4 ms·

On a similar note can anyone provide insight on what's possible when working from home with kids aged newborn to preschool? As someone who would like to work fr

On a similar note can anyone provide insight on what's possible when working from home with kids aged newborn to preschool? As someone who would like to work from home and start a family in the near future it looks like I may need to choose one or the other (stay at home parent or remote worker). Ideally if I could do both, I could me more involved in my child's life and not sacrifice income. Maybe a part time remote job is doable?

jimmyswimmy 7y ago
By 10 they're able to work for extended periods with minimal help. By 7 or 8, a schedule will get the kids to only interrupt you every half hour or so. Before then it's luck of the draw. Newborns and toddlers are impossible. Lovely things but they require constant attention. I think it's not possible to hold a regular work schedule until your kids hit 5.
meheleventyone 7y ago
With newborns my wife and I tried to give each other a couple of hours a day to have some time off. That was about the limit. We were lucky that here kids get to go to great kindergartens from 18 months. True normalcy in that both are sleeping through the night in their own beds most of the time took until the youngest was three.
VLM 7y ago
My experience with WFH when my teens were much younger, is that a laptop with 100% wifi is required, and toddlers building lego or similar isn't really any more distracting than an open office environment. Probably less distracting in that toddlers are somewhat more predictable than coworkers. If you work in an open office environment you'll expect WFH will be hyper productive due to lack of distractions and then get very disappointed that you'll lose 50% of those gains by toddler interruption. In practice, note you're still ahead of the open office people talking about sports and Trump derangement syndrome and plans for partying this weekend and sex and relationships and pop culture for hours on end, just not going to be as far ahead of them as you expected/hoped. You have to get good at short term budgeting of attention. Its rare to have a license plate stamping job of continuous 100% effort required for precisely 8 hours per day or whatever. Work on diagnosing the tricky bug report or new architecture design during nap time after lunch, I had a solid hour or more to concentrate uninterrupted. I can do comparatively mindless "TPS report header changes" for hours in the morning while refereeing toddler arguments about who took my lego piece. I can write a perfectly good status report email during a Thomas the Tank Engine episode, for example. I find the mandatory time discipline is actually useful in that it prevents wasting too much time on things that don't technically require the optimization. Could I spend an extra two hours on that power point that management is going to completely modify anyway? Yeah, I could, and in the office I would, but at home, the kids want me to play catch for ten minutes outside, and it was just busywork anyway. In the office my doctor advised me a long time ago to stand up and walk around every hour for leg circulation. I've also avoided carpal tunnel that way, or maybe its the weight lifting. At home I probably spent 1/12 to 1/6 of my time supervising the kids. Productivity really didn't change. For your own health you should probably be taking breaks often anyway, so having the kids around isn't that bad. Nobody ever complained about being too healthy and not taking breaks is unhealthy.
- hermitdev 7y ago
  > In the office my doctor advised me a long time ago to stand up and walk around every hour for leg circulation. I've also avoided carpal tunnel that way, or maybe its the weight lifting. I constantly drink herbal (decaffeinated) tea or water throughout the workday. This forces me to get up and move about every 30-45 minutes or so to either refill my mug/water bottle or use the bathroom. I'm still fairly young (in my late 30s), but have already had a number of issues with joints/tendons. I was approaching carpal tunnel while I was still in college (spent +16 hours a day in front of a computer). Luckily, some light exercise helped back then. Now I've arthritis in pretty much my entire spine. It's a real pain, but getting up and walking around every 30-45 minutes really helps a lot with my pain. It seems to also help with posture as I tend to slouch more the longer I've had my butt in my chair.

jimmyswimmy 7y ago

By 10 they're able to work for extended periods with minimal help. By 7 or 8, a schedule will get the kids to only interrupt you every half hour or so. Before then it's luck of the draw. Newborns and toddlers are impossible. Lovely things but they require constant attention. I think it's not possible to hold a regular work schedule until your kids hit 5.

meheleventyone 7y ago

With newborns my wife and I tried to give each other a couple of hours a day to have some time off. That was about the limit. We were lucky that here kids get to go to great kindergartens from 18 months. True normalcy in that both are sleeping through the night in their own beds most of the time took until the youngest was three.

VLM 7y ago

My experience with WFH when my teens were much younger, is that a laptop with 100% wifi is required, and toddlers building lego or similar isn't really any more distracting than an open office environment. Probably less distracting in that toddlers are somewhat more predictable than coworkers. If you work in an open office environment you'll expect WFH will be hyper productive due to lack of distractions and then get very disappointed that you'll lose 50% of those gains by toddler interruption. In practice, note you're still ahead of the open office people talking about sports and Trump derangement syndrome and plans for partying this weekend and sex and relationships and pop culture for hours on end, just not going to be as far ahead of them as you expected/hoped. You have to get good at short term budgeting of attention. Its rare to have a license plate stamping job of continuous 100% effort required for precisely 8 hours per day or whatever. Work on diagnosing the tricky bug report or new architecture design during nap time after lunch, I had a solid hour or more to concentrate uninterrupted. I can do comparatively mindless "TPS report header changes" for hours in the morning while refereeing toddler arguments about who took my lego piece. I can write a perfectly good status report email during a Thomas the Tank Engine episode, for example. I find the mandatory time discipline is actually useful in that it prevents wasting too much time on things that don't technically require the optimization. Could I spend an extra two hours on that power point that management is going to completely modify anyway? Yeah, I could, and in the office I would, but at home, the kids want me to play catch for ten minutes outside, and it was just busywork anyway. In the office my doctor advised me a long time ago to stand up and walk around every hour for leg circulation. I've also avoided carpal tunnel that way, or maybe its the weight lifting. At home I probably spent 1/12 to 1/6 of my time supervising the kids. Productivity really didn't change. For your own health you should probably be taking breaks often anyway, so having the kids around isn't that bad. Nobody ever complained about being too healthy and not taking breaks is unhealthy.

hermitdev 7y ago
> In the office my doctor advised me a long time ago to stand up and walk around every hour for leg circulation. I've also avoided carpal tunnel that way, or maybe its the weight lifting. I constantly drink herbal (decaffeinated) tea or water throughout the workday. This forces me to get up and move about every 30-45 minutes or so to either refill my mug/water bottle or use the bathroom. I'm still fairly young (in my late 30s), but have already had a number of issues with joints/tendons. I was approaching carpal tunnel while I was still in college (spent +16 hours a day in front of a computer). Luckily, some light exercise helped back then. Now I've arthritis in pretty much my entire spine. It's a real pain, but getting up and walking around every 30-45 minutes really helps a lot with my pain. It seems to also help with posture as I tend to slouch more the longer I've had my butt in my chair.