How to balance between Kid and Coding?
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Put the kid up for adoption. Problem solved. :) (I am joking before anyone thinks I mean it). You culd work away from home or make a rule that if you are working you should not be disturbed. Pretty hard to support a family if you lose your job so you have to make it the priority (unless you are wealthy, of course).
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me
Actually, I run my own consultancy , so loosing a job is not on order :D Actually I converted one of my office floor as my apartment after kid was gone. It was tough at the start to squeeze in an Office cum apartment, but I saved about three hours that I would have otherwise be wasting, driving to office from home. However due to nature of work, I do not always know how I will get a solution or sometimes even worse, what is a solution. So working hours is time which takes to get the result straight. But yeah. Probably you guys are right. I need to somehow learn to imagine the time that I give to my kid as a "future project"http://s.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/smiley\_tongue.gif
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This is probably the most absurd problem I am facing for over a year now. Being in Prototype and product design, I consistently need to think about the design and code. Earlier it used to be "Sit in front of system till you get result". It could be a day, 2 days or anything. Now I have a 15 months old Son. He prefers my time over his moms and has grown a fondness for books and pictures. I love spending time teaching him and playing with him. But when a problem is unsolved, I am finding myself lost, even now. Playing with kid, thinking about algorithm. Sometimes it is morning 3 AM to 8 AM that I work in my closed world, but even that schedule is not helping any more. Sort of lost! You guys are probably the most outstanding programmers on earth in Codeproject. Thought, would shoot up the question to you! Suggest me a solution to balance life :( Oh by the way, sorry for this long message. I had to find a place to trash my thoughts :D
I totally agree with Richard MacCutchan. Over the years I've also noticed that spending time with the kids also helps to solve problems in work (not to mention it helps to put them into right perspective :)). Don't know if it's because of being more relaxed or the goofy ideas, but that's the way it is. Another and important thing: I don't know if this translates very well to English but we have a saying that your work or your colleagues won't be coming to visit on your grave every year. Something to think about :)
The need to optimize rises from a bad design.My articles[^]
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Focus on your child. After your wife he is the most important person in your life. And believe me, the childhood years just fly by when you spend too much time focussed on other things, until you look round and see he's grown up, and you wonder about all the times you missed.
One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.
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Focus on your child. After your wife he is the most important person in your life. And believe me, the childhood years just fly by when you spend too much time focussed on other things, until you look round and see he's grown up, and you wonder about all the times you missed.
One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.
:thumbsup:
Life - Dreams = Job TheCardinal
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Focus on your child. After your wife he is the most important person in your life. And believe me, the childhood years just fly by when you spend too much time focussed on other things, until you look round and see he's grown up, and you wonder about all the times you missed.
One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.
This is one of those times where you need a "Vote 1000" link. :thumbsup: /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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This is probably the most absurd problem I am facing for over a year now. Being in Prototype and product design, I consistently need to think about the design and code. Earlier it used to be "Sit in front of system till you get result". It could be a day, 2 days or anything. Now I have a 15 months old Son. He prefers my time over his moms and has grown a fondness for books and pictures. I love spending time teaching him and playing with him. But when a problem is unsolved, I am finding myself lost, even now. Playing with kid, thinking about algorithm. Sometimes it is morning 3 AM to 8 AM that I work in my closed world, but even that schedule is not helping any more. Sort of lost! You guys are probably the most outstanding programmers on earth in Codeproject. Thought, would shoot up the question to you! Suggest me a solution to balance life :( Oh by the way, sorry for this long message. I had to find a place to trash my thoughts :D
Grasshopper.iics wrote:
Oh by the way, sorry for this long message
No problem, you choosed best place for sharing. By the way, I have 9 month free with no baby, and I am afraid I would have the same problem.
---------------------------------------------------------- SignatureNotFoundException
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This is probably the most absurd problem I am facing for over a year now. Being in Prototype and product design, I consistently need to think about the design and code. Earlier it used to be "Sit in front of system till you get result". It could be a day, 2 days or anything. Now I have a 15 months old Son. He prefers my time over his moms and has grown a fondness for books and pictures. I love spending time teaching him and playing with him. But when a problem is unsolved, I am finding myself lost, even now. Playing with kid, thinking about algorithm. Sometimes it is morning 3 AM to 8 AM that I work in my closed world, but even that schedule is not helping any more. Sort of lost! You guys are probably the most outstanding programmers on earth in Codeproject. Thought, would shoot up the question to you! Suggest me a solution to balance life :( Oh by the way, sorry for this long message. I had to find a place to trash my thoughts :D
I am in same situation just like you and from the same country too ;) I have kid just turn 11 month; Only sometime work trick for me is to set up kid trolley next to my work desk and give him a dummy keyboard to tap on.. He keep doing it for a while and think that all that happens on TV (Because I use my TV as My monitor) is because of his key strokes.. Try this and would work. Hard to balance the work and kid but these days you will always remember when your 5 year old kid solve your sql-query or may be PHP bug ;) Enjoy Jigar
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This is probably the most absurd problem I am facing for over a year now. Being in Prototype and product design, I consistently need to think about the design and code. Earlier it used to be "Sit in front of system till you get result". It could be a day, 2 days or anything. Now I have a 15 months old Son. He prefers my time over his moms and has grown a fondness for books and pictures. I love spending time teaching him and playing with him. But when a problem is unsolved, I am finding myself lost, even now. Playing with kid, thinking about algorithm. Sometimes it is morning 3 AM to 8 AM that I work in my closed world, but even that schedule is not helping any more. Sort of lost! You guys are probably the most outstanding programmers on earth in Codeproject. Thought, would shoot up the question to you! Suggest me a solution to balance life :( Oh by the way, sorry for this long message. I had to find a place to trash my thoughts :D
I agree with Richard! Your children is your future, invest in them!
Regards Vallarasu S | BreakingDotNet.blogspot.com
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This is probably the most absurd problem I am facing for over a year now. Being in Prototype and product design, I consistently need to think about the design and code. Earlier it used to be "Sit in front of system till you get result". It could be a day, 2 days or anything. Now I have a 15 months old Son. He prefers my time over his moms and has grown a fondness for books and pictures. I love spending time teaching him and playing with him. But when a problem is unsolved, I am finding myself lost, even now. Playing with kid, thinking about algorithm. Sometimes it is morning 3 AM to 8 AM that I work in my closed world, but even that schedule is not helping any more. Sort of lost! You guys are probably the most outstanding programmers on earth in Codeproject. Thought, would shoot up the question to you! Suggest me a solution to balance life :( Oh by the way, sorry for this long message. I had to find a place to trash my thoughts :D
If you are at home, kids and family should be your highest priority. Kids over the World deserve more attention than anybody is giving them, especially when they are not yet teenagers. We could make a survey how much time our community spends daily with its kids. 1 hour? 2-3 hours? 4-5 hours? What is right? :-) In such an age as your son he sucks everything what is happening around him and you give him seeds which will shape his personality. If you are going to be busy and he wants to spend time with you then this is how he will be probably responding later in his age (people tend to behave in some way how they were brought up). As somebody suggested here, the best is going to some office for a few hours so he/she cannot see you and also your children can learn that you go to work and you have got habit working. Anyway, I would go for more time with children and sacrifice work!! :) ha ha And let your wife start programming :-) ha ha Actually, nice your brought here such a question :-) Thank you.
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I am in same situation just like you and from the same country too ;) I have kid just turn 11 month; Only sometime work trick for me is to set up kid trolley next to my work desk and give him a dummy keyboard to tap on.. He keep doing it for a while and think that all that happens on TV (Because I use my TV as My monitor) is because of his key strokes.. Try this and would work. Hard to balance the work and kid but these days you will always remember when your 5 year old kid solve your sql-query or may be PHP bug ;) Enjoy Jigar
"Hard to balance the work and kid but these days you will always remember when your 5 year old kid solve your sql-query or may be PHP bug" This is Inspiring :) Playing with kids and giving them time is fun. I kind of Love that. But when a code is unfinished, it kind of keep playing in the mind. I am trying to Mental Hibernation. So when I stop I can keep it saved in my mind. While resuming, it starts from the stage where I was stopped. And all your responses are so encouraging. Many of you seems to have managed this at one point or the other :)
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Focus on your child. After your wife he is the most important person in your life. And believe me, the childhood years just fly by when you spend too much time focussed on other things, until you look round and see he's grown up, and you wonder about all the times you missed.
One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.
Exactly. I agree. My son is now 21 months old, and I also kept trying to find time to get my work done. Then I would see him do something amazing, and I would run to my wife and tell her, 'do you know what he just did?!', all excited. And after telling her, she would say, 'oh, he's been doing that for a couple of weeks now!' That is when I realized that some things are more important than work. They grow up only once. Don't miss it. You'll regret it.
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This is probably the most absurd problem I am facing for over a year now. Being in Prototype and product design, I consistently need to think about the design and code. Earlier it used to be "Sit in front of system till you get result". It could be a day, 2 days or anything. Now I have a 15 months old Son. He prefers my time over his moms and has grown a fondness for books and pictures. I love spending time teaching him and playing with him. But when a problem is unsolved, I am finding myself lost, even now. Playing with kid, thinking about algorithm. Sometimes it is morning 3 AM to 8 AM that I work in my closed world, but even that schedule is not helping any more. Sort of lost! You guys are probably the most outstanding programmers on earth in Codeproject. Thought, would shoot up the question to you! Suggest me a solution to balance life :( Oh by the way, sorry for this long message. I had to find a place to trash my thoughts :D
Sometimes i have the same problem as you are experiencing. unfortunately there's no magic potion that makes you focused on work while having a son to take care. The way i found to get things done even with the interruptions of my family is: 1 - set a mental workplace and work-time. after that, set a real workplace to handle your job. 2 - uses earphones. 3 - talk to your family that you're unavailable during that time. Only contact-me if there's an emergency (a real one!) 4 - at the beginning of the work day remember to set the daily goal to acomplish. it will help you get motivated to stop and have time to your son also. 5 - put your tasks in a task list and make it visible. mark each complete task wen it gets done. well... those simple things is working for me (at least for while) hope it hepls a little at least. :laugh: :cool: Zamaro .:
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This is probably the most absurd problem I am facing for over a year now. Being in Prototype and product design, I consistently need to think about the design and code. Earlier it used to be "Sit in front of system till you get result". It could be a day, 2 days or anything. Now I have a 15 months old Son. He prefers my time over his moms and has grown a fondness for books and pictures. I love spending time teaching him and playing with him. But when a problem is unsolved, I am finding myself lost, even now. Playing with kid, thinking about algorithm. Sometimes it is morning 3 AM to 8 AM that I work in my closed world, but even that schedule is not helping any more. Sort of lost! You guys are probably the most outstanding programmers on earth in Codeproject. Thought, would shoot up the question to you! Suggest me a solution to balance life :( Oh by the way, sorry for this long message. I had to find a place to trash my thoughts :D
There is no balance, you have to choose. You can choose to focus on work. Your kid will grow up anyway, and if you don't beat him, and you give him the occasional hug, he'll probably be alright. And you can work until your skills become obsolete and then retire, alone. You can choose to focus on your family. You will enjoy the ultimate programming experience; teaching your child. You will still be employed, and your career will continue. You won't achieve as much at work as you might have, but by the time you're 40, chances are you'll discover that you aren't going to win the Nobel Prize for Programming after all. When you retire, you will be surrounded by a wife and grown children who love and admire you, and probably a network of good friends because you chose to nurture other social relationships. That intensity you feel about work is an illusion. It's how you feel when you have to solve every problem from first principles. In 10 years you will master your craft and most problems you will solve by "muscle memory". The office won't consume you in the same way. Furthermore, your kid will go to school when he is 5 or 6, and you will have plenty of time for work. Work is the same every day. You have plenty of time to get tired of it. Nobody ever lay on their deathbed and said, "I wish I'd stayed later at the office." A child is yours forever, but he is only a baby for a single beautiful season; not even a year really. Seize this moment. Roll around in it and get it all over you. This moment is precious because it doesn't last.
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This is probably the most absurd problem I am facing for over a year now. Being in Prototype and product design, I consistently need to think about the design and code. Earlier it used to be "Sit in front of system till you get result". It could be a day, 2 days or anything. Now I have a 15 months old Son. He prefers my time over his moms and has grown a fondness for books and pictures. I love spending time teaching him and playing with him. But when a problem is unsolved, I am finding myself lost, even now. Playing with kid, thinking about algorithm. Sometimes it is morning 3 AM to 8 AM that I work in my closed world, but even that schedule is not helping any more. Sort of lost! You guys are probably the most outstanding programmers on earth in Codeproject. Thought, would shoot up the question to you! Suggest me a solution to balance life :( Oh by the way, sorry for this long message. I had to find a place to trash my thoughts :D
Tough question, but with an easy (if incomplete) answer: family SHOULD come first. Easier said than done as we still have to pay the bills, but everyone else is correct in saying that the kids grow up too fast - mine are now 15, 11, and 9 and I started working at home about 11 years ago. What I did notice is while a number of others were telling you that family is more important they weren't really giving you a solution to your problem; I mean no offense by saying this - it's just an observation. The reality is that balancing work and family is difficult and becomes more of a challenge when you work from home (and even more so with young children who really don't understand the physical boundaries of an office or time boundaries of a clock). The solution is really going to depend on how you CAN work (eg. some people can work at night or easily split their days into smaller parts) and how your partner and child are willing or able to work with you. I don't have a simple or complete answer for you as I honestly still deal with this challenge myself, but I will pass on some tips based on my experience: 1. Talk with your partner/spouse. Coming to CodeProject is great, but our advice means little or nothing without agreement and approval from your partner. She may also offer suggestions that work for her or solutions you haven't thought of. 2. Review your current work schedule for a week. What is working for you and what isn't. Why did it work or not work? I understand your challenge - sometimes it can take hours or days to come up with a solution and that can make it difficult to be fully present in body and mind even when you're not technically "working". Can you identify patterns to this? Sometimes I find that being away from work for an hour or two helps to provide clarity to a solution that I could otherwise stare at for hours on end. Tracking your work behaviour can also help you to determine if you can work better at night (because of fewer interruptions), or if you are more productive with long-periods or short-periods with frequent breaks. 3. Do your best to establish boundaries that you and your partner agree upon. These boundaries include your physical office space and the times that you are working. 4. Determine how much flexibility you and your partner expect with regards to the schedule you are trying to set. If there are going to be times that you need to work a bit longer, there should also be times that she's able to interrupt your regular schedule. That's my (long-winded) two-c
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This is probably the most absurd problem I am facing for over a year now. Being in Prototype and product design, I consistently need to think about the design and code. Earlier it used to be "Sit in front of system till you get result". It could be a day, 2 days or anything. Now I have a 15 months old Son. He prefers my time over his moms and has grown a fondness for books and pictures. I love spending time teaching him and playing with him. But when a problem is unsolved, I am finding myself lost, even now. Playing with kid, thinking about algorithm. Sometimes it is morning 3 AM to 8 AM that I work in my closed world, but even that schedule is not helping any more. Sort of lost! You guys are probably the most outstanding programmers on earth in Codeproject. Thought, would shoot up the question to you! Suggest me a solution to balance life :( Oh by the way, sorry for this long message. I had to find a place to trash my thoughts :D
I used to work 8pm to 6am (when I was telecommuting) and that helped a lot. Certainly years later you will regret anytime you chose work over kids, no matter how important you think the work is. It broke my heart when my 3 year old grandson (who was living with us at the time) just wanted to go to the park and play for an hour or two and I had to say no, I had to catch a plane instead. When they get a little older, you can park them in front of a computer. I have several systems and I'd set my granddaughter up to use one that was about 12 feet away from mine. Initially she would beg for me to do things for her, but I refused and told her she had to figure it out herself. I use programmable Gateway 2000 keyboards on all my computers and I set her up with a "Back" key and a "Task Switch" key. A little timeline here, at 3 they know the difference between Coke and Pepsi and so navigating a GUI is no problem. Clicking doesn't really kick in until around 3 1/2. But Back and Task Switch eludes them a bit longer so I'd set her up with her own desktop that had links to Sesame Street, PBS Kids, and (reluctantly) Disney. I told her to press the "Back" key first and if repeated pressing did not get her back to where she wanted to be, then press the "Task Switch" key (since some web pages would start in a new window). This way I could watch (or hear) what she was doing and she could explore on her own. It was fun watching her move from "press a key to hear sound" to "drag and drop to sort the animals" to rudimentary reading, all on her own. We used to make movies of her playing at the park and she got such a blast out of watching them, especially when she could stop and rewind them, watching them in reverse. These were Quicktime movies and I usually started those for her. One day she called me over because she was stuck. Turned out she had tried to start Quicktime on her own and had chosen the menu item Choose URL instead of Choose File. I didn't teach her that, she just watched me and since she couldn't read, she made the wrong choice. Impressed, I pointed out the menu item she needed to click on (since it was positional, she didn't need to read it) and she was off to the races and I was back to work. Initially I wasn't keen on GUI's. Before the advent of tooltips, I worried that we'd find ourselves back to reading hieroglyphics which each vendor having their own icon. But my grandkids taught me to embrace them. They were truly functional illiterates, so whenever I have to deal with an older person
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This is probably the most absurd problem I am facing for over a year now. Being in Prototype and product design, I consistently need to think about the design and code. Earlier it used to be "Sit in front of system till you get result". It could be a day, 2 days or anything. Now I have a 15 months old Son. He prefers my time over his moms and has grown a fondness for books and pictures. I love spending time teaching him and playing with him. But when a problem is unsolved, I am finding myself lost, even now. Playing with kid, thinking about algorithm. Sometimes it is morning 3 AM to 8 AM that I work in my closed world, but even that schedule is not helping any more. Sort of lost! You guys are probably the most outstanding programmers on earth in Codeproject. Thought, would shoot up the question to you! Suggest me a solution to balance life :( Oh by the way, sorry for this long message. I had to find a place to trash my thoughts :D
You're very lucky to have the chance to spend time with your child. I regret that I missed too much of my son's life (he's 5 years old now) due to a variety of reasons. Believe me, you'll never get back what you have missed and the feeling is awful. You will only get one chance to hear his first words, you will only get one chance to see him take his first steps... Like Richard said, the importance of the time for your child is priceless. The million dollar question is how you balance that with your work. It's not easy, but then you need to provide for your family. If you start delaying your deliveries or if the quality of your work decreases, the provision may get hindered and you may not be able to provide your son with the best he deserves. Having said that, you may try a few things to increase your productivity: 1 - Make an arrangement with your wife. Try to get a couple of hours of her to get him distracted so he won't run into you, some uninterrupted time. 2 - Try creating some sort of physical barrier between your office and the rest of your residence (nothing drastic, but something that does not make so easy for him to disrupt your train of thought), so you can have focus when necessary. 3 - Split your working hours into smaller increments during the day. This way you can take advantage of his napping time to work. Toddlers usually take several naps during the day, so that can be used to your advantage. When he is awake you can play with him and do some work that does not require too much focus. Prioritize your critical job to take place when he is napping. 4 - I know that at this age kids require constant attention, so if you have a critical task to perform, your partnership with the mom can take place where you are alone to finish what you have to do. 5 - If you can successfully split your tasks through different hours you will be able to focus away from the job and better enjoy the time with your son, this way one thing does not get in the way of the other. You will always find yourself thinking about the job while with your kid, but the key is not to have this happen all the time or too much. Well, I hope this give you some ideas to try. Do a schedule, reserve some time with your son and some only for your job. Observe his hours and build your schedule based on that. Hopefully you will be able to get the most out of both worlds this way. All the best on your lovely challenge :)
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This is probably the most absurd problem I am facing for over a year now. Being in Prototype and product design, I consistently need to think about the design and code. Earlier it used to be "Sit in front of system till you get result". It could be a day, 2 days or anything. Now I have a 15 months old Son. He prefers my time over his moms and has grown a fondness for books and pictures. I love spending time teaching him and playing with him. But when a problem is unsolved, I am finding myself lost, even now. Playing with kid, thinking about algorithm. Sometimes it is morning 3 AM to 8 AM that I work in my closed world, but even that schedule is not helping any more. Sort of lost! You guys are probably the most outstanding programmers on earth in Codeproject. Thought, would shoot up the question to you! Suggest me a solution to balance life :( Oh by the way, sorry for this long message. I had to find a place to trash my thoughts :D
Everyone's balance point is different. At first I found it hard to work from home with my son & wife as they're very demanding. This forced me to be a lot more focused at work as working from home was spotty. Now I've got a routine where I work hard while at work but when I go home my first priority is my family. After my son goes to bed, before he wakes up and sometimes in the middle of the night I'll get up and start working because I really can't sleep with work ideas bouncing around in my head. So far this has made me more productive at home and at work. He's now in school so I have more time but I really appreciate the time I spend with him as it is priceless and irreplaceable. Professor Sutor (sic) from Purdue told me many years ago: "When you work, work hard. When you play, play hard". Good Luck & Enjoy! Karl
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This is probably the most absurd problem I am facing for over a year now. Being in Prototype and product design, I consistently need to think about the design and code. Earlier it used to be "Sit in front of system till you get result". It could be a day, 2 days or anything. Now I have a 15 months old Son. He prefers my time over his moms and has grown a fondness for books and pictures. I love spending time teaching him and playing with him. But when a problem is unsolved, I am finding myself lost, even now. Playing with kid, thinking about algorithm. Sometimes it is morning 3 AM to 8 AM that I work in my closed world, but even that schedule is not helping any more. Sort of lost! You guys are probably the most outstanding programmers on earth in Codeproject. Thought, would shoot up the question to you! Suggest me a solution to balance life :( Oh by the way, sorry for this long message. I had to find a place to trash my thoughts :D
It takes a certain sort of discipline to leave work at work, and it helps in my case that I work in an office, even though I also code at home. I have specific times to leave the office and when I do I mentally detach from my work so that I don't take it home. Note, though, that this does not mean that my unconscious mind doesn't go on problem solving, it certainly does, but it does mean that I am more able to be both physically and emotionally present when I get home. And once I'm home I don't start coding until my daughter is fully asleep, otherwise I find myself getting irritated when it's no fault of her's. Maybe if you were to define clear boundaries with your work, not easy I know, then you would be able to achieve the detachment I described. ps. I don't want this to sound like I have it all figured out, I don't, but I have found a work/home split that works for me. Good luck.
.dan.g. AbstractSpoon Software
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email: abstractspoon2_at_optusnet_dot_com_dot_au
