Originally posted on LinkedIn
The tension between work (and entrepreneurship) and being a parent. And the guilt it brings. Long post.
The tension is real — you have to acknowledge it, accept it, and consciously decide where you stand on the scale.
A post by Santiago Villadiego Mogollón brought the topic back to mind after a couple of years.
When my kids were born, my productivity dropped to the floor (easily 5%) for ~3 months. And then, when I recovered some of that, it still felt incredibly low compared to before (around 60%).
Obviously, you’ll say. Before I worked 14 hours a day and now “only” 8-10.
But it hurt — I felt guilty. For 2 reasons:
1️⃣ Feeling like I was a “shadow” of who I used to be. 2️⃣ Guilt from sometimes thinking I should spend less time with my kids to work more. And at the same time wanting to spend every possible moment with them. The tension itself made me feel guilty.
I managed to “make peace” mentally in three ways, thanks to coaching sessions with Omar Salom:
▶️ Accepting that life time is limited, and the time with young kids even more so (~10 years or so!) — and that each day only has 24 hours. ▶️ Understanding that time with my kids is also productive — very productive. They are my most important project, by far. ▶️ Fully organizing my 8-10 daily work hours so that work productivity was as high as possible within that time.
Combined, I realized having kids didn’t take productivity away from me — it multiplied it. Today I’m 95% productive at work and 300% productive overall compared to before.
Now, during my work hours, I produce in 8 hours what used to take me 14.
But more importantly — in my non-work time I’m engaged in the most powerful project possible: getting to know and co-building two good, capable, confident human beings who will together do 10 times what I could do in my entire life.
What could be more productive than that?
In the end, I chose entrepreneurship from the start so I could manage my own time and build a family.
Could my company do somewhat better if I spent less time with my kids? Probably. But would it be worth it? I don’t think so.
I’ve found cool communities where people talk about this — Eduardo Lloreda, Ignacio Salcedo, and Sebastián Blanco lead some of them.
In 5 Types of Wealth, they make it very clear — what game are we playing? What are we working for? You have to remember the core, the center — and it’s not money.
I think this should be talked about more. Which side of the scale are you on?
