Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast, where we provide one lesson every single day to help you with your most important job, being a parent.

I'm Ryan Holiday, and I draw these lessons from ancient philosophy, modern psychology, practical wisdom, and insights from

parents just like you all over the world. Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

Cherish the garbage time. It's one of those lines we throw out casually. I want to spend more

quality time, whether it's with friends, with family, with your kids, or with yourself. We think that

everything has to be special and elaborate and worthy of a photo on Instagram. And we project big

expectations and put enormous pressure on ourselves to provide these moments of of a photo on Instagram. And we project big expectations

and put enormous pressure on ourselves

to provide these moments and experiences for our kids.

We save and plan for elaborate vacations.

We anticipate for months and months in advance

this big to do or that one.

And when inevitably it isn't as special or elaborate or photo-worthy,

we feel awful, like not enough, like we haven't done enough. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld,

who has three kids, put it well when he pushed back against all of this quality time nonsense.

I'm a believer in the ordinary and the mundane, he said. These guys that talk about quality time.

I always find that a little sad when they say, we have quality time. I don't want quality time.

I want the garbage time. That's what I like. You just see them in their room reading a comic book

and you get to kind of watch that for a minute.

Or it's having a bowl of Cheerios at 11 o'clock at night when they're not even supposed to be up.

The garbage. That's what I love. Special days? No, every day is special. Every minute can be quality time.

All time with your kids. All time with anyone you love is created equal. What you do with it is what makes it special. Not where, for how long,

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