What is your main task?

My daughter cut herself with my razor and started bleeding and my emotionally charged reaction to that had ripple effects in her the next day.

I wrote a more stylistic piece about it on medium for those that like prose, but this is LinkedIn. We get to the point and like insights amIright? THIS IS LINKEDIN where we derive lessons in B2B sales from proposing to our future partners!

A story in three paragraphs:

After a sleep-deprived night with my newborn, I woke up to an older daughter who was feeling very mischievous and demanding of my attention. To make matters worse, I had planned quite a few household projects that day ("organize shed" has been on my to-do list for months....) The whole day, whenever I would want to get started on my projects, my daughter wouldn't allow me. She would make a mess, spill something, or just "get in the way" of me trying to complete my tasks.

This continued all day and by the time and by the time when her bedtime drew nearer, the day had been "wasted." I didn't get anything done, Mariela had served a few time-out sentences, and neither of us were having fun. I decided to call it a day and put her bed early. In my sleep-deprived zombie state, I somehow missed that she had grabbed my razor and watched her playfully mimic me and shave off a tiny chunk of her nose. We both exploded: my daughter in pain and I in anger. My visceral reaction was to raise my voice and reprimand her to show her the seriousness of her actions. 'NO, NO,NO!" I yelled while pointing to the razor.

The next day, I was rushing through a breakfast run for my family one morning and my daughter fell and scraped her hand. I thought nothing of it until I saw my little girl hitting her hand and yelling at her self "NO NO NO!" I then realized she was now mimicking how I treated her and reprimanding her self. This really hurt because I've been overly self-critical all my life and I was witnessing my daughter inheriting this unwelcome trait of mine. I knew then that this was directly a cause of the way I angrily reacted the night before and had to course correct.

Parenting reflection:

Children are mirrors of ourselves. If we don’t like what we see, it is often a reflection of our own unwanted behavior. I’ve been overly self-critical all my life. Now that I’m a father, this is no longer a personal flaw, it’s now a trait that I am at risk of handing down to my two daughters. I don't want that for them. I want them to be reasonable and kind with themselves. So I have to be reasonable and kind with myself too.

Productivity reflection:

In being pulled in two directions and trying to multi-tasked, I did neither. There are times for knocking out the to-do list, and there are times for fully committed quality time with our children. On that day, and more often than we'd like to admit as busy professionals, the task of the day is to raise our children. This means giving them our full, undistracted, and intentional presence. I plan to provide tips on how to balance this, but it's up to each of us as parents to set the intention and commit to being the parents we desire to be.

Spending time with our children is not unproductive. They are not in the way of getting things done. Raising them properly is what we need to get done. By not practicing this, I unknowingly passed on one of my most unwanted traits, being too hard on myself.

My shed is still unorganized, I moved out that task to August. However, my daughter's nose is healed and I'm working on being kinder and more reasonable to both of us. More on this to follow, but I'm treating this as one of my Q2 strategic objectives. You thought you'd finish this article without reading the words "strategic objective?" Come on! This IS LinkedIn after all amiright?!