There are many, many remarkably lovely benefits of being the father of a newborn.

There is the love, like you never felt before.

There is the connection with your partner, like you had never really understood.

There is that sense of legacy and perspective, that you are now something more, that your life is about something much more than you.

And it is here that you also find the greatest challenge.

Even more so than the extreme tiredness.

Your time is no longer your own.

It is your child’s.

The things that you took for granted: the morning pause to reflect, regroup and reassert, gone.

The freedom to do things largely when you want to do them, whether it is important or not, disappears.

These things we knew would come.

But intellectually knowing a thing, and actually experiencing it are completely different things.

In amongst the feeding and the nappies, the coos and the cries, over the last 7 weeks, I realised I recognised aspects of this challenge.

I had seen glimpses of it before.

There had been times in my career, where I was essentially on call 24/7, and despite being very senior, there was always some problem, in some part of the world that needed my attention.

I often had very little control over my agenda, I had very little control over my time.

I had no real ‘time agency’.

It took me a long time to create systems to wrestle some control back, but it was always a struggle, it never really felt like enough.

It is only now, when I am outside those corporate structures, and once again my time agency is severely compromised, do I understand how important, how precious it is.

It is probably the strongest argument for doing your own thing: despite all the challenges, it comes with at least an opportunity to define the shape of not just what you do, but also how much ownership you want to have over your time.

It is also a powerful argument for building fame, so that, by becoming famous enough with the right audience, your time with others becomes even more valuable. Demand then outstrips supply, giving you more choice over what you spend your time on.

If time is the most precious thing we have, and I suspect it is, both of these give you more agency over yours.

It got me thinking, what questions would I ask to better understand how I felt about my time? And then, how to define what kind of relationship I might want as I made decisions about my life, especially in my work…

How much time agency do I have? (in work but also life overall)

1. How much control do I have over my time? Who owns my agenda most of the time: on most days, most weeks, most months, most years?

2. One qualifying question: Could I say ‘no’ to certain things and realistically be able to not do it?

If you don’t feel how much time agency you have is right, what would be?

How much time agency do I want?

1. How much control do I want? What would be enough?

2. How comfortable am I with not having to think about certain things, to let others define how I spend my time?

3. Where would I like more ownership? And why?