I have considered for a time writing a comment here as your process felt quite foreign to me. I am sure it might work for some people, maybe even most EAs (judging by the upvotes), but I would also perhaps put up a warning flag for EAs considering whether to become parents or not: This might not be the right process for you and I think it is not at all necessary if you want to be an EA and a parent. I know you caveated the post this way, but I am commenting both to reinforce this caveat, to offer a bit more balance to this post and to offer an alternative strategy.
Therefore, I would like to outline an alternative and perhaps simpler approach: Ask yourself only if you want to bring another life into this world or not, leaving out all considerations of impact. If you land on “yes”, then do it and do not worry about impact. Sure, it could have a “negative” effect on your impact, but I think it could easily also be net positive in sublime ways (like emotional safety, meaning in life, etc. that can affect your productivity in large ways).
I would also warn against trading off kids with impact. Another comment here touches upon it but I think there is value to always putting the kids first if you want to have kids. There are many times this will come up and having been a parent only for 6 years they could be situations such as the kids not feeling 100% and taking a day off instead of sending them to daycare, even though you during that day could save 0.1 lives in expectation.
I think the reality is that many of us will have careers that are at least 40 years long, and kids might only take up significant time 10-15 years of these. So you still have most of your career to work breakneck hours, taking financial risk, etc.
You also might not want your kids to come across this post (maybe a reason for the pseudonym!) - I tried for a few minutes reading this as if my parent wrote it and felt quite conflicted.
That said, I love a lot of the advice here, e.g. the red lights at night (we now read bedtime stories with headlights with red light—hard to stay awake for us parents too!), talking through splitting responsibilities in terms of hours (for gender equality in the relationship) and much more.
I have considered for a time writing a comment here as your process felt quite foreign to me. I am sure it might work for some people, maybe even most EAs (judging by the upvotes), but I would also perhaps put up a warning flag for EAs considering whether to become parents or not: This might not be the right process for you and I think it is not at all necessary if you want to be an EA and a parent. I know you caveated the post this way, but I am commenting both to reinforce this caveat, to offer a bit more balance to this post and to offer an alternative strategy.
Therefore, I would like to outline an alternative and perhaps simpler approach: Ask yourself only if you want to bring another life into this world or not, leaving out all considerations of impact. If you land on “yes”, then do it and do not worry about impact. Sure, it could have a “negative” effect on your impact, but I think it could easily also be net positive in sublime ways (like emotional safety, meaning in life, etc. that can affect your productivity in large ways).
I would also warn against trading off kids with impact. Another comment here touches upon it but I think there is value to always putting the kids first if you want to have kids. There are many times this will come up and having been a parent only for 6 years they could be situations such as the kids not feeling 100% and taking a day off instead of sending them to daycare, even though you during that day could save 0.1 lives in expectation.
I think the reality is that many of us will have careers that are at least 40 years long, and kids might only take up significant time 10-15 years of these. So you still have most of your career to work breakneck hours, taking financial risk, etc.
You also might not want your kids to come across this post (maybe a reason for the pseudonym!) - I tried for a few minutes reading this as if my parent wrote it and felt quite conflicted.
That said, I love a lot of the advice here, e.g. the red lights at night (we now read bedtime stories with headlights with red light—hard to stay awake for us parents too!), talking through splitting responsibilities in terms of hours (for gender equality in the relationship) and much more.
Thanks for the added perspective!