As a father of two I can relate with some of the answers here, but I'd like to add an alternative viewpoint here just to give young dads some glimmer of hope.

As a father of two I can relate with some of the answers here, but I'd like to add an alternative viewpoint here just to give young dads some glimmer of hope. For the first and a half or so we've had a difficult life with the first kid. To be honest, there is just no way around it. Especially your first kid. The SEAL-level sleep deprivation and complete lack of "me time" really takes it toll. I'm also not the type of dad to let mom handle everything. She also has a career and, to be honest, a better one too. So I was regularly up at 2AM, 4AM and 6AM. Then a workday. :) (If you have young parents around you, please try to be compassionate.) But for some reason I'm more effective now than I ever was. I can remember "not having enough energy" to complete some project for as long as I am alive - even when I was alone. It is clear to me this had very little to do with my actual life and more with my attitude. My life is more complex and demanding than it used to be but somehow I still managed to lose 60lbs, learned to read Latin, took guitar lessons and started a business. Every single one of these items never would have left my todo list without my family. They have endowed me with a keen sense of priority which made planning my life quite easy to be honest. I know those achievements I listed are not that hard, but for me they are significant. I've found most things in life don't require your eternal soul as a sacrifice, they just take (usually a lot of) time and so you need to be strategic about your goals. Take it slow, don't burn yourself out, but also don't stray from left to right unnecessarily. Keep your eyes on the ball. Don't shift from "write a compiler", "read latin", "write toy OS", "build cpu from nand-gates" to "learn german" and back to "learn to draw realistically" in a month. Focus. A dirty word, I know, but a powerful one.