Fatherhood - The Longest Feedback Loop

Up until fatherhood everything we as men face in life is measurable and with a short /instant feedback loop.

Education - study hard, get college admission?

Job - good college and grades, great job opportunities

Career - meet targets, good career growth?

As we grow all our resource allocation - time, energy, effort - is primed to get instant feedback in terms of results. Then comes fatherhood, the longest feedback loop in a man's life. A job we hold for life with a singular goal of moulding our child(ren) into the best person they can be.

The uncertainty starts from day 1.

Am I holding this tiny little thing right??

Am I spending enough??

Am I too strict, too lenient??

Am I a good father, good husband??

Given the way we are primed to think, act and focus our energy on immediate outcomes in our work lives. We start measuring ourselves as parents with any and every discernible marker - walking, talking, eating, schooling - of the child’s progress to measure our performance as parents.?

This is not only counterproductive and takes away the joy of being a dad, but also adds to the stress of having to balance work and family responsibilities.?

While most of us are familiar with Clayton Christensen as a guru of disruptive innovation, in his essay ‘After 25 years studying innovation, here is what I have learned’ he has interesting observations on family too.

‘Don’t reserve your best self only for your career’ (Clayton Christensen)?

Your decisions about where and how you allocate your resources — time, energy, and talent — ultimately shape your life’s strategy. For me, there are many things that compete for these resources: I’m trying to have a rewarding relationship with my wife and five children, contribute to my community, succeed in my career, contribute to my church, and so on. And I have exactly the same problem that a corporation does. How much do I devote to each of these pursuits?

Allocation choices can make your life turn out to be very different from what you intended. Sometimes that’s good: Opportunities that you never planned for emerge. But if you make poor choices about how to invest your resources, the outcome can be bad. When people who have a high need for achievement have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they often unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale, get paid or promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your friends and family typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids, for instance, misbehave every day, and it’s not until 20 odd years later that you can say, “I raised a good kid.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers — even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

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This fatherhood journey with its long and uneven feedback loop is hard, and gets harder in the age of quantified self and constant need to measure.?

But the joy in fatherhood is as much in the journey as it is in the outcome, and as with all journeys good companions make journeys memorable. Share, learn, lean on, provide a shoulder to fellow dads and enjoy the longest game as a team sport :)