I was reading my almost-two-year-old the same book for the fifth time in a row. “Little Dumplings” was the only book he would consider, and he wanted it again. Of course he did. He always wants it again. “More,” he says as he taps his hands together. He doesn’t really let me read each word. He wants to race through the pages so we can “read it again.”
Go Deeper: More “Working for Fun” columns from Steve Carse.
It’s 7:03, seven minutes until bedtime, so he will get it again.
I couldn’t love this little guy more, but I do not want to read it again. I want to check my phone. Not for anything important. I wanted to see if our latest popsicle post got another like, or comment, or see if some new “news” had been posted.
I was aware this was not lining up with the story I tell myself, and I tried to snap out of it. I read the pages with some extra zeal. Still, I was frustrated with myself.
Like a few billion other people on Earth, I’ve been dipping my toe deeper and deeper into the AI rabbit hole of late. I’m impressed and scared of what it can do. With that in mind, my mind started to drift.
I started to daydream about a robot doing all my hard work instead of me. At first it was doing the laundry. Great. Then it was reading my son the same book for the sixth time. Then it was waking up at 4 a.m. to soothe him back to sleep. Then it was doing all the hard stuff — the stuff I complain about, the stuff that exhausts me, the stuff I fantasize about not having to do.
All so I could refresh the apps on my phone, and then go find some other lazy task to capture a dose of cheap dopamine.
It was probably a ten-second thought, but it stuck with me.
Because if a robot did all of that … what would be left for me? The easy parts? The fun parts? Would I just swoop in for bedtime kisses, the fourth quarter of basketball games, and graduation?
Bedtime went smoothly, I putzed around the house, and soon was in bed myself. At that point, I realized I’m living some version of this already. We send our kids to preschool, and we have a nanny who helps fill in the gaps. My wife and I both work, recovering workaholics who now mostly stick to the standard 9 to 5. Still, we have a lot of help. We get to avoid a lot of the hard parts.
But lying there, phone in hand, robot in my head, I felt like a hypocrite. I’m already outsourcing some of the hard parts. And yet somehow, the hard parts I still have, the ones I can’t delegate, might be the whole point.
They might be the primary ingredient for sustained happiness.
I’ve found peace in an idea that is kind of sad at first: the things you’re focused on, working hardest on, fantasizing about completing aren’t going to change things all that much. When it’s all over, you’re going to feel pretty much the same as right now.
Once the breakfast nook is built. Once the kids are sleeping through the night. Once I stop getting calls about a broken freezer at King of Pops HQ. I have this running list of “once this happens, then I’ll feel…” what? Settled? Content? Done?
But I’ve been doing this long enough to know. We started King of Pops with $7,000 and a used pushcart. I have hit plenty of milestones since then. When I was trying to convince my brother Nick to quit his job to partner up with me at King of Pops, we had a number, 100,000 pops, and we’d both be able to ride off into the sunset. We 10x’d that one quite a while ago, and we’re still waiting for the sunset to ride into.
Published a book. Sold a food distribution company we started. Launched 60+ franchises when Covid changed everything. And every single time, within a few days, maybe a week, I felt… pretty much the same. Not bad. Not disappointed. Just — the same. My baseline.
That used to bother me. Now, I think it might be the best news I’ve ever gotten.
Because if the finish line feels about the same as right now, then right now is already pretty good. These are the good ol’ days. I thought I made that up at a King of Pops field day like 12 years ago. Turns out it’s in songs. It’s on throw pillows at Marshalls. Andy Bernard says it in The Office. But it takes a lot of self-awareness and reflection to hold that energy.
The good ol’ days never feel like the good ol’ days while you’re in them. They feel like monotony. They feel like reading the same book again.
And here’s what scares me a little. As life gets easier — and it will, that’s what technology does, that’s what money does, that’s what success does — happiness might actually get harder. Because when you can outsource the hard parts, you have to willingly opt in to the hard parts. And choosing hard when easy is sitting right there on your phone? That takes a kind of discipline I’m not sure most people have. I don’t think I do, at least.
The robot in my head wasn’t saving me time. It was stealing my life. The soothing at 4 a.m., the chasing, the exhaustion, the same book for the fifth time — that’s not the obstacle to happiness. That just is happiness. I just can’t always see it while I’m in it.
I read the book a sixth time that night. Not because I’m great at being present. But because the robot isn’t here yet.
And honestly, I hope it takes its time.