
Kids and Time - luu
https://www.jefftk.com/p/kids-and-time
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luxurytent
I see a lot of new parents struggling to fit time in for code in those early
days. The odd Ruby tweet mixed in with spit-up talk.

It took me a good 3 1/2 years to finally get into the right routine, both
physically and mentally. Our kid's great (another one on the way in Sept) but
we really struggled with a consistent bed time routine that was healthy for
all sides for a long time.

We're in a good place now but I imagine, just like us, many parents fail to
realize that every child has different needs and sometimes, you've gotta ride
it out quite differently.

As an aside, the pandemic sure has helped us get into a more rigid routine. We
have the odd late night for our kid but otherwise, the house is clean (as can
be) and kid's in bed by 8pm. A silver lining in all this mess.

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rootusrootus
For what it's worth, two kids is not 2x the work. More like 4x. You will need
to step up your game :).

~~~
jefftk
_> two kids is not 2x the work. More like 4x_

Different families seem to have pretty different experiences here. In my case
having two kids has felt like maybe 1.5x the work, decreasing as they get
older. At this point (4y and 6y), I think one child would likely be more work
than two, because they spend so much time playing with each other.

Probably depends a lot on what kids you happen to have, how they get along,
your parenting style, and what resources you have.

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rootusrootus
> Probably depends a lot on what kids you happen to have

I agree. If my son had been born first, I'd think I was the greatest parent in
the history of parenting. But my daughter came along first, and taught me
otherwise.

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carlivar
I think this is why it's no coincidence that people often become people
managers around the same time they have kids. Not only are you consistently
managing people at home and work, it tends to be a more steady 9 to 5 job with
less late night passionate coding or such required.

Or that could just be my experience.

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jefftk
For what it's worth, that hasn't been my experience. I've been working ~9-5:30
as a programmer for my whole career (2008-present) with essentially no late
night coding. I think that's been very typical at the places I've worked
(defense contractor, mature startup, Google, startup, Google).

I do think the fraction of managers with kids is higher, but I suspect this is
just explained by managers generally being older?

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carlivar
Perhaps just different personality types. I have never worked well technically
productive in an office. I view that as planning, reviewing, conversational
time. I just love working on things at night. My brain feels optimized at that
time. But kids stopped allowing me that window, which wasn't necessarily
9pm-2am or something. More like 3pm-midnight.

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nerdponx
For me it's some combination of the darkness and less "other stuff happening".
Otherwise I just want to go outside and otherwise get distracted by the hustle
and bustle of humanity.

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meristem
We have twins in elementary/primary school--anything I say is couched on that
reality. We found that having them sleep through the night, go to the bathroom
in middle of night by themselves, and wake up themselves, freed some energy.
They also are in bed asleep before 8:30, which frees some time.

The primary issue for us in terms of "free time" is the quality of the free
time. It happens when our circadian rhythms are in the downhill stage. And it
happens in shorter chunks than the "ideal" chunk for creative and flow-driven
work.

The pandemic & having them at home has exacerbated these issues.

PS: If you have young twins or are about to have them, it is true that feeling
normal happens when they are 5, and not before. This is much later than if you
are having one kid at a time, on average.

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war1025
> it is true that feeling normal happens when they are 5, and not before.

As the father of a 4 year old and twin 2 year olds, curious what you mean by
this.

Feeling normal in what way?

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meristem
Would love to answer-- can you tell me more about your curiosity?

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monkeydust
With a 3 and 1 year old me and my wife are or on cusp of earlier bedtimes -
will be a magic moment as our free time will shoot back up - we have told
ourselves we will not just use it to talk about the kids or watch netflix
...lets see!

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082349872349872
cf Barber, "Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years"

Part of her thesis is that weaving and textiles have been stereotypical
occupations for the distaff gender because they can be done in a single
location and are interruptible, making them very suitable for child-rearing.

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garmaine
Speaking as an (amateur) archeologist, weaving and textiles are traditionally
female jobs in most societies because it requires fine work by small,
dexterous hands. I'd say a connection to child-rearing is reaching beyond the
obvious.

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thrwaway69
Men can't have small dexterous soft hands?

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adrianN
In the same way that some women can be stronger than average men, but female
soldiers are very rare historically.

~~~
watwut
That is why males cant play in orchestras ... male hands being bigger and
stronger does not imply them having less dexterity

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jvvw
I'd like to see his partner's figures too!

~~~
jefftk
We've done time-tracking a few times as a couple to figure out whether we're
splitting things fairly:

* 2011: [https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division](https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division) (no kids yet)

* 2015: [https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division-ii](https://www.jefftk.com/p/time-division-ii) (18m)

* 2017: [https://www.jefftk.com/p/december-2017-time-tracking](https://www.jefftk.com/p/december-2017-time-tracking) (3y and 1y)

I think the increase in time has likely affected both of us similarly, but we
haven't timed another week.

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baxtr
> Overall I'm enjoying having more time for projects, though I do miss some
> things about very little kids.

I might have an idea to solve that one!

