Tradeoffs - personal, professional

I do feel like I am missing out on the cute cuddly moments with my kids when we send them to school for a major part of the day. Feel this a little bit stronger as my colleagues and friends are having their kids “stuck” at home with them during the current COVID crisis.

The stress level for us and kids was insane when we were trying to multi-task all day, every day. We are taking a moderate risk and optimizing for our comfort of being able to focus on one thing at a time, without stress and guilt. Hope it doesn’t turn out to be a life changing decision.

I also believe that many things are best enjoyed in moderate quantities. Any other path involves giving up on something, to make a lot of time for something else. I do not want to make this tradeoff when I am not of the opinion that the incremental change of focusing on one at the cost of another is worth the loss and is not something I would regret long term, compared to doing both in moderate quantities. So optimizing for regret-minimization, working full time and giving it our best shot when kids are in daycare/school is our choice.

Each person and family has a style in making decisions. Ours has been to keep our hands and legs in as many parallel things as possible without falling. This makes us happy and helps us feel fulfilled. It is ok if opinions change in the future, we will make changes and adjustments when and if needed. So optimizing for current happiness enhancing decisions, what we are doing is spot on.

I don’t know why my career validates me as much as it does. I need to get out of this thinking in theory, but hard to decouple myself from the race in practice. I am running, although I don’t know what is the real end or goal. I am hoping to figure out the directions along the way.