How Do I Employ Tactics To Improve How I Approach Being a Father and a Husband?

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00:00:02.580 | - Hi Cal, my name is Mark.

00:00:06.640 | I'm a software engineer in Michigan.

00:00:08.480 | I'm married with a three-year-old son.

00:00:10.640 | I have a really good job.

00:00:11.600 | They respect my time and I'm able to keep my schedule

00:00:13.840 | under 40 hours a week.

00:00:15.440 | And so I feel really good about that bucket

00:00:17.000 | of my life right now and the progress I've made

00:00:18.880 | in becoming a better employee.

00:00:21.200 | And what I want is more quality time with my family.

00:00:24.400 | Like a lot of adults, I struggle with the balance of family

00:00:27.040 | against all the other demands in my life.

00:00:29.200 | I've got a good amount of weight to lose.

00:00:30.960 | So I need a non-trivial amount of time for fitness.

00:00:33.560 | A lot of household administration that comes up

00:00:35.880 | and then kind of separately household projects

00:00:37.960 | that I ended up being responsible for.

00:00:39.860 | And so family ends up feeling like just another chore.

00:00:44.420 | You look for inspiration on this

00:00:47.560 | and you get the social media version

00:00:49.760 | that portrays an unrealistic vision for the family.

00:00:54.520 | So if in my professional life,

00:00:57.380 | I've become good at reflecting on how I work

00:01:00.040 | to become a better employee,

00:01:02.720 | how might I do the same thing for my family life?

00:01:06.240 | So that way I can improve how I approach

00:01:09.320 | being a father and a husband.

00:01:11.660 | Be curious some of the things that you do here

00:01:15.120 | or if there's anyone that you respect on this subject.

00:01:18.080 | Thank you.

00:01:18.920 | - Well, look, I'm pretty careful

00:01:21.760 | to have my household manager tell my nanny

00:01:25.160 | to bring my kids into my presence

00:01:27.260 | at least once a day for five minutes

00:01:28.860 | so that I can say, "How was your day today?"

00:01:31.860 | And they say, "Yes, Papa, we had a good day."

00:01:34.500 | And then I give a subtle nod to my nanny

00:01:37.100 | and they bring the kids out and the household manager

00:01:39.020 | make sure I don't have to see them again for 24 hours.

00:01:40.820 | So that's what I would advise.

00:01:41.820 | Just make sure your staff brings your kids

00:01:43.700 | into your presence for a few minutes every day.

00:01:47.340 | By the way, there's people out there

00:01:48.340 | that somehow assume for whatever reason

00:01:50.380 | that somehow my life is like this

00:01:51.740 | where basically I just never see my kids

00:01:54.020 | and there's some sort of like giant staff

00:01:56.720 | that takes care of them for me.

00:01:58.300 | So not everyone's gonna get that joke.

00:02:00.680 | Okay, so a couple of recommendations here.

00:02:03.400 | One, good shut down, complete ritual.

00:02:07.160 | So even if you are physically in the presence of your family

00:02:11.640 | if your mind is psychologically on work,

00:02:14.760 | this email I have to send, this meeting that's coming up,

00:02:17.320 | this thing that I may be not making much progress on,

00:02:19.800 | they're only getting a small bit of the benefit.

00:02:21.920 | So definitely lean into your shutdown ritual.

00:02:25.580 | Then make sure you're closing all the open loops.

00:02:27.220 | You have a good plan for the next day.

00:02:28.620 | That plan fits into a weekly plan.

00:02:30.220 | You can trust it.

00:02:31.660 | You're not missing anything.

00:02:33.400 | You check that shutdown box in your time block planner

00:02:36.260 | or say a phrase like schedule shutdown complete

00:02:38.580 | so that your brain can actually release work.

00:02:40.900 | I think that's really important.

00:02:43.260 | Two, see if there's ways you can reduce the footprint

00:02:48.740 | of logistical or administrative non-family oriented

00:02:53.120 | time consuming work in your life.

00:02:55.320 | So the whole point of working, not the whole point,

00:02:59.080 | but a large point of working is to get money in exchange

00:03:02.240 | for your time that that money can then be invested

00:03:05.200 | to get outcomes that are useful for you.

00:03:07.080 | So it sounds like you're good at your job.

00:03:09.260 | You have a good job.

00:03:10.700 | It's probably a well-paying job

00:03:12.040 | based on what I can tell from your question.

00:03:14.500 | Don't be shy about saying,

00:03:15.960 | I want to invest a non-trivial amount

00:03:17.940 | of the money generated in this job

00:03:19.520 | to actually free up my time outside of the job.

00:03:23.480 | I think sometimes we get in this mindset of,

00:03:25.440 | if I don't have to spend money on X, then I won't.

00:03:28.520 | Like you have beat the system.

00:03:30.840 | But if you have the money to spend

00:03:32.220 | and it's going to free up time,

00:03:34.600 | then maybe you should actually consider doing that

00:03:37.120 | if that is possible.

00:03:38.080 | And you might have to really readjust your budget.

00:03:41.680 | We're going to do less of this

00:03:43.600 | so that we can get more time to do that.

00:03:46.600 | Someone who's written well about this

00:03:48.160 | is my friend, Laura Vanderkam.

00:03:50.720 | And she has a book called "168 Hours."

00:03:54.460 | I always get numbers wrong when I do this,

00:03:56.340 | but I think it's 168 or 162,

00:03:59.480 | hundred something hours.

00:04:00.560 | But anyways, it's about productivity.

00:04:02.840 | And in particular, the intersection

00:04:04.360 | between household admin and productivity.

00:04:06.640 | And she's a big advocate of,

00:04:07.640 | hey, if you can afford it,

00:04:09.440 | spend money to take things off your plate.

00:04:11.700 | That's kind of the point of money, right?

00:04:13.680 | That if you happen to have it,

00:04:14.940 | that's a pretty good thing to use it on.

00:04:16.500 | You could buy a nicer car or a, you know, whatever,

00:04:20.520 | a lot of unnecessary exercise equipment,

00:04:23.320 | or you might be able to get a yard crew

00:04:25.760 | so that you don't have to rake your leaves

00:04:27.260 | and weed for three hours on the weekend

00:04:29.680 | because you have a young kid

00:04:30.760 | and that's not really what you want to be doing.

00:04:32.160 | So you want to reduce that time.

00:04:34.000 | I mean, I'm kind of looking towards Jesse

00:04:37.080 | because he knows more about fitness than I do,

00:04:38.600 | but I'm not sure if I agree with this idea

00:04:41.260 | that if your goal is you need to lose weight,

00:04:45.400 | you're talking about that being a substantial

00:04:47.220 | time involving activity.

00:04:49.140 | I mean, 80% of that is probably getting your diet in order.

00:04:51.980 | And do I have that more or less right?

00:04:53.340 | Like you got to lock in your diet.

00:04:54.860 | That doesn't take any,

00:04:55.680 | it doesn't take any more time to eat clean

00:04:58.740 | than it does to eat junk.

00:05:00.160 | And honestly, when it comes to weight,

00:05:02.060 | I mean, you're not going to go Peloton off

00:05:04.620 | if you're a guy that has the extra 20 pounds.

00:05:06.740 | The reason, the way that's going to go away

00:05:07.940 | is you're gonna stop eating so much sugar

00:05:09.340 | and you're gonna stop drinking so much beer.

00:05:11.140 | And so, you know, maybe you need to go through a phase

00:05:13.720 | where you're really focused on your healthy eating

00:05:16.580 | and you have some sort of less time consuming,

00:05:20.660 | you know, trade intensity for time type of exercise.

00:05:23.660 | I mean, I do this, Jesse might shake his head here

00:05:26.460 | because he knows much more about fitness than I do.

00:05:28.620 | My time saving hack with fitness,

00:05:31.520 | especially when I had young kids is I said,

00:05:33.100 | okay, I can't get to a gym necessarily.

00:05:35.180 | I can't do long exercising.

00:05:36.520 | So what I did is I said,

00:05:37.400 | I'm gonna do a thousand pull-ups a month at a minimum.

00:05:41.060 | And some months are shorter than others.

00:05:42.140 | So I just do 36 pull-ups every day.

00:05:44.460 | It is really intense, but it only takes four minutes,

00:05:47.640 | especially once you get good at it, right?

00:05:49.240 | And it at least keeps your muscles moving or what have you

00:05:52.100 | and active and so they don't atrophy.

00:05:53.680 | I mean, honestly, if you had to do that for a year,

00:05:57.120 | you know, a thousand pull-ups a month,

00:05:58.960 | a thousand pushups a month, and you're eating well,

00:06:02.480 | you're probably gonna be better off

00:06:04.040 | than the 90 minutes you're doing in the gym

00:06:06.600 | twice a week right now.

00:06:07.480 | And then as your kids get older,

00:06:08.440 | you can actually go figure out how to do the stuff

00:06:10.100 | that you probably should be doing with weights, et cetera.

00:06:12.800 | I don't know how that works, but all right.

00:06:15.600 | So I'm just throwing that out there as well.

00:06:17.660 | All right, so we wanna summarize here,

00:06:19.360 | good shutdown routine.

00:06:21.040 | Two, invest money where you can

00:06:24.120 | so that you have more time outside of work,

00:06:27.280 | taking things off your plate,

00:06:28.480 | taking things off your family's plate.

00:06:30.560 | And three, you talked about this social media fantasy

00:06:35.080 | about what parenting life should be.

00:06:38.080 | I've seen some of these accounts.

00:06:39.700 | As far as I can tell, parenting life is,

00:06:42.500 | if you're a woman, is all about you and your kids

00:06:46.140 | are wearing white linen and are in fields.

00:06:49.220 | So according to Instagram, it's like,

00:06:50.500 | what moms are supposed to do is be in fields with their kids

00:06:54.340 | and there's flowers and they're wearing white linen

00:06:57.500 | and they're very well lit.

00:06:59.120 | And they're usually doing some sort of project,

00:07:01.360 | like we're pressing flowers between tissue paper

00:07:06.180 | to make a set of wind chimes

00:07:09.080 | with which we can celebrate Mother Gaia.

00:07:11.920 | And I also have a kind of a nice glow behind me

00:07:14.540 | as I take the picture.

00:07:15.760 | All right, we all know the reality is within seven seconds,

00:07:18.320 | the one kid will be eating the tissue paper

00:07:20.840 | while the other one is using the pressed flower

00:07:23.220 | to see if they can blind their sister

00:07:25.200 | by getting it ground up and blown into their eyes.

00:07:27.960 | And somehow you have urine on your white linen dress

00:07:30.520 | because that's just how that goes down.

00:07:32.120 | And if you're a man, as far as I can tell

00:07:33.980 | from the social media things,

00:07:35.560 | you basically are supposed to be, as far as I can tell,

00:07:39.080 | either a professional athletic coach

00:07:41.800 | who is training the next Olympic athlete out of their kids,

00:07:47.680 | or you have a full-fledged movie caliber special effects

00:07:52.200 | laboratory and maker shop

00:07:53.880 | in which you are building life-size robotic mechs

00:07:58.880 | that you can ride in and your kids can move around in

00:08:02.260 | and they're controlled, remote controlled,

00:08:03.720 | and you're videotaping it with professional level filming.

00:08:07.120 | And these are these fun projects

00:08:08.760 | that you're doing with your kids.

00:08:09.960 | All this is impossible.

00:08:10.960 | No one actually really does all this, right?

00:08:12.800 | So ignore social media.

00:08:14.720 | It's better to have, to be around.

00:08:17.760 | Hey, you're just around.

00:08:18.760 | We're having dinner together, I'm around, you know?

00:08:21.820 | And then having something you do with each of your kids.

00:08:25.800 | And it might not be every day, but it might be,

00:08:29.560 | I'm helping this kid with baseball.

00:08:31.520 | So once a week I pick him up from the bus

00:08:33.520 | and we go by the playground and we play some baseball.

00:08:35.880 | And this other kid we're into risk.

00:08:39.520 | My oldest right now is really into risk.

00:08:41.120 | We play a lot, we play some risk.

00:08:42.720 | And that's just what we do.

00:08:43.560 | And it's not every day, but we play risk or whatever.

00:08:45.820 | You have a thing you're doing with their kids

00:08:47.720 | that your kids can think like, dad does this with me,

00:08:51.200 | even if it's just once a week, right?

00:08:53.760 | That's kind of where you need to be.

00:08:55.080 | And you're around and you're not lost.

00:08:56.960 | And you're around and not with the leaf blower

00:08:59.520 | till 9 p.m. because you didn't wanna spend the 100 bucks

00:09:02.440 | to have someone come do your yard.

00:09:03.920 | All of these things work together

00:09:05.840 | and I think you'll be much better off.

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How Do I Employ Tactics To Improve How I Approach Being a Father and a Husband?

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