👋 Hey Reader!

Here’s what I’ve got for you in today’s issue of WFH Dads:

• An honest look at my 2025 as a WFH dad
  • Theme of the year
  • Work
  • Family
  • Health
  • Marriage
  • Faith
  • WFH Dads
• Recommendation of the week - 1 Second Everyday app

Let's get into it.

My 2025 annual review as a WFH dad

I spent the last few days doing a full annual review.

The biggest aspect of it is reading through my journal for the year. I also look through my habit tracking data (I use an app called HabitKit), goals I set for the year, and photos and videos on my phone.

This year I though I'd share a little bit of the insights that came from the reflection.

Below you'll find thoughts, stats, goals, and lessons learned from the different domains of my life. Feel free to skim since it's longer than my normal newsletter.

My hope is to give an honest look at the highs and lows of the year while also potentially giving you some ideas on how to bring more intentionality to any particular domain of your life.

tl;dr

• Theme of the year: Being open-handed with my time
• Biggest win: Shorter workdays, no nights/weekends
• Biggest miss: YouTube launch
• Biggest lesson: Focus on what's essential

The theme of the year

If I had to name one theme, it would be this: being more open-handed with my time.

That started when I got laid off.

I suddenly had more margin, not just in my calendar, but mentally as well. Instead of hoarding time or obsessively optimizing it, I started saying yes more often. Lunches. Coffee. Kid pickup. Meeting neighbors. Lingering a little longer instead of rushing to the next thing.

The season of unemployment ended up being very meaningful to me (I guess they call it funemployment for a reason). I got to spend so much more time with my family and my friends.

While I typically have a goal to have lunch or coffee with a friend at least 2x a month, that increased to nearly 2x a week when I became unemployed in June.

My worry was that when I got a new job, I'd lose all that margin.

But I wondered..what if I could still be a little more open-handed with my time even when I started my new role?

I started at Huntress in late October and thankfully, I joined a social media team of 4 (instead of being a team of 1 like at my previous job). My new role as social media content specialist doesn’t demand as many hours as my previous one. Because of that, I’ve been able to continue to be more available to others (friends, kids, wife, etc) than I've been in the past.

The season helped me see that presence and relationships aren't just something you do after work. They're part of a good work-from-home life.

I wrote more about that season of unemployment here.

Work

As I looked at my work-related goals for the year, everything I wrote about above was actually one of my explicit goals — to work fewer hours overall and create more space in my days.

By the end of the year, I was working noticeably fewer hours than I was at my previous job. No nights, no weekends, and wrapping up by 4:00pm.

Earlier in the year, I was carrying a lot of anxiety about work (even before I got laid off in June). I felt like I was trying to keep so many spinning plates up.

At my new job, I came in with a different mindset:

• do fewer things
• do them really well
• actively resist the urge to volunteer for everything just to prove I'm a team player

The book Slow Productivity was really helpful in providing frameworks for HOW to do this. You can read my reflection on the book here.

The result has been better focus, less anxiety, and work that feels more sustainable alongside family life. I’ve also leaned more into AI workflows and creating SOPs to be more efficient with my time.

I’m still ambitious and want to crush it at work. But I’m much clearer now that working longer is rarely the same thing as working better.

Family

Often in my journal, I'll document moments that I really felt present with the family. The word presence gets thrown around a lot but for me, that's a feeling that I'm really enjoying being in that moment and not thinking about being anywhere else or doing anything else.

A lot of those entries revolved around small, ordinary moments with the kids.

Playing Trouble. Wrestling on the floor. Walking slowly around the neighborhood on Halloween (it's like the only time the neighborhood feels like a neighborhood!). Or even waiting outside a car inspection place with my daughter and holding her hand while she balanced on the curb.

As far as goals, I did have a goal to do weekly guitar lessons with Audrey but that fell through. She didn't really want to practice her chords. But she did start taking piano this year and that's going a little better.

I also had a goal to send my parents a short video message everyday (using a free app called Marco Polo). I stuck with that, even if it was just a 'hey good morning, had a good night of sleep and we're sitting here eating breakfast, hope y'all have a great day, love you!' Highly recommend it if you find yourself not really having the time to call your parents as often as you'd like.

Health

Here are the health stats for the year:

The year was kind of maintenance mode. No big goals or events, just stay consistent.

Running:

• Total: 686 miles
• Monthly average: 57 miles
• Highest month: Sept → 73 miles

For the most part, ran at least 3x a week (which was the goal). Oh, and we did run a 10k as a family which was super fun!

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu:

• 72 classes
• Weekly average: 1.3 classes

Goal was 2 classes per week. Had some injuries early in the year and sickness later in the year that kept me away from the gym.

Also intended to do a little more personal study of moves to try at the gym but always have a hard time making that habit stick.

Mobility:

I have tried to create a mobility routine in the past but have failed. What finally helped was:

• having ChatGPT give me specific mobility stretches based on the type of exercise I do and where I feel the most stiff
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• started using an interval timer (iOS, Android) and programmed my routine in it so I don't have to think about what to do next or for how long
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• started doing it in the morning instead of the night

Started this routine near the end of the year and was able to stay more consistent with the mobility work than I ever have.

Calories / weight:

Tracked calories most of the year (using the Lose It! app), then stopped around the holidays. I have found that when I do track the calories, it helps me be more mindful of what I'm eating, even if I'm not being super strict with my diet...like maybe I still get the occasional Dr. Pepper but I don't get 3 refills of it.

Got close to my weight goal of 165, drifted away from it, but am coming back down to it post-holidays.

Marriage

One area I became more aware of (and still have a lot of room to grow in) is recognizing the invisible mental load my wife carries.

Things like:

• school paperwork
• ordering medication refills
• keeping an eye out for when we need to order more stuff like dish soap

Was recently reading a newsletter about this and made me realize there's a lot I can do to take that load off.

For example, since I am super forgetful when she asks me to do things, I am starting to become obsessive about adding digital reminders via my Apple Watch (ie. Hey Siri - remind me to switch out the laundry in 23 minutes).

We also went on a marriage retreat through our church later in the year which is always a great time to get away and really spend time investing in our relationship.

Faith

Had the goal to read my bible everyday. Didn't read it quite everyday (ironically not reading it on Christmas) but I typically make time for it first thing in the morning.

We also committed to a weekly Sabbath (a day of rest on Sundays). What that looks like for me is I try to avoid any 'striving' on Sundays. I don't do any work. I don't work on WFH Dads. I don't even workout.

I sleep in. We go to church as a family. Sometimes we have lunch with friends. I journal in the afternoon while the kids nap. And we take it easy. It's been a really good rhythm that our family looks forward to.

I also wrote down prayers more regularly this year which was surprisingly enjoyable to reread. It was usually a prayer through a particular part of the Bible (using a lot of the same words the original author would use) and so they were different than my typical prayers.

WFH Dads

I didn’t hit either big goal this year with this WFH Dads business:

• ❌ launch the WFH Dads YouTube channel
• ❌ grow email list to 1,000 subscribers

This year was about learning where my limited focus actually needed to go (perhaps you're seeing a theme here).

YouTube:

My goal was to launch the YouTube channel by the end of the year.

I didn't get that done for a variety of reasons. I got the videos titles and thumbnails created, videos outlined and filmed, but as I started to edit, the process of creating new workflows to optimize for efficiency in the edit (making templates, MOGRTs, SOPs, etc) ended up taking longer than anticipated.

Getting sick at the end of the year, prioritizing meeting with people over filming, getting a new job, and then deciding I wanted to do an online class in December…it always seemed YouTube was the second priority.

BUT I'm currently editing the batch of first 5 videos so subscribe to the WFH Dads YouTube channel here to follow along!

Newsletter:

I landed at about 470 subscribers by the end of the year. A lot of growth came from recommendations of other creators. Some growth came from being a guest on a few fatherhood or productivity podcasts.

Interestingly enough, two of my biggest jumps came from simple, off-the-cuff posts on Threads like this one. And a good amount of those people have become engaged subscribers!

Coaching

I got on a good amount of calls with readers of this newsletter to hear about their specific struggles being a WFH dad. Each one was so insightful and has helped me refine my coaching program to really speak to the pain points they're experiencing.

Near the end of the year, I settled on a new brand promise:

Helping ambitious WFH dads stop working nights and weekends (without sacrificing their career)

Let me know how that lands with you.

Moving forward

The lesson I’m carrying forward is this: focus on what’s essential. It’s easy to feel like I need to be on Instagram Reels, LinkedIn carousels, or whatever the latest creator advice is.

After experimenting this year, I’m confident my focus is going to be just three things: this newsletter, YouTube, and coaching (with the occasional fun post on Threads).

What I’m carrying into the next year

If I had to summarize what I want to protect going forward:

• shorter workdays that leave energy for real life
• being open-handed with time
• fewer goals, chosen more carefully

If you made it this far, thanks for reading!

My hope is that something here gives you language for your own reflection, or permission to stop striving quite so hard.

And if you're still wanting to do a 2025 reflection yourself but don't want to write something so long, check out this post that's just 3 questions to answer as you move into 2026.

Recommendation of the week

​1 Second Everyday App​

Every year, I put together a short video that takes one second from every day of the year (or at least all the days I took a video on my phone). It's always so fun to see my year in 5-6 minutes. I've been doing this since 2014 and what's wild is when I look at my old videos, it's like a completely different life (because it was)!

I don't share these publicly anymore because most of the footage is of my kids, but I used to put them on my YouTube channel. You can see my 2019 version here back when I was a classroom teacher.

There's an app called 1 Second Everyday that I use that makes it easy to do. It's free and uses the videos that are on your phone.

Looking back on 2025, what’s one thing you’re proud of, or one thing you want to do differently in 2026?

Reply to this email and let me know. I read and respond to all of them.

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Thom Gibson Founder of WFH Dads ​​

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600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2246
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