What Lands at 8 Won’t Land at 18

Father’s Day always sneaks up on me—some years it’s handmade cards, other years it’s frantic brunch, but this time something new landed. I was looking at my oldest, thinking about that classic “let’s do Disney” idea, and it hit me. A Disney vacation at 18 doesn’t land the same way as if we had done it when they were 8. With four kids, that means I’ve got four clocks ticking, all at different intervals. Here’s what changed: adults rarely recall much from before age 5-7, which means early experiences really do have a shelf life you can’t get back. The window isn’t just closing for the big trips. It’s closing for all kinds of little moments, too.

Today, the urge to hit one more business milestone feels quieter. I’m thinking less about technical milestones and more about how to invest in memory dividends. The deadlines haven’t gone anywhere, but so what?

Most days, my default is to optimize—more output, better velocity. It’s easy to treat “quality time” like another variable to tune for next quarter, thinking I’ll catch up down the line. But you can’t just drop in Disneyland or a backyard campout wherever you want on the timeline. The sting comes when you realize those open windows—when excitement, wonder, or goofy group photos just happen—won’t always be there waiting for your perfect, optimized schedule.

What changed for me was running across how Bill Perkins talks about memory dividends. He reframed how I measure what really compounds over a lifetime. It’s not just income or shipping velocity. It’s the stuff you actually remember, that family and friends bring up again and again.

The Compounding Power When You Invest in Memory Dividends

Think of what happens when you invest in memory dividends—it’s like emotional compound interest. When you invest in experiences—whether it’s a wild trip or just building a fort in the living room—you start collecting returns right away. But the real magic is in how those moments keep paying out. Every time you come across an old photo, retell a goofy story at the table, or watch your kids recreate the same moves years later, that single experience sends out another emotional dividend. If you put those investments in early, the returns keep stacking up for decades. It’s not just about making memories—it’s about planting seeds that keep growing long after the moment passes.

Timing isn’t a minor detail here. It’s the lever. There’s a sweet spot for certain experiences—front-load life experiences to hit it. A Disney trip at age 8 has a way of burning itself into their memory bank, setting off years of callbacks and family jokes that just don’t happen if you wait until 18. The payout profile changes—wait too long, and you miss the compounding.

It’s not limited to epic vacations either. The little everyday things matter just as much. The dinner table stories that turn into family lore, the dance parties in the kitchen, and the short walks where you decide to leave your phone at home—these all stack up. Not just the times I clock out, but the moments when I’m actually present.

Adopting the Die With Zero lens—the first big shift for me—actually changed my approach to spending and saving so my habits matched my priorities. (source). It reframed presence as an investment, not a leftover.

Diagnose the Default, Reframe the Asset

You can spot the engineering mentality from a mile away. We’re wired to roll milestones forward, deferring the messy present in hopes of a cleaner, more efficient finish, and that bias quietly wipes out memory dividends for engineers. I keep treating real time with my kids like a side project—something I’ll optimize when the backlog clears, when the launch stabilizes, when the calendar opens up. This is the default: throughput wins, presence gets tabled. The problem is, “later” never lines up quite the way you think. I’m always kicking the can, telling myself next sprint is when I’ll show up.

Now, put presence in engineering terms. Your attention is capital. Allocate it wisely. Latency matters. Delayed writes to memory rarely come through with the same clarity or value as live ones. In other words, you can’t count on replaying those fleeting moments at full fidelity if you log them long after they happen.

Here’s the kind of miss that still stings: debugging a flaky integration test at midnight, determined to call it in before the build. Ship goes green, but the bedtime story’s gone. I caught myself doing this more than I admit—the code gets fixed, but the moment doesn’t make it to memory.

So let’s redraw the boundaries. If I treat recurring presence as a protected asset—a non-negotiable block instead of a vague intention—everything changes. I started by hard-wiring a weekly, no-work window into the schedule. It’s a guardrail. One night a week, full attention, no laptop, no phone, no “just one more email.” Shipping and showing up can absolutely coexist, but only if you commit in advance and defend it like any major deliverable.

You don’t try to fit in moments wherever there’s downtime. You book the bandwidth ahead. It’s the same principle as reserving compute to avoid bottlenecks; carve out dedicated time and let everything else route around it. Whatever milestone you miss, you won’t miss the window that matters.

And believe me, once you start seeing the return on those blocks—those stories, those connections—it’s the only performance metric that really compounds. That dinner table recap I mentioned earlier, that’s become the highlight reel at our house. This isn’t about rescue; it’s about the kind of coaching that sticks. Block your presence in now. Guard it with the same rigor you defend your best work. The payoff doesn’t show up in code commits, but it does last a lifetime.

The Practical Memory-Dividends Playbook

Start with the calendar. Look at each kid—really look—through the lens of ages and stages. Last week my oldest was picking colleges; my youngest still wants bedtime stories and backyard bug hunts. Map out what actually peaks now, and prioritize memory dividends over what you can push later. Maybe it’s that trip your third grader will soak up like a sponge, or the nerf battle your middle-schooler won’t want next year when “cringe” kicks in. This year’s window is the lever—some moments expire, and if you don’t list them now, they’ll vanish without you noticing.

Set the weekly guardrail. Pick one block—Friday night, Saturday morning, doesn’t matter. Tell your team, your cofounders, your Slack channels: this time is locked in like a production freeze. The goal is simple: framing cuts down back-and-forth, so treating presence as a fixed part of your operating system keeps it stable and predictable. Don’t let it float, don’t let it get bumped.

Design for compounding memories ROI, not one-offs. Big trips are great, but the real dividends show up in repeatable micro-moments. What sticks long-term are dinner table recaps that turn into lore, spontaneous kitchen dance battles, backyard campouts that happen twice a year, not once in a lifetime. It’s those recurring stories that kids bring up on long drives, that their friends start referencing and you realize you’ve built a little legacy. These compound just like interest—callback after callback, year after year.

All of this fits squarely into what I’ve called “Spending for Optimizers” and hashtag #LifeDesign. It’s not a one-time hack. It’s a setup you revisit as seasons change, as your business flexes, as your family grows. Block out presence now so you don’t have to engineer regret later.

Your move: Plan one age-bound experience this week, before something else fills the slot. And block that recurring no-work window right now—don’t let another sprint roll by before you invest in moments that compound.

When Presence Feels Like a Tradeoff

Let’s be honest—a big part of me still worries that choosing presence might slow the roadmap. Carving out hours for family instead of pushing for one more feature feels risky, and there’s no getting around the fact that the tradeoff is real. If you’ve ever glanced down at your calendar and felt the tension between shipping and showing up, you’re not alone.

Six months ago I thought I could somehow beat the system. If I just worked smarter, sorted the block schedule tighter, I could squeeze out more hours for both family and compilers. That’s not how the calendar played out. Some weeks I still try, but it hasn’t fully resolved and maybe it never will. There’s always unfinished work somewhere—either code waiting to land or someone waiting for me to show up.

Here’s what doesn’t get enough airtime. Early memories aren’t just nice-to-haves—they pay back for decades. The stuff you invest in now gets repaid every time a story is retold or a photo is dragged out at Thanksgiving. These moments keep compounding through inside jokes, family traditions, and the kind of connection that outlasts any launch cycle. Shipping is important, but presence has a different return profile. Making memories when the window’s open gives you returns that just keep paying out, long after the feature you shipped gets sunsetted.

So if you’re nervous about momentum slipping, build yourself some guardrails—design work for presence like you would any other critical path. Sync up with your team so expectations are clear, batch your deep work into tight blocks, and defend one recurring, non-negotiable calendar lock for family time. Track your deliverables on a weekly pulse. If things veer off, adjust, but don’t let presence be the buffer that always gets squeezed.

Father’s Day isn’t just about cards or an extra pancake. It’s your nudge to compound one moment this week. The window is open right now—pick your block, lock it in, and let this be the post-2-of-7 commitment that sets the tone for real memory dividends, today.

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