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Comment by drekipus | Hacker News Reader

I had my firstborn from my new fully WFH job, in the middle/tailend of the pandemic.

It has totally been a blast having the little one around. I work in my living area which is open plan into my kitchen, so I get to see her learning how to eat out of the corner of my eyes when I'm in work meetings, etc.

My personal suggestion: if you're working from home with children, don't try and seperate and go into the study; do the opposite, being out work and make it a part of every day. It's like the photos of your family you have on your desk, but in real life.

YMMV.

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Newborns/infants are way easier than toddlers. Game changes once they get mobile and destructive. My wife is down two laptops due to our little guy.

Thanks for the heads up.. yeah, we're starting to see some destructive proclivities develop already..

It will be a fun ride in the future!

What's funny is that when my wife became pregnant I had a near panic to find a place so I could have a dedicated area to focus. And we closed on that very house last week. Our baby is only one month old, but I can already feel what you are talking about. Where we are now is basically one giant room, and I actually like it so far. Whoops. Well, at least the "study" in the new house is a large converted garage that has room for office and an extra living room. I've struggled with remote work with the concept of sleeping where I work, so at least this will fix that, and when the time comes we'll have a dang bedroom for her. Not sure we need three living rooms though, that'll be a lot of play areas!

Enjoy that peaceful phase, it will not last long.

We had our first in June 202, so early in the pandemic. I was already WFH since 2019, my wife joined me in that while pregnant in March 2020.

I used to have my offic in the living room, but as soon as our son could walk IIRC, we moved the office. Office is now separate but reachable for the kids. But the separation is better for my concentration. What was my office in the living room is now the play area, filled with drawing, Lego, cars, and what-have-you.

WFH with small kids is perfect. No commute so I gain an hour a day. When I feel it's been enough work for the day, I'm cooking dinner 10 seconds later. If the kids wake up late, fine, I'll drop you off at daycare later after I did a bit of work. It's 5 minutes on the electric cargo bike anyways.

I don't think I could ever go back.

I cannot wait for the electric cargo phase. The day care we’ve selected is a 15 minutes bike trip away. How long were your kids when they could handle being on the bike?

The advice we got was from ~8 months, when they can sit up on their own. For the 2nd kid, that's been only a few weeks, but it's so nice to be much more nimble than with a stroller and less bulky than a car to go places with 2 kids.

Can't wait for the weather to warm up a bit and go on bigger trips with the two kids in front.

Your cargo bike has them in front? That’s what I’m leaning towards because I’ve had a few close calls from behind. I’m already petitioning my city to fix a few missing bike lanes haha, I also wonder about wearing reflective decals and using flashing lights. Only so much you can do. Once I’m past 15 minutes of roads we can basically access all of the best parks of the city through an awesome trail.

We have a https://www.babboe.nl/babboe-city-e. And as you can tell from there, we're Dutch, in the Netherlands, so bike paths is all superb over here.

We tried a few variants, also with 2 wheels in front so it can't fall over in standstill. But that's less stable in curves than a normal bike with 1 front wheel.

My mileage varies a lot. I suppose it has to do with how each person's executive functions are wired, but personally, I absolutely cannot get into deep work while family stuff is going around in the same physical space.

I know folks who have setup a room at home that looks complete unlike the rest of the home to work in.

Paint, flooring, lights, switches, door handles, ask completely different.

It helped them shift in and out and it was pretty cool to experience, similar to when someone has a basement that feels like it transports you to another place entirely in a desired way.

I find wfh and hybrid life has me thinking about design much more

I use both a separate space and sometimes move to the living room, kitchen or rooftop depending on my activity. Staying in the same room and possibly same position all day is not perfect either. I definitely need that separate office when in full focus mode but usually a working day is not 100% like that, same as in a regular office.

My 9 and 12y old kids are at school until 2pm, I love taking that pause at 2:30 to have lunch with them and then I send them to do their homework. Once they have finished it is either they stay quiet or I kick them out of the house and they have to play in the street for an hour.

You can't avoid all interruptions, like when kids are sometimes fighting which is the moment to be strict.

I assume most people in here had the means to set up their own office / room through the pandemic? I for sure had to with a newborn on its way etc, it wouldn’t have been possible without that.

It’s an absolute joy each morning when I enter that personal, (relatively) quiet space, sitting on my Capisco chair with that beautiful 30” display in front of me…

Very similar situation (had first one 3 months before covid, second one during), our flat back then made me work from our living room, where they played. Absolutely amazing for bonding and I am sure they are better off due to it, but I can't say it has been beneficial for my work. But then again the same can be said about most others.

We have tons of global conf calls, its harder to do that with kids screaming in the background or demanding your attention. Good luck focusing on that hard task where it takes you some time to even get to mental model of given problem.

The thing is, when choosing priorities, I would have to be really messed up piece of sh*t of a human being to prioritize work over my own kids. So all good on that front. Now I work from my own study room as they are a bit older (and we moved to bigger flat) and its nice to have some privacy too

Yep this is what I ended up doing too (and am still doing). I have a separate study room I was going to move into, but until it's completely necessary I'm not going to.

Having a few spaces setup in the open and in a study complete with dual monitors etc can let you change up the scenery or when needed be present elsewhere and keep things moving.

Distractions at home might be like distractions and interruptions in the office

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