Ever since I was a kid, I always knew, with complete certainty, that I wanted to be a father. And I thought I knew what becoming a father would be like. What it would look and feel like. What it would mean to me as a human being.

I also thought I knew what it took to be a good father. As long as I showed up, played with my kids, and taught them some good values along the way, I’d be all set.

I have never been more spectacularly wrong in my entire life.

Kids Don’t Need Attention

“When looking for a solution to a problem, pay close attention to what’s happening around you.”

— Rick Rubin

What was happening around me when I became a father was chaos.

There were “things” everywhere, messes at every turn, and constant noise reminding me that I was failing at the most important job in my life.

Parenting is challenging in every conceivable way. Your kids need constant attention. So, you give it to them. But as an adult, you have exceedingly less and less time to give.

You have work demands, households to clean, groceries to buy, bills to pay, friends to socialize with, food to cook, kitchens to clean, the dentist, car maintenance, and on and on.

So, the time you give them becomes less and less valuable over time. And before you know it, an innocent 30-minute screen time treat turns into Elsa from Frozen becoming a full-time babysitter.

But not me. I did all the research. I read all the articles. And I listened to all the gurus on the internet. I thought the chaos in my house was because I needed to give my kids more time.

But I learned the hard way that kids don’t need their parents to give them more attention to thrive.

They need structure.

Tovah Klein is a Psychology Professor at Barnard College, the Director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development, and author of How Toddlers Thrive.

Klein has worked with families and young kids for more than three decades, and from her experience and research, she believes a key component for reducing chaos and stress in a household with kids is through structure and routines.

“The more that structure and routines are in place, the freer the child is to develop the internal control to manage his or her feelings, thoughts, and behaviors — all of what enables him to mature, grow, and learn.”

Kids have no concept of time. “We’re leaving in ten minutes” doesn’t mean anything to them. They need a daily, repeatable, and predictable structure to create anchor points for transitions.

“Anything you do — from getting dressed to brushing teeth, to leaving home to eating meals — will be smoother if you have a routine to carry them through the transition”.

I didn’t have structure. Or routines. And as a result, I felt overwhelmed, anxious, and stressed. A lot.

Eli Hardwood, MA, LPC, is a professionally licensed therapist, and she specializes in helping parents foster secure, connection-focused bonds with their children. She also wrote the book, Raising Securely Attached Kids, and she also believes structure is crucial for kids. And adults.

“All human beings need structure, but it is especially important in helping the developing brain of a child to feel safe, calm, and ready to learn.”

Investments Don’t Grow From Attention

When I began investing, I had poor role models. They were the classic Wall Street type. Middle-aged, white men — enraged with ambition, an endless thirst to win, and apparently an obsession with never sleeping.

I can still hear Gordon Gecko’s famous line rattling around in my head:

“Money never sleeps”.

Jim Cramer boasted sleeping a robust 4 hours a night so he could read earnings calls at 3 AM. Jordan Belfort has claimed he used to work 15-hour days 7 days a week, saying he consciously “fought sleep”.

What I learned from these so-called heroes of mine was that successful investing required frantic and chaotic hustle. None of these characters looked calm, patient, and brace yourself…content. They were all running around with their hair on fire, making trades, and endlessly digesting more and more information.

Gordon Gecko couldn’t get enough information.

“The most valuable commodity I know of is information.”

All of this behavior looked exciting, and more importantly, it looked like the right strategy for success. All of these figures appeared to be successfully doing what I wanted to be doing.

What I wanted was to successfully pick my own stocks. But that’s just what I told myself. What I really wanted — which took me years to realize — was to have true and real conviction in my investment decisions.

Every time I would hear someone on CNBC talk about a stock, I immediately began to subtly question whether I knew enough about the company. Or I would hear an analyst comment on a stock I owned. Then the doubt began to creep in.

So, I frantically read headlines, searched for more stock tips, and listened to everyone else tell me everything they knew about the companies I was considering buying. I was following everyone else’s noise, and constantly (and subtly) changing what I thought about the companies I was evaluating.

But more importantly, what I was constantly changing was my investment approach.

And just like that, I was back to my early parenting years — awash in chaos.

Attention Costs Energy

In 2019, a research paper published in the Journal of Financial Economics presented the findings of a study that monitored thousands of earnings forecasts issued throughout the trading day. The researchers wanted to see if forecast accuracy changed as the day progressed.

As it turns out, accuracy declined significantly as the day progressed and the number of decisions increased. By the end of the day, analysts resorted to “heuristics” — mental shortcuts or guessing — rather than rigorous analysis. The paper concluded that decision-making is a depletable resource.

“Extensive evidence from psychology indicates that judgments and decisions that are made under greater pressure, distraction, or fatigue tend to be made more heuristically.”

In other words, Investors who do not use systems or routines to automate at least some of their tasks — what to eat, when to read annual reports, when to exercise — waste their “best” cognitive fuel on trivialities, leaving them “fatigued” for the actual investment decisions that matter.

By neglecting to establish a repeatable system, I inadvertently accumulated more and more information, leading to frequent changes in my investment decision-making approach. Additionally, I found myself deferring critical investment decisions until the end of a long day, when I had depleted my cognitive reserves from the morning.

And I paid for it.

John Sweller created a theory that he calls the Cognitive Load Theory. He makes the argument that the brain has a “working memory” with very limited capacity. When we don’t have a routine, we are constantly in a state of explicit processing.

In the process of decision-making, the prefrontal cortex becomes active, which creates a high metabolic cost. This activity involves the consumption of glucose, the primary energy source for the brain.

But a consistent routine shifts “daily maintenance” tasks into procedural memory (handled by the basal ganglia). Because procedural memory is “low-wattage,” a person with a routine finishes their morning with significantly more cognitive “delta” (excess energy) than someone who had to “decide” their way through their morning.

Jim Simons was the founder of Renaissance Technologies, which was a quant trading hedge fund that generated annual returns of over 60% per year, perhaps the best investment track record of all-time.

Simons hired Bob Mercer, a lead researcher for their Medallion Fund, who was said to have eaten a Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwich for lunch every single day. When Mercer was asked about the peculiar — and boring — lunch choice, Mercer replied that wasting energy on such a trivial task would be foolish.

I now understand what he meant.

When I began following a system as a way to make sound investment decisions, everything changed for me.

I now know what to expect most days, I can manage a high degree of volatility, and I feel safe and secure knowing my investment process is consistent and not influenced by noise.

As soon as I began providing my kids with consistent routines, everything changed for them.

They now know what to expect most times of the day, they can manage transitions with confidence, and they feel safe and secure knowing their father is giving them a somewhat predictable environment to hopefully thrive in.

Every parent can attest to the wonderful feeling of knowing that their children have a predictable and stable day, allowing them to thrive.

Knowing that your children are the ones who teach you the most important lessons of your life is an entirely different experience.