It becomes apparent once you have kids that you don’t have time for everything you want to do - something I took for granted in my 20s.
It took me almost a year to internalize this new lifestyle of working when you get the chance, and be brutally efficient (still not great at this) vs having to compromise precious time with kids.
Anwyay, 2 posts I came across online on this topic -
Naval tweeted- “kids, mission, religion - choose atleast one” to the Loom foudner who felt lost after selling his company.
And just yesterday, read Jason Cohen’s post “You can have two Big Things, but not three”
Big Things include:
Job
Kids
Spouse
Social Life
Major Hobby (e.g. build a boat in the garage, become a chess master, video game addiction)
Startup
Here, he intentionally puts spouse and kids separately and calls it out as well. I think there’s a time dimension that gets missed on a casual read. Without the time dimension- it seems to imply to that the entire working population with kids who care about their work and kids have dysfunctional marriages. I think “big things” can swap in and out on varying time scales. On weekends, startup gets dropped out (easier now with AI automations) to focus on family. On weekdays and when kids reach daycare age - there are hours in the day where the startup is a single priority. On evenings, it’s family again.
For me the takeway is not to have parallel-lanes for each Big thing where choosing one means losing another. Be open to having intersecting lanes - work on vacations, talk to spouse about the startup etc.