My Parental Leave

I just spent two months looking after my three month old son (Kal). I really enjoyed the time we had together and it was wonderful to focus on family and interests outside of my job at Automattic.

Time with my Son

The majority of my time was spent with my son, Kal, and with immediate family. I have a lot more empathy for my wife as looking after a baby is harder work than I had expected.

Bonding: I think most of the value of the parental leave value was for me to bond with Kal. I’m still not completely sure he knows who I am 🙂
Bathtime: I give him a bath every day before bedtime, where I play him a new song each day on Spotify. It’s a fun little routine and something I’ll continue doing even when back at work.
Sleep Training: We finally did this about half way through my parental leave and it was a game changer. It was amazing to get 6+ hours of uninterrupted sleep again although I wish it was more consistent.
Walks: Every day, I’d take him on 1-2 hour walks in the baby carrier which was both good exercise for me (and when I listened to audiobooks and podcasts) and also relaxing for Kal who loves being outside.

Personal Development

I made a concerted effort to eat better, exercise more, read/write and brush up on my programming ‘skills’:

Health: After Kal was born, I was not at my healthiest. I worked on eating better (less sugar and carbs, less frequently drinking alcohol) and adding in more strength and HIIT training (Peloton classes and Kettlebells) in addition to walking, running and cycling. I am already feeling better and want to codify and adhere to new habits over the next few months.
Reading: I spent more time listening to audiobooks and podcasts. I’ve enjoyed listening to the 20 Minute VC, Acquired, and All-In. I read Powerful (Patty McCord), Greenlights (Matthew McConaughey), Range (David Epstein), Leading (Alex Ferguson) which were all great. Ready Player Two (Ernest Cline) was disappointing (even though I LOVED RP1) but I’m happy I read it regardless. I’m now slowly making my way through A Promised Land (Barak Obama) which is very interesting as I don’t know much about US politics.
Programming: I started a Full Stack JavaScript course on Treehouse (completed about 25 hours) starting right from the beginning. It was great to reconnect with engineering and I now understand many elements of JS and can scan through code and understand how it works.

Developing Theses

Africa Investing: I set up a rolling fund (focused on early stage investing in Africa) to offer my friends/family and extended network access to both this asset class (private technology companies) and emerging market (Africa). This is an extension of the part time angel investing in Africa I’ve been doing for six years.
Future of Work: I spent some time learning, thinking and writing about different ideas mainly about the future of softwar e development and investing. I made a few small investments (in support of these ideas) in entrepreneurs all over the world, mostly co-investing with folks I’ve known for a long time.

My wife and I also finally completed some life admin, such as moving out of our NYC apartment and finding childcare for when we are both back to work. We are hoping to move back to NYC once the weather improves and vaccinations are distributed widely (hopefully Q2 2021).

We are looking forward to life getting back to more ‘normal’ and being able to have closer physical interactions with friends and extended family.

Aadil Mamujee