By Patrick FitzPatrick

My father taught me how to be a man by being the embodiment of a good father: Loving. Engaged. Patient. Persistent. To this day, he teaches by being, not lecturing. Sometimes the lessons dawn slowly, but they’re never forgotten for having been earned through my own analytical skills.

No lesson has dawned on me slower — or is now more indelibly imprinted — than his lessons about work-life balance.

My father never “works hard,” he simply works — an on-or-off, all-or-nothing proposition. Whether on the job (pre-retirement) or running his own business (since the 1970s), he works like a Trojan. Or he doesn’t — full stop.

It’s those moments when he was completely off the clock that are responsible for my most cherished childhood memories. Fishing trips. Weekend country auctions. Whale watching. Prospecting and fossil-hunting. Building a computer from a kit back in the days when one kilobyte of memory was a “big thing.” The list is endless, peppered heavily with weekend adventures, but also including afternoons, evenings and random weekday mornings.

Dad, you see, knows how to disengage. He has the self-discipline not just to get work done, but to work at maximum efficiency so he can walk away when he needs to.

If I give her nothing else, I aim to give my daughter exactly what Dad gave me: Time. Sure, I grew up in an era in which I suspect it was easier to disengage. It was, after all, a time before the internet existed. It was a time when you never called anyone at home after 5pm for fear of being rude, to say nothing of living before the invention of the BlackBerry.

Today, more than ever before, disengaging from work takes self-discipline. Some of us get this, but most struggle with it — and we’ve no excuse for it, really. I knew the lesson, having learned it at home, but I did a pretty good job of forgetting it until recently.

A friend of mine is chairman of a major national financial institution — one of the largest in Egypt. Having recently run into each other at a reception, we wound up talking family for some time. I complained that my daughter slept too early — like 6 in the evening early, which translated into no time with her in the evenings. Between her early wake-up call, the demands of the magazines and a small business to run, our schedules intersected for brief periods early in the morning and on Fridays.

My friend’s suggestion was simple: “Change her schedule and yours.”

He had the same issue with his kids when they were pre-school aged, and his solution was a compromise: The kids were kept up 15 minutes, then 30 minutes, then 45 and so on until, eventually, they were awake until maybe 8pm. He would make certain to be home by 6pm to be with them before they slept. Then, if necessary, he’d head back into the office. Oddly enough, he didn’t always wind up working longer hours — instead, he worked smarter.

“It’s about priorities,” he said.

Another friend, who is nothing if not Egypt’s supreme dealmaker, reinforced this lesson just a week later. One of his kids attends the same pre-school as my daughter. For exactly the fourth time since my daughter enrolled last fall, I was the one dropping her off. She thought that was pretty cool. I thought it was even cooler — until I got to the gate and saw my friend standing next to it, looking over the fence watching his son at play in the sandlot. If he can work out how to take his son to or from school several times a week while putting together 10-figure deals, we all can.

Sure, your job is great. And yes, there’s little in life more satisfying than running a business well. Except, perhaps watching your kids grow up to do the same or better one day. bt