Ask HN: How to balance ambition with a newborn child?

6 points·productized··4 comments

I consider myself generally ambitious: I have a bootstrapped 20-person service business and I want to scale it further or reinvest some earnings into new products. However, I do also care a lot about being a present dad.

Based on your experience, what helped you balance kids and work?

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Been at my entrepreneur journey for 10 years now (Dgraph Labs, and now Struct Chat), and have had 2 kids.

My take on this: I work hard on weekdays, morning till evening, say 8 pm -- but, do help out with things like to-fro school, showers, some classes, depending upon how hard spouse is working.

But, always -- Keep the weekends off. And perhaps a bit of Friday evenings too.

It’s tough. One of the toughest things to balance.

I’d suggest be a present dad for a few years at least and let work take a back seat. You can always focus on that more once the kid is in school. This is what I’ve done. I don’t feel guilty for my career and am working on that now.

Ultimately it’s up to you…

Prioritize your kids. Pressure yourself to take care of the real priorities and let the team carry the rest. It’s too easy to get lost in bullshit.

You’ll have a better business for it and avoid alienating your kids.

I struggle with this as well. I stopped working weekends and wake up at 4:30am on weekdays so I can end the day earlish at 4-5pm to spend time with family.

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