Want A Successful Career? Have Children
Everything you read lately about startup mentality, workplace enhancement, growing your skillset — all of it revolves around one single word:
Fail fail fail. Fail lightly, but fail often. Try everything and when you’re done, try it again. Fail enough to know what you are terrible at and make the appropriate changes. This is the Google Search century after all. Failure teaches us our limitations and elucidates our mistakes. It also teaches us discipline and puts us at greater ease. Those who are prepared to fail take bigger challenges and reap greater rewards.
Want to become a fail professional? Have a kid
I am not going to sugarcoat this.
The absolute quickest way to learn exactly how shitty you are at nearly everything is by creating a small human.
For comparison, last year I flew in on the 11th hour of a major Senate campaign and created pretty much all of the digital infrastructure from scratch. 47 days, 7am to 3am, gained 20lb eating things I cannot recall. I was engaged at the time, flying back to DC for just six hours every Saturday to plan my wedding.
When we won, I thought, this is the hardest thing I will ever do.
NOPE.
The small warlord, he consumes absolutely all of your time and offers no recompense.
The sheer number of things that can go wrong with an infant are infinite and the amount of insatiable screaming that accompanies the sleep deprivation is tantamount to water-boarding. Want an ISIS agent to divulge information? Give him a newborn to take care of.
Worse than that, the child is something you cherish. So everything you do needs to be perfect, but it just can’t be. Imagine dumping all of your life’s savings on a Rolls Royce and before each time you drive it, you have to take 7 shots of tequila and wear a blindfold. You’re going to hit something. It’s just a matter of how hard.
The novelty of the neurosis loses its luster after just a few days and you are faced with a very adult, “I need to get my life together.”
So what does this have to do with a career?
There are an awful lot of people in Washington, DC who see childbearing as an inferior good or want to postpone it until their late 30’s in exchange for some eclectic, luxurious life and a powerful career.
If only there was some benefit to having a kid…
I cannot tell you how many times I have had coffee or lunch with older mentors and colleagues who lament not having more children earlier. The number is in the dozens.
“I wish we would have had kids earlier.”
One of the things many pointed out — that blew me away — was that for the first time in their lives, they had something (or someone) else that was greater than them, someone else to attend to. Even in marriage, spouses are fairly responsible and capable, so it is usually not until children that both learn what it means to give up almost all of their old life for a person.
Converting this virtue to professional capital
I do realize that it has only been a month and I am not the CEO of Microsoft yet, but I have seen a dramatic change in both my wife and myself in regards to how we spend our time. When every aspect of your life, including waking up, is an absolute fiasco, you have to plan appropriately, coordinate all the parts and execute that plan.
Need me to organize this 400-person reception? No problem, I got through church without my son screaming or vomiting.
Employees who are prepared for the entire plane to fall apart mid-air are also the ones most able to hold it together when it counts. If learning and growing in your job is all about being challenged, then there is no greater torture — I mean challenge — than parenting. There just isn’t.
From my 4 years in this city, I would happily defend the argument that parents make better managers, colleagues and direct-reports — regardless of how many insane little ones they may have. From my experience, the selfishness quotient shoots way down and the professionalism is always greater.
Want to get your life together and be better at what you do? Have a kid.
