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Comment by _dark_matter_ | Hacker News Reader

Just a question, are you married/have kids? I feel like that can be an important part of the schedule question. With a family, you can't work all those extra hours; or at least it would be much more difficult. These rules would help enforce a normal running of the household. Any thoughts from other at-home workers with families?

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Having kids (especially small ones) makes all the difference: I can't use my wonderful home office any more because of the all noise in the house: my kids, friends of my kids visiting, dog barking at all of them and etc.

Walking around with earplugs/headphones all day is too painful and not an option, so now if I really want to get anything done I leave the house.

I'm curious, how do you mean painful? I work in an office cube farm, and it's often noisy/chatty enough that I find it hard to concentrate without headphones or something. But I find most earbuds and cheap headphones uncomfortable to wear for more than half an hour or so, so I bought a big set of over-the-ear Bluetooth headphones that are great to wear all day long. Might be worth a try if that's your problem.

There is more attention given to the sounds of your family than your work colleagues. It's a completely different kind of distraction. And it's a little bit heartbreaking every time to say to a kid that you are busy right now.

That last part. It's why I can't work at home. It's INCREDIBLY difficult for me to ignore my children when in close proximity.

I get increasing feeling of discomfort from wearing any type of headphones/earbuds for more than 3-4 hours a day and I've tried different kind of headphones/earbuds, invariably with the same result. It's probably an individual thing, I have plenty of friends who seem to wear something all day long...

Perhaps I have an incredible tolerance for it but I can work white happily with three children making a lot of noise, one of which is a mini tyrannosaurus.

It was only until I had children that I realised just how much time they take up (this isn't meant to sound selfish, they're awesome!) It makes me wonder just what I did with all of that spare time I had when I didn't have kids.

As far as home working is concerned, I do it (along with slightly different hours) during term time to allow me to do drop-off/pick-ups. There's no-one else at home when I'm working from home.

During holidays I'm either off to look after children or I work from the office. I don't have enough space to effectively shut myself off.

Married (wife works at home, too); no kids.

(Our flat has three bedrooms ... or rather, had three bedrooms: in practice, it has one bedroom and two offices.)

So, I work from home a fair bit, and have two kids who are homeschooled by my wife[0]. I tend to get a couple of hours of work done before anyone else in the house is awake (say, 6:00 am - 8:00 am). I will typically work during the kids school time (which runs 'til early afternoon), then I'll often take a break until dinner. Depending on my output, I may work for another hour or so after the kids are in bed. Like the original author, I rarely need to be constantly available on email/IM, and I have a fairly predictable meeting schedule, so this type of day works for me.

The downside is that it can definitely blur the lines between work and play. I can live with that, however, because it does offer me a pretty significant amount of freedom with my time (that is, I'm willing to work a couple of hours later in the evening if I'm free to take advantage of a perfect spring day in the afternoon).

[0] This actually helps enforce a schedule because I am relegated to my desk in the bedroom during school hours. I can only show my face during lunch.

From his faq [0]: (I had to actually google for it, don't worry ;))

"He lives ... with his wife..., a couple of cats, several thousand books, and an ever-changing herd of obsolescent computers."

0: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/faq.html

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