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.

What are you playing for?

It can be hard in the moment to think of anything else. You have lunches

to make, practices to get to, birthday parties to plan, work to do, childhoods to survive. Having kids

is so overwhelming that your ability to conceive of two weeks from now, let alone the future, is

severely compromised. This isn't an entirely bad thing. It's good to be in the moment, to not get

too far ahead of

yourself. But at the same time, you do need to make sure that you consider more than just this

moment. The baseball player Anthony Rendon has talked about how he's needed to balance optimizing,

not just for his professional career, but for his goals as a parent. Even if the season doesn't

work out or the next four years don't work out, he said recently, I'm planning for taking care of my kids when they get older. Hip surgeries, wrist surgeries, ankle surgeries, I want to play with them when they're 10, 12, 15 years old. You've got to make sure that your short-term decisions. I'm too tired to go to the gym. These pills help me sleep, these are my peak earning years, don't come at the expense of your long-term goals. We've talked about how the end of your life you'll judge your success based on how much time your kids want to spend with you. Well, amidst the busyness and all you have to get done now, are you making decisions that are conducive to that?

Physically, like, are you going to be around for that?

And more figuratively, are you making the deposits and building the connections necessary for

that to happen?

If Rendon extends his plan career for a few years, but it comes at the expense of being

able to ride bikes with his teenagers or lift up his grandchildren, it'll likely consider it a bad bargain, even if it increases his net worth.

So it goes for us with our own career and lifestyle choices.

Hey, you're listening to a Daily Dad podcast, one meditation a day inspired to help you do your most important job, which is be a great father.

These are meditations inspired by ancient wisdom, psychological research, and just great strategies from normal dads just like you.

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