Routine Tasks

As I mentioned last week, Anne gave birth to a set of twins, our first kids, in early November, and we have had them both home with us for a little over a week, following a stay in the NICU.

Leading up to the big day, every parent we spoke to asked a variation of the same question, always with a knowing smile: Are you ready? Anyone with kids of their own knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into. One coworker told me I was in for a nightmare of chaos. Another laughed when she heard I expected to work out each day.

For the most part, despite my optimism that Anne and I would have these kids sleep trained after a month, the doomsday predictions of other parents have mostly turned out to be true. We have had very little time to do anything other than feed the babies and change their diapers every three hours, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and have not slept for more than six hours at a time.

Some life.

I am lucky to have meaningful parental leave from work, which means the past few weeks, and next couple of months, can be entirely dedicated to this new parenting routine. I have nothing I need to be doing, other than changing diapers and feeding these babies. My calendar is wide open.

Surprisingly, this empty calendar has brought more, not less, focus to my life. Not focus on anything particularly important, or any long term goal, but simply focus on the task at hand:

Changing the next diaper.

Feeding the next bottle.

Burping the babies.

Preparing to do it all over again soon.

The one thing you really can’t do with newborns is multitask.

Maybe I’m unique, but this level of relaxed focus on one simple task was rare before these two kids came into my life. I experienced it during runs, and while reading, but very seldom anywhere else. I even chopped vegetables in a hurry, while listening to a podcast or watching TV.

There is a time and place for that type of optimization, and maybe I’ll feel differently after a few months of this routine. Who knows. But there is also something to be said for forcing myself to stop and focus on a task that requires absolutely zero thought, just muscle memory.

I plan to spend a good amount of time over the coming months reflecting on what it means for me to become a parent. Already, a few weeks into it all, I can feel myself becoming less ambitious. Not in the sense that I no longer want to accomplish anything, but that anything I do accomplish is gravy. Having these two kids is enough.

With that in mind, it makes sense that I would now be more appreciative of what some might call the little things in life. Who cares if there is something better I can be doing with my time than changing a diaper? And how can I be sure that it’s really a better use of my time? I will probably look back on these days more fondly than I will any period of my life in which I did something just for me, because only now – under a mound of diapers – does my life have true meaning to others. Only now am I being relied upon by others.

Here’s something similar I wrote about slowing down back in 2021:

My parents were moving houses, so I decided to work from my grandfather’s apartment. He lives in a corner unit, and his kitchen gets plenty of sunshine and has a small round table that’s perfect for conversation. He has instant coffee, which most people seem to hate but I love. So each morning we drank our instant coffees together from 8am-9am, talking about all sorts of things. I really enjoyed it.

There’s this story that I heard for the first time last week. Maybe you’re familiar with it. A classroom is told to fill a mason jar with a bag of sand, a pile of pebbles and a couple of big rocks. One group pours in the sand, then dumps in the pebbles, and has no room left over for the big rocks. The second group puts the big rocks in first, lets the pebbles fall in between the rocks, and then pours the sand into the nooks and crannies. Everything fits perfectly.

The teacher says to the students: “See? To fit everything, you need to start with the big, important things first. If you start with the sand, you’ll have no room for what matters.”

It’s a popular time-management parable, but it feels particularly relevant after this week with my grandfather. Because that “gluttonous” hour each morning was the best way I could be spending my time. It was a very big rock. The type of thing I’ll remember for the rest of my life. And the things it was getting in the way of – logging onto my computer, checking email, reading articles – were all just sand. Of zero importance in the long run. People say you won’t be thinking about your career on your deathbed. Well if that’s true, then where does email fit into that hierarchy? Or mindlessly scrolling headlines you’ll forget that afternoon?

Sometimes routine, mundane tasks are actually big boulders camouflaged as a waste of our time.

I’ve heard it said that a parent only gets ten years to be their kid’s hero, after which their children get their own friends and their own lives. That may sound like a long time, but I graduated from college ten years ago. A decade flies by, and considering how short each individual phase of childhood is, a decade of parenthood will pass by even faster.

Before I know it, I’ll be wishing for more time to hold the babies, feed the babies, and yes – even change the babies.

I better savor these days while I have them.

– Emmett

What I’m Reading

The Pathologization Pandemic – Gurwinder Bhogal
“It would seem, then, that the rapid liberalization and medicalization of young people, enabled by social media, has hindered their self-belief and resilience to setbacks. Many teenagers have subsequently become trapped in a cycle where they feel distress, pathologize it, causing more distress, leading to more pathologization and distress, which eventually becomes textbook anxiety and depression. The rise in diagnoses is therefore not simply an illusion caused by medicalization; society is teaching kids to feel powerless and worthless, which is causing real dysfunctions.”

Killing the Cat – Scott Galloway
“To take the greatest visual metaphor in automotive history and kill it is to destroy shareholder value. It’s the essence of CMO malpractice. It’s just as stupid and wasteful as if Disney responded to a spate of weak releases by taking Mickey, Moana, Darth Vader, and Elsa out and shooting them.”

The New Pornographers – Roxanne Gay
“After a while, there is a certain tedium to TikTok. The feast becomes overwhelming. Our taste buds dull. Our eyes dry. TikTok understands that once you start scrolling, it is so very hard to stop. And TikTok creators understand that to keep the app’s users scrolling, they have to try to outdo themselves and everyone else on the platform. For better or worse.”

GET THE NEWSLETTER

Semi-regular thoughts on the good life and personal growth.