You get a dog and you take it for a walk. Why? Because they need exercise. They have to get their energy out. They benefit from the leadership. They go to the bathroom outside instead of in your house. It’s all very good for them.

But, to borrow a question from the great Montaigne about his cat, perhaps the other way to think about it is that your dog is taking you for a walk. After all, you need exercise. You need to get outside. You need the consistency and the routine and the break.

In a sense, this is what we were talking about when we said recently that our kids are putting us on a schedule as much as we’re putting them on one. Having kids has forced us to get outside. They make us sit down for meals. They pull us away from our desks. They made it harder, if not impossible, to multi-task. They get us to put the phone down.

It’s good that they do this. It’s good that they make us do this. Because left to our own devices, we’d be less disciplined, less structured, less balanced. We’d work too much. We’d waste more time on things that matter less. Our kids keep us in check as much as we do them. And that’s very, very good for us.

P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about how simple routines can help improve your life, check out this 7-minute video, “Why the Stoics Believed in the Power of Routine,” on our Daily Stoic YouTube channel.