4:45 am

Wake up and prepare for a 30 minute conference call with my startup team that begins at 5:00 am. The conference call tends to conclude by 5:30 am. At that time, I focus on me — my day’s priorities, my own hygiene and pampering, my tea, maybe exercise but that is certainly the exception to the rule — this is a completely selfish hour.

6:30 am

My children have arisen, typically with some reasonable amount of force. During this time, I place all my “priorities” aside and only focus on their needs whether hygienic, physiological, emotional, or academic.

7:30 am

The children are off to school, and at that time, I spend the next hour focusing on short tasks — responding to emails, noting things that need replaced or addressed in the house, shopping lists, etc.

8:30 am — 2:30 pm

A multitude of things could be happening during these hours — class, completing readings or assignment, doing interviews (my startup requires significant in person communication with various government officials in the Ministry/Department of Health), managing my startup team, building slides or content for a pitch or presentation . . . the list goes on and on. And on and on.

3:00 pm

My children, ages 5 and 10, are out of school and ready to start extracurricular activities promptly. Thankfully, the extracurricular activities are also at school, so I don’t have to go pick them up and transport them to another place. Since we arrived in South Africa, Johnathan is doing Rugby and Noah is doing soccer. These activities typically wrap up by 4:00 pm. At that time, they need to be picked up.

4:30 pm

Noah has swim lessons, at a private swim facility, while Johnathan uses Noah’s swim time and swim facility resources to get started on his 90 minutes of homework.

After swimming, we go home, and although I’d love to tell you that I go home and prepare dinner, that would be disingenuous as that is much more the exception to the rule.

I certainly have a support system that allows me the flexibility to do the parenting tasks I feel are most meaningful and significant to me and my connection with my children, and then outsource others. I tend to outsource much of the cooking, all of the cleaning, laundry, running many errands, picking up cards and gifts if they don’t have special meaning, some grocery shopping etc. So fortunately, for my kids’ bellies and my level of sanity around 6 pm, we get home, to a fully prepared and plated dinner.

6 pm

We eat, chat, and argue about whether the TV should be on, and what went well or less well about the day and then we conclude. After dinner the boys have some free time, until 8 pm — which typically means TV, computer games, video games, iPad, YouTube, etc.

8 pm

Our nanny puts Noah into the bath while I help Johnathan with the remainder of his homework.

He doesn’t always appreciate my kind of help because it doesn’t give him answers but instead forces him to think critically and apply the process and outcome of an alternative situation to his situation . . . but he’s learning . . . its certainly an interesting and challenging process — for both of us.

8:45 pm

I transition from helping Johnathan with his homework to putting Noah to bed with a story — the exact same immensely boring story about a lion trying to eat a jackal that constantly outsmarts the lion. We tend to read the same book two or three times a night for about 20–30 minutes until Noah falls asleep. I actually set an alarm for myself as well, because sometimes I fall asleep too. By the time I have finished putting Noah to bed, Johnathan tends to be finished with his homework. Usually, I find him sitting on the couch watching some borderline aggressive or vile cartoon which I don’t regulate as I have decided to choose my battles, and violent cartoons, though certainly non-preferred, didn’t rise to the top.

9:30–10 pm

My older son, Johnathan goes to bed and I ramp up for the rest of my night.

10 pm

My evening starts with an hour-long 10 pm conference call with my Cornell classmate and the co-founder of my startup, Andy Reed. Usually that conference call leads to some action items, most of which can’t be completed at the time and go on the to-do list for the following day.

11:30 pm

Despite being fatigued, I tend to meet someone for a cocktail — sometimes a friend and sometimes someone I need to network with, sometimes new people I have met, it really varies. But, while my nanny is home with the kids, this is my “adult time”/social time/networking time.

1:30 am

I get into bed.

I don’t believe anyone truly “has it all” but this is my attempt at balance. The loser here — sleep.