In this video, the speaker, a new father and solo business owner, describes the persistent feeling of "dad guilt" that arises from trying to simultaneously meet the demands of his business, his family, and his own self‑care. He explains how the guilt creates a loop where he is mentally absent at work because he worries about family, and then feels guilty at home for not working, leading to reduced productivity, strained relationships, and personal burnout. The speaker proposes a concrete solution: creating a "master schedule" that maps out recurring blocks for work, family time (including partner and child), and self‑care activities. This schedule should be dynamic yet serve as a fallback structure, making each activity non‑negotiable so that when the schedule is followed, guilt diminishes because each domain has protected time. He stresses the importance of making the schedule a shared, non‑negotiable agreement with his partner, iteratively refining it over weeks or a fortnight, and using it to free mental space for other goals such as health or hobbies. The video ends with an invitation for viewers to request help or see his own schedule.
Chapters
One of the biggest obstacles that I've had to face since becoming a dad, especially being a solo business owner, is this phenomenon of dad guilt. Now, prior to being a dad, of course, it's something I didn't really know much about. I'd heard the term but never really thought much about it. And to be honest, I tend to be quite good at, um, controlling my emotions and so on, so I never thought it was something that I'd really be affected by. But what I found, particularly in the early days— it's a lot better now, and I'll explain why shortly— what I found in the early days is I would always struggle to remain present. So if I'm in my business and I'm working and I'm trying to get shit done in the business to obviously bring in money and to help and serve my clients and so on, and the goal, of course, in my mind as a dad is to protect and provide for my family, so I need to be at work and I need to be, be getting on with it. Now the catch is there's this other part of me that's not the business owner that says, well, you're a dad now, so you also need to be spending plenty of or ample quality time with your daughter, with your partner, and so on. You need to make sure your partner's well supported and feels supported and not like she's just the, the only one left to, to parent your daughter and so on. And of course I want to be fully present in my daughter's upbringing and life, but the catch is when I'm in business and feeling like I should be there, I'm not able to stay present or focused on the specific task at hand. So therefore production is going down, effectiveness is going down, and results are not coming as quickly as I want them to. Because even though I'm at work, I'm not really fucking at work because my mind is somewhere else. Now, on the flip side of this, what I would find is, well, then when I go, okay, well, I'll cave into that guilt, or it's now time to be with my daughter, I'll go spend time with my daughter, my family, and so on. But now I'm feeling guilty because I'm not at work. One, because, well, you need to be at work to earn the money to keep a roof over the head and put food on the table, right? But also because I didn't get enough work done during my allocated work time because obviously I wasn't present there. Excuse me. And I was feeling like I should be elsewhere. Now I'm with my daughter and my family, and I now feel like I should be elsewhere again. So you get caught in this there's like a no-win situation. It's like, I'm here and I should be there, I'm there and I should be here. And then on the flip of that, of course, we have to take care of ourselves too. We at some point ideally need some time for self to decompress and so on. We need to be able to take care of our health, maybe work out, maybe concentrate on getting good food in, rest and recovery, maybe even meditation and personal development practices and so on. And The problem is, again, anytime you engage in those activities or focus on you, well, now you're taking away from both your family and from your business. So then there's like this double layer of guilt. It's like, well, you can definitely not work on you because there's these two other massive obligations that you have to serve. And this went on for me for, for over a year, um, pretty much up until the new year this year, 2024. And part of it was because it's one of those things you think, oh, I'll deal with it, I'll handle it, I'll get used to it. It's just a time thing, you know. Surely this is just something that happens in the early stages of being a father and a business owner, and then over time, as I get used to this thing and as things settle down, it will all just naturally go away. The catch-22 is it, it didn't go away. It doesn't go away. Um, so if you're on this path and you're a a recent father or you're due to be a father, just so you know, it doesn't go away unless you do something about it. So for pretty much all of last year, my partner and I kept saying, we need a schedule, we need a schedule, we need a routine, we need something. And my partner absolutely hates the idea of schedule, routine, etc., because in her mind it's a prison. It takes away the ability to be spontaneous and to just do things on the spur of the moment and so on. I'll let you in on a little secret: it doesn't. But that's how it feels when you've been used to having this freedom of routine, freedom of schedule, where you can literally do what you want, where you want. Now suddenly it's, oh, there's boundaries in place and so on. But the catch that we found was until we put some of those boundaries in place, we never felt free because we could never actually focus on the specific task or activity or experience that we were supposed to be engaged in. So what we actually did was create a master schedule. Now, this is where I recommend you all begin. Now, of course, it would be nice to go, what are all the specific things and the exact timings and the time frames and so on? All that can come later, but what you need in the beginning is a master schedule. Now, what this actually means is you have a base template that schedules out your week. Then what you do is you have obviously your work hours, you have all of the specific time you want to spend together as a family. Maybe there's individual time where you're with your partner or with your daughter. Maybe there's time for hobbies, pastimes, this and that. But you have this base template which is essentially dynamic, meaning it can change. But when things do change or things come up spontaneously or you get distracted or taken off track, you have a template and a structure to immediately fall back on. So whenever something happens that's outside of our routine, we don't have to be like, oh shit, well, what do we do now? And oh, I'm stuck and don't know where to fall back in. Instead, it's just a case of, well, where am I supposed to be in this schedule, in this master schedule that we have? What day is it? What time is it? What's supposed to be going on? And we can immediately fall back into routine. And what this has done— it sounds boring, I know— but what it's done is actually allowed both of us to open up mind space, energy, resources for ourselves, because we now can actually focus on this specific task at hand. Oh, I'm working in my business. Well, that's okay. I'm allowed to work on my business because this is specific allocated time for it, and I don't have to feel guilty about not being with my family because I have specific scheduled time to be with them where I'm, I'm able to focus on them 100%, and then when I'm with them, I don't have to feel guilty about not being in the business because the same thing is happening in both directions. Then of course, we can also allocate a time for each of ourselves to do the things that we need to do to take care of ourselves and so on. And again, we don't have to feel guilty about it. Now, there is one catch that comes with this, and it is the fact that ultimately you have to make it a non-negotiable, otherwise it will not work. Now what I mean by that is it's very easy as a business owner to constantly want to work, be working, because your business will always provide a task for you to complete if you want one. So you can, you can literally work 24 hours a day if you wanted, especially if you're a solopreneur or solo business owner. Ultimately, you could literally work 24 hours a day and your business will constantly serve up tasks, obligations, things to do that aren't necessarily relevant to improving the business or making more money and so on, but they're just, just things that need to be done. It's shit that's got to be done, and you'll find lots of it. The same goes for being a parent, being a partner, and so on. There are always things that we could do or be doing instead, you know. Oh, I want to work on my business, but I've got to tidy my office, I've got to take care of the house, I've got to do the washing, I've got to do this, that There's a million different things all the time. So you have to get real clear about what's important and what's urgent so that you know how to allocate your time effectively on your master schedule. And as I say, you must get non-negotiable, non-negotiable, sorry, about how you implement this thing. Because if you don't, you'll just have this nice idea of a schedule or routine that will never actually get implemented. And never get worked upon. So you'll, you'll constantly continue to feel the way you did prior. You'll still feel overwhelmed, chaotic, like you can't get anything done to the level that you know you could, because yes, you're physically in a place, but energetically you're elsewhere, and therefore unable to focus fully on the task at hand. So that's my tip for you guys today. Where possible, I would recommend you sit down with your partner, take the time to figure out what would be an ideal master schedule that serves you, your business, her, her business or hobbies or obligations, whatever they might be, so that your partner as well, and also of course, time with your daughter, son, children, however many you have, and then of course, things like self-care, things like time with friends maybe, maybe you have hobbies, pastimes and so on. You want to allocate everything that's important a specific time schedule now— or sorry, a time slot. Now the one other thing I will mention is some people have a shitload of stuff to cram into a week, so your schedule might actually have to run over a fortnight, and then it cycles or rotates fortnightly. That's absolutely fine as long as it is something that you can get down on paper and then start to work on. And of course, we tweak it, we refine it, we improve it over time. As you get experience running the reps and running each day's schedule, over time you'll find out what works best. Is this actually working for me? Does this serve the— excuse me— serve my specific needs, my goals right now? Does it allow me the time that's needed to get the amount of work done that's required to get the result I need in business? And so on. So it takes time, um, to, to refine it, but just getting it nailed down is step number one. So that's what I recommend you guys do. Of course, if you want help or guidance around this, just drop a comment below saying schedule or reach out to me in the DMs, comment the word schedule and we can have a chat. I can give you some tips, some advice. I can even show you my own master schedule if needed. But it has definitely been one of the best things for emotionally setting me free from that dad guilt and that feeling like, oh, when I'm in my business, I should be with family. When I'm with family, I should be at work and all of that. So something I highly recommend for you guys because it opens up the space for you to then work on other areas of your life too. Oh, you want to fix your body? You want to lose body fat or get out of pain? Well, now you have the time and the energy to do it. You have the mind space to focus on that thing because you know those other important areas of life are being well taken care of because you've specifically allocated time for them. So that's my video, video for you guys tonight. As always, any questions, drop them below, and if not, I look forward to chatting with you all in my next video. Take it easy, people.
