Hello all,

My daughter is now 3 weeks old and it’s surprising how much I’m enjoying being a father. While the cards are stacked in my favour (both my girlfriend and I have a lot of enthusiastic and supportive family and friends), it has been tiring (of course) and I’ve found that there are distinct changes to how I’m working as a business person.

First, I should say, I’m not supposed to be working. I have paid parental leave provided by the Australian government and, so, I’m not supposed to work much - I think a few hours a week are allowed (to keep the business alive) but nothing significant. Which is good because that’s about all I can do!

Before having a child, I would often really be driving around the city doing different things for the business: attending meetings, dropping off orders, hustling here and there. Overnight, to some extent, I have found myself telling collaborators ‘we need to find a way to do this without me leaving the house or it can’t be done’.

For most of my projects for 2026 I was able to get enough done in November, December and January so that things are largely in place, and with an hour or so a week, meaningful progress is made. But there are two book projects where I’m finding that I just cannot drive them like I was earlier in their lives. For one project, I was often proactively designing, communicating and getting things done, but that one has slowed down a lot, as the artist is also quite busy at the moment. I really need to spend some time over the weekend upgrading everything.

Another is the sort of project where there’s loads of hands on deck but we haven’t, yet, worked in a delegated way. On a small art project, teams are often two or three people large, so it makes sense to do a lot together, since it’s easier to get 2-3 folks in the room and work through things, rather than each person work on their own parts. Now that I am finding it hard to be in a meeting, even from home, we are sort of having to work things through. This project has taken a LOT of work so it will go forward, but I’m in a position where there’s one institutional partner that I sort of just need to make things a bit easier or the project likely starts to become significantly challenging.

It’s only been three weeks, so it’s hard to know in what ways the ways I work are changing in that it feels too soon to say ‘oh with a kid I can do x but not y’. What I’m finding is that I can commit a half day more easily than an hour. It’s easier, oddly, to tell my girlfriend ‘I need the morning to go to the studio and meet with someone and get work done’ than turn up for a call, where the baby might be crying and just need a cuddle. But maybe that’ll change. I’m also finding that it’s easier to find some time at home to do some design, emails, etc, which is unsurprising but NOT the way I’ve been working.

Still, with only a few hours I can work each week before the government takes my parental payments back I have to be somewhat candid with my peers and collaborators and somewhat selfish too. In the short term I just can’t be as reliable or as active as I’ve been, and been known for, and that’s ok, I just need to adjust. I’m finding that out too - other people are happy to give me more time and grace, I just have to have the foresight to ask for it.

Finally, I have to say that February has been a surprisingly great month for sales and that has been a really good boon for me. December and January are always very slow, so when the sales start moving again that’s a big sigh of relief.

I’m looking forward to March - there’s a lot of good things happening.

Matt