I think you misunderstood the point. Most of the time, the things that are screaming for our attention are not the truly important things, so it's easy to get

I think you misunderstood the point. Most of the time, the things that are screaming for our attention are not the truly important things, so it's easy to get distracted and waste time. When we have little kids, they happen to be both important and screaming for our attention, which makes it much easier for us to focus on what's important. That's the point he was making. I actually observed this in my life a week ago. We just moved our toddler from the crib to a bed and he's been waking up in the middle of the night asking for attention. When this happened, my first instinct was like "ugh. I have to go lay down w him rather than doing advent of code". Then I realized that laying down w my 2 year old is so much cooler and meaningful than anything else I could be doing w that time. I heard the phrase sometimes "you don't have to do this, you get to do this". That's what I think the quote is about.