.

00:03:02.280 | Now, when it comes to what MyFamily actually does,

00:03:05.280 | there's a couple ideas I can think through that might be

00:03:09.120 | useful.

00:03:10.960 | One thing we try to do is keep one weekend day clear.

00:03:15.560 | So when we're working on activities for the kids,

00:03:19.400 | we've been doing that this fall, for example,

00:03:21.280 | and it's been quite successful, where we keep Saturdays clear

00:03:24.480 | of any sort of I have to drive you

00:03:26.720 | to this place for this whatever sporting event.

00:03:29.960 | Keep it clear of that.

00:03:31.360 | Let those happen on Sunday.

00:03:32.880 | And that's been really nice to have a completely open day,

00:03:35.420 | because then we can do whatever.

00:03:37.040 | Let's go see the grandparents.

00:03:38.300 | Let's go for a hike.

00:03:39.440 | Let's go to a movie, whatever it is.

00:03:40.920 | I think that's been a nice, relaxing trend

00:03:44.460 | that we've injected into our lives.

00:03:46.040 | The other thing I'm real big on, and this is probably

00:03:48.240 | a battle I'll end up losing at some point,

00:03:50.520 | is really trying to keep activities minimized.

00:03:54.120 | I think it's important that each of the kids

00:03:56.080 | always has something they're doing,

00:03:58.120 | especially at their ages, something physical,

00:04:00.120 | because otherwise they will literally run up the walls

00:04:02.640 | and be ripping drywall from the ceiling

00:04:04.560 | by the time we get to bedtime.

00:04:07.040 | But one thing is enough.

00:04:09.160 | It's really easy when you hear about these different

00:04:11.360 | activities, like, well, they would like that,

00:04:12.880 | and this would be enriching for them.

00:04:14.100 | Yeah, that would be kind of interesting,

00:04:15.200 | and they should do that as well.

00:04:16.120 | But the overhead of actually getting people

00:04:18.080 | to these places, driving the kids to the places,

00:04:20.120 | waiting there, the fragmenting of your schedule.

00:04:23.320 | Now that evening's gone.

00:04:24.200 | Now this evening's gone.

00:04:25.120 | Now we have something in the middle of the day this day.

00:04:26.960 | It's way, I think, underestimated the cost of that overhead.

00:04:31.160 | So we've been trying to the extent possible to say,

00:04:33.480 | well, why don't you play baseball this fall?

00:04:36.360 | And that's good.

00:04:37.520 | And yeah, Boy Scouts might be fun.

00:04:38.760 | That Robotics Club seems interesting.

00:04:40.320 | And maybe there's this enrichment thing

00:04:42.360 | that your school's offering.

00:04:43.200 | You know what, let's just not do any of those things.

00:04:45.500 | And we're usually happy when we succeed

00:04:48.060 | with keeping that limit, because when you have enough kids,

00:04:50.900 | one thing per kid takes up a lot of time already.

00:04:53.140 | So those are some hacks that we deploy,

00:04:56.340 | but check out those books.

00:04:58.460 | Check out Oster's book.

00:04:59.820 | Check out Vanderkem's books.

00:05:00.900 | You'll get a lot more, let's say,

00:05:02.500 | well-thought-through advice on this important question.

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How Can My Family Pursue a Deeper Life?

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