The Great Juggle: Surviving Fatherhood, Work, and Everything In Between

How Ambitious Dads Are Navigating the Impossible Balancing Act of Modern Life

July 19, 2024 - Its been a month. I hoped to write each week but sometimes the balancing act (like the one I’m writing about below) tips too far in one direction. So I’ve drafted, I’ve plodded, but I couldn’t finish. I guess this is the part of becoming a good writer that we all have to work through. I’ve got two (big!) workshops on fatherhood and leadership coming up, too. So stay tuned by reading my articles. Hope everyone is having a wonderful start to summer - Jeff

When the lockdown began my wife was 8 months pregnant with our second child in the worst affected area of the US, New York City. We had a 3 year old that needed constant attention, and we both were struggling with our jobs. My wife, who led HR at a small financial consulting firm, had to manage layoffs while wanting to quit work just a few weeks before her maternity leave. The stress of the end of the pregnancy and the uncertainty of COVID was not kind. I was desperate to keep my business afloat, which until that time was 100% in-person leadership coaching and training, and to support my family. Balancing things felt impossible. Literally four of our most fundamental needs were being demanded simultaneously: safety, health, happiness and livelihood. 

We all went through some version of this stress in March of 2020. Yet today, finding balance is still the top challenge among the 50+ Ambitious Dads I have interviewed. “There are competing demands for my time and my energy. I like the work. I run the business. The struggle is how to give attention to everything including my emotional energy. I also want time for myself for exercise, and that feels selfish to ask for when I travel so much for work,” explained father, husband and Managing Director James Boddy. 

“I feel like I’m balancing a constant sense of disappointment because there are always things I am not doing that I wish I could, and I can get preoccupied with these,” shared Scott Klausner.

“There’s no way to do it all. You can’t be the person that takes your clients out for drinks and tucks your children in.” explained a father of 2 and CEO of a $200 million organization. “When you’re doing executive-type work it’s stressful. You need downtime.”

Join the club (says my wife)

This impossible balancing act is not news to mothers, of course. They have struggled with this reality long before us. They’ve also created a few better resources and a loose culture of support for themselves to try and tolerate the emotional rollercoaster. As I’ve written previously, many of us are, through fatherhood, learning about our own emotional regulation while simultaneously experiencing every emotion under the sun every. single. day. So we’re coming to grips with these emotional waves while trying to balance an ever growing list of core priorities. And it’s exhausting. 

So what are we feeling?

Emotionally, the balancing act so many Ambitious Dads have described to me centers around 5 emotions: guilt, stress, fatigue and fear, and love. There are more, but these capture the major themes. Before diving into them, let’s acknowledge that these are big emotions. They stretch us. And most are not energizing. This is hard work.

Guilt: I could be doing more for  ______ (my team, my boss, my partner, my child, my parents, my chatGPT persona, etc.)  I care deeply about everything I am trying to juggle and my wish would be that there was more space to focus on each thing. But there isn’t enough time - especially with my children! And with the little time I’ve got, I rarely feel like I’m prepared to engage with them in the best possible way. Ugh.

Stress: I’ve got this critical project due / projections to review / my oldest needs to go to the dentist this week / my wife has to travel for work on Wednesday and Thursday / I need to feed everyone tonight. Our list expands each week and is rarely consistent and it means we rarely feel on top of anything.

Fear: I just verbally exploded at my son. I am my worst dad self. Instead of thinking about all the wonderful ways I connect with my children, I ruminate on my worst moments (when I lose my temper after minute 10 of a tantrum, for instance). As involved dads with few role models we have a lot to learn and often get stuck in our imperfections rather than connecting with our best selves as dads.

Fatigue: I am primary parent this week and I’ve got a Board meeting. I put the kids to bed, do more work, and wake up before everyone to do even more. I am exhausted, physically and mentally. And I’m getting skilled at adding more guilt to the day by recognizing the need to carve out time to decompress but not figuring out a way to do it! 

Love: Our balancing act isn’t all landmines. I felt so much connection and joy from my family when we went for ice cream after dinner / wrestled on the bed till my exhausted back gave out. These moments propel us forward. They are part of the antidote.

So now what?

The challenge with the balancing act is that it doesn’t stop. “The sooner we realize that juggling all the glass balls perfectly is impossible, the sooner we can find a little peace,” suggests Chief Development Officer Leo Martellotto. “There are some spheres you must never let hit the ground and break, but others can. You need to be attuned to that.”

Here are a few tools, by no means an exhaustive list, that many of the Ambitious Dads I interviewed use to tackle their high wire balancing act challenges:

Over communication: When I don’t share that I’m struggling, it just comes out as little digs. “I guess I’ll take care of the dinner, dishes and bath time again.” Or more strangely, “Can you just get off Instagram, WTF!” When we started working harder to communicate our overwhelmedness - before it bubbled into resentment - we supported one-another better. The burden definitely feels smaller when we do.

Beware of the false narrative. “There is this belief,” Vikenti Kumanikin explains, “that if you say no to specific situations at work in order to be there with your kids, it will lead to big losses in terms of your growth. This was not true for me. Ignoring one workshop, one meeting, one travel wasn’t going to change my trajectory. It would have been better to be with my kids. I overemphasized the importance of specific work events and activities.” What false beliefs about some of the things we juggle are we holding onto too tightly?

Setting priorities: “Your tough decisions are never good vs bad but good vs good. So you need to establish clear priorities. When I had my son, he was my priority. Knowing and declaring it, alleviated the stress about decision making. And your priorities can shift. When my son was young I prioritized him and turned down opportunities to be a medical partner. As he has gotten older, I have sought out that opportunity.” explained anesthesiologist James Garas.

Self care and support: I don’t work out for the six pack (well, maybe to drink it). I work out so I can literally wrestle on the bed with my boys. I need the energy to connect with my kids because for me, exhausted family time is not family time. I’ve written about why self care and asking for support can be so hard for us dads here. And we have options, especially when we have financial means. As Ambitious Dad Tom Gray put it, “at one point, our kids thought DoorDash was how dinner was made.”  

We are not alone!

These are just a few of the insights Ambitious Dads suggested to manage their overwhelming list of priorities. But potentially the most important one is simply this data point: every Ambitious Dad struggles with this (im)balance. None of us are alone. It’s part of the world we’re inhabiting (for better or worse), so perhaps we take a line from our feminine counterparts and talk about it more. Share it more. Write about it more…