Once you have children, everything changes. I went from having 5+ hours of free time each day to -5 hours of free time every day. You have to get super efficient with everything in your life. Cut out the things that aren't the most important things. Kids (especially when they're between 0-7 years old) take up an enormous amount of energy and focus.

You'll learn tricks to improve your performance and squeeze more time into the day. But the biggest thing that's worked most for me is staying up later than I normally would prefer. I get a few extra hours for passion projects and still get everything in the day accomplished that I'm required to accomplish.

It's a tough slog. Immensely rewarding, but tough. Prepare yourself for the change in advance so that you don't go through the massive shock I experienced.

I have high hopes that the time I'm investing in my kids will not only benefit them, but long term will benefit me as well.

At 5 my oldest son is doing a lot of small chores around the house. He just passed the tipping point of where I can spend less time giving him directions than it would have taken for me to just do the job myself. I see this scaling over time.

A part of the "playing" that I do with him is building and repairing stuff around the home. He loves it. It takes much longer to complete anything that if I was just doing it myself, but I'm doubling up "play" and "chores" so it works out. For things that he can't help with I try to outsource.

I like some of the ideas of past generations who often viewed kids as resources.

I don't mean to offend, but have you considered what your child might think of you when they grow a bit older and find this comment?

They'll probably thank him for raising him well, and teaching him/her the value of a good work ethic, rather than being spoiled and lazy.

Ideally he won't think anything of it because I've spent so much time with him we're working side by side building his first business by that point.

I'd be careful, the more expectation you load onto a child, the more they push back in the teen years.

Quite true; and it's oddly frustrating to me to notice how much time the pre-kids version of me wasted.

There should be a way to borrow someone else's kids for 6 months or so, force yourself to carve the waste out of your life... and then wait another decade before having your own kids.

Hah, I would have paid for that service. :)