I have been working in the industry for 8 years and am now considered a senior developer, also as a team lead.
Three years ago, my first child was born, and a few months ago, a second one arrived. While I don’t regret my decision to have kids at all, I do feel bad about how the lack of free time affects my career and how my knowledge falls behind the industry.
Before having kids, I used to spend a few hours a week on never-ending personal projects to learn new things. However, now I neither have the time nor the energy for that.
The only way that has worked for me is to read some tech books, which are often not about coding, and to read some blogs or subs like this.
However, I feel like this approach is too passive and is not providing the best outcome that I would expect.
Any tips there, perhaps from someone who was is similar situation?
A) daycare, B) 4 days a week for work, 1 day a week for work-related learning/projects/ideas. YMMV depending on your employer
If only this were true for all.
That one day usually gets occupied with wanting to clean the house or get other chores done so the weekend is available for the family to enjoy together.
Daycare costs cause for reevaluation of need once they hit school age.
Employers also need to have upgrading or continued education built into budgets to allow for that growth as well or at least I’m hopeful they would do that. Understandably you train people to leave is the mantra I’ve heard over and over. But those tend to be the better employers and the good karma comes back to them.
So functionally speaking I take my 20% of other time on the mornings when I don’t want to start as opposed to it’s own day.
Working from home I need the whole space empty, but daycare for us is now $660 a week which bests out the mortgage so that may have to change.
In any event, work time is now also fun time so I pack it as densely as I can, then grind with the fan in the evenings. Weekends are pretty nice with the fam, but weeknights… Eesh.
and I can really relate to that part of the need to use that one day for some home errands or other stuff. this would also probably come with the payment problem for that day (depends on the job, contract etc). So, as long as it sounds good on paper, it’s not something that can be applied with no limitations or drawbacks.
It’s a mental adjustment. It’s a schedule or routine you and your partner may need to build. All depends on how you keep your domicile concerning the errands aspect.
I’d carve out your productive time or when the creative juices flow and try to get that moment for you setup for the day you’d get. Then have your mindmap, notebook or whatever easily accessible to just note or draw your thoughts on the problems or concepts.
Maybe you can look into alternative sleep cycles (Edison, Tesla, Bell etc) and see if that allows for a you time.
I’ve found looking for news aggregated sites related to your niche can also just give you a little pick me up boost to stay in the know on trends but also gives you content for say a Pocket or repo to gather content to read before bed or another time. Heck even reading it to your young one.
I’ve been combatting this for several years. Once the independence kicks in for them you are freed of things you thought you would never be. Also really neat when they are interested and or can do work while mom or dad works.
About payment problems. If the employer looks to 4 day work weeks it’s either going to be 4-8’s or 4-10’s and if 8’s to stay competitive will need to accommodate for 5-8’s pay schedule. Then there is the pay off of carving out your time to maybe push a side project or contribute for a slice of revenue that could be your play money.
It may complicate the money situation, but as a new parent my wife and I have found a lot of value in paying the extra price for stuff like grocery delivery. We also found value in getting a roomba.
The roomba keeps the main floor of our house clean enough that we can afford to go a few weeks without using a real vacuum if we need to.
The grocery delivery saves us on having to get the kid together, ensure the diaper bag’s packed, drive out to the store, find the stuff, drive back home. Or at least we can avoid locking down one of us with kid duty while the other runs out to shop. It’s not cheap, between fees and a tip we often end up paying ~20% more, but it’s a time vs money value decision. I find we’re valuing our time more than money a lot lately. It also allows us to re-up groceries or household goods on days one of us is working from home, while we’re working.
Granted, I’m in a very stable salaried position where I’m not constantly being picked apart on metrics or qualified productivity (I’m more sysadmin and automation than software dev). We’re also in the early stages of child rearing, not even 6 months in yet. Mileage may vary.
We do groceries via delivery, tho for us it’s more of a time saver to spend it with kids, instead of losing that 1-2h to go to the store. So, it’s not changing that much in terms of time for self improvement.