If the kids are being particularly tough, and you feel the frustration rising, imagine that you actually traveled back in time from 20 years in the future. You get to re-live this moment with your kids. It helps put things in perspective.

When I was a bartender, I overheard a guy say to his buddy, “Your kids don’t give a fuck about your day or your hassles. They want a dad that cares about their day.”

Always stuck with me.

“to remember that we always judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge everybody else on their actions and to take that into consideration”

Never walk backwards on a construction site. Always turn, walk forward, and turn back around. Even if it’s only one step, the amount of people I’ve seen trip over is crazy high.

I’ve been in I-T for a long time, and I’ve learned from the good bosses almost as much as I’ve learned from the bad ones.

One of my best managers, though, the kind you’d walk through fire for, left me with this gem about work-life balance and especially downtime and taking breaks:

There’s never a good time. Do it anyway.

It’s so simple, and points out what we know about being vital vs being irreplaceable, getting your downtime, getting the hell away from work for a while, etc.

“The days are long, but the years are short.”

When you’re in the thick of it, the days can grind. You are left exhausted and irritable. It’s very easy to hide on your phone etc.

When you look back, those times have flown by. They will never be a baby again, that was all the time with them you will ever get, in that stage. The same for being a toddler etc.

You have a short window to build a lifetime of memories, in each age range. Don’t waste it.