Becoming a father just started getting really real for me. Our friend Judy, whom we were visiting when I got Lily pregnant (also whom we joking blame for our pregnancy saying that it's contagious and Lily caught it from her) just gave birth a few days ago. When we heard the news we were so excited and happy for her, especially since we've been following her blog about her pregnancy and Lily's been chatting with her about it throughout. Then a little bit after the excitement, it hit me that, holy crap, this is us in 3-4 months. Up until now, becoming a father has been somewhat of an intangible concept, something that will come sometime in the future, but not just yet. Our lives have changed a little bit, but not too significantly, even though Lily's body is changing drastically. But hearing the news that Judy just gave birth and seeing the photos online of someone who was basically in the same situation we were in up until a few days ago, made the concept of become a parent so much closer and so real I could almost hold it in my hands. I talked with Lily a bit about this and she basically feels the same too, that it was still just a concept until we heard our friends good news, and now it's reality.
And as such, I'm finally having the reactions that people have been expecting, such as freaking out. I have no idea what idea what I'm doing and no clue about being a father. I don't know how to hold a baby, or change diapers, or how to feed her, or how to make sure she grows up to be a good person. I have all these ideas and concepts in my head of how we should raise our daughter and what kind of life we'll lead, but in reality I'm completely lost. I've also been really busy at work these past few weeks so I haven't had much time to dwell on this, which I'm not sure is a good or bad thing. I think the best advice I've gotten so far, (from Fio who has two daughters) is that no amount of preparation will prepare me to be a father. Basically I'm not going to be ready to be a father until I actually am a father and no amount of advice, books or classes is going to change that. I've just got to roll with the punches as they come, and the only way I'll learn to be a father is by being one. Realizing this makes me feel a little bit better, but I'm still wigging out.
Finally I've always hated complaining without doing something about it, so one thing I've decided to do is try to organize my life better and be more efficient at getting things done. I don't know what I'm actually going to do when our daughter arrives, but I do know that we'll have a lot less time and a lot more stuff to get done. So one thing I can do to prepare for the coming unknowns is to figure out how to be more efficient. To that end I'm trying out a new time management system invented by David Allen called "Getting Things Done" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done). I haven't actually read his book on this so I don't know all the details and intricacies of it but I've formed a basic understanding through the internet and Google. It's a system developed a few years ago that's been steadily gaining popularity in tech circles. One of the basis of it is that our brain's reminder system is terribly inefficient, and that we try so hard to remember the things that we need to get done we don't have any energy left to do it. The key then is to externalize or distribute this reminder system, such as by writing down all the tasks. The reason why it's so popular with the tech crowd (and hence me) is that it utilizes technology to offload the reminder system, freeing our brains to actually get stuff done. So the 10,000 feet overview of it is that you enter in all the things you need to do into a piece of a technology that then presents it back to you in an organized and focused manner letting you do your tasks without having to spend all the mental energy to remember them.
In a little bit more detail, the system as I understand it is (tempered by my use of Omnifocus as my technological GTD tool of choice):
1. Do a brain dump and write down the tasks you need to get done (this is on a continuous basis, so when something new comes up write it down)
2. Do a weekly review were you classify/prioritize your tasks into projects and contexts, where a project is a group of tasks that accomplish a specific goal and a context is a localization of tasks (projects can span multiple contexts and vice versa). So an example of a project is "Set up investment plan" and an example of a context is "Phone calls".
3. Whatever system you're using should then present you a focused list of things that you need to get done by context/availability/priority/due date so that you can look at it and pick tasks to do.
4. Also whenever you're doing something you should look at your context to see if you can get anymore tasks in the context done. Say you're about to make some phone calls, look at your "Phone calls" context and see if you can knock a few more of those out.
I've been trying this system out for the past few days and I think it's helping. I've managed to get a few more errands done that I probably would have otherwise forgotten about (such as rebates on a few things I bought). I'll update after a few more weeks to see if this is just a knee jerk reaction to the realization that I'm going to be a parent and an excuse to feel like I'm doing something to prepare or if this is a system that will really make me more efficient.
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