Reflections of a New Parent
Resetting expectations, newfound resiliency, and journaling prompts for new parents.
After becoming a parent, I noticed in myself a recurring thought pattern related to work, which is that I’m no longer doing work as well as I once was. While I’ve always had a worry that I’m not doing work well enough, my strategy for contending with that belief has been to work harder, longer, and smarter. In doing so, I would get to a point where I either feel like I’ve done a good job or am learning to do a better one. The problem now, as a parent, is that I have no slack in the system. I have no additional time to work longer. So much more of my mental space is taken up with my daughter. And, I’m struggling to find ways to be smarter about work.
This isn’t the only new experience that I’ve been having since becoming a parent. I’ve also noticed a renewed motivation to be the best version of myself — not only as a parent but as a person — so that I can create the world I would want my daughter to grow up in. This is inspiring and gives me energy I didn’t have access to before.
In the same vein, it’s amazing to me how much more resilient my partner and I are than perhaps we ever thought we’d need to be. After three nights of little to no sleep, I’ve been proud and surprised by how effective I can still be.
It’s been helpful to have supportive friends, family, and colleagues around me. They’ve helped in terms of normalizing what I’m going through, as well as mirroring back to me that my 60% effectiveness is still better than most. I have to reset my expectations of many things, especially my output, in order to survive day to day. Like being a founder, what you work on every day has to be the most important thing. With my daughter, we have to feed her, burp her, nap her, change her, clothe her. Everything else is nice to have, and I’ve reset my bar to take that into account.
I’ve also heard that sleep-deprived people overestimate their effectiveness and productivity, and I’m sure I’m doing a little of that as well.
We as a society are constantly having kids while working, and the questions at the beginning of the journey for me have been:
- What do you need at a minimum to get through the day?
- What does your partner need at a minimum to get through the day?
- Where can I be so bold as to ask for support? (This can be very hard for helpers who have a tough time asking for help, but makes a huge difference.)
- What are my new expectations of myself and my livelihood that acknowledges the reality that I no longer have the same amount of time I used to have?
- What are the strategies and coping mechanisms that are no longer available to me?
- What’s most important to me that I don’t want to lose or forget about, even though everything’s different?
Are you looking for additional support around questions at the intersection of life, work, and family that entrepreneurs and career-minded people face? Check out this helpful post from Reboot.
