All right, we got a question here from Jonas. Jonas asks, "How should one combine having young children and integrate newfound ambitions to one's life? Should both be balanced or approached in a seasonal way?" So he says, "Hi Cal, I'm a father of two young children, age one and three.

Having them into my life made me realize some of the potential I had in me but left untapped. I now want to realize it, but I find myself limited by my responsibilities as a father. Should I still aim for big ambitions and find a way to balance both, or should I view the current times as seasonal and wait for them to grow up a bit before seriously getting after it?" Now Jonas, I would say some seasonality here is probably warranted.

When my kids were one and three, I would have been, it was a hard time just from an overhead admin just trying to make the work schedules work and it was not the easiest of times. I was trying to get tenure at that time. This was this period I've alluded to before where I had really taken my foot off the gas pedal in my writing career.

So Deep Work came out, I've got to get this timeline right. So Deep Work, I finished writing Deep Work before my second was born. I think maybe it came out, I'm trying to get the timeline just right here. I was working on it before he was born, but obviously it took me a long time to finish.

Because he was born in 2014, the book came out in 2016, but I finished it in 2015. And then I kind of walked away. I do have memories of editing that book with a baby on my shoulder. And then I was like, "Okay, I need to take a break." And it wasn't until years later that I got going again on Digital Minimalism and A World Without Emails.

So I remember taking my foot off the writing gas pedal. Deep Work came out in that period and ultimately did become a very successful book, but it was not a big deal when it came out. I was not like I have to do today, doing publicity tours. I would do some podcast from our basement.

And that was basically it. I wrote a couple of op-eds, but there was no big deal with that book coming out. It took up very little time. I did not write new books. I wasn't getting after it with Let's Get Going. When I saw that Deep Work had traction, I wasn't saying like, "Let's go.

We got to get some new books out of here right away." So I remember that as being a pretty slow period where all I wanted to do was focus on getting enough research done that I could get tenure. I just really remember that's what I was focused on. Then a couple of years later, I put my foot back on the gas pedal again.

I mean at some point, I remember having this conversation with my agent where I basically said, "I'm ready to work." And that's when we turned around and wrote a proposal for digital minimalism and a world without email. I said, "Look, I'm going to write these beasts back to back.

Let's roll." As soon as I finished the first one, I'll go into the second one. And so I think seasonality matters with kids. Professional ambitions, let's go up and down. I think you're in a period now where you want a good steady state. It's also a great time to daydream and let me read and think.

And these kids are going to open up, as you noted, they're going to open up a new understanding of your world and your potential and what's important to you. Tap into all of that daydream plan, figure out things you might do, read inspiring things, watch documentaries. But I would say wait to put the foot down on that gas pedal until maybe things are going to seem a little bit calmer.

Finally, by the way, being a good dad to two young kids is a pretty ambitious thing to do. So it's not like you're stripping ambition from your life. It's just you are focusing on a related ambitious project right now. It just doesn't happen to involve how you make money.