🔥 Performance in Parental Pandemonium
I, like many others, feel incredibly fortunate to be a parent. Despite stubbornly feeling like I'm still the same age, my children continue to get older at a rate that is simultaneously terrifying and amazing to witness.
I often catch myself sharing war stories of the early years when sleep was fleeting at best, and where the concept of any sensible or humane routine was out the window. Those times when every day seemed to blur into the next as my wife and I did our damndest to help raise a little humans and somehow drag our sorry, exhausted, zombified asses into work to crush it for Q3.
Amazingly, somehow, we all survived...
As I look back on that blur, it's easy to forget that we managed to accomplish a ton of amazing things with these little humans:
- Walking and talking
- ABC's and 123's
- Sweet, merciful, sleep schedules
- A solid appreciation of fart humor
- ...and so much more
We did that and more while spending every day feeling as if we were burning the candle at both ends with a flamethrower.
Every day was survival and despite that, for most of us, we somehow made it and have some pretty awesome kids to show for it.
Every day as a parent, we made the choice that we were going to keep these screaming, barfing, diaper-filling humans alive and give them the best life we could. Firmly anchored in those aims, and even when the days and nights got challenging, we generally kept our eyes on that horizon.
We'd wake up each day and go to bed each night, making sure the baby has what it needs, from food to entertainment to nap time. Regularly, we would also find ourselves scheduling appointments for the baby, from doctor's visits to play dates, to a tour of that daycare with AP Geometry Classes.
Our hard work created something that will likely outlive us. Think about that. My equally inexpereienced wife and I produced something amazing and lasting because we had a vision. Because we had intention.
The way we managed to produce lasting and meaningful results in the midst of parental pandemonium was and continues to be daily intention. The same is true for any business venture...
⏱ ️ TLDR;
- New parents often hear from more seasoned parents that "the days are long and the years are short." The same thing can be said of fast-moving industries, such as tech startups.
- Just like with parenting, life in a fast-paced tech job makes it easy to fall into the monotonous and myopic acts of day-to-day survival, sometimes obscuring the long-term vision that you need to keep aiming for.
- The key here is daily intention, which requires daily planning.
💼 Down to Business
Tech companies and startups are like that screaming baby many times. They're unpredictable, evolving fast, and often times they make things that smell very bad. Guess what? They require the same daily aspiration and investment that any child does.
At many companies I've been a part of, I've noticed the tendency for days to blur into weeks and weeks into months.
It's all too easy to get swallowed up by endless meetings, "quick chats," and distractions that keep you from accomplishing the truly hard work of any company: daily progress on long-term goals. Over and over again.
I've seen giant and audacious goals all too frequently eaten alive by a swarm of busywork and shiny objects.
You've felt it, too.
That malaise at the end of the day, the end of the week, where you're exhausted but have nothing to show for it, no closer to that goal you wrote down last week. Or was it last year?
That is the feeling of long days compressing into a blur of indistinguishable weeks and underwhelming years.
So what's a person to do? Look the chaos in the face, embrace it, but make sure it has naptime as well...
😴 Chaos Needs Naptime
It's a universal constant...chaos will always exist. While some of your crafty ideas may dull its advance, it will always be there.
To fight this enemy of excellence, you need to decide on a plan for every single day, or the madness wins by default.
The chaos will be novel and unique each time you encounter it; that's just its nature.
As a result, you must declare your goals and orient yourself daily to the tasks that get you closer to achieving them. Being an adult means that sometimes you need to put chaos down for a nap so you can do grown-up stuff that you know is best for the long-term.
Besides, despite the novelty, most busy work is relatively meaningless in our lives.
Compare those frivolously urgent tasks that seemed so important last week with the feeling you got when you published that article, wrote that song, or shipped that massively awesome feature you're proud of. That crap doesn't even compare.
You likely only remember those significant milestones and accomplishments in your life, and it's backed by science. Researchers call it the "Holiday Paradox" and it explains why intentional milestones make for a much more fulfilling life.
We don't create many new memories while doing the same old thing every day, generally miring ourselves in mundane tasks. But when we are on vacation, we create countless memories because everything we're experiencing is new. When we look back on that fantastic adventure, time will seem to have lasted much longer because of that newness and you guessed it, that intention.
Ask yourself, how did you get the chance to experience that holiday? You had the intention to go somewhere, you planned for it, and you executed on it.
If you don't have a plan for the day or for your life, you'll roll from one tantrum, task, or demand to another, putting out fires and feeling like you're making progress. You're not. You know it, and you'll forget about all the menial work you did this week soon enough.
Choosing this mayhem as your path in parenting or business, you'll end up with roughly the same thing to show for it: a tired, burnt-out spirit and a trash can...full of dirty diapers.
