Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?

the advantage of having young kids is generally they sleep very early which means you can have the early evenings to yourself (assuming they stay asleep).

they also take lots of naps in the afternoon which equals down time for you.

so as a rule, when they sleep you have some free time.

The nice thing about having kids is that it forces you to think about time management. Think about how much time you waste chit chatting, eating lunch, watching TV, surfing the Internet, etc. After kids, you'll want to rethink how you spend time and cut down on non-productive activities. That's exactly what I did - I reconfigured my time around productive work and kids. On week days, I allocate 7-8 hours for my day job, 2-3 hours for kids and family, and 2-3 hours for myself - blogging, writing, learning, etc. Weekends is more flexible. So think hard about how you spend your time and cut down on things that aren't important for you - you'll find more time than you think you had.

> Wake up super early on Saturdays and get about 3 hrs of skill building time.

You never know what kind of kids you'll get. Mine wake up every day at 5:55 to 6:30. Otherwise, generally good suggestions.

How dedicated are you to becoming a 10xer? You don't have to sacrifice your relationship with your kids to level up your skills – you need to cut out the distractions that are holding you back.

Data scientist here. It is 100% possible to do things with kids, but you really have to be motivated to do it, AND it really helps if you have a support system of other people to help take care of your child. I wrote about the dangerous deception we have in American culture, and particularly tech culture, of people who "have it all," but in reality have a bunch of help in the background here[1] and here[2].

If you work full-time and you want to go above and beyond, you're essentially working three days: work, before school + after school, and then your third day is learning or development.

Whatever that means for you in terms of reshuffling energy and other commitments will vary on your personality, energy level, etc, etc.

When you have a small child, it is extremely hard to multitask. So I wait until she is asleep. All after work time and weekends are for her.

Here is the way my schedule works: I pick her up from daycare, do dinner, playing, and then she goes to bed. I then take half an hour break, and delve into whatever I have going on, for about three hours.

I'm currently taking a Java class, writing technical blogs, and working out some Python. So I'll usually do an hour of reading/Java homework, then start a blog post, then finish off with whatever else I was working on.

Over the past three weeks, I developed this talk on big data[3]. That was probably the hardest because I needed a lot of time to write the code, test the code and concentrate, and all of my energy was just sapped.

All of this is to say that you can do it. For me personally it takes a lot of reshuffling and work and giving up things, but that's how kids work.

[1]http://blog.vickiboykis.com/2015/09/we-are-not-getting-the-f... [2]http://blog.vickiboykis.com/2012/07/sheryl-anne-marie-and-ma... [3]https://veekaybee.github.io/data-lake-talk/#/