Ask HN: How do you find time to learn new skills having family?

It gets better. When my kids were small, I did not do side projects or have hobbies, or learn anything new outside of work. I did start to have more free time after they no longer were toddlers. That period of time was almost 10 years from the first child until they all are were 5+ years old, but that is now past history. Now, my learning, hobbies and projects have recovered. Some day, it will be history for you, too.

Nap time and as they get older they do their own thing and you gradually have more free time which is mostly just lonely time so enjoy what you have while it lasts

There is always time even with little ones around.

Nap time is a good time to get some work/learning in.

Although when they are 0 to 6 months old it can be pretty exhausting. I once was so sleep deprived I showed up to work with one black and one brown shoe when mine was a couple months old.

I would recommend getting up an hour or two before your family and settling in for some time to learn new things and work on personal projects. This can also work in the evening or both.

Ask your spouse to trade up for some free time for each of you maybe give each other a two hour block of time on Saturday and Sunday.

Do you watch TV, give up a TV show or go down to one show and use the rest of the time for personal projects if you enjoy doing that.

Everyone needs downtime, and learning working on a side project is fun for me. But take time for hobbies too.

And prioritize spending time with your family. Kids grow up fast so make the most of your time with them. Don't try to work/learn when you're supposed to be spending time with them.

I think that's why getting up an hour or two early are some of the most productive hours of the day. No one else is awake in the house, no emails, no phone calls.

Good luck carving out some time for yourself.

I think you first need to give yourself permission to find equilibrium with your current situation. When I first became a family man I tried to keep up with my old habits. The frustration and sleep deprivation that ensued caused damage to my relationships with my wife and daughter that I regret to this day. It wasn't until I decided to take a break and find my "new normal" that I could then start to identify gaps where I could fit things like study etc back in.

Stop feeling guilty for setting aside time to learn skills during regular working hours. It took me a while to adjust, but it's utterly logical and correct that technical people should explore technologies as part of their work. When I became a manager I encouraged all my teams to set aside time like this. I basically said: if the topic you want to learn more about is very relevant to your current task, that's great, if not, that's fine too, if it turns out to be interesting, put on a lunchtime seminar for the group so we can all learn something.

I think as devs we all know that we will sometimes go yak-shaving just as an excuse to dig into something we're interested in (or at least not return from the rabbit-hole with any urgency), so I'd rather my teams do this consciously and think about what might be useful or just fun and interesting to other people on the team as they explore.

Family time should be family time, and if you're waiting for it to end so you can get to your hobby project you're not going to be as present as you should be. Also, it might work a little for the first kid, but when the second arrives forget about it.

Once our baby was 6 months old, we were able to stick to a hard bed time (7PM), hopefully the baby will be in bed by 8 (in actuality). Then you and the wife have at least 4 hours of down time.

Hi, first off, I have kind of the same problem and I am also strugglig with no spare time, even though I have only 1 kid and she is 1.5 years old.

If you are an employee than it's expected that you learn on the job and hours booked on education will be seen by the company as an investment that pays off in the future and it's also far cheaper than trainings, so your manager should be glad that you do that - especially if there are no urgent tasks to be done.

On the other hand, if you are self-employed / working as a contractor like I am, than you need another strategy, because anything beyond quickly looking up stuff (like any real learning on the job - videos, tutorials, etc) are a no-go as you are booked to perform. Usually if you are useful for your clients your stream of todos is neverending anyway and there is no time to lookup stuff.

What works for me is that I don't work for clients on friday - for a lot of companies it's a short day anyway and they won't miss you that much. I deliberately pass on those billable hours, because I've found that education pays more in the future and is more fun as well. So friday is usually the day when I get my learning done. Just a word of warning - you need to protect this day against your own laziness and your family as well. So put your headphones on and hack away. Breaks are okay of course, but if you treat it like spare time, everyone else will do the same and you won't get anything done.

Of course you can also work during naptime and in the late evening, but I've found that I am pretty exhausted then and I am not that productive or willing to pick up new stuff - so I usually do lighter work / light reading / watching videos in the evening and leave the tough new technology for fridays.

I've priorized what I find valuable in life and that makes making decisions easier. For me it's health, family, education, friends, other hobbies. For the time being, I've basically dropped every hobby that is not for my health or my professional education.

Take care, Martin

Once they're old enough, find hobbies or projects that can include your children.

Bear in mind these hobbies/projects may not be in your area of interest--in fact, your children will probably guide what you focus on (just don't force them to be interested in what you're interested in). Regardless of the subject, you can make it interesting to yourself.

Once they're grown, you'll have plenty of time to pursue your own interests, and if you're lucky one of your children just might follow in your footsteps.

Mostly your children will grow to love the time you spent with them and you'll be grateful for it when you look back. They'll be happy memories.

There are no free wins here. My advice follows some of the others: during work hours try to schedule time and have articles/books/videos queued up for downtime after kids are asleep when your SO isnt needing your presence/company and you are truly up for it.

Trying to get up early and hack your life will just lead to burn out and family problems both. Dont do it to yourself, your SO or your kids.

Be present with your family out of work. Squeeze in 30min each morning when you get to your desk to hack on something you read on the train in or at home. Accept your situation and also realize that 30 min daily spent purposefully is enough to make real progress in one direction at a time.

It is exhausting with two small kids and an SO and a job. Please dont kill yourself trying to be super human. Accept limitations and live a better life within them!

With a kid or kids that age it might be best to take a break. When my first born was 6 months I quit my full time job to do a startup. 12 months later my second was born. A year later we sold the startup. Focus was the job and family. Learning new stuff was out of the question. I had some catching up to do when the kids got a little older but it wasn’t hard.

One way for you to learn is to teach your kids new stuff. Keep in mind that you'll need lots of patience - never yell, act disappointed or rushed. Yes, it's hard but you'll be very surprised how quickly they catch on. Kids may seem like they are spacing out but they are constantly learning, even the 4 month old. You hear about the 12 year old computer geniuses. They don't just appear. The parents have had a lot to do with that in many cases. If you start now there will be a time when you won't be able to keep up with the kids. Just set some time every day. It's a win win situation. They win. You win.

You should probably focus on your own health and little one for now. He will eventually grow up, then, waking up an hour earlier than your family will make up 7 hours per week for you to train.

Choose actions to minimize future regret.

Yes, it's a Dad-ism, but it applies to Dads too.

Your kids will be grown and gone before you know it. Really.

When you spend all day working and testing what amounts to a reminition machine (see my profile), poring over images of your kids when they were little, and your role in their life was outsized, I guarantee you won't regret the time you spent with them.

I took mass transit for my commute, and that, and when the family was asleep, was my time to learn.

Got rid of cable. Stopped playing video games. Got rid of Netflix, too.

This didn't all happen at once, but you get the point. I have wasted a ton of my life watching tv and playing dumb games. Enough.

I still watch movies with my son which we get from the local library.

Honestly, I didn't do much personal improvement when my kids were little. Having kids hurts your career. So what? Are you a career jockey or something else? I'm something else.

i spent time at work to learn new skill. felt guilty at first but think of it this way: you finish your work already and it benefits the employer as well. it’s win win

I'm in exactly same situation and I'm gonna shamelessly share my blog post about it here ;)

https://lukaszkups.net/notes/organize-yourself/

&tldr; Organize yourself, and prepare that you'll want to sleep less (a bit)

Dad of a 4 and 2 year old here. There is one effective way I have found: schedule it. Literally slot 2 hours on Thursday night to learn something you want.

There are a couple of reasons this helps. If you treat it as a serious and valuable use of your time you will be more efficient in how you approach it. Scheduling also lets you anticipate it and mentally prepare for being receptive to learning.

It is important to protect that time and get buy-in from your partner so you can fully shift gears out of parent-mode. The flip side of this is no staying up extra late to noodle around then be burnt out the next day. Accept that you are going to learn things slowly and it will stretch out much longer than you might like.

When my kids were about the age of yours, I did the bulk of my learning during the weekends; there was always at least half a day's worth of 'free' time distributed throughout those two days. I can't remember if it was Trello or Basecamp, but I used one of the online project/todo/card management sites to maintain a list of ideas/links/bookmarks etc., during the week (this is a lot of fun in itself, it's like filling a shopping cart!), and then worked off the board over the weekend. I found this helped me to appreciate the progress I was making -- it can feel quite slow-going in the beginning -- half a day a week amounts to 2 days over 4 weeks. Inevitably, as you progress (as you start to gain some proficiency in your new skill) you'll find yourself putting a few more hours in during the week; excitement and creativity being the greatest motivators! Good luck! It's not easy, but it's eminently do-able.

Im my experience, you DO have time still. It is more of a question of WHAT STATE you are in when this time is there.

After having the baby and changing job, I found it VERY hard to find time to learn new stuff or work on my side projects. The main issue was not time itself, but the fact that I was exhausted, so used this time for brainless activities like gaming or watching TV.

Reading `deep work` helped me a lot realize this and I am now doing better at it. The first step is to recognize that you still have this time :)

I was/am in a similar situation but with one kid. The trick I use is to use my travel time efficiently. I travel by public transport. ~1.5 hours each way. I read on my Kindle and note down thoughts/points in a physical diary. When I come home, I give my undivided to my kid. Has worked pretty well :-)

Great question, and a situation I've been through/still going through myself. I have a 2.5 year old son, and another due at the end of this year. We're not fortunate enough to have parents nearby, so all care is 100% on us or nursery.

When they're really young it is tough to have time for anything, especially when there's no nap regime instilled into them. I was in such a daze from learning so many new things about being a parent, that projects/hacking/downtime in general seem to take a back seat for a while.

In writing (and rewriting) this reply I've realised that in the past few years things have changed a lot for me, and when I can squeeze in "my" time has changed too. I don't think there's any right or wrong answer of "when", but my number one piece of advice would be to not be selfish. You'll kick yourself later if you miss time with your children because you wanted to learn a programming language, or that you're so tired from killing yourself with long hours or sleep deprivation that you're rubbish to be around.

Communicate with your partner too - agree when they're ok with you taking your time, and vice versa - insist that they time their own time too.

I have no idea what'll happen for me when number two comes along...but I'm looking forward to it :-)

Family doesn't get in the way for me.

You need a non-tech hobby. Family is perfect for that. Whatever your previous hobby was, it's with family now. Travel with family. Watch horror movies with family. Play tabletop games with family. Watch YouTube in bed, with the baby under your armpit.

Then you need a tech hobby. Find something interesting to do. My kids draw, my wife cooks, sometimes the kids play with each other and daydream. That's a great time to mess around with new tech and algorithms. I've learned cheap, fast website hosting, SEO, procedural generation in my own time in the past month.

Also don't learn for the sake of advancing your career. Learn to be able to build interesting things. Find an interesting problem to tackle, something with possibly no economic benefit, then learn how to do it best. This will actually advance your career better than trying to learn the next stack. Like make CSS art, or do something like writing your own voice autotuner.

Unpopular opinion alert. Having a family is a new skill. Embrace it! Put your other stuff on hold for a few years.

For me, it was not lacking time, but lack of energy.

After the first one, it took 3 years before I had enough energy to pick up side projects again, and then the 2nd one came and we were even more exhausted.

Now 3 years later (6 years total) I'm finally starting a side project again.

Scheduling kind of works, but when you don't have the energy to do something that you scheduled, it still doesn't work.

My hobbies have changed over the last 6 years. I picked up BMX racing with our oldest, D&D/ttrpgs with new friends and reading sci-fi/fantasy instead of watching tv and playing games (you can pause it anytime).

My new side project relates to one of my hobbies (lfg site for ttrpgs).

Being picky is necessary and having "meaningless" downtime to find your focus is more important than stressing out and trying to do everything and nothing.

I've been contemplating this question.

Fundamentally, there are never enough resources to do everything you want to do. When it comes to time management, an important part is accepting that you can not do everything you want to, and that life has different times and seasons which have different priorities.

I'd suggest your priorities right now are: - tending your children's physical and emotional needs - same for your wife; specifically, ensure that she gets time away from the kids to do something that makes her happy , ideally a little every day but certainly some time each week - same for yourself; it is reasonable and likely that you are up with the baby some nights, so getting sleep when you can is a priority, for, if you miss a night of sleep, the impact is similar to coming to work drunk and you may have a net-negative quantity of productivity that day; consider having a catnap in the day; consider having some personal time, going for a walk, a workout, or hanging out with friends playing board games [but make sure your wife has had time first!]

That doesn't leave much time for learning (or for side projects). You aren't likely to be able to sit down at a keyboard and learn a new library or technique. I'd suggest learning something different -- listening to some audiobooks or maybe podcasts, while you are doing dishes, commuting, or out for a walk.

One thing you might do for your sanity is have an untouchable hour every week (or, perhaps, 20 minutes each day) and work on a project then. You'll certainly lose some time trying to build back up the mental state for the project, but may find satisfaction in moving something forward. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-you-need-an-untouchab...

The other thing I want to suggest is slowing down. I understand you are under pressure to provide for your family now, and provide for growing demands in the future. It is always good to aspire to be more than you are. When a jet encounters turbulence, there is an optimal speed for getting through it, and that speed usually requires slowing down. Sometimes enjoying a minute of silence or some peace is the best way to use a chunk of time; sometimes you need to be present and fight the battles of the moment with your spouse. [I've heard good things about meditating, too.]

The seasons will come and go, and you'll be able to get more balls back into the air to juggle, but for now, you need to protect the most important ones.