101–110 of 530 posts
The trick is that when I feed her just before going to bed I always put on a conference talk or a video lecture.
This saves me from getting bored and I also found that the background talking makes her fall asleep more easily.
One of the many great things about children, if you're not a total heartless bastard of course, is that having them really sharpens your mind as to what's important and what's not. Most of these things the HN crowd obsesses over are shit, and the things that replace those things will also be shit, and the thing you make with those things--even if it makes you fabulously wealthy--will also be shit, and if you don't be…
I have a "ToLearn" list that keeps getting longer and longer as I struggle to have some quality time where I can learn and really comprehend stuff AFTER putting my 4 year old daughter to sleep- i too have to stay with her till she is asleep- often with me also going to nap...
When I am getting stressed and mad about all those constraints I picture the sweet moments with the knowledge, that there are just a few years left where my daughter and son are small enought to want to play with me ;)
This thread is slowly filling up with stories of enthusiastic workaholic parents who are disciplined and fit enough to take every single 15 minute break to sit down and get some code out. If you're able to code up a blog engine with one hand while holding your baby in the other, I envy you. I wish I could muster up the energy and discipline to do something like that. But to other readers: for many people this is not…
I'm not a rock-star programmer but I can definitely hold my own in the office. And guess who the managers prefer to take to meet clients, me or the guys that spend 120 hours plus infront of a screen.
If your answer is "But [insert famous tech guru] does it", you'll find that [famous tech guru] has a spouse who takes care of all or most of the kid stuff.
This thread is slowly filling up with stories of enthusiastic workaholic parents who are disciplined and fit enough to take every single 15 minute break to sit down and get some code out. If you're able to code up a blog engine with one hand while holding your baby in the other, I envy you. I wish I could muster up the energy and discipline to do something like that. But to other readers: for many people this is not…
So to keep up with technology is that I sometimes switch from customer (if you have the chance), then you will automically learn new things. Whether they are old or new technologies.
Another thing is try to follow sometimes courses, seminars (hard- and soft skill), during working hours preferably. Then it won't affect your private time.
And if I have time when my 3 kids are in bed, and I still feel the energy to create something. Force myself to keep my side project small, and don't be too hard on yourself when you don't finish it. Because you definitely learned something.
Becoming a parent did not prevent me from doing extra work but rather made me re-evaluate my priorities. I want to give a good example to my 7-years old son with some balance in life with time for playing, sports, slow family dinners.
Fortunately web development allows me to accumulate savings for inevitable pause between jobs be it for re-training when my Rails expertise becomes obsolete, fun projects, sabbatical or founding a startup.
Subtracting time for household work, that leaves 1-2 hours each night for leisure. Weekends can give a bit more leisure time, but not always. Sometimes my girlfriend and I eat after kids-bedtime to have a chance to actually taste our food (or go out, with a babysitter staying with our kids), once a week I go to the local hackerspace, the rest is more or less for myself.
For me, I learned to ruthlessly prioritize in my list of things that I want to do, and I got good at structuring my projects in result-oriented blocks of work that can be done in one or a few time blocks.
I also don't watch TV; this went way down the priority list after the first kid was born.
At first, it will be hard. You may not have any spare time. After the newborn phase, the amount of spare time you have will slowly start to go back up again. Enjoy it, they aren't little babies for long. You will be well aware of how precious that time is, in a way that your pre-parent self could not comprehend. I usually have about 4-5 hours of time after the kids go to bed. During this time I either program, talk w…
At first, it will be hard. You may not have any spare time. After the newborn phase, the amount of spare time you have will slowly start to go back up again. Interesting... My experience has been the opposite, the first ~6 months they sleep so much that there is plenty of time to do things. Then you get a phase where they start to crawl and then walk around. In that phase, you have to be attentive all the time to ens…
But in general having kids takes a lot of time. So I can't do all the things that I used to do before. I go out a lot less, I watch barely any TV anymore, and I rarely code anymore at night (too tired most days), and I read fewer books.
However, I'm still productive. Little projects that I used work on for a few weekends take months now. I just spend a few hours here and there. But once the project is done, it's done, and it doesn't matter how long it took.