Two Of The Most Important Decisions I Have Ever Made

This week marks perhaps the most important milestone in my life.

My youngest son will finish junior school.

If you know me, you will know that I have spent the last 20+ years obsessed with decision making.

And what I’ve learned comes down to the thing that my son’s teacher said she shouted while running after him.

“Make good choices”

If you have young children, pre-school, perhaps, here are two pieces of advice that I will never have cause to regret.

The first comes from a blog post I read by Tim Urban of WaitButWhy.

He wrote that people don’t realise that by the time we turn 18 and leave home for the next stage of our adult lives we’ve spent 93% of all the in-person time we’ll spend with our parents. It’s already the tail end of your time together.

If your kids are 3, that’s 15 more summers. 15 holidays if you go away somewhere with them once a year, before they pull away from you.

I am quite tight, but it was a simple decision to say we should at least do two experiences a year. More if possible. Double or triple our stock of memories with the kids.

Not expensive stuff. It’s not about money. It’s about having more time with your children.

The second thing is that if you put work first you’ll miss the first 10 years of your kids’ lives as well.

Leave at 7.30, come back at 7 and do that for long enough, and the years will go by. And you’ll miss really important stuff. You’ll miss them growing up.

I tried very hard to construct the kind of working life where I could move from commuting every day to being at home.

I’ve managed to have around 6 years of walking my kids to school. Six years of four minutes twice a day. Walking up and down, hand in hand.

One day, as comedian John Bishop said, one day they’ll let go of your hand and never hold it again.

And it ends this week.

But I was there for it.

These two decisions will be, as far as I am concerned, the best choices I ever made.

And if you are in that stage of life, with children that are still young, I would strongly advise that you consider making them too.