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This sounds unreal: Job + parenting + study?

How are you doing this? This can't just come from keeping lists and or touch typing?!

Can you give me some background on what you are doing?

Consider:

- 8 hours of work (a generous estimate).

- 4 to 6 hours of parenting (between children's wake time in the morning and the evening).

- Commute time? Is she driving? Public transit? Other? We'll neglect this.

- 3 hours on study (an hour per day per semester hour).

With a two hour commute, that's a 19 hour day. Without, 17 hours.

That leaves no room for other daily necessities, though those could be built into the 4 to 6 hours of parenting time? I don't know. Alls I have to parent is a dog, and she's pretty low maintenance.

Now, suppose she front-loads her decision making onto those lists a la the Getting Things Done method. Then, she doesn't have to put much thought in to what next for this or that thing?. She can just look at her list for whatever thing, see what's next, and do it.

[edit] I think what she claims she is doing is possible, I just don't "have what it takes". I'm not even sure "what it takes". [/edit]

Personally, I struggle with focus, energy, and decision making. I've tried lists, and other things. Sometimes I think it is a discipline issue, other times I think its diet, lack of exercise, or maybe even my semi-regular sleep schedule. I'm not really sure, and I'm too tired to figure it out.

I see or hear of other people who perform at this "three full time commitments" thing and I wonder at what I'm doing with my life that leaves me so far behind.

There is still a weekend with two full days.

Parenting time tends to take over most of the hours that would have been work-time, on weekends. At least until your kids are old enough that they don't want anything to do with you anymore (or so I hear).

With kids it's usually possible to do something either productive or fun alongside the whole kid-taking-care-of thing. It's just very hard to do anything you like that is productive or fun. You gotta roll with the punches. Typically things that require few unpredictable interruptions and that can't be done with your kid(s) (which varies greatly with their age) are out of the question unless they're in bed or someone else is watching them. Or you turn on Babysitter Television, of course.

This is very true in my experience. I covet and zealously guard the hours between 8pm and my bedtime and/or ~6am and when the kids wake up. It is very hard to do deep intellectual work when you have kids around, but easy to get more rote tasks completed.

It's a big part of the reason I do a lot of jobs with my kids. I teach them how to cook, we grocery shop and I discuss how adults purchase things, I fold the laundry in front of TV with them, etc. My 4-year-old son has shown a lot of interest in my tools lately and last week he helped me repair a cupboard. My deep intellectual work is after a nights rest when I wake at 4am (I go to bed at same time as my children, ~8pm).

> Personally, I struggle with focus, energy, and decision making. I've tried lists, and other things. Sometimes I think it is a discipline issue, other times I think its diet, lack of exercise, or maybe even my semi-regular sleep schedule. I'm not really sure, and I'm too tired to figure it out.

Oof. Feels like I could have typed that myself.

Many of these "the power of scheduling" posts seem to be written from the vantage point of either a newly begun regimen or a high water mark that isn't reflective of the mode. I say this less as a judgement on others and more anecdotally for myself. I've had those weeks of high output, and they always came coupled with proud forum posts giving thanks to and detailing my careful scheduling. This is never sustainable and quickly crumbles apart.

Maybe I'm not trying hard enough or I'm missing some crucial detail. Or maybe a life of every detail planned isn't the right life for me.

I'm the one that this comment chain is replying too. I mention that I'm hyper-productive compared to my past self. For me, the change involved getting diagnosed with cancer about 3 years ago. I've posted here before about it but the experience led to a lot of reflection and I realised I didn't want to die because I was unhappy with the life I was living. If I was going to die I wanted to have had a good life. I'm all cancer free now but I've still got the drive to live a good life.

First, I'm a father (i.e. "he").

It's heavily about time management. On Monday and Tuesday nights I don't have my children. So Monday I wake at 4am, do 3 hours of uni, spend 30 minutes getting ready for work and have 30 minutes to travel to work. I work 8 hours but I have an hour for lunch (which I study in), getting home takes half an hour. That leaves me about an hour of free time and 3 more hours of study. 7.5 hours sleep.

So Monday hits 7 hours of uni, so does Tuesday. I also have Wednesday morning and 3 more lunches so now I've done 20 hours. Since I wake at 4am I can get 2 hours in the days I have kids and now I've hit the hours needed easily. If I have a lot of work due I can take a day of leave (maybe twice per semester).

I also have Sunday nights free and one Sat night + Sunday day free per fortnight. That's a lot more hours. I typically get most jobs done when I'm parenting. Parenting is actually really busy because after school pickup I have dinner, cleaning dinner, baths, homework, etc.

When do you exercise, grocery shop, meet teams at school, get sick, enjoy your hobbies, read for fun, catch up with friends or other parents, drive your kids to activities, help with homework and projects... ?

I'm glad this works for you, but for me (and I imagine many) a hyper "productive" schedule and life seems to be missing the simple joy of living and the flexibility of unscheduled opportunities. Again, if it works that is great but for many people the time management approach is not viable.

I'm in the military, I have an hour of PT every morning at work as part of my work day. I don't do any study when my kids are awake, they get my full attention. I take them grocery shopping Wednesday afternoon, I do nightly homework, we have activities on weekends and some school nights (i.e. this week is dentist Thursday and school disco night Friday). Most of my friends have children of similar ages so I tend to see them a lot on weekends. I simply spend my free time studying. The average North American watched 5 hours of media per day in 2015, that's 35 hours per week.

I know this life isn't for everyone, for me this is a necessary thing I need to do if I want to change from military to software development. I can't stay in the military forever as a single parent, it's simply not feasible, so I'm doing what I can to set myself up post-Army. It's not the most enjoyable life but it's temporary and it's an investment in my future. I'm not trying to say it's the solution for everyone but if you have goals you want to achieve then it's certainly a possible life for most people.

I think what a lot of people, especially parents, lack is energy. There is a reason I do most of my study in the early morning with a very early nightly bedtime, it's because I have more energy before work than after work. After 7 hours of study and 8 hours of work, I'm exhausted. When my head hits the pillow I'm out. It's probably a good part of the reason why so many people rack up 30+ hours of TV per day, they want to sit on the lounge doing nothing of a night. Having daily PT at work has been a blessing, it's kept a high level of fitness up and I feel this gives me more daily energy.

>I get angry when I see an office worker earning 6 figures typing one finger looking at the keys. Touch typing doesn't take long to learn but it saves so much time and effort.

I think this is mostly an illusion, unless your job is writing. For stuff like SW, typing is usually not the limiting factor. Thinking is. For management, typing a lot usually equates to a large bureaucracy (and lots and lots of pointless emails).

Me? I can type without looking at the keyboard. One of the stars in my team cannot.

Flip the principle over: How many people have suddenly become more productive and "moved up" because they learned to type faster?

I am in a large bureaucracy and the person I'm thinking of probably types 5-8 WPM in a job that involves a lot of typing and gets paid over $120k.

ymmv but often typing isn’t the bottleneck, thinking is (typing faster != more nor better output)

But not having to think about typing reduces your cognitive load. Touch typing as a coder isn't about speed, it's about freeing your mind from having to think about your fingers.

Touch typing is somewhat overrated. I never learn to touch type and never had any regret over it, don't get me wrong, I do t peck for keys either but the speed of properly touch typing is no need for me, I'm not a professional typist. I on the other hand am great at remembering shortcuts and I think that's way more important to my work than touch typing, I feel that using the mouse to open a menu and click debug as a complete waste of resources and mental focus.

TBH for me touch typing wasn't as big of help as learning vim inside out.

And I see the same clumsy slowness when others touch type in front of me

While I totally agree with that, there are times when typing is my bottleneck. It's often the case that once I've figured out what I want to say, the next challenge is converting it into text. During that phase, I want to be able to quickly convert thought to words on a screen without any barriers.

Which points do you most disagree with and what's your alternative?

Not keeping a schedule, i.e. ""I'm not keeping a schedule for 2007, so I can't commit to that, but give me a call on Tuesday at 2:45 and if I'm available, I'll meet with you."".

I don't know too many people who would be happy about being told you value their time so much. I keep a tight schedule and I plan around it instead. I also don't feel the need for an index card each night. I already have my lists of jobs that I need to get done and some of those jobs are due tomorrow.

You get angry when you see someone does not touch type? This sounds petty and weird.

I don't think they actually get "angry", but rather pretty annoyed. I do the same thing. If someone asks me for help or something and I see them "hunting and pecking", then I get slightly annoyed that this person hasn't spent a couple hours learning how to properly type. It would save them so much time! I just want everyone to be more productive and something like typing is a pretty easy place to gain productivity.

I fall back on touch typing when I want to keep typos at a minimum, but it's so much slower for me than "hunting and pecking" (even though I don't look at the keyboard when doing it, so it's hardly "hunting"). But that speed increase comes at the cost of accuracy. If I could get speed parity with touch typing, it'd be amazing. I've spent days trying to learn. I don't know if I'll get there. Please forgive me, senpai. :C

I do get angry too, in a sense that this person has not spent any time optimizing when it's their full time job. How can a person who cannot optimize basic things for themselves be expected to lead a group? It smells a lot like either corruption or incompetence.

At this point, I hope you'd owe up to taking the burden proof that a person who cannot optimize basic things for themselves cannot be expected to lead a group