How to balance between Kid and Coding?
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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