

Ask HN: How do you spend your quality time with your Family. - yogrish

Fellow hackers, You are always occupied with your coding,designing, startup launches, marketing, Pitching to VCs etc. Then, how do you spend quality time with your family and kids in particular? They need to be nurtured well and your presence is a must. How do you balance both worlds?
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chris_dcosta
It's difficult to strike the balance. I admit that working into the small
hours means I'm up late the next day. I can't remember the last time I got up
before my partner or the kids. Holidays are really important to me now,
whereas in the past I just saw them as an inconvenience.

One thing I have learned to appreciate though, is that if you do spend a week
with the family, completely leaving work behind, you get a real boost when you
start back again. You get new ideas, you get the energy to implement them, and
you get fresh eyes to look at what you were doing. Having a break really can
be as productive if you get the mindset to why it is necessary.

After a while you get to look forward to the breaks because you know it will
bring on better things.

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thejteam
I would say schedule some ritual for a specific time each and every day. Under
no circumstances deviate from this. I am working a full week and working on a
small business evenings and weekends, but no matter what every day at 8 pm I
am there to read bedtime stories. I am pretty good at it too. It is my
favorite time of the day and I won't give it up no matter what.

I make time for the kids other times too(in fact I am going outside to play
soccer with them in about 10 minutes)but having that one special ritual that
they always do with you will be very special to them.

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nodemaker
Well one of the basic tenets of the hacker mindset is to automate anything and
everything.

If you find yourself working so much that you dont get time to spend with your
family, you are most likely spending a lot of your time in doing tasks that
can either be automated by a computer or assigned to people willing to do it
for less than what your time is worth or maybe what you are willing to pay for
in exchange for time with your family.

