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How Can I Balance Time-Blocking and a New Kid?


Chapters

0:0 Cal's intro
0:10 Cal reads a question about Time-Blocking and a new kid
0:22 Cal's initial joke
0:40 Cal's real advice
1:30 Cal talks about Keystone Habits
2:50 Cal revelation

Transcript

All right, we have a question here from Kendo. Kendo asks, how soon after the birth of a child is it realistic to start seeking out routines and employing time block strategies? I would say your child should probably be time blocking by, let's say, six weeks. I don't know if that's appropriate.

You can get them a bigger font planner because I know their eyesight's not as good. But if they're not time blocking from six weeks, I don't see how if you spool out that thread, they end up getting into Harvard. So let's be realistic here, Kendo. You've got to get on that.

No, I know you're talking about yourself. So it's chaos after a child is born. The chaos has a different valence depending on which child it is. And it's exactly backwards from what you would expect. I mean, you'd expect it-- well, the first child-- because objectively speaking, the first child should have the least impact because there's just one child in your life, and it's this big, and it sleeps most of the day.

I guess you just get used to things. And then your second child is actually-- the footprint's a little bit smaller. And by your third child, it's like, text me from the hospital when the baby's here. I'm in a meeting. So you get more used to it. I don't know.

You just get used to the chaos. Go easy on yourself. You should not be immediately back into highly structured time control and time block planning. I do think it's pretty important within a week or two to start injecting back some sort of keystone habits or routines that are not focused on some sort of demonstrably large accomplishment, but are focused on self-signaling-- that I still have some autonomy over my time, and I can still do things that I think are important, even though there's this chaos going on in my life right now.

Again, this is particularly important for your first kid because, again, by the time you have your second or third kid, if you're going to have multiple kids, there's already family routines going on. The disruption will seem a little bit less. I remember this really clearly with my first. And I don't know exactly what this timing is, but it was chaos.

We didn't know what we were doing. And there was a point-- must have been a few weeks in, maybe even more. I'd have to go back. And I kept a diary at this time. I'd have to go back and read it. But I remember there was a point where the baby was sleeping, my wife was sleeping.

And I went to another room and was just reading a book. And I have this memory. The book was I was reading, as one does, Descartes. So the famous-- I forgot what it's called, but the famous Cartesian philosophy, where he sort of establishes existence from just the fact that I think, therefore, I am.

And I remember thinking, oh, I can still do things that are intellectually interesting and unrelated to this child. I can't do a lot of things. I was very tired, and I only read for 20 minutes. But for whatever reason, that was really profound for me, is when I realized, OK, there's some things I can-- you can still have some things you were doing that are unrelated to the child.

And I think it's really important. And again, it can be a very small footprint. Don't try to sell it to your wife that it's important that your habit of, I need to golf four days a week, that's not going to fly, I think your habit of, it's really important that my routine of going on a guy's trip twice a month to Vegas-- it's like an important keystone habit, so I'll be back in four days-- that's not going to fly.

But if it's, I read a little bit before bed, I still do a walk every morning. There's a little exercise that still happens. Maybe you're not going to the gym for an hour and a half, but there's a pull-up bar in your garage, and you're doing that. So having some sort of routine almost immediately, by which I mean just habits that are easy and flexible, but have nothing to do with the kid that you execute, I think that's really important.

(upbeat music)