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.

Look, some of my fondest memories are building stuff over in my grandfather's garage, building models with my dad,

Pinewood Derby, little science experiments.

Those are the things that you remember.

You don't remember the TV shows that you watched or the movies you watch.

I mean, maybe you do a little bit, but it's those sort of practical and grossing activities

that I think back on my childhood, and I'm just so glad I

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It's amazing for them. You're tired, you're strapped for time, you're being asked to do an

impossible amount. That's what parenting is these days and so, so much more. It can be thankless.

It's tough. It pushes you in ways that you never could have imagined. Should it really surprise us that people are having fewer kids or that some people are deciding not to have them at all? In a recent podcast, Ezra Klein pushed back a little bit, though, on the calculation that parenting is supposed to be awesome for parents. It is amazing that my children

get to experience life, he said, not because it makes my life better in every respect, though I can

talk about the ways that it does. He says, but it's because their lives are precious things.

And my parents gave up a lot to have me here. And my life has been a precious

thing to me and on and on backwards down that line. So this isn't to say that we're just vessels

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