Episode Transcript
Qin En 01:10
Hey, Samuel, welcome to parents and tech to begin with. Could you tell us a bit more about your family?
Samuel 01:15
Absolutely. I'm very happy to do so. And then I should say thank you for hosting me here. Delighted to be here and to be speaking to you about it today. So my family, I guess the starting point is Kassala who's my wife. I would call her my MVP. You might quickly realize that I’m a default sports analogist and I'm a big basketball playing family.
Qin En 01:35
Okay. Okay. Sorry. Samuel MVP can be two things, most valuable player or minimum viable product. So for clarification..
Samuel 01:43
I didn't even think about that, but think how this is going to sound to my wife. Yeah. Yeah. So my wife, Casa, she's my MVP. And then at some point we're going to upgrade to the enterprise version.That is categorically and absolutely not what I meant by MVP. So I'm talking about the most valuable player. And like I was saying, basketball is a really great example to sort of hang it on in basketball. If you have a championship team, you will have an elite group of players. You will have a bunch of winners and they will trust each other and they will play well together.
You will have a bunch of role-players who do specific things really well, and you will have a great supportive back-office and probably an innovative and imaginative coach, calling the shots. But Almost always, not always, but almost always. There's elite championship teams. They do have this genuine cut above superstar MVP, the Michael Jordans of this world, the Steph Currys of this world, the Kevin Durant's.
And for me, that's Kassla, she is the unflinchingly supportive driver of not just me, but also of our family. Well, I come to my children. I should care a hundred percent about her and not just that, but she's beautiful. And she's funny and she's full of, and she's the cushion that allows me to be who I am.
The reality is I'm an introvert pretty much masquerading as an extrovert. And what that means is that when I'm masquerading as an extrovert and I've done doing that for a period of time, I am wiped and I'm like an iPhone with no battery. What that leads to is a bit of uptown and energy levels and therefore up, down in output.
And when I'm down, she is the one that keeps our family moving. So that's my wife, Kassla. And then I have two wonderful daughters. So Sienna will be three soon. She is adventurous and she's mischievous and she's super proud and she's loving and she's full of life. And I spend a lot of time with her. We like to swim. She loves swimming at the moment. She comes on my paddleboard with me and sits on the front. She asked to do Acro yoga. I don't think she's quite realized yet that he doesn't actually know how to do acro yoga, but he can't lie on the floor and hold his hands up and then she can stand on them. So we do that sometimes, and she loves music. So we spend a lot of time singing songs and dancing around.
And then I have a youngest. And she is recently one and she is affectionate and she is full of life as well. And she's now an enormous Explorer. That's always the way, right at that particular age, when they start to figure out what they can do with their body, when they start to figure out they can walk and then they can run and then they can climb.
And then all of a sudden your world comes crashing down because it's constantly falling off things and climbing up things they're not supposed to be on. And that's the stage that she's at. But that's the family. Yeah, we start there.
Qin En 4:12
That's a beautiful family. So, so much to unpack over there, but Samuel, maybe let's start off first with, how did you meet your wife?
Samuel 04:21
So we met while playing tennis, so my wife is very good at tennis. It's sort of a Family sport that she's always played. And I am not very good at tennis, but I like sports. And so I will dabble in most things. And a friend of mine who I'd played tennis with once or twice had a doubles game. And my wife was playing in the doubles game one morning for work.
This is in the UK, this is in London and somebody dropped out. They needed somebody shortly. So that's probably the only reason I would get the call up. Because my standard was not quite there for the rest of them, but he gave me a call and said, can you fill in? We need somebody for the doubles game. I went along and on the other team was Kassla, my now wife.
And actually she was serving to me. And I remember that the first game that she served to me, I only got one of those balls back over the net. So that shows the disparity between the two. And I was thinking. She's wonderful, but she clearly won't be interested in me after that performance. And so I had to put it back on terms that I was more comfortable with.
So I found out that she was actually a captain of a mixed netball team. And so I put my hand up and said, oh yeah, netball. That's a lot like basketball. I can come and play on that team. Unfortunately, I was there for a much stronger contributor to that team. And so hopefully I managed to reopen the door and it seems like I did.
So that's how we met playing tennis and then playing netball mixed netball.
Qin En 05:36
That's fascinating meeting and bond into sports. So after you got together, how did children, or when did children come into the picture in terms of the discussions, the conversations about that, how many children? When to have it? I'm sure all these are big conversations. Maybe shed some light behind some of the..
Samuel 05:53
Uh, it's funny because the very honest answer is when did we first talk about having children? It was on the first date. Okay. And not necessarily talking about having children together, but I think children I've always been an aspiration for both of us.
So I come from a family of four children. And for me, it's always been a sort of accepted mental frame that when I'm older, I just want to have a child, I would probably want to have multiple children, I guess that's just the status quo that I've grown up in. Casa comes from a similar place of having always wanted to have a family.
And so it was something that we talked about as an aspiration, but we didn't talk about specifically, necessarily as something that we were going to do together until a bit later. I don't think we really ever talked about when, it was more, over a period of time. It was well understood that we both wanted to do that.
And at some point in time we would, yeah, there was no sort of master plan. This is how we must fit it into our life. I guess there was some level of thought around. I've always thought that when my children are 18, it would be nice. If, when they're sort of fully grown and approaching sort of peak athletic prowess, it would be nice for me to still be able to play with them.
So, I mean, it would be nice to be able to play tennis with them and be able to contribute. It'd be nice to be able to play basketball with them and be able to contribute. There was something around. Don't leave it too late, but not much more than that.
Qin En 07:09
Yeah, interesting. So you've mentioned about coaching tennis, almost what comes to my mind.
It's that, so you will coach them the basics, the beginner and the intermediate, and then to get advanced to their mum for the advanced.
Samuel 07:21
That’s exactly right.
Qin En 07:26
Sort of got a whole spectrum covered.
Samuel 07:27
Yeah. I mean, I'm okay with them now. Sienna's going to be three soon and I'm okay with coaching now, but I think I've only got a couple more years before she needs to graduate to somebody a bit stronger than me.
Qin En 07:36
But maybe about the number of children.That's interesting because I hear you, that you want multiple, in fact, for you too, you have a number in mind and whilst that sort of aligned right from the start with your wife or. There are some form of alignment needed along the way,
Samuel 07:55
I guess no alignment needed so far. Let's see what happens in the future. It was easy enough to say, do we both want to have a child? Yes. Okay. Okay. Do we both want to have a second child? Yes. Okay. And I think the reality is that we're so incredibly fortunate to have two children. That's something that I think it's only as we've got to a stage in life where we have started thinking about, and then having children that you realize beyond the somewhat banal statement, not every child is a blessing and it's totally true.
But beyond that, you really truly realize what that means when you start contemplating it, when you start having, because it's only then that you realize how difficult it is for some people and how fortunate you are if you are able to have children.
So I think what has maybe changed in my mental frame is that when I was younger, I was living in a future reality that, yeah, sure. I'm going to have loads of children because I wasn't aware of the reality of how difficult it can be and how fortunate you are to be able to do that. So how my mental frame has shifted a little bit now, We're so blessed and fortunate to have these two wonderful people in our life.
And if we never had any more children, then there's no downside there. Yeah. And who knows, who knows what the future holds right now? Two, three years and under, I'm not sure I can throw somebody else into the mix right now. And the reason for that is simply that how can I contribute to those two and the way that I want to?
And so my wife, because of her and the way I want to add to everybody else in my life that I want to contribute to. Somebody said to me the other day, and I liked it. I'm not Shiva. And I think that this is very much applicable to this scenario that I'm not. And I only have so many hands in some time. And I want to engage deeply with the family that I already have. And I think it's responsible therefore to think about when and how we might add others to the party, if we want to do so.
Qin En 09:37
Absolutely. I completely understand and identify with that as someone who has a 16 month old daughter, too, you have your work, you have your wife, you have your kid, it's already so many things. And I think that's something that's always top of mind.
So Samuel, I have to ask you in terms of balancing and figuring out how to manage all of this being present for each and every one of them. What are some of the changes that you had to make in the past three years since you became a dad.
Samuel 10:02
A big one that I think is the way that I work and when I work and how I work and the reality there is that my style has always been calendar-based. So I will assess what I seek to achieve and the time that is available to me and I will prioritize and I will schedule. And a good day for me has always been. If I have a back-to-back calendar, not with meetings, but with some of them might be meetings, but with things that I'm seeking to do, whether that's thinking time or whether that's exercise time or whether that's actioning X, Y, and Z task time, I have a back-to-back calendar that I stick to.
So 30 minutes for this, do it followed by one minute, one hour for this, do it. That's because that's when I'm making progress because I prioritize the right things to focus on and the big learning, post having children is that goes totally out of the window. It's not possible to work on that basis when you have young children.
So for me, I start work pretty early and that's because that's when I do my best work. And that's when I like to do my deep sort and my thinking, my inspiration and the reality is that if I'm in my office at five o'clock and I've got a two hour block to think deeply about something. And at quarter past five, one of my children starts going daddy, then it's game over.
You don't go. It's not like a coffee machine that you walk in and flip the switch and turn it off. That's game over for the next hour. And then the knock on effect, if you're trying to get through various different things. And if you have various different responsibilities, is that as soon as one thing slips, of course, everything else slips.
And the reality there, is that you end up constantly showing up, unless you mitigate this, you end up constantly showing up to stuff, under prepared and you end up constantly, somewhat delivering less than you might seek to deliver or aspire to deliver to the people that you work with. And so that's a really important learning to think about how to prioritize time, when to think about how to carve out the space, to do the things that you want to do and buy the things that you want to do.
And I include Parenting. Like if you've made a choice to have children, then it's something that you want to do. And so you need to carve out the space to do that well, and that means creating time for your children, but it also means creating time away from your children, such that you can mindfully recharge to be on top form when you are back with your children.
And the same is true for work, creating time for your work, but also being away from your work so that you can mindfully recharge for when you're back working. And I think it's a challenge and I think it is incredibly important that you work with a really trusting group to allow you to do that because that's the trust that you would expect to see in your family and that you would hope to see from those close to you and it's also trusted as needed in the workplace. So I guess that is my biggest learning. Is rethinking how I work.
Qin En 12:41
Absolutely. And I can completely identify with that. You have a schedule you're organized about it. And I think especially even before you have children, that's something that you can communicate with a partner. I would say that I have certain things on, I need to get things done and more often than not, they're understandable, but when it comes to having young children, if they cry, if they yell, if their one-year attention, there's no such thing as a Calendar for it. And you just got to do a bit. So following that, how do you protect these work blocks of time where you really just gotta sit down, get things done, especially in this day and age where we're all working from home, how do you carve out that protected time?
Samuel 13:18
So I think a significant part of that is trust and compromise with my wife. And then what I mean specifically around that is I work in the morning and she looks after the children in the morning.
So when somebody wakes up and cries and screams and whatever it might be, then. Deal with it in the afternoon and the early evening it's vice versa. So that's really when she does her deep work and I'm responsible for that. The reality of the world in which we are living and what we are seeking to do on the professional front means that it's never quite so clean - cut and easy as that.
But that is the way we try to do it as a partnership is to create a space and time for each other, to work in the way that we work, which is different. The way that I work is different to the way that my wife works. And I think, you know, that pre-children. But you only truly understand what it means to empathetically respond to those post children because before you have children, yes, we work differently but the friction doesn't arise. Like when post children, now you're overlapping your ways of working in a much more pressurized environment and the friction does arise. So that's one way to attempt to mitigate it is to really be empathetic to how each other work as a partnership and to structure your schedule and your commitment to parenting, um, to enable you to do that.
And then the other one is very similar. But it's with the people that you work with. So to have the trust and to have the support of the leadership team that I work with in APAC and the people on my team, and to get that then, or to enjoy that it's important that everybody is cognizant of everybody's different needs. And everybody's cognizant of everybody's different ways of working. And everybody is cognizant of the culture that you are seeking to create. Like us, in our company, we want a culture where people can be not just parents. But can be high-performing parents. And we want a culture, therefore, where people can be deeply engaged with what they need to be engaged with outside of work.
And it's bizarre because I'm not talking about it as inside work and outside of work. When one of my strongest beliefs is having to some extent, no disconnect between personal and professional life. So I don't believe in two phases, one for the workplace and one for home. And I believe that to be genuinely phenomenal at what you're seeking to do, then you need to be entirely authentic with the people that you work with and that creates trust.
So there's something around being open and honest and real. With the challenges that one is facing as a parent. And of course those challenges will change throughout the life of your children, that when they're at different ages, but creating that space in that trust amongst your group, such that people will support you to have deep time in other parts of your day or your week, or people will support you to pick up your slack. The amount of slack that I have created that others have picked up for me in the last couple of years is enormous. And I think that hopefully the reason that we collaboratively respond to that and people pick up the slack is because I do the same for them, with the things that are going on in their life. And I think that's really important, but it comes from a place of trust and a place of wanting each other to succeed. So myself and my wife, we have total trust and we want each other to win. And I don't think, always in the workplace that's the same, but it's really important to me that in our workplace, then our leadership team and the rest of that, everybody in the group has trust in each other, but wants each other to win. So we want everybody individually to win and we want us to collectively win. And so we create the support and the empathy to enable that.
Qin En 16:37
So much to unpack over there, but maybe let's dial back. You mentioned there was this part where there were differences, of course, between you and your wife in terms of working styles, parenting styles, and debt really came up when children came into the picture.
So could you humor us with perhaps a story or an area that there was friction and how both of you went about overcoming it.
Samuel 16:58
One that pops to mind. I find it very funny, which is not really about working styles. It's about parenting styles. Okay. Maybe I'll start there. So as stylist, who knows, because I'm biased and blinkered with how I might characterize our own style, but we don't raise our voices.
And we don't shout to our children. And I have shouted at my oldest child twice in her life. And I remember them so specifically, partly because they're infrequent, but partly because of the reaction when I have them. And the first one who is when our youngest child boat was made. Three months old or something like that, as you'll know, then when children at that age, when they're sort of lying on that front and they stick their arms out and they've got their legs and they're laying on their tummy with the head up and sort of looking around sort of Superman posts. And she was doing that on the floor. And I was, I think, making coffee on the kitchen bench, overlooking the living area. My wife was to the side of the room, doing something, getting ready for work or something like that. And our daughter Sienna was sitting on the floor just in front of both sort of looking at her, doing that and enjoying it and just taking it. And I think eating some breakfast or something, and I was just watching that thing. Oh, that's nice. The two children together. And then out of nowhere, Sienna sort of two foot, dropkicks both in the face and experimenting with pushing the boundaries in the same way that children sort of push each other down and grab each other and pull them and see what's doable here.
What's possible. What's the scope of my body and my strength, all these different things. So she did that. And of course, For me, it's horrifying. Yeah. And in the moment I was, why is she doing that? I don't want my child doing that, but at the same time, what about Bo? Is she okay. She's just been kicked in the face.
So my reaction was to shout loudly across the room. You do not do that. Sienna spun rounds and my wife, Carol, on hearing the cry sort of spun to look at the children to see what must have happened. And then you could see the cooks turning. She stopped. And looked back at me and said, you do not shout at my children.
To your question, I guess it's the, in the moment, right? Very different parenting styles. And we would say actually that our parenting style is certainly not the same, but it's built on many of the same values. So broadly the way that we parent is very similar and we also believe in a sort of united face.
So we believe that if one person is saying one thing, it is not right for the other parent to contradict that in the moment at least. And so it was interesting to see that there is something that goes too far. So shouting for my wife pushed it too far, no matter what had happened. And it's really great actually, because I've learned from my wife that that was my instinctive reaction.
In reality, you can't always change what you do on instinct in a moment. What I would hope to do in the future is actually not. And I think these days when similar things happen, then I don't because you learn by failing. It's in the same way that when I was young, I went diving and I lost my regulator and I inhaled a load of water. I would never do that again. So now I would always pick up my second regulator, which I didn't do when I was young and when I was going to type, because it was just in the moment, the first experience. And I think it's the same thing that you learned by doing. And we learned the disparity in our parenting style and then converged on where we wanted to be by going through that experience.
Qin En 20:06
Got it. Wow. Thanks for sharing that story. And so it is just so on that topic also about discipline, because your older daughter's. Three, starting to be more aware, starting to expand her vocabulary. And like you said, push the boundaries. What does discipline look like in your family?
Samuel 20:26
It looks like telling daddy what he's not allowed to do.I think we try to role model what we believe is the strongest behaviors that we would hope our child would be influenced by. And we seek to give them the room to experiment and learn. How they should ask such that is most beneficial for themselves and for the people around them, we give them the freedom to explore and we're ready to sort of put the guard rails up.
And when we put the guardrails up, we try not to say. You should not do this. And we try not to say, you are not allowed to do this. We try to talk to why the action that you're taking impacts other people. And a good example is with the two young children, Sienna is much bigger and stronger than Bo, but yeah.
So if they both want the same thing, they will get it. She can push her out of the way and she can get it. So what we try to then do is to call out how that action has impacted though. She's now full with them. She's not crying. She's had itself. She suffered a frustration and it was caused by you. You don't like it when a frustration is caused by somebody else to you.
And we call out examples of where that's happened in the past. So for example, we say you didn't like it that time when somebody shouted at you, you found that scary and you don't see your parents shouting at you. So why are you shouting at Bo? or whatever it might be. We try to talk through discipline, but I think the answer is we're learning.
We're totally learning how to do this. Like all parents. And I think we will be learning forever because the first time we have a six year old, that will be the first time we have a six year old and the first 12 year old, it'll be the first time for that.
Qin En 21:58
Yeah, definitely take that's one of the wonderful things we grow along with our children and I like the part about helping them to empathize and understand what they have done wrong instead of adopting a more punitive approach where the children feel better about it, but it also don't really understand why they feel bad about it.
Now, earlier you also mentioned a bit about high-performing parents. Tell us a bit more, what does a high-performing parent look like from your perspective and how do you enable that today in the workplace for the teams that you lead?
Samuel 22:27
Yeah, so totally subjective. High-performance is very different for very different people. Part of that is to do with what you see to achieve. And part of it is to do with the type of place you work and the type of work that you do. So myself and my wife, we do very different things. So my work is in venture building, creating startups in a studio structure.
My wife is a solicitor and she works predominantly on restructure. And so the sort of what good looks like in those two worlds, there are many differences and I'm sure there are many similarities as well, but what we're seeking to achieve looks quite different. For me, high-performance is the fulfillment that comes through stifling one’s potential.
That's what I'm seeking to do with my work is to genuinely unlock whatever potential that I have. And that means that I need to work on things that I'm genuinely inspired by. Otherwise, my output will always be X percent less than the ultimate potential. I believe I need to work with people that I'm inspired by and I need to work with people that I trust in.
And I need to work with people who are phenomenally good at what they do. I need to work in an environment that creates the space and the support structure to allow me to be the best version of myself. And it needs to also create that space and support structure to allow everybody else to be their best versions of themselves.
Without that they won't be truly fulfilled if they weren't truly fulfilled, then they won't be as supportive as a group as they could otherwise be for me. And so it plays back into me, which is that I won't be as successful and fulfilled as I might like. So how does that manifest? Uh, I think it manifests in three ways.
One is, I am very concerned with that. We invest time and thought into who I work with. Hmm. Another one is I'm concerned with and invest time and thought into what type of work it is that I do. And another is I invest time and thought into what is the culture and structure at play in the place where we work and the best example of that is something that we've talked about a little bit earlier. Which is creating an environment that encourages deep work and encourages people to have the space and the expectation to explore and to think, I think the key thing is to proactively explore rather than to be in a place of reactive response.
What we're trying to do is to create new ventures that inevitably break new ground. We're trying to create stuff that hasn't been done before, and that's really bloody hard. So to do something that hasn't been done before, if that was easy, then everybody would be doing it. And the reality is that for every time that you try, you might not succeed.
And to be able to make a breakthrough. You need incredibly intellectually adept people with a passion for what they're doing, a working environment that supports them to let the data points and the imagination marinate. And then from that, hopefully be able to create something that is different and it's new. And as a step forward, it's a genuine breakthrough.
And so you need the space to be able to do that. So we like to create that sort of deep work culture, as you can see, this is an interesting juxtaposition because what matters there is space, mental and some space. And to put it very bluntly, what children don't give a shit about is giving space.
Qin En 25:38
A hundred percent, but I think almost navigating the irony, the juxtaposition of that. It's also where, like you said, if it's easy I would have done it. Cool. Well, I noticed, Samuel, if I'm not wrong, you were born and raised and you grew up in the UK. What led you, and of course your wife, to Singapore?
Samuel 26:00
When I first started my career, I was a lawyer and I spent a little bit of time in Singapore a long time ago when I was a corporate lawyer, I spent only about six months here.
I was familiar with Singapore because I spent a bunch of time living here, but I'd also pass through a lot whilst traveling in Southeast Asia and Australasia and various different places. And I loved Singapore from the first time that I came here. So in my mind, Singapore is always a place that I could be, and I could spend my time and I could build something.
And I was super excited to do that. My wife is also British. Her mum is originally from Hong Kong, so she has some family ties there and she had spent time back and forth to Hong Kong when she was younger, she'd never lived abroad. And there was a point in time when we were living in London, where she woke up one day and said, I'd like to live abroad and I'd like to live in Asia.
And I said, great. That suits me down to a T. We can do that. Where do you want to live? And she said, well, I think it's between Singapore and Hong Kong. I mean, how boring, what a standard selection of options. And I said, absolutely you choose. She said, we can't go to Hong Kong because I've got family there. So I'd have to go for dinner with them every weekend. So it'll have to be Singapore. And so here we are, we ended up in Singapore reasonably shortly after that. I mean, I thought it was very much, let's explore that and over time then we'll go and do that. But the reality is that she came back from work the next day and said, I've got a job in Singapore. So get your stuff together. And that was that, and that was now about six and a half years ago.
Qin En 27:22
Wow. And I guess since then, moving over here, raising your kids in this environment, were there any surprises along the way, in terms of culture differences, things that you weren't expecting or perhaps was different from the way you were brought up?
Samuel 27:37
Now that smacks me around the face when you asked that question. Okay. Because I think the thing that I've learned, the older I've got, is that all of my preconceptions about culture and status quo were wrong because they were influenced by an incredibly narrow scope of context. And what I mean specifically by that is growing up in my family with the values that were as passed in that family.
Then I almost thought that well, that's how everybody thinks. And you only realize that it's not true until you step outside your bubble and into the, say the street that you live on. And then you realize actually there's a greater diversity of opinion, but the reality is in most cases, the street that you live on is this somewhat concentrated belief system and value system.
They might be very different, but relative to each other, they're probably closer than the street, four miles away. And that's simply to do with demographic and relative affluence and relative access and things like that. So I think I was reasonably fortunate in my childhood to have a reasonable understanding of many different contexts and beliefs and ways of living and thought processes around that, based on where I went to school and the fact that I moved around a few schools based on, I played a lot of sport.
And so I played with people from all around the country. And then as I sort of got a bit older and left home, then I traveled an awful lot. So I think that the context that I had grew, the sort of diameter of my circle expanded, and I think I was very fortunate between the ages of probably about 18 and about 28, I think that the expansion was exponential.
And so what that meant was there was no longer, almost a status quo or a value system, because it was very clear to me that the way that my family had done it. And I was sort of semi detached house in Sheffield, England was totally different to the way that my friends would do it in Urrutia Tanzania or my friends in Denmark and the Netherlands or my friends in Singapore, whatever it might be. And that there's no wrong on this they're right. And that there's wide, wide spread to if appropriate. Even within those sorts of micro-cultures. So I guess you get to a point where there's no status quo anymore. Everybody's an individual, who's trying to figure it out themselves and trying to do the best for the people that they care about.
So there was nothing that smacked me around the face. And then the reality of Singapore, which is such a wonderful feature of Singapore, is that it's very diverse as per London, as per Toronto, as per many places in the world. But you're so fortunate to be able to spend time with all sorts of different people from all sorts of different cultures and different mindsets and different approaches and to learn from them.
The one thing that maybe I can point to is that myself and my wife thought when we had children, That we would have a certain method around things like sleeping. It's really important that children have a structure and they sleep by this structure. And it's really important that they have their own bedroom and that people are not in shared bedrooms together.
And it was only about having children. Going through the process of sleep training and thinking about it, that you start second guessing some of those assumptions and exploring different ways of doing it. And then we read so much about it and talked about it and thought about it and realized putting children in their own bedroom and putting them on a strict sleep schedule is a very, at least to my understanding Western construct. And for example, that doesn't happen in Africa. The whole family sleeps in the same room and that's super beneficial because it creates safety and it creates comfort and it removes trauma. And many of the ways that we have sort of, sort of, this is how it’s done actually create some level of minor trauma for the child.
And so there's a question around, is that a good thing or a bad thing, but. I believe that the trauma is a bad thing, then you shouldn't do it. So some of those pre held opinions around how we might sort of get our children into a state of effective sleeping were maybe not the right way to. We've been back and forth on that.
Qin En 31:24
So what does the sleeping arrangements look like for your children?
Samuel 31:25
So they have separate rooms. And we have experimented with having them in the same room and having them in separate rooms and having them in our room. Now we're at a place where they have separate rooms and it's only very recently that I feel that we are getting close to having cracked it.
But as you will know, with a young child, then you will crack sleeping for about a month and then there'll be an enormous regression and it will all go wrong. So who knows when we will genuinely crack it, we can see the incremental steps forward in both children. And that's good. At least for now fingers crossed.
Qin En 31:56
That's wonderful. And that ideal figuring out what works, experimenting, testing it out, and then now running another experiment. So hopefully that works out and then the results are positive.
Samuel 32:07
If anyone is struggling with sleep training, then I think the most important thing that we have realized is to do two things. One is that our children have a bath before they go to bed. It is to get the bath into bed that is 30 minutes and no longer. And there's no playing after the bath. So the bath becomes a part of the process and then we're in the bedroom and then we're reading books and then we're brushing teeth and we're getting ready, but it all happens reasonably quickly and with no deviation.
I think one of the key bits in the second one is that the 30 minute period is designated wind downtime. So it's very important that there's no wind up time. And sometimes dad is the one who messes that up.
Qin En 32:45
Because you want to spend time with them after a long day at work.
Samuel 32:47
Exactly. Exactly.
Qin En 32:49
Got it. Also at the start of this conversation, you talked about. You are an introvert that has to be an extrovert. And I think one of the challenges of being an introvert is interacting and talking with people, which is probably what you do for a big part of your day. It does become tiring, such that by the time it comes to the end of the day, I myself find is that those hard to hold conversations, sustain conversations with my wife, with my children, or even play with them. How does that look like for you and what have you found to work in terms of that energy management?
Samuel 32:22
Yeah, I totally empathize with that. And it's in the moment I find that mentally tough because lacking energy to engage with the three people who mean more to you than anyone else. In my case, that's difficult.
And then there's this mental juxtaposition where you put side by side, the people that you care more about and the energy they're getting. And some of the things that you've invested energy in that day, some of which inevitably, always, were so much lower in value and you might not know that going into it, but you certainly know it retrospectively.
So I struggle with that a little bit, I believe in trying to create separation. So almost in the same way that some people, even though they don't necessarily commute to work, particularly now sort of post COVID people, working at home, people like to create a little commute where they walk for 20 minutes from their house back to their house. And now that. And the same in the evening. And I find that valuable from a work perspective, but I also find that valuable to create the separation between the energy sapping that might've gone on during the day, and then investing into my family that evening. So if I can break the sort of pre-family time, like going for a walk or going on my paddleboard or going for a swim or something like that, or even for me, something that is really energy giving is to sit and listen to music.
So if I can stop. I think it's just a mental stop for a period of time. It's almost like with the phone, I don't know what the numbers are, but it takes you two hours to get to a hundred percent charge, but it takes you 10 minutes to get to 25. So something like that I think is a useful way to do it. But then also you can plan your day, maybe a step further, and maybe this is not always possible for everybody in all roles, but if you plan your day such that you say, what are the three things I most want to invest my time in one of them is that period in the evening or the morning or whatever it might be with my family.
Okay. So I can't overburden myself prior to that. So that means that there can only be two other gold star things in my day. And if there's a third one, it has to go and it has to be prioritized and has to be kicked out. Sometimes it's useful to have others to help you to do that because sometimes you think you might be a Superman or Superman, be able to do everything in the calendar in one day but of course it's not possible.
Qin En 35:22
Yeah. I carve that out and I like the idea of taking a walk, almost forcing yourself to have to commute and that clean breaks. You are sitting almost context switching and you know that, okay, it's time to work or it's time for the family.
Samuel 36:33
Something I do is actually combine the two.So combine the, getting the energy with the being with the children's. So for example, I'll put music on with my children. I'm going to say dance. But I don't dance. I pick them up and jump around the room. They love it because we're jumping around the room and that creates energy in the room, but it also creates some energy in me.
And it also creates an enjoyable moment for both of us. Stuff like that can be really useful.
Qin En 35:57
Awesome. I got to ask, there's a part where you mentioned paddleboarding. Tell me a bit more about it: where do you paddleboard? It sounds like something that 's common outside of Singapore, but in Singapore, it's at least the first effort.
Samuel 36:11
I think it's reasonably common. Okay. So I used to live on the east coast before COVID and before Western Australia was locked down, then we'll spend time when we go on holiday, we'll go to Western Australia. We'd go. And pat about that. And I would paddleboard on the east coast. We now live in Sentosa so it is super useful and super easy for us to go paddle boarding.
And that’s really, really enjoyable. So the east coast and Sentosa is where I do it. Nice. And you tend to see a few people out in the back. There's a few beach clubs in Sentosa and the east coast where you can kind of hide paddle boards and go up. So I like to do that. It's a nice thing to do with the children. The youngest, one's a bit young for that at the moment.
Qin En 36:45
Yeah. But I think soon enough she will be able to enjoy that. This has been a really enjoyable conversation, Samuel. If we have to wrap it up and as one lesson you learned as a parent in tech, what would that be.
Samuel 36:55
I'd say it's the, the thing we were talking about earlier around deep work and space, it's the battle that you will inevitably face. Once you have children to be able to deeply engage with whatever it is that you're passionate about in life outside of your children and with children. And to think thoughtfully about that, the lesson is to think thoughtfully about how you will create space for your children and for the other things that matter and to recognize.
Even once you thought thoughtfully about it, that it will not be right and that it will be frustrating. And so to go into that with a mindset of this will be frustrating and I will be constantly learning. And I guess that feeds into a mindset which is to always get in the game. So something, a mental frame, it's just the glass half full thinking.
Yes. But if you think about getting in the game with any moment of adversity, I fortunately found myself in a place now, and maybe it's the benefit of having had children. I enjoy adversity so much these days, because whenever I'm in that friction point, that adversity, I know that I'm winning. I know that I'm losing.
And whenever I'm failing on supporting my children, I know that I'm becoming a better parent and that's great because we had these tiny, tiny pieces in this enormous world today and the world in the moment today. And in our lifetime is like such negligible importance versus the world over its entire existence. So we're effectively consequential. And so all we can do is get in the game about how we are contributing to move everything forward. And that on a very personal level is about how we're moving ourselves forward and how we're moving our families forward. If we're constantly learning, then we’re constantly improving, then we will be constantly facing adversity. So the lesson is to enjoy the adversity because you're becoming a better parent.
Qin En 38:42
That's golden advice. I really love that too. Embrace the challenges, embrace adversity, and know that that's shaping and molding you. Thanks for that Samuel. So if the parents are listening, would love to connect with you, how can they best do so?
Samuel 38:54
They can find me at samallhall.com.
They can find me on LinkedIn as Samuel Hall. They can find me on Twitter. I think I'm at @SamAlHall on Twitter. And if they search for me on Spotify, they will find that Johnny Cash has written a song about me so they can listen to that too.
Qin En 39:11
Wow. Okay. That's fascinating. I would definitely do that. Thank you so much, Samuel for joining us at Parents in Tech. It was such a joy talking to you.
Samuel 39:19
Total pleasure. Thanks so much for hosting me. It's been a really really interesting discussion.
