What has having kids taught you?

There were only a few events in my life that completely changed my world view and having my first kid is at the top of them. Now we have 3 kids and it has made life both fun and challenging. As an business owner my focus on work life balance has never been greater, which makes it extremely hard for the entrepreneur in me. I just can't code thru the night or spend all weekend hacking a new idea together anymore. Which means I've shifted my focus to being more efficient, more selective, and more focused during my work hours.

I have 4 and the youngest is 18 so:

1. Patience
2. A better teacher
3. Kids go from 8 to 16 in one year and then they leave the nest, so enjoy the good times
4. Better control of responses by expecting anything anytime I hear, "I have to tell you something"
5. Your kids are somewhat a reflection of yourself, so you are reminded how you can be in various ways and in different situations which helps identify strengths and tendencies

Patience

I have become way more patient since having kids.

But the biggest thing for me - I have learned to be a lot less selfish, and a lot more empathic towards other people's needs over my own.

In my 30+ years of running my own businesses, I can actually tell the difference between employees and stakeholders who have kids, and those that don't. It isn't an obvious 'mean' selfishness, but I find that people I work with who have children tend to be more intuitively understanding of others when they are not feeling 100%. Also, those who have gone through the trials of young kids tend to be a lot more likely to stick around when things get tough. It is as if their threshold for discomfort and inconvenience is a lot higher.

Having kids while building a business also taught me how to focus my time effectively so I could spend quality time with them away from my business. A friend of mine proudly tells everyone how he missed the birth of his two daughters because he was making a delivery to customers himself, but I never wanted anything like that. I always have placed my family first, and will make the sacrifices necessary to do so. Not that I would ignore a customer totally, but I would ensure that someone else could carry out tasks for me during important life moments. Once again, I find that other people with kids are usually the first to step up and do those tasks for me because they have an inherent understanding of how important family is.

Not knocking those who choose not to have kids, or to have kids late etc. - everyone has their own choices and journey, but for me, I would rather work with, and partner with people who have kids at this stage of my life.

Really grateful to my kids for teaching me that I have a much bigger backup energy reserve than I ever realized. You can keep going literally for days after you think first think "I'm tired", and that feeling of tiredness is actually just a fake feeling you can push through with willpower.

Also grateful to my kids for teaching me that the "in the zone" thing my fellow developers whine about all the time is total bulldust. If you really need to, you can write perfectly passable code in the five minute increments that appear in between wiping butts, making breakfasts, reading stories, providing sympathy after sibling brawls, and answering difficult questions about death and existence. Context switching efficiently and coding without "the zone" are learned skills, not magical impossible ideals. "The zone" is BS.

One other thing that has been a huge benefit is having to work in your head, away from the laptop. The requirement to be away from your tools means you have to spend a lot more time thinking about what the highest impact actions you can take will be when you finally get some laptop time. This actually makes your solutions much more effective and faster to implement. The best and cheapest time to fix a bug is at the design stage, in your head, before you've built anything. Rich Hickey calls this "hammock driven development" and parenting time is often similar.

Knowing your time is limited helps you be disciplined about turning off Twitter and YouTube and Indie Hackers. :)

Ok, gotta go feed the brilliant little beasts breakfast now!

My wife and I celebrate our 12th anniversary today and we have four children ages 2-10.

Time is valuable.

Time with my wife. I certainly enjoyed dates before children but never truly valued that time until we had children.

Time with my children. I’ve heard it said that when they are little the days are long but the years are short. This is so true; our son Judah is 7 tomorrow and our baby girl Hallel will turn 2 on Thursday.

Time working. I’ve learned to prioritize and break things down and have found that separating planning the work (easy on my phone) from doing the work (best for the laptop) makes me significantly faster.

Steady, patient, and consistent growth works really well.