It’s been a while since I sat down to write, and that’s because my wife and I recently welcomed our son Noah into the world :)

Sharing my new daily rhythms (or lack thereof) with people, I noticed something right away. They would always offer: “Things get easier.” And to that I would say “Thank goodness!” The diapers, the spit-up, the sporadic sleep…I’m certainly glad all of that eventually cools off (well, maybe not the sporadic sleep).

But what never seemed to come up were the many things that instantly got easier upon Noah’s arrival. Now, if I could impress upon him that crying is not the only way to get what you want in the middle of the night, I would. But while we weather this phase, I notice that everything I do is buoyed by a profound sense of purpose, and a clarity I have never felt. While these don’t quite give me more hours of sleep, so much is easier now than it has ever been.

I often look to comedians to explain the world around me, and this wonderful clip of Bob Odenkirk and Mike Birbiglia does a great job of putting that purpose and clarity into words. In it, Mike asks Bob “Who are you jealous of?”, to which Bob replies “Anybody who’s still got little kids at home growing up. There’s no question I knew what I was doing when I had kids growing up. I was being a dad.” Bob captures the confidence and comfort that comes with knowing yourself and what you stand for, and wasting little time on things that don’t matter.

Products as Vehicles for Purpose

I can’t help but reflect on the work I do helping teams build products that bring their purpose to the world, and how the same first principles hold true. A product is a vehicle. It carries a purpose farther than any one person could, putting a team’s beliefs in front of many people they would never otherwise reach. When this is done well, it scales a mission’s reach and impact beyond what anyone thought possible when they started.

And the same purpose a product carries outward is what steers it. When an organization has their purpose clearly articulated, and the discipline to ensure everything they do is in service to that purpose, the resulting clarity is beautiful. Decisions about how to measure outcomes and impact get easier. Value proposition framing gets clearer. And most importantly, how we prioritize our time spent building becomes more obvious.

The biggest risk any product faces isn’t that it’s built poorly. It’s that it’s built to solve the wrong thing for the wrong person. That’s why I’ve always thought of prioritization as an exercise in saying no, not saying yes, and that framing has served me well for years. But figuring out what to say no to is far harder than figuring out what to say yes to. Saying yes is easy; the world is full of good things to say yes to. Saying no is where the real work lives. Fighting against our own biases to build a solution that is truly in service to its users requires a great deal of clarity, and the restraint to say no to the distractions that pull a roadmap in six different directions.

As a new parent, it’s easier to know where my time and energy belong now, with a clarity I didn’t have just a few months ago. The nos come faster because the yes underneath them is never in question, and I now have a new ideal that colors how I help teams make better product decisions, faster.

The “Why” You’d Never Question

With Noah’s arrival, the world quietly stopped being mine and became his. And with that shift, the things I do so that I can take care of Noah have gotten easier. The effort is the same. What’s gone is the wondering whether it’s worth it.

So yes, things got harder (the lack of sleep is real). But I keep circling back to this paradoxical yet steadying truth: when you do the hard work of finding the “why” you’d never question, a lot of the other choices start making themselves.

That’s what’s going on in my world. And before I put down the pen and head back to the land of diapers, bottles, and laundry, I’d like to tell you firsthand as a new parent that things do get easier.