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Comment by Helmut10001 | Hacker News Reader

Tipp: I usually go to bed with my 3y old son at 8pm. Then I usually wake up at 4am (or earlier). Between 4am and 6.30, I can do all my personal stuff, self-hosting, reading HN, trying technologies etc. We eat breakfast together and then head to work/Kindergarden etc. Worked really well and I totally enjoy the calm morning hours to slowly prepare for the day. That said, having kids is still the biggest challenge I ever encountered (I worked abroad, got a PhD, went to UC Berkeley and still, all of this felt super easy compared to a kid).

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There's certainly a few hours you can grab for something; I'm sure the extra sleep young children need contributed to our survival as a species, or else few children would have survived to adulthood. :-)

I've got a side project I've been trying to work on, but there's just so much else that needs to be done: You've got to keep connections with family and friends, you've got to do your laundry and your taxes and your shopping, you've got to figure out what to do about schooling, and so on. And I can't tell you how many times I've managed to block of 3-4 hours on a Sunday afternoon / evening to do some proper hacking, only to have my son fall ill and have to spend that time getting him medicine or trying to help him fall asleep.

All that to say, it certainly is possible to have "side projects" other than your child, but as OP said, you really have to adjust your expectations down. :-)

Since I'm a parent, I'm getting really good at time management. When the kid was 1 it was impossible to do anything, but now that he's 3, I do get at least some time almost everyday for hobbies/projects (not a lot, as you mention, but at least some).

Some things I do:

- I insist on getting some exercise done everyday (basically, walking the famous 10000 steps). Apart from the general benefits of exercise, not being in awful shape helps having more energy and therefore getting more things done. It's difficult to find time specifically for this so what I do is if I have a remote meeting where I'm not going to talk a lot (and most days I have one), I do the meeting while walking outside, connecting to it from my smartphone.

- While commuting to work by bus I do some Anki (I'm learning Chinese with it).

- I'm aware this is not within reach of everyone, but we hired someone to do a good chunk of the housework. When deciding if you should do this, consider that you are basically buying free time for yourself. How much is free time worth to you? For me, now that I have very little, it's worth a lot.

- Having only a little time to do something is no longer an excuse. If I have 15 minutes, I read a book for 15 minutes, no longer saying "I'll save it for when I have more uninterrupted time".

Pretty accurate. Military service does prepare you (a bit) for kids. Guard duty lets you sleep for 3 hours before your next shift. Then another 3 hours and that's enough. Yep, early childhood parenting.

Discipline, boredom and acceptance cover many of the other challenges of parenthood.

three (3) hours! ha! i wish. and i'm still inside that hurricane.

Every kid is different. You've got a real challenge on your hands. Our first was the same. Good luck!

Hey man! Sending my beat wishes and virtual strength towards you! My kid is 13 months old now and I think there were 2 or 3 occasions where she slept more than 3 hours straight. I feel you! It'll get better! Or so I hope :)

Any time I read a comment like this, I have to ask, when do you get time to do things with your partner? When do you do chores? For most people it's the evening, which you don't have, and in the morning you do your own stuff.

Or am I assuming too much and you are a single parent?

You don't.

But kids grow up - it doesn't stay this way forever.

> You don't.

I recall my SO asking my relative's wife (mother of three) what to do if you're already out of energy and dinner is not ready.

"Some days there just won't be any dinner for you" was the reply.

Naively it seems like things like frozen ready meals or meal replacers (Soylent, Huel) would be an easy fix (I wouldn't give them to the kids, but for a tired parent it'd be better than nothing).

I'm not a parent though (although planning to be), so am keen to know why that's wrong.

It might have been implied. A sandwich or whatever.

It's not wrong - you do what you can to stay nourished.

The only wrong approaches I can identify is beating yourself up about not preparing a decent meal for yourself and not eating at all.

Both me and my SO lost weight in the first months because we made the former mistake.

Thanks for your comments, it's really helpful to hear other people's experiences :)

I am a parent of 2, and you're right: I've never skipped a dinner, but sometimes that dinner has to be a bowl of cereal.

The webcomic SMBC says it well: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/before

Mac and cheese….

> You don't.

Thank you for saying this. I strongly believe this is the right action until kids are older and start helping around the house. (Still trying to convince my SO though.)

Honestly, raising kids is not that hard if you give yourself permission to be not perfect. Order pizza, avoid using plates when you can, let yard overgrow a bit, hire cleaning service. Bail out of unwanted social obligations. In fact, trying to get approval of others is what makes parenting hard.

It’s common in many parts of the world for people to get their weekly housework done by someone else. Failing that, there’s always the weekend.

Once kids get slightly older you have routines and they become so much easier to manage. My partner and I get plenty of time together once the kids go to bed, especially on the weekends since they don’t nap at school (ugh). The secret is being very focused on routines.

I've never been able to do this as there's usually 1-2 hours of cleanup to do after bed time. And directly after bed time I have very little will left to do housework so instead the cleanup gets delayed til 9/10pm. (3 kids) Rinse repeat :(

It depends on the kids, the ages, and the phase of the moon - but I've had good success making a daily habit of "kids, time to pack up" half an hour before their bedtime routine.

We go together through the house and find good places for everything, figure out what they want to do with in-progress activities, etc.

When I started this practice, it took three people and twenty minutes to do five minutes worth of cleaning, but the kids get faster as they learn (a skill they might find useful in their own home, one day).

Including the kid in the chores from as early as he possibly could has been a huge win for us. At 6 he can now handle stuff like simple food preparation, emptying the dishwasher and folding his own clothes pretty much unsupervised. That saves a lot of time on the evening clean up.

my work starts around 5 am so my personal time starts at 3 am. One of my colleagues has two children a few years older than mine so his bed time is a little bit later- he goes to bed at 11 pm and then wakes up at 2am to do his personal stuff - running a minimum 80km/week non-negotiable. i personally get around 5 hours a day of sleep which is manageable but there are times that's not possible.

i think parenting is actually alright if you don't need to sleep. i have a pet theory that my son inherited my ability to get by on very little sleep and it can be pretty aggravating at times!

some hobbies are definitely no longer possible so if you are thinking of starting a family but consider the annual pilgrimage to tomorrowland or ultra (and all the trips ahem that go with it) mandatory then obviously, think twice. those i know who continue to do things like these with children clearly have someone to offload their parenting duties to- and that is something that you have to discuss with your partner before you move forward on such a huge event in your life.

I have kids and the thought of going to bed at 11 and waking up at 2 for personal time has never once crossed my mind! That sounds like an awful recipe for severe sleep deprivation. There are plenty of other, healthier, ways to get personal time as a parent as kids age.

> he goes to bed at 11 pm and then wakes up at 2am to do his personal stuff - running a minimum 80km/week non-negotiable. i personally get around 5 hours a day of sleep which is manageable but there are times that's not possible.

This is patently absurd. The number of people who can get by on this level of sleep is probably less than the 0.01%

we hire the 0.01% :)

That sounds incompatible with having any kind of social life, even when you don't have the kids around.

social life is other parents with kids on shared weekend activities.

Yes, I realized that it is inevitably to loose friends after having a child. At least those without kids frequently got very angry with me for cancelling dates late, not being on time, or not calling frequently enough. I cannot solve this riddle, so my priorities are

a) stay healthy enough to be able to support my family

b) spend time with my child, since you cannot postpone this

c) care for those who really rely on me (parents)

There's usually not much left afterwards, but I still have long term friends who understand that I may be largely unavailable for a 10 year timespan.

I can confirm this. Going to bed with the kids and being fresh in the early morning feels way better, than tiredly wasting time in the evening.

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