michaelleland

I'm a father of 7 children. I'm the youngest of 5 siblings and my wife is the youngest of 6 siblings. Both of our mothers had college degrees and jobs and chose to stay at home with the children, and neither of our fathers had anything other than middle-class incomes.

My wife has also chosen to be a homemaker, and I watch in awe at how much she gets done. She creates a space where the "slack" you mention can happen--that is where we can afford to be generous with our time. I don't see it as a financial income thing, but more of a lifestyle thing (arguably the same thing).

We've lived in both Sweden and in America, and we've modeled our family life by looking at the older families in both cultures that seem to be thriving--and building in this slack, building in someone who can simply _care_ for the others and be cared for in return has been amazing.

I’m working on building a payroll outsourcing company targeting the construction industry. 2,900 employees paid last week! Deep ERP integration is our competitive edge.

2.5M isn’t much. Is this possibly related to second- or third-tier subcontractors or suppliers not getting paid by the next subcontractor up the chain?

The European (ok, Swedish) attitude is: the authorities are there to enforce the law.

The American attitude is: the law is there to support the authorities.

Fun! I bought all the versions of this game off of EBay, and showed my kids how to play. My youngest struggled with the abstractions in the game, so I 3D printed a hex board and the airplanes. It took way longer than I thought to figure out all the moves, but I got it down with little template cards he could reference. The fun part is now we can play 2 planes vs. 2 planes, or 3 player!

We believe the ultimate moral defense of markets is that they divert people who otherwise would raise armies and start religions into peacefully productive pursuits.

Interestingly, nearly every sentence begins with "we believe," a fundamentally religious statement.

The tax credits for married people here in the US seem to be part of this type of policy, no?

I have a lot of anxiety as well, and I (now) am assuming that a large part of it is due to ADHD.

What did/does therapy look like for you?

What does therapy look like?

Got it, thanks!

I don't know if I'd call it a "large" organization, but it could be--I for sure feel like I avoid the larger items at times.

Looking at the last 10 years, I've build 10s of routines to compensate without knowing why.

Good luck getting medication! Hopefully it helps you.

Thank you! I've never heard of him.

Thanks for the input. Parsing what is a negative consequence of this compared to a negative consequence of other things (e.g. lack of support systems at work, inefficient delegation, etc) will be tough and a good exercise to go thru.

Yes, coffee really does help--and fails to keep me up at night if I drink it late. Thanks for the tip about doctors being hesitant--we'll see what happens with my primary care.

I suppose I'm the same as you in the aspect that I'm "successful" but many definitions, and I'm not struggling to the point where my life is falling apart, but there is often unresolved anxiety related to things that demand my focus.

I love finding this out, and learning more about it. Thanks for your input.

I loved it. We moved there with 4 kids and had number 5 there. Life-changing, wonderful experience.

I’ve heard that it has similar effects to Bulletproof coffee in that way.

I’ve experimented in the US since “real” kaffeost is hard to get ahold of, and I’ve found Wisconsin cheese curds to work the best.

I’m an American, but I lived a year in Kiruna (up north, mining town, part of Lapland) and it was a common thing among my friends from there. Common enough that I brought the tradition back to the US and enjoyed a cup of coffee-cheesed coffee just yesterday.

Oh, thank you!

Yes, it has been an ongoing thing for several years. [1]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2021/03/23/kiruna-a-...

Fun to see Kiruna here on Hacker News! My wife and I lived there for a year in 2014/2015. The mine is the _reason_ for the town, and it's exciting for my friends that live there to see additional minerals other than the high-quality iron ore they currently are mining.

As some other comments have mentioned, the town is being moved as the mine follows the iron ore under the current town. It's a relatively small town (~22,0000 people) but it's still a huge project to move.

The new deposit is under the town's ski slope on Luossavaara, which is the site of a now-abandoned iron ore mine. Luossavaara is the "L" in the mining company's LKAB name (Fully, Luossavaara Kiruna AB), so good that it's going to be working again under that same played-out deposit. It's also almost directly under my sister-in-law's house--which means they're probably slated to move too!

I was reading a biography of John Nash and came across this game that he (re)invented. Thought you all might enjoy!

When I lived in Sweden I read about the concept of “no permanent damage.” The playgrounds seemed much more dangerous than the ones I grew up with here in the United States. I suppose liability has a lot to do with it. I’ve attempted to incorporate that principle into the activities I encourage my own kids to participate in—allow them to experience and explore things that are somewhat dangerous in order to grow.

Yeah, just heard about it from Ian McGilchrist, when he was talking about the left-brain/right-brain differences. He mentioned this race in that context, so I looked it up.

Get away from all these things just long enough to write down an overarching goal for your life. Include your loved ones in this goal-setting. Discard, delete, unsubscribe, close, destroy all of those things that obscure your path towards that goal.

Vi bor i USA men vi kallar fortfarande vår pojke "Emil" när han spelar rollen.

tock tock tock Hacker News is crazy.

I built a half-pipe with my 10-year-old son! We designed it in Sketchup, did a material takeoff in Excel, and built it with lumber that got delivered to our house. 4’ high, 8’ wide and 29’ long—-and hours and hours of fun. Teaching things like trig and how to use a chop saw and the difference between different grades of plywood to a boy who’s learning-starved since school closed has been one of the more rewarding things I’ve ever done.

I don't know that I agree. The "right direction" is something that is hard to define alone and is likely to be defined by the social context you find yourself in at any given moment. Finding something that you enjoy and doing that can be the wrong direction as well.

It seems that I've been the most productive when I've felt the greatest weight of responsibility--first child, first few mortgage payments, first employee--and I have been the least productive when I attempt to avoid responsibility. Productivity, at least as defined as "what I need to get done to feel satisfied that I have fulfilled my obligations in the least amount of time" for me requires motivation, and nothing is so motivating as honest responsibility.

Saturdays are often filled with work for me, now. I work towards my master's degree, and I work on and around the house, and I work and play with my children. I rarely work on the business.

I run a boutique accounting services firm in the northwest--18 employees, <5mm in revenue. We do a fair amount of out-of-town work, which requires some travel.

I'm also married, a father of six kids, and we live out of town on 2.5 acres with a sizable orchard.

One thing that helps keep things balanced is that my wife chose long ago to stay at home with our young ones. She is my best friend, and we always make decisions together, which is a huge help when confronted with the inevitable time-conflicts that new opportunities or old problems present.

I enjoy my job. Frankly, my job is absent a lot of the drudgery that many people have. It is challenging, and while we're not the startup-crazy-growth type of business, we are slowly growing and there's always something new to be done. The worst for my family and for my health has been the travel. From August 2018 to December 2018 I was on the road 11 weeks out of 22; roughly half of the fall was spent out of town, working out of a hotel and customer locations. I ate too well and exercised too little, and missed my family terribly.

When I'm in town, I work from 7am to 5pm, but I have almost no commute--it takes me only 10 minutes on rural roads to get to my office. Deer and school buses are the only delays! It's much easier to eat healthy foods and exercise.

I haven't worked a Saturday or Sunday in years--even while traveling, I'm nearly always able to be home on the weekends. This has been a huge help in keeping me grounded and giving time to putter around the orchard and play with my kids.