Don't Miss the Forest for the (Christmas) Trees
The holidays are the best time for family drama and personal reflection.
On Friday I wrote my team a note reflecting on 2023 and looking ahead to 2024. Its theme was keeping our eye on the prize through John Heywood’s 16th-century proverb warning us not to miss the forest for the trees. I then slammed my laptop shut at 5:00pm and headed downstairs from my home office, ready to start the holiday break that our overlords in Paris grant us every year at the agency (the French bureaucratic maze is second to none, but the paid holidays make it a bit more tolerable.) I looked at my kids running around like the little energetic demons they are and smiled knowing in 72 hours they would be experiencing Christmas through the eyes of toddlers. There truly is no better show on earth.
Then I walked into the kitchen where my wife, who had taken the day off, walked up to me and handed me something. An early Christmas gift? Not quite - it was a positive Covid test. While I wasn’t expecting a relaxed-at-the-beach vibe for the holiday break, this threw quite the wrench into my goal of trying to get some R&R here and there throughout the week. The kids were already sick (thanks, preschool) and now yours truly would be shouldering the majority of the childcare through the holidays.
Lean Into Your Strengths
While many of us feel a surefire way to get better at something in life is to focus on where we see deficiencies and shore them up, the reality is that a better way is to discover our strengths and ensure we’re leaning into them and keeping them sharp. That doesn’t mean ignoring our weaknesses and only working within our strength areas, but it means that we need to be mindful of the time we spend trying to improve our weaknesses instead of fortifying what we’re already good at.
All of this to say that while I like to think I have many strengths to lean into, maintaining order among my 2- and 4-year-olds is not among them. My wife - who has the patience of a saint - is much better with the kiddos, and the feeling is shared by them. “Mama” rolls off their tongues at least twice as often as “dada,” even when dada is the designated PIC (parent in charge), right in front of them, and mama is rooms away.
You can’t blame them - my wife is second to none. She owns her own business and does the majority of the child-rearing while I do the Lord’s work as a middle manager of analytics at a big-name marketing agency. I’m a numbers guy and I’d guess we’re at a 65-35 split when it comes to the kids (Ed.’s note - Erica: “It’s at least 65. I keep them fed and clothed to start, which is a huge base.”) One of my strengths is picking life partners (hers is not) and it’s one I’m lucky to be able to lean into.
About That Forest
So we’re day three into solo-dadding while trying to keep the holidays on track (in reality we’re at an 85-15 dad/mom split because unlike when I got Covid, Erica is still helping out) and I am beat. But these are the trees I’m stuck in - the day-to-day grind of two kids under five. Sure, I haven’t woken up in my house without whining over a monitor or a kid’s face in mine since my daughter was born, but the reality is that - when it comes to kids - while they may see the world through the lens of instant gratification there is anything but as a parent.
At work, the trees tend to be deadlines, the next client report, the next QBR, the next promotion, and so on. We allocate our time, energy and resources to these endeavors and we try to keep our eye on the larger picture - long-term career goals, five-year plans, larger client relationships. That’s the forest we try to keep in focus regardless of how deep in the trees we are.
But like I wrote in the email to my team as we left for the holiday, there’s a larger forest we always have to keep in mind: our families and loved ones. No matter how crazy work gets, or how crazy the demands and the hours at the office are, there is nothing in life that will drive our fulfillment like our connections with those close to us outside of the office. Even when our kids are being, well, kids.
Like Clayton Christensen says in his famous HBR article “How Will You Measure Your Life?”
Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.
I read this article years before my eldest was born and this passage always stuck with me. The incrementalism of neglect is a powerful concept and it flies in the face of easier but less accurate explanations of things like failed relationships, which rarely simply fall apart one day versus slowly die out like a houseplant you remember to water every now and then.
What’s Your Forest?
Just as we talked about finding strengths and leaning into them (don’t marry impatient Bostonians, to start, but that’s Erica’s cross to bear) it might be worth asking yourself this holiday season what your forest is. When you’re on your deathbed, what will the thing be that you think about as you drift off to whatever afterlife you envision for yourself? Will it be how high you climbed the corporate ladder? The shareholder value that you created (on behalf of others)? That strategic initiative you both sold into the board and then proceeded to crush executionally? God, I hope not.
No one dies wishing they’d spent more time in the office, so do the work now to figure out what it is you’ll wish you’d done before it’s too late to, you know, do it. There’s a modern saying that’s applicable here, and it sticks with our arboreal theme. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago; the second best time is now. Plant your trees today so you can have your own forest to stay focused on.
Grab Bag Sections
WTF Peloton: Those unfortunate enough to follow me on Instagram know this, but for those of you with better things to do (although you are reading this Substack…), Peloton has an AI problem. When you ride their bike and take an on-demand class you can choose to have the resistance automatically align to the instructor’s plan. It’s a neat function and it’s just one less thing to have to do during class.
But these things have to be coded into the lesson. It’s become quite clear Peloton is doing this via AI, as multiple times across multiple classes the instructor will talk about a theoretical resistance and the auto-resistance will change to it. Sure, it could be an incompetent individual watching the classes and incorrectly manually coding the resistance, but after all of the layoffs one has to assume that a) they’re not doing this kind of manual coding anymore and b) if they were, only the best coders would remain within the culled-down herd. Either way, if Peloton could fix this upper echelon of first-world problems, (Bill Lumbergh voice) that would be greaaaat.
Album of the Week: When dad time increases, so does screen time. Right now my son is very into Frozen II and I gotta say, the soundtrack slaps.
We all know Edina Menzel has pipes and I would argue “Into the Unknown” is better than “Let It Go” from the original Frozen. But the song that will stick in your head and that I think is the runaway winner of this cinematic masterpiece is Jonathan Groff’s “Lost in the Woods.” The guitar riffs, the soft rock power ballad vibes, this author’s man-crush on Groff - they all combine to make this a certified banger. If you see me outside of the actor’s door with a Frozen II poster after I finally see Merrily We Roll Along, just keep it moving and don’t make eye contact with me.
Quote of the Week: “Posters on our classroom walls had told us that castles in the air were fine places to live—all you had to do was put foundations under them—but neither Thoreau nor our teachers had told us how much harder it was to build down than up.” - Jonathan Rosen, The Best Minds
See you in the new year!
A note on illustrations: DALL-E 3 is miles ahead of its original iteration and I’m incorporating their outputs into this post and will continue to do so in the future and mark it in the captions. The prompts are in the alt text of the image. Worry not, I’ve not yet asked ChatGPT to write any of the text for me and will clearly call it out if we ever end up down that road.