Why having kids is the best biohack in my life.
Along with the Bitcoin culture, my partner Martina and I have delved into biohacking this year. While we had already been doing many things for a long time (such as fasting and meditation), other things brought us interesting inspiration and opened our minds to new ideas and approaches. When I heard the opinion of a Czech biohacker (@npub1m2mvvpjugwdehtaskrcl7ksvdqnnhnjur9v6g9v266nss504q7mqvlr8p9) that meditation is one of the most effective biohackings when we look at the price/performance ratio, I started thinking about other things that move our lives forward without having to pay for them or struggle to obtain them. Besides completely obvious things like exercise, I then thought of children.
After some reflection, I was left amazed. Children have changed my life for the better by several orders of magnitude more than any other technique I have ever tried. Before children, I was an unorganized chaotic person who smoked, drank, worked at night (or at least tried to), woke up late, watched movies and series, and always looked stressed and busy, even though I never really did much work. I was on the best path to burnout, and maybe I was already smoldering a bit.
But then the children came. And with them, a avalanche of changes. The first was to quit smoking - after 5 years of futile efforts, it was the children who gave my subconscious a strong enough reason. Then to stop drinking - to be the right support for Martina, who probably won't drink for another ten years or more.
That was before their birth. Then came the birth itself. And then the second one. And we found out that if you don't go to bed before ten o'clock, a cruel fate awaits you the next day. You don't feel like getting up? Nobody cares. You simply must (usually at 6 am), you can't just hit snooze like with an annoying alarm clock and sleep in (especially when your children don't like watching animated shows on laptop).
Suddenly, you gain a rhythm. It hurts at first. But then it gets better and better. We began to realize that thanks to the children, we have to learn to handle our time extremely efficiently. And that it is not necessary to sit in front of the computer all day, inefficiently browsing the internet and calling it work. That you can be just as effective with two hours of work a day. I have never had such pumped and efficient 120 minutes as when I know that I simply won't get any more (unless I want to just dump the kids on my partner).
You will also stop wasting time on TV shows and movies. That one hour between your children's bedtime and your own sleep is too valuable to be filled with something that doesn't bring you clear benefits. From now on, only reading books or listening to educational podcasts is acceptable. Also active resting needs to be learned. To shut down my laptop and turn off my phone. No phone calls. No checking emails. No neverending chats. I have endless lego building ahead of me, and the only way to make everyone happy in the long run is through full presence (although I don't always succeed in this).
Now, with two little children, I feel like I have more energy (since I've been forced to learn how to manage it), work much less (although I don't feel any less effective), go to bed on time and wake up regularly at dawn, have order in my life, don't drink or smoke, and do all the beautiful and healthy things (like exercising, cold baths, eating healthy) to be able to spend long days with my kids in a good mood and without emotional breakdowns.
In my life, there has been no better biohacking than the arrival of my children.
