If you ask me now what I have, I would say, “A wife I love, children, work that is meaningful and helps me grow, time for my family and my hobbies, a nice house.”

I already have everything I wanted.

But we keep running on the hedonic treadmill. How about a bigger house? How about a car? How about a job with a fancy title and higher pay? When we get them, we want even more.

I’m all for growth and ambition. I never want to retire from work I love. But sometimes we forget about the trade-offs. Bigger expenses mean more financial stress. Higher pay means more responsibilities and maybe less time with the family.

It’s worse if we get stuck in a loop, as Clayton Christensen described in How Will You Measure Your Life?:

[my classmates who inadvertently invested in lives of hollow happiness] prioritized things that gave them immediate returns—such as a promotion, a raise, or a bonus—rather than the things that require long-term work, the things that you won’t see a return on for decades, like raising good children. And when those immediate returns were delivered, they used them to finance a high-flying lifestyle for themselves and their families: better cars, better houses, and better vacations. The problem is, lifestyle demands can quickly lock in place the personal resource allocation process. “I can’t devote less time to my job because I won’t get that promotion—and I need that promotion …”

I’m still working on getting my business off the ground. So it’s not like I’m in the perfect state right now. But if I look around, I have enough.

As 37signals co-owner DHH said, “If you are blessed with a partner that you love, some children that you adore, you’ve already won the greatest prize that most humans are able to achieve.”

And he argues that it’s delusional to think more money can complete us:

having an occupation and a pursuit that you enjoy, being able to carry burdens with a stiff upper lip and with again, a sense of meaning, is incredible. To have family, to have friends, to have hobbies, to have all these things that are actually available to most people around the world, that’s winning. And it doesn’t mean you have to discount your ambitions. It doesn’t mean you can’t reach for more, but it does mean it’s pretty dumb if you don’t realize that it’s not going to complete you in some hocus-pocus woo sense to make more. It really isn’t.

We already have everything we wanted.

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

But before those words escaped my mouth, I took a deep breath and tried my best to let go of my anger. It wasn’t as if I was at peace right away. I was still wearing my displeasure on my face. I’m no saint. But I paused and moved on to the next moment.

In Roger Federer’s 2024 Dartmouth commencement address, he said, “When you’re playing a point, it is the most important thing in the world. But when it’s behind you, it’s behind you.” His advice: “It’s only a point.” But we keep replaying the lost point. We blame ourselves. We get frustrated. We become upset. Then we lose the next point, too.

Moments in our lives are just like points in a tennis match. We lose our cool and lose that moment. Then we keep being angry. But when it’s behind us, it’s behind us. Don’t lose the next moment, too.

Children are much better at this than adults. Despite being older, we tend to hold onto our anger. We convince ourselves that we need to be angry for a certain duration because that is what being angry is about. We can even hold grudges for years! But children move on very quickly. One moment they are angry, the next happy.

My son did eventually let my wife brush his teeth and get him dressed for school. Then he happily chatted with me about his breakfast. It was as though he had forgotten about being angry at me.

It’s only a point. It’s only a moment.

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

Here’s what happened: Schoeman and the race leader, Jonny Brownlee, were racing each other hard. Near the finishing line, Jonny collapsed from heat exhaustion. Schoeman went on to win the race. All was well, except what happened next.

In third place was Alistair Brownlee, Jonny’s elder brother. Out of brotherly love, Alistair supported his brother to the finishing line. This scene has gone viral countless times in the past decade. And each time, there was a flood of hateful comments thrown at Schoeman (and his family) for ignoring Jonny and finishing the race.

The Brownlee Brothers have been my favorite triathletes since I became a triathlete about 16 years ago. But I believe Schoeman did the right thing. They are professional racers whose careers and lives depend on them winning races. But perhaps more critically, the Brownlee Brothers love racing hard more than anything else. No true athlete wishes their competitors were weak so that they could win races. So, I’m sure the Brownlee Brothers appreciated the hard race and tough competition.

No one should receive the unjustified hate that Schoeman has been getting. As Confucius said, 己所不欲，勿施于人. Or simply, do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you. I don’t think anyone would want to be on the receiving end of those comments. For the sender, it might be a few impulse words, forgotten by the end of the day. But for the receiver, it becomes years of hurt and self-doubt.

Growing up, I saw similar bullying in school and how it affected the victims for many years, long after the bullies had forgotten what they had done. Admittedly, I didn’t have the courage to stop them, for fear that I would become a target.

I have also received some unkind comments from strangers before, and they have affected me for longer than I would like. It might be inevitable since I chose to have a public profile. But it doesn’t have to be like this.

Just like us, Schoeman is a father, a husband, and a son. We definitely wouldn’t want our children, partners, or parents to ever be in the same unfortunate situation he has been in.

The internet has made it possible for us to send messages to almost anyone we want. Let’s use it to spread the kindness we want to see in the world. Let’s not send messages that we would never say to someone’s face, just because we are behind our keyboards. Let’s model the right behavior for our children and guide them as they are growing up and learning about the internet and the world.

I don’t think Henri Schoeman has the capacity to read all the comments he received since he shared that video but, Henri, if you do…

Hey Henri! You have been a huge inspiration for me. Sorry if this comes across as rude, but you are one of the few athletes who have shown me that size doesn’t really matter in triathlon (I’m about the same height as you!) and you inspired me to keep training when I wanted to give up on the sport. The positive impact you are making on the world is much bigger than you can imagine. Thank you, and I hope you are keeping your head up!

Instead of cherishing the opportunity, Marcus squandered it like a typical college student with excessive allowance. He was partying, spending too much money, and neglecting his studies. Hoping to change his son’s behavior, Cicero wrote Marcus a letter on how to live an honorable, useful life. That letter, De Officiis (On Duties), was considered the pinnacle of moral philosophy for centuries.

Like Cicero, we all like to send our children to the best schools. There, they will study and learn to read, write, and calculate. English, mathematics, sciences, humanities, and so on. Their teachers will educate them on various subjects (assuming AI doesn’t disrupt education as we know it).

But our duty as parents doesn’t stop at getting them into good schools. We also have to teach them ethics, virtues, and character—like Cicero did with his letter. Even studying under a leading philosopher wasn’t sufficient for his son Marcus to learn how to behave.

Cicero couldn’t physically be in Athens to supervise his son, but many of us are constantly around our children, especially when they are young. We not only have to teach them how to behave; we must also model how to behave. Children rarely listen to us but they never fail to imitate. If we want them to behave well, we have to behave well ourselves.

And we cannot leave this to schools and teachers. Some schools have moral education, which is great! But this is too important to leave it up to chance. We have to own it, like Cicero did.

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

Many years ago, the startup I was at had all the employees do a personality quiz. I thought the answer to this question was obviously “to be kind.” But when we discussed our answers among ourselves afterwards, I realized many thought otherwise.

Of course, it isn’t wrong to be smart. I want to be smart, too. That’s why I have been collecting quotes and writing. But if I can only choose one, I would rather be kind. I want my doctor to be skilled but more importantly ethical.

When imploring us to redefine success and meaning, John Gardner said, “There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are... They have the gift of kindness or courage or loyalty or integrity. It matters very little whether they’re behind the wheel of a truck or running a country store or bringing up a family.”

Given the trend and market incentives, AI will only become more and more intelligent. In some ways, that’s great. I can’t wait for AI to help me refill my household necessities, plan and book our vacations, and handle boring paperwork.

But AI can never be kind, courageous, or loyal for us. We have to do that ourselves.

We all have that one crazy yet supportive friend. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini can never be that friend. Tell them you want to quit your job to start a business; they will ask whether you have enough savings, offer to refine your business idea, and help you come up with a plan. Sure, that’s nice. But often we just want to hear our friend say, “Oh yeah? What are you waiting for!”

When we are going through hardship, we just want our loved one to give us a hug and sit with us. When we want to take a leap, we wish to feel supported by our family and friends, regardless of what will happen. When we are not behaving quite like ourselves, we hope people around us can see through the turbulence to our real selves.

AI may eventually do all our professional work, creating PowerPoint decks, filling out Excel spreadsheets, and sending emails. But only we can do the human work of being kind, courageous, and loyal to the other humans around us. And among all the things to teach our children, the most important one is how to be a good human.

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

I look at my son and daughter every day and think, “how are you growing up so quickly?” My dad friends often tell me they do the same.

About three years ago, I started journaling every night. I write a short note about the day and attach all the photos and videos from the day. Then, in the app, I can see my entries on this day a year, two years, and three years ago. Almost every night, my wife and I look through them and marvel at how little our kids were back then and how quickly they grew.

Oh, he took his first steps today two years ago... Look at how big his school uniform was on him; it’s so tight now... Aww he was such a small baby!

It’s like reliving those precious moments again and again. Bad days, the ones filled with meltdowns and tantrums, no longer feel miserable and often make me chuckle.

But I regret that I only started this practice a few months after my first child was born. It feels like those few months have slipped away. I still have the photos and videos from then, but the memories are blurry.

You will wish you had started this earlier, too.

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

“Self-pity and resentment are among the most toxic of drugs.”—John Gardner

“Never lie, never cheat, never steal. Don’t whine, don’t complain, don’t make excuses.”—John Wooden

This too shall pass! Parents with sick kids, I see you. Hang in there.

Alfred

Hanging up my bike

When we become parents, we lose a little of our old selves.

For me, there’s Alfred the father, who is hands-on with my kids and cooks dinner for my family on most days. Then there’s Alfred the husband, who wants to spend as much time with my wife as possible. And then there’s Alfred the co-provider, who is getting my business off the ground to contribute financially. If we peel away all the layers, there is also Alfred the self.

Alfred the self has his own dreams and demands, too. I was a triathlete who loved cycling and traveled for races. Triathlon was a huge part of my life. Once I had kids, I stopped almost all of my training. I haven’t cycled for more than a year. I don’t even think about racing locally. As Zach Baron wrote, “With two, that old life is so completely gone it’s like it never even happened. It is a planet you cannot return to.”

It sounds sad but it’s more complicated than that. We all deal with the loss of our old self in different ways. Some parents grow into their new self and devote their lives to their children and partner. Some wish to revisit their former self from time to time and have their parents or nannies look after their children. There are also those in between who are conflicted. Some resent parts of their new life while also feeling ashamed about their resentment. Some long for the old days but also love their new life. I have been all of them at various points.

My relationship with cycling has changed a lot over the last three years. Before my wife and I had kids, I used to ride about 200 km each weekend. After our son was born, I took an indefinite hiatus. Once he could sleep better at night, my wife encouraged me to resume my Sunday rides. I rode about once a month, and it felt nice to be cycling again. But I realized I felt less strongly about it.

So, when I found out that my wife was pregnant again, I didn’t hesitate to drop the hobby. I didn’t want my pregnant wife to look after our energetic son by herself. With two children, I also became more risk averse. (Road cycling in Singapore is rather dangerous; my wife has seen many cyclists die in the A&E after a crash.)

I still love cycling but I don’t love cycling in Singapore as much now. Emotionally, I’m still attached to it. But logically, I’m not. Do I want to wake up at 4:15 am on a Sunday to feel the cold air hit my face as I speed through roads filled with reckless, angry drivers? I suspect I am mostly missing the feeling of cycling and am nostalgic about “the good old days” rather than actually wanting to be on the bike. Or maybe all this is just self-justification so that I don’t feel like a selfish parent. Either way, it is okay to miss something but not want to do it. Humans are complex!

Regardless of whether my love for bike rides has shrunk, my love for my kids has grown as I’ve gotten to know them better, and it has slowly eclipsed the former. A mentor once told me he views life in seasons. My last season was triathlon; my current season is fatherhood. Now, on the weekends, I get to sleep in until 7 am, enjoy a slow, chaotic breakfast with my family, and play in the pool with my kids.

Every morning, when I step out of my room, I see my Giant TCR Advanced road bike hanging on our living room wall. Do I want to go back to cycling? Maybe. But I’m in no hurry. The bike will still be on the wall next season. My kids won’t be three and one again.

This morning, my baby daughter woke up earlier than expected. Then my son refused to let me change his diaper because he wanted to play with his toys. “No, I don’t want to change. Uniform is not my favorite,” he declared. At the same time, my daughter was grabbing my right leg and wailing. I looked at the wall clock. How has it been half an hour already? We are going to be late!

I turned around from my son to pick up my daughter and put her onto my lap. She gave me a happy grin. “What you doing!” my son said playfully to her and giggled. My daughter looked at him, her favorite person, and smiled. I let out a smile, too. We played together for another five to ten minutes before I tried to get my son dressed. It wasn’t entirely without resistance but we got it done and left the house together cheerfully.

Mornings with little children will never be peaceful, calm, and quiet. But do we really want them to be? Do we want them to simply wake up, dress themselves, and file out of the house without speaking a word? Or do we want to play a little, laugh a little, and sigh a little?

When I was living alone, I had the supposedly perfect slow morning. Wake up when I want to, sip a nice cup of coffee, enjoy the morning tranquility. I miss that sometimes. But to give up all I have now just for that? No.

Sure, it can be exhausting doing this day after day after day. But we choose how we want to remember it. If we remember that such mornings are finite and that we will miss them eventually, we might cherish them a little more.

Before we know it, our children will be teenagers and then adults. As Matthew Broderick in the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

Even at 67, my dad is still constantly looking for new products to sell, figuring out how to install and use them, and teaching his customers. He only has a primary school education. But he learned how to use apps and picked up a little English from my siblings and I. This is, among many other reasons, why his business has been going for almost 40 years. Even though many of his competitors have shut their businesses, he hasn’t become complacent. He never stops learning and exploring. He would often nag us, “This one have to learn! That one have to learn!”

Admittedly, I sometimes get annoyed by his constant questions. I would complain in my head, “Why bother with this new app when you are so old already? You keep forgetting what I taught you the last time. Just use what you already know and leave me alone.” It is only when I slow down and reflect that I realize how wrong I am.

Even though it’s harder for him to pick up new technology at his age, he is not intimidated by it and not afraid to try or ask questions. He doesn’t master everything he attempts. But he would give it a shot. If he could type and read English fluently, he would probably fire up ChatGPT and ask it endless questions until he really understands the things he wants to learn. Day in, day out, he models lifelong learning for us.

As John Gardner implored us in his popular speech, Personal Renewal:

There’s a myth that learning is for young people. But as the proverb says, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” The middle years are great, great learning years. Even the years past the middle years. I took on a new job after my 77th birthday—and I’m still learning.

Now that I have my own children, I regularly think about how to encourage and inspire them to be interested in learning. My dad has shown me the path.

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

• Type 1 fun: Enjoyable while it’s happening.

• Type 2 fun: Miserable while it’s happening, but fun in retrospect.

• Type 3 fun: Miserable while it’s happening and in retrospect.

Eating ice cream is Type 1 fun, running a marathon is Type 2, being stuck in a traffic jam is Type 3.

Many parents complain that parenting is miserable, when what they are describing is Type 2 fun.

When we went to Perth with our 18-month-old son, my wife and I were so exhausted after just five days that we called the airline to bring our flight forward. We couldn’t wait to go home.

But we look back at the trip fondly. I remember waking up with my son and watching the kangaroos outside our cottage. I remember enjoying a nice cup of coffee at a cafe while my son drank babyccino for the first time. I remember him wanting to sit on the tractor train again and again and again—even now, more than a year later. “Australia is my favorite place, you know,” he tells us every few days.

Even as I flip through my journal entries from the trip now, I can’t remember why we felt so drained and miserable then. Sure, he screamed and puked whenever we put him in the car seat. We had a four-hour delay for the five-hour outbound flight. But we look like we were having so much fun in every photo and video. I can’t help but grin whenever I look through them. Maybe that’s just how my brain chooses to remember it.

Just like with triathlons, I just keep coming back for Type 2 fun.

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

Children need models more than they need critics.

— Joseph Joubert (French moralist and essayist)

It is easy to fall into the trap of criticizing our kids, even when we mean well. Why isn’t your bed made? Don’t you say that word again! How can you be so selfish and not share your toys with your little sister? If you don’t work hard, you will fail in life!

But Joseph Joubert reminds us, “Children only obey their parents when they see their parents obeying the rule. Order and rule, once established and recognized, are the strongest of powers.”

Criticism only tells a child what not to do; a role model shows them what to do. They do what we do; they say what we say. You know this if you have accidentally said “Oh shit!” and your kid repeated you immediately.

Whenever we see a behavior that we do not like, it is an opportunity to reflect on our own behaviors first. Are we behaving the way we want them to behave? “But I don’t go around screaming at people angrily,” you might argue. Sure. But when they melt down and hit you, do you snap? When they refuse to sleep and keep wanting to play, can you remain patient? When they refuse to do something seemingly simple like brushing their teeth, do you threaten them?

Practically, telling children not to do something only highlights the forbidden action without giving their developing brain a clear picture of the desired behavior. We can tell them what to do instead. Better yet, we should show them what to do.

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

He thought because he owned knowledgeable slaves, he owned the knowledge itself. To which, Seneca wrote, “No man is able to borrow or buy a sound mind.” With the advances in AI, it is tempting to fall into the same trap: We think because we can get answers to almost anything in seconds, we are knowledgeable. But having the information is not the same as knowing, understanding, and acting on it.

Even before ChatGPT, we had Google, which gave us access to information that our parents’ generation could only dream of. But we were taught to visit a few websites, compare the information, and make an assessment ourselves—which, while slower, is a valuable skill. Nowadays, many people outsource the tedious work to AI and call it a day.

Don’t get me wrong, I use AI every day to help me with learning, research, and coding. The danger is outsourcing all the thinking to AI and believing that makes us knowledgeable. Just the other day, I was conversing back and forth with Claude, hoping to refine my business model. After getting frustrated at its responses and going nowhere, I realized I just had to pick up the pen and think on my notebook through writing and drawing. AI can help but we owe it to ourselves to do the thinking.

When Sabinus’ guest suggested he try wrestling, he countered that he was too thin and weak. The witty guest responded, “Don’t say that, I implore you. Consider how many perfectly healthy slaves you have!” Just as having healthy slaves doesn’t make us healthy, being able to ask ChatGPT for answers doesn’t make us knowledgeable.

Parents are starting to worry that with AI, our children won’t know how to read and learn. The decline is already happening. So, it’s all the more important that we model it for our children. We have to do the work ourselves.

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

As Ryan Holiday wrote, “Every parent’s deepest fear is losing their child. And the terrible, beautiful tragedy of parenthood is that, indeed, we are constantly losing our children. Day, by day, by day. Not literally, of course, but in the sense that they are constantly growing, changing, becoming someone different.”

Having kids is not exactly a walk in the park. In the first year, we were perpetually lacking sleep. In the next few years, our patience was constantly tested. And I’m sure more challenges will come. I know it because I was always making my parents annoyed, worried, or both—maybe even now.

We know we can get through anything together. We know this too shall pass. At first it’s quite comforting, then troubling. Because as Tom Hanks shared, “this too shall pass” applies to both bad and good times. HFMD, meltdowns, and “I don’t like you papa”? This too shall pass. Their happy faces in the morning when they see you and want you to lift them out of their cot? The times when they are tired and want you to carry them? The non-stop bombardment of what they did in school today? This too shall pass.

If we don’t slow down and cherish these moments, they will be gone before we know it. When my son turned 3, I wrote him a letter. As I reflected on the year, I was surprised by how much he grew in a year. At 2, he could only say a few words or short phrases. At about 2.5, he said “I want you because I love you.” (Who’s cutting onions!) I had often wanted to skip past the terrible twos stage. But then I realized how much I would have missed. He will never be 2 again.

Having our daughter, in a way, has let us relive some of the early stages (even though it will never be exactly the same as having only our son then). You would think I’m constantly savoring every moment—the good and the bad. But admittedly the dread of the bad overwhelms us more often than we like. Just last night, we were struggling with a little baby who refuses to sleep. My wife and I were waking up every hour or so to her cries.

Then this morning, when we drew the curtains, our little girl looked at us with her half-opened eyes and gave us her widest two-toothed grin. We instantly forgot what happened last night. It’s like someone swapped our battery for a fully charged one.

I reminded myself, “She will never be this age again.”

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

Three years ago, when the nurse pushed my son into my wife’s ward for the very first time, she casually told me he pooped and I should change his diaper. I stared at her and blurted out, “Uh... I have no idea how to do it...”

If you think about it, isn’t it amazing that we were expected to somehow know what to do with this little fragile human being from the moment they were born? And all the way, for the rest of our lives? And that if parenting is so important, there isn’t a definitive guide to parenting?

How do we figure out our parenting style?

Here’s my story.

My dad often brags about how, when he was a little boy, he walked more than 5km to school every morning. He brags about many things, so I’m doubtful about this claim. But one thing I’m certain: He didn’t want me to suffer the same.

When I was 13, I had a habit of going to school as early as 6 am for a bowl of bak chor mee (minced pork noodles). He would wake up before dawn just to send me to school and then head home to get a little more sleep, before going to his workshop with my mum. I don’t remember asking for it, and he was always nagging us to be independent. So why did he do that?

Now that I’m a parent myself, I think I know why.

We give our children what we didn’t have, spare them from what we hated, and pass along what we admired.

Money as love

Growing up, my family was rather well to do. But I often wondered why my parents were so obsessed with their work and left us to their siblings. Is money really more important than us? As a kid, I resented them for many years.

But now I understand that growing up poor drove them to make as much money as possible. They wanted to give my siblings and me money because they didn’t have it as children. Only much later in life did my mum admit to me that they thought making money was the most important thing they could do for us. Or as my friend elegantly put it, “It isn’t that they love making money more than being with you. Making money for the family was their way of loving you.”

I didn’t appreciate the financial safety net and psychological relief they created for me until recently. I learned that people who grew up poor constantly worry about money even when they make enough. It’s not like I never have to work. But I never had (or have) to worry about whether my parents have enough money. That allowed me to pursue whatever career I wanted, including quitting my job to start a business and working less to be with my family.

Likewise, I see myself giving my children what I didn’t have. My parents were barely educated and couldn’t read—let alone teach—us English. So books weren’t a part of our house. (But they did try their best to send us to good schools.) There was a good stretch of 10 years when I didn’t touch a single book. When I had to read Totto-Chan for literature classes, I googled for a summary. (If I had ChatGPT then, I think I would have bungled my education.)

I used to think people who read are nerds. But to paraphrase Albert Einstein, to punish me for my contempt of nerds, fate has made me a nerd myself. I fell in love with reading in my 20s (and picked up Totto-Chan after I had a kid). Now, I shower my children with books and read to them every day. I don’t force them to read, though, because I’d hate that myself. I read physical books myself to show them I read. Thankfully, my son wants me to read to him so much that I have to set a limit every night.

I give my children presence because I didn’t have it. But this is only possible because my parents gave me—to put it crudely—money because they didn’t have it.

Spare the rod

As a kid, I was sent to countless tuitions. I had tuition in the morning even before I went to school in the afternoon. It was so much that on one fine day I rebelled. After the morning tuition class, I refused to go to school. My mum was not having it. I locked myself in the bedroom, thinking I had managed to escape her. She unlocked the room from the outside and promptly whipped me with the rattan cane. She then hauled me out to the street to hail a taxi. I even hugged a tree, trying to resist her. In the end, I still went to school, but with tears on my face and scratches on my forearms.

I don’t want to force classes and activities onto my kids unless they are interested. As much as I can, I want to create an environment that inspires them to be curious about the things around them and be interested enough to learn more themselves. Just like I give my children what I didn’t have, I want to spare them from what I hated.

The cane was the bigger one. I developed a strong aversion to physical punishments. My parents would cane me and at the same time reprimand me to stop crying while I was in pain. It made zero sense to me but that was unfortunately the tough-love era. I even made a joke about them caning me in my wedding speech, and the entire ballroom burst out laughing. Everyone understood.

But the problem back then was that I gradually learned the caning was to instill fear in me to get submission. So I did the opposite. I became more defiant. I didn’t do anything crazy that I’d regret but the trade-offs of caning never seem worth it to me. Of course, I’ll never know how I’d have turned out if my parents spared the rod. I was a pretty nasty boy. But I’m determined to find better alternatives for my children, without spoiling them. One thing I do is carry my child into my room, give him the space and time to let out his emotions, and then talk to him.

Carrying it forward

I recently saw a father post this text from his father-in-law on Reddit:

I was listening to a podcast about parenting recently. They were talking about how some dads take the best qualities they saw in their own fathers and try to carry those forward, while also being intentional about not repeating the things they didn’t like. It made me think about what a great dad you are. The kids are fortunate to have you as a father.

I realized I had been doing this subconsciously. For all the complaints I have about my parents, they have taught me a lot and I want to carry those qualities forward. My dad demonstrated to me self-reliance and agency by fixing everything he could. My mum taught me the importance of family by staying close with her remaining three sisters (especially after losing two).

I also try to pick up a few qualities from my in-laws, such as their selflessness and humility, and also their way of loving their daughter (my wife). Whenever we needed help with the kids, they would rush over to our house and never expected us to bring our kids to theirs. They visit and cook dinner for us every Saturday. Once, both my wife and I had food poisoning. The next thing we knew, they were knocking on our door. They worried about us and worried we wouldn’t have the capacity to look after our son.

Sometimes, it’s a balance of the two sets of parents. If someone knocks into my dad’s car, he will pursue the culprit to the end of the world if he has to and demand hefty compensation. When it happened to my father-in-law, and even with a video recording of the accident, he told the other driver to be careful next time and paid for his own repairs. Neither extreme feels right to me, so I’m finding my own middle.

My personal blend

My upbringing has shaped my parenting style for better or worse—and how I parent my children will shape how my children parent their children. Without recognizing this, I would have unintentionally parented according to my subconscious biases. And more importantly, this prompted me to seek out better examples I don’t naturally come across in my life.

Embarrassingly, I was winging it in my first year of fatherhood. I was busy with my startup and felt confident I knew what to do because I had a good upbringing. But parenting challenged me. I lost patience and snapped over little things like bedtime. I soon realized I had to do better. Instead of relying on just my instinct, I picked up parenting books and biographies, subscribed to fatherhood newsletters, and joined dad communities. That is also why I send my daily field notes and weekly newsletters on being a hands-on dad. I want to research stories and philosophies to apply to parenting and to remind myself to be more patient, to cherish our finite time together, and to be a good role model.

My parenting style is like a remix. I give my children what I didn’t have and spare them what I hated, and then I blend in measured amounts of qualities I see in great fathers. It’s not gentle parenting or tough-love parenting or helicopter parenting. It’s my parenting.

What is your parenting like?

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

When legendary basketball coach John Wooden’s son was born, a friend sent him a framed picture with the following poem:

A Little Fellow Follows Me

A careful man I want to be,
A little fellow follows me;
I do not dare to go astray,
For fear he’ll go the self-same way.

I cannot once escape his eyes,
Whate’er he sees me do, he tries;
Like me he says he’s going to be,
This little chap who follows me.

He thinks that I am good and fine,
Believes in every word of mine;
The base in me he must not see,
This little chap who follows me.

I must remember as I go,
Through summer’s sun and winter’s snow;
I am building for the years to be.
That little chap who follows me.

So often, we want to teach our children to do this and that, or not do this or that. To be kind and righteous, to work hard, to avoid bad company, to have patience...

Endless nagging never seems to help. We don’t know if they understand our words—or are even listening. But they are always watching us. They need models more than they need critics.

We want our children to have a healthy relationship with technology. But are we scrolling Instagram on our phones over dinner?

We want them to be kind and helpful. But did we stop to help the old lady cross the road in the rain?

We want them to work hard. But can they see us working hard?

We want them to be polite. But how do we speak at home?

Remember: Whatever he sees you do, he tries.

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

Now that I can look back at that period with a clearer head and a little less fatigue, I see it as a blessing, too.

Of course, I would never want them to be that sick again. But since they started school, we haven’t spent that many full days together. If I could choose, I would rather have 10 days of vacation together. But when life gives us lemons, my son wants to taste them. So I give him a slice and we all laugh at his wincing expression. I remind myself that my children will never be this age again.

While I was worried about leaving my work behind, I came back with a refreshed perspective and realized I needed to change some things. Without the break, albeit involuntary, I would have continued going through the motions.

As Laura Ingalls Wilder said, “There is good in everything, if only we look for it.” She grew up in poverty because of her dad’s debt and poor business choices, lost her nine-month-old baby brother to acute diarrhea, and gave birth to a son who died after 12 days—among many other misfortunes. Yet she chose to focus on the positives, like her Pa’s fiddle music and her Ma’s grace.

I’ll be the first to admit parenting has challenged me and pushed me to my limits. But I also realized it’s sad to love our children so much and yet remember their childhood as a time of misery and frustration.

Whatever happened has already happened. But we can choose how we want to remember it.

P.S. Want to come back to this later? Keep it in your commonplace book.

As a father of two, I often ponder this. I grew up with, fell in love with, and became reliant on the internet and apps—sometimes a little too much. Now, it’s AI.

A few days ago, I felt that my multiple projects (field notes, weekly newsletter, and Fernsage) weren’t working that well together. I opened up the Claude iOS app and started chatting with it to refine my ideas. I appreciate being able to bounce ideas with someone (or something, in this case). But Claude’s responses weren’t getting me anywhere. Frustrated, I picked up a pen and scribbled in my notebook.

Unlike chatting with Claude, which allowed me to be vague and still get a response, the physical act of writing on a page forced me to be precise. As Sir Francis Bacon wrote, “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” It wasn’t like I solved my challenge immediately. But writing exposed gaps in my thinking, which I had to confront. You could write on a computer, too. I prefer the flexibility to write and draw on paper, without having to think about what apps to use.

In the end, even though I didn’t find the perfect solution, I made better progress on paper than with Claude. (If you are curious: I write for fathers who want to be better parents in this tech/AI world; field notes serve as daily reminders while newsletters go deeper. And I use Fernsage to collect relevant stories and quotes for my writing and myself, as a dad.)

Despite the convenience and wonder of new technologies, a pen and a notebook sometimes work better. Are you stuck on any problems that could be better solved by thinking on paper? Are you doing the work or outsourcing too much to AI?

What’s worse than a kid having HFMD?
Two kids having HFMD.

— Me, a dad

I looked up at the clock. It was only 8:30 am. My kids had been up for three hours, screaming, crying, and refusing to drink or eat. They had caught HFMD a few days earlier.

Hand, foot, and mouth disease. HFMD. Probably the four letters parents of little ones fear the most. My son caught it once when he was just eight months old. He barely drank for three days because the ulcers were giving him so much pain. Desperate, we tried frozen milk, yogurt, and even ice cream. It was two miserable weeks for him and for us.

We knew what was ahead for us. At least a week of crying, feeding troubles, and weight loss. On top of that, we would miss work, cancel activities, clean the house endlessly, and avoid contracting the disease ourselves. Everyone would be stuck at home, frustrated, annoying one another, and melting down.

I knew this too shall pass. But how do we deal with it when we are in the thick of it? When you are in the middle of a major project and you suddenly have to take care of sick kids for a week or two? When you are not only overwhelmed by worry but also frustration and fatigue? When it feels unfair this has to happen to you?

In the second century, Marcus Aurelius led a decade-long military campaign along the Danube River. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he also had to manage the devastating Antonine Plague sweeping across the empire. To deal with the stress, frustration, and anger, he wrote reminders to himself, often drawing on earlier philosophers like Epictetus. For instance, to remind himself not to take time for granted, he wrote:

Epictetus used to say that, as you kissed your child, you should say in your heart: ‘to-morrow maybe you will die’. ‘Those are words of ill omen.’ ‘No,’ he replied, ​’nothing that means an act of Nature is of evil omen, or it would be a bad omen to say that the corn has been reaped.’

While that might sound extreme, it was a harsh reality for him. He and his wife Faustina had at least 13 children, and fewer than half lived to adulthood. Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about such a high mortality rate nowadays. But we should never forget how fragile life can be.

This practice is known as hypomnēmata. The practitioner collects quotes from books he read or conversations he heard. Every day, he opens his notebook, finds passages relevant to his current struggles, and meditates on them. Reviewing the passages and keeping them top of mind daily helps him reframe his current circumstances and inspires him to act in the way he wishes to. It is kind of like watching Top Gun and feeling inspired to be courageous. But the effect fades, so you watch a different action movie each day.

One of the first passages I meditated on this week was from Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life?:

In the words of Andy Grove: “To understand a company’s strategy, look at what they actually do rather than what they say they will do.” Resource allocation works pretty much the same way in our lives and careers.

I have been writing about wanting to be a great dad. Have I been living up to it? Have I been doing the hard long-term work and being with my children when they need me the most? Have I been patient and understanding while they are sick? Have I been regulating my own emotions and anger, especially when my children are upset and throwing tantrums?

My son hates me brushing his teeth. I usually coax him patiently, but I wasn’t at my best when I was short on sleep. I insisted he brush his teeth even though he was sick. I almost lost it, but I caught myself. It dawned on me that it must be extra painful to have his teeth brushed when he has ulcers in his mouth.

When I wanted to complain that my situation was unfair, I meditated on Charlie Munger’s advice to not wallow in our misfortunes:

I had a friend who carried a thick stack of linen-based cards. When someone would make a comment that reflected self-pity, he would slowly and portentously pull out his huge stack of cards, take the top one, and hand it to the person. The card said, “Your story has touched my heart. Never have I heard of anyone with as many misfortunes as you.”

Well, you can say that’s waggery, but I suggest that every time you find you’re drifting into self-pity—I don’t care what the cause, your child could be dying of cancer, self-pity is not going to improve the situation—just give yourself one of those cards. It’s a ridiculous way to behave and when you avoid it you get a great advantage over everybody else, almost everybody else, because self-pity is a standard condition and yet you can train yourself out of it.

Charlie Munger was left with almost nothing after a divorce, and then lost his 9-year-old son to leukemia. (What is HFMD in comparison?) Yet he believed one shouldn’t let a single blow become worse through wallowing. He cited Epictetus’s view that every unfair setback is an opportunity to behave well and learn something new.

I expected to get more and more frustrated as the week went on. I’m more tired for sure, but I’m handling each meltdown a little better. Each tantrum was (and still is) a chance to practice patience and empathy. (Of course, I’d be glad for easier practice scenarios but this is supposed to be hard.)

When I worried about neglecting my business and writing, I thought of Anna Quindlen’s A Short Guide to a Happy Life:

Don’t ever confuse the two, your life and your work. That’s what I have to say. The second is only a part of the first. Don’t ever forget what a friend once wrote to Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator had decided not to run for reelection because he’d been diagnosed with cancer: “No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office.”

In How Will You Measure Your Life, Clayton Christensen also wrote:

[my classmates who inadvertently invested in lives of hollow happiness] prioritized things that gave them immediate returns—such as a promotion, a raise, or a bonus—rather than the things that require long-term work, the things that you won't see a return on for decades, like raising good children.

I wrote that I want to prioritize my family and build my business around them. Have I lived up to that commitment? But also, when the kids finally fall asleep, do I watch Netflix or write?

This week has tested my commitment. Thankfully I work for myself, so I can drop everything to be home for my kids. I still wanted to keep writing, so I have written several field notes and this newsletter when the kids slept, albeit more hurriedly than I’d have liked.

I’m certainly not a perfect dad. One moment I’m marveling at how big my son is and how loving he is to his little sister. Next moment I’m pulling my hair out wondering why he has to melt down and cry over seemingly little things. There are moments when I wonder if I’ll make it to the end of the week (and whether the illness will end then).

What I love about hypomnēmata is it doesn’t require me to be perfect. In fact, by doing it, I’m acknowledging that I’m not perfect and that I’m working on it.

I don’t know when this will end. My kids are still sick, and I’m drained.

But I know I’ll open my notebook tomorrow and meditate on another passage.

Hello fellow dads—after almost two years of procrastination, I finally set up subscriptions for my Substack. It costs less than a cup of coffee. If you want to support my writing and be early members of a father-founder community, subscribe here to get 20% off. As a bonus, I’m offering to do a 30-minute video chat with October subscribers.

What bedtime taught me about patience

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance. — Franklin P. Jones

It was 9:30 pm. I had been lying in my son’s room for about an hour—after reading to him for half an hour. Yet he was refusing to sleep. As I watched the clock tick closer and closer to my own bedtime, I grew more and more frustrated. “That’s it,” I declared, “if you don’t want to sleep, I’m going out.” I stomped out of the room, and he burst out in tears. It wasn’t my proudest moment. I felt both irritated and guilty at the same time.

I read about creatives and entrepreneurs working a second shift after their children go to bed. Nicholas Sparks was a traveling pharmaceutical salesman when he wrote the novel The Notebook. He wrote from 9 pm to midnight, three to four days a week, after his two small children went to bed. But by the time my son is asleep and I can finally emerge from the dark cave, I’m all cranky and too tired to do anything. I’m frustrated, annoyed, and grumpy.

Just a few days earlier, I read a dad’s comment in r/daddit: “Oh man. I tucked in my sleeping four year old boy the other day and, when he was covered, stood and marveled at how beautiful he was. It brought me to tears.” I felt ashamed. Where is the loving father I’m proud to be? What’s so hard about lying down with my son? I suspect my frustration came from two things: One, losing the precious evening in a dark room. Two, being uncertain about whether I’ll have time to hang out with my wife or do more work before my bedtime. I doubt my three-year-old refuses to sleep to annoy me. But I often wish I could speed up time and skip this phase. Maybe things will just get better. This too shall pass, right?

Mencius told a story of a farmer in the state of Song who was anxious that his crops were not growing fast enough. After a long day at the farm, he returned home and boasted to his family, “I’m worn out but I helped the seedlings grow!” Worried, his son ran to the farm and discovered, to his horror, that the plants had all withered. The farmer spent the entire day pulling every single sprout up by a few inches. Some things cannot be rushed. We all learned that lesson before we became dads: However eager we are to meet our little ones, pregnancy takes nine months.

There’s a famous saying of Confucius, 欲速则不达, which loosely translates to “if you wish for speed, you will never arrive.” His disciple had just become a magistrate and came to him for advice. Knowing that his disciple was ambitious, he cautioned him not to rush to show results. His advice can also be applied to parenting and bedtime. My son will not fall asleep faster because I rush him. In fact, it will be the opposite. The more I rush, the less sleepy he will be, and the more frustrated I will become. Nobody falls asleep faster by rushing.

But how do I make peace with that while having all that pent-up frustration boiling in me? A slight poke from my son, innocent as it might be, will make this volcano erupt and shoot lava everywhere. Even though my dad friends deem me the most patient in the group, I’m an active volcano with several recent eruptions.

When I melted down before my son did, I was demanding that he act like a wise adult while I acted like a child. If I, at 34, cannot control my emotions, how can I expect my 3-year-old son to master his emotions? I’m skeptical that any parent can be perfectly patient and has never lost his cool before. But we all try. We try to make it an exception rather than the rule. If I want my son to learn to regulate his emotions, I have to show him how to behave in tough situations. I have to be the wise adult.

Again, I found some guidance from Confucianism. Confucianism advocates for 德 (de), virtue and moral character. Confucius said, “If you try to guide the common people with coercive regulations and keep them in line with punishments, the common people will become evasive and will have no sense of shame. If, however, you guide them with Virtue, and keep them in line by means of ritual, the people will have a sense of shame and will rectify themselves.” Isn’t parenting leadership of our children? We can use punishments, or we can lead them by example. We can use bedtime to practice patience and to demonstrate self-regulation. (Fun fact: my Chinese name is 勇德 (Yong De); how can I not practice it!)

An unlock for me is realizing I can hate the behavior but still love my son. Bad behavior isn’t him but a window into him. Then, instead of treating him as the problem, I should consider us to be on the same side. How can we solve the problem together? Even before that, what is the problem?

Eager to resolve this once and for all, I had jumped to solutions even before defining the problem. Some parents swear by Yoto players, proclaiming how the tiny radios captured their children’s attention and freed up their evenings. I found the silver bullet! I excitedly bought one for my son’s third birthday and waited for that day, and night, to arrive. On that fateful night, my son told me... to throw it away. Pfff.

While reading How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen, I realized my mistake. Every kid is different. (So is every parent.) For every parent who loudly swore by Yoto players on the internet, there is probably another parent who quietly cursed at it and chucked it on the shelf. Our problem is he wants my company while I want my precious hour before bed. A Yoto player, while mesmerizing, isn’t me. My son wants me! (When I actually sit with that, it makes my heart full.)

I wish I can tell you I found the perfect solution, and we all live (and sleep) happily ever after. I’m currently iterating through a list of experiments, with various degrees of success:

• I leave the room without explaining. This is the worst; he will bawl his eyes out (understandably).

• I lie on a bed beside his cot in the dark until he falls asleep, and then I creep out. He is probably the happiest with this approach. But because this can take an hour or more, I’m usually frustrated at the lost time. Sometimes I doze off before him, and when I finally realize I have fallen asleep and get out of the room, I can barely do anything but head to bed.

• I tell him I’m going to brush my teeth and I’ll come back to check on him. I brush my teeth and return in about 5-10 minutes and lie down in his room. I slowly extend the duration until he falls asleep while waiting. But he asks many questions and has many requests in between, and he gets rather upset the next day that I never returned.

This past Monday, I started my latest experiment: I told him I’d sit outside his room, with the door open, and read my book. I didn’t know how he would respond to it, but I thought it was worth a try. Surprisingly, he seemed fine with it. On the first night, he even offered me his favorite pink chair! On the second and third nights, he fussed and wanted to sit with me instead. I refrained from getting angry and insisted, with no visible emotion, that he stay in his cot while I read outside. Eventually, he accepted it. I had always wanted total darkness to help him fall asleep faster, but I made a compromise because I needed some light to read. He could see me if he stood up in his cot, but he wanted me to read out loud. I was reading How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen, so I thought it wasn’t a bad idea for him to listen in. My throat got really dry, so I spoke softer and softer, and then stopped. When he asked, “Papa, why are you not saying the words?” I patiently explained myself, and he accepted it. This still took about an hour, and I was on the verge of erupting a few times. But he got my company while I got to read.

Isn’t all this song and dance excessive for something we do every night? I don’t disagree. But to me, it is also a cocktail of patience, self-regulation, problem-solving, and willingness to try and fail. Until I can simply tuck my son in bed, marvel at how beautiful he is, and leave his room, I’ll slowly sip this little cocktail.

(I don’t even like drinking.)

What is your children’s bedtime routine like? What works best for you? Tell me your stories!

Actual bedtime routines from other parents

I hate people telling me how to parent. But I found it helpful to hear stories from other parents and then decide for myself which methods to try.

If you are struggling with bedtime, I compiled a list of bedtime routines shared by my parent-friends, other parents in How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen, and dads on Reddit. Examples from the book have names.

Remember, every child is unique. Parents have different preferences and tolerance levels, too.

Read more

Hello readers — I have another major Fernsage update to share before we get to this week’s dad essay:

I want your commonplace book to feel truly yours. You can now customize the theme of your book, including the accent, background color, roundedness, and fonts. If the price is stopping you from trying Fernsage, email me!

On fixing taps, and fatherhood

My father once drilled into a water pipe while installing a new rack in his storeroom. He calmly turned off the water supply, hacked off a piece of the wall, replaced the leaking water pipe, and plastered the wall hole. I remember thinking: Oh, you can just do that?

Another time, we fixed a clogged toilet together. We used a plumber’s snake, upgraded with an electric drill, to loosen whatever was stuck. Then, we picked out the debris (well, things covered with shit) with our hands.

Oh, you can just do that?

Since becoming a father myself, I have been thinking about how my father can fix anything in the house. Building a room, changing an LED strip, and pretty much anything about cars. He has been running his car workshop for almost 40 years.

Will my children think the same about me?

Nowadays, hiring a handyman takes only a few taps. Fixing things myself makes less and less sense... until I realized:

Fixing things is more than getting them fixed. It’s about knowing I can.

After I moved into my own place, I had a leaking kitchen tap. While I used to rely on my father, I was determined to deal with this myself. So, I went to a hardware store, bought a new kitchen tap, and replaced it. I proudly told my dad. He looked at me and said, “You could have just changed the cartridge.” I didn’t even know there was a cartridge inside! Since then, I have fixed loose taps, blown cove lights, and a leaking bidet spray. Sometimes, I do small maintenance, like washing the air-conditioner filters. But however small, it’s about being comfortable with opening up the appliances rather than assuming only “professionals” can touch them. Where I’m not as experienced as my dad, I turn to YouTube and Gemini for help.

As a cyclist, I also learned to replace several bike parts myself and to bring spares and tools when I head out. When I’m on the road alone with a flat, I can get upset at the abrupt end of my ride and flag a cab to ferry me home... or I can just replace that damn tube myself and continue cycling!

It’s the same when it comes to running a business, especially doing it solo. LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman said, “Starting a company is like jumping off a cliff and assembling a plane on the way down.” I launched Fernsage about two months ago. It wasn’t perfect, but I knew I had to put it out there first and then fix and improve it along the way. (So if you want to record ideas, quotes, and information for later use, please try Fernsage and share your feedback!) Then, there’s also the small stuff. Just this week, my Gmail stopped working, and I couldn’t receive emails. So, I dug into the DNS and realized I missed a step when transferring my domain between providers and switching name servers. With the help of Gemini and Google, I fixed it.

Recently, my toilet lock broke. I removed a few screws and took out the lock but didn’t know how to approach it. My father popped by for dinner, so I got him to help. He didn’t know if he could fix it. But he took it apart anyway. I watched in horror but reasoned, at worst, I could get someone to replace the entire door.

He carefully disassembled the lock down to its individual components so that he knew how to put them back together. He eventually discovered a tiny component with two little forks had broken. It wasn’t something he could easily fix right there and then, so he suggested I call up some hardware stores for a replacement lock. A few days later, when I told him the stores didn’t carry this custom lock, he figured he could weld the pieces back together himself. He did that at his workshop and came back to fix the lock.

That’s when I understood. He couldn’t fix everything. He just wasn’t afraid to try.

My father never sat me down to teach me any of this. He just went about trying, failing, learning, fixing. I learned from watching him. One fix after another. For more than 30 years.

I can’t fix things as well as he can. But if my children see me try enough, at home and for my business, maybe they will pick it up, too.

Originally published at: https://alfredlua.com/newsletters/fixing-taps