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Comment by 01100011 | Hacker News Reader

Eh, some of us just have to keep working. No time to work on our magnum opus, because we're trying to remain productive in the ersatz offices we've cobbled together at home.

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I find myself working more hours lately because I no longer have a hard break from leaving the office.

Yeah I miss even the 10 minute drive home transition from work to home mode.

This is obviously a luxury, but I've found having a separate room helps a lot. Putting my laptop to sleep and turning off the light acts as a transition.

If you don't have a separate room, you could also plug your computer in somewhere, and go on a short walk every day.

I was already not very into or committed to my job, so working from home made it even harder to focus (or care), and now I just spend most of my time playing video games

Why don't you enforce your own hard break? You are done working and not available after a certain time.

It isn't that I'm being forced to work more, it's that I end up working more because I never get out of 'work mode' psychologically. It's become too easy to jump on and start doing a code review or start the next ticket. I used to work 2 days a week from home, but the routine of the office the other three days was enough that I knew at 5 PM, even at home, that the work day is done. I don't have that routine anymore.

Some of us are stay at home parents.

I was just explaining to someone that I have to be: a parent, a teacher, an engineer and a husband. I feel I am doing all of them equally badly sigh

That's okay, I was doing all those things badly before the apocalypse.

My guess is you're doing better than you think. Be gentle with yourself and watch that self-talk. It can be a killer.

Remind yourself that the fact that you are even in your children's life on a daily basis already puts your children ahead of 1/4th of the U.S.

> According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 19.7 million children, more than 1 in 4, live without a father in the home.

https://www.fatherhood.org/father-absence-statistic

A friend wrote "Train for a Mars mission: how to survive social distancing while working from home with your kids around without losing your sanity" https://medium.com/@szopa/train-for-a-mars-mission-how-to-su...

I feel for the parents. Some of my coworkers are struggling. Thankfully we're all lucky enough to still be working now but it's definitely tough. I'm the primary care giver for my father. While that's meant preparing his meds, preparing meals, and taking him to doctor's appointments, etc. With the closing of the senior lunch and his few friends unable to visit I'm now full time social director. Much more stressful than I'd have anticipated. On the other hand, he isn't a child and generally stays out of my way while I work.

Best of luck to you all. The number and variety of stressors right now is off the charts. Hope you and your families come out the other side stronger for it all.

My home office for years was a walk-in closet. Just big enough for a small desk and a chair. Because I'd turned my old office into a server room, and it was too noisy.

But before I did that, I hacked used cube farm partitions into office space in said server room. It didn't actually work, because the scream of those 1U servers was very hard to block. But it would have been fine in the living room, or wherever.

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