Ryan Nesbitt
Ryan is a General Partner at a web3 x impact fund Flori Ventures. He was previously co-founder of Arcadia, a unicorn climate energy data company. He lives in Maine with his wife Anna and three kiddos: Oliver (7), Linnéa (6) and Astrid (2).
What does your normal working day look like?
We wake up with the kids and spend the first 1-2 hours of the day together, making them breakfast, getting them ready for school and sending them off around 8:15am. We have an au pair that lives with us, so she drives the older two to school and takes Astrid off to a park, library, or other activity for the morning.
Anna and I both work from home. We dive into work from 8:30 to about 4pm when the kids return from school. We eat family dinner around 5pm during the week, then continue to bath, play, reading and bed 7-8pm.
How long have you had this routine?
This routine has been mostly the same since the kids were born. We spend mornings with them before work, then dinner and reading and such in the evenings pretty much every day.
How has it changed as your children have gotten older or as your family has grown?
As the kids need a little less sleep, we’re able to mix in more morning and after-school play with slightly later meals and bedtimes.
What boundaries have you set around your work and how did you work with your colleagues to enable them?
Even though I work with a team distributed across many time zones, I almost always maintain my working hours and don’t take meetings during the morning and after school with the family. We both will jump back into work at 8pm as needed if we’re not able to get things done during the day. My colleagues also have kids and respect those blocked-out times. It helps that we all work remotely and make our own schedules.
What are the most important things for you to get right to have a successful day?
Honestly, if I can fit in exercise during the day that’s huge. I try for either first thing in the morning or just after the kids leave, otherwise, it means sneaking it into a lunch break during the day which tends to be harder.
I also really like spending 30 or more mins before bedtime reading with the kids (or having the kids practice reading now!) Sometimes I’ll read chapter books while they fall asleep or otherwise we collaborate on picture books.
Switching to weekends, what are the most important things to get right to have an excellent weekend day?
Weekends are usually very social. We love getting together with other families since the kids self-entertain, and we get some adult time which is harder during busy weekday schedules. We usually have a slow morning with coffee and reading/games with kids and a big breakfast - Saturdays are pancake day! - and also try to take turns catching up on the exercise we missed during the week.
How do you "turn off work" and give the kids your full attention?
I have all notifications turned off on my phone, and it goes into do not disturb from 7pm to 7am. I do my best to leave it in our bedroom in the mornings and after school, but that’s hard. I have a garmin that shows my messages or calls, but I can’t respond, and I find it much less distracting to quickly peek at my wrist vs picking up my phone. If there is something urgent, I can always go into our room and deal with it on the phone.
I think one of the hardest things about working from home is that the space that is supposed to be for the family now overlaps with work and the kids have a hard time making that distinction. I don’t think we’ve quite figured out the best way to handle that, and you can see how the kids vie for attention when we are trying to work while they are at the house.
What has been the most impactful thing you've done to save time / energy in your family?
We’ve started building out a planned meal schedule for the week so that we don’t have to think about what’s for dinner each night. So, for example, Tuesdays are always Tacos, Friday is always Pizza and movie night, etc. It helps us with grocery planning, but also, the kids like the routine and the expectation setting (e.g. no movies on Tuesdays, that’s a Friday thing).
What has been the most impactful thing that you've automated or outsourced in your family?
We decided early to have an Au Pair vs daycare and have stuck to that for the past seven years. There’s certainly the trade-off of having someone else live with you, but we’ve found huge benefits in having another adult in the household beyond just the childcare. In particular, it has made it much easier for us to have consistent date nights and couple time which has been crucial for our relationship during these early parenting years.
What principles have served you best in your parenting?
Communication is super hard with parenting small kids. We’re tired, distracted by work and the kids struggle to communicate what they want. It’s really easy to lose patience and get frustrated.
Through that we developed a principle where you try to always assume the best - that your partner is trying their hardest, that the kids meant well, etc. This has really helped us get through times when we feel like we’re doing all the work, the kids are misbehaving, etc. We can take a step back and try to figure out the root of the frustration or behavior and understand each other, both as parents and with our kids.
What is your approach to screen time?
I’m very against screen time. We do a movie or an actual TV show on Friday nights, but otherwise, I prefer little to no screen time. We don’t have ipads and I don’t let the kids use my phone. I think they will eventually learn to use technology but for now want them engaged in outdoor play, board games, make-believe, anything.
Is there a primary parent in your household, or do you split the parenting evenly?
We split parenting fairly equally. I took a couple of years off when the older two were younger (highly recommend!) and during that time I certainly was much more involved, but presently we are both super involved.
If there is an even split between parents, how do you divide the work and make sure that it is fair?
We try to avoid discussions about who is contributing what and whether or not it’s fair. That makes it seem like parenting is just a job and takes the joy out of it. We’ve found it more productive to have as a default belief that we’re both doing our best to raise our kids and then to reach out to each other if there are things we need help with or if we’re feeling overwhelmed.
What is your most life-changing parenting purchase under $100?
We loved having the clip-on chair by Inglesina for when the kids were smaller. It’s so hard to feed small kids, so having them in a seat right up at the table and buckled in is key, and this seat travels easily, so we could bring it with us whenever we take trips (which is often)
What is your top trick for making it through flights?
We bought a TSA-approved car seat that you can bring on the plane and clip into the seat. Makes a HUGE difference in the toddler range (from 6 months to 3 years) to be able to buckle them into a normal car seat - they feel safe and contained and will actually sleep some. Otherwise, in our experience, they tend to slide out of the airplane seatbelt and play the whole flight which can be rough on overnight flights to Europe.