Ask HN: How can one be present? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can one be present?

I work regular hours from 9 to 5 and have a family. My commute is about 1 hour. How can I stop thinking about work and focus on my family?

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The answer is simple. Just bore yourself. You can't just stop thinking about work, you have to let your thoughts run through it until it's over. You have to practicing reeling back your mind from the stray thoughts.

Don't listen to podcasts. Don't watch entertainment. Don't look at social media, including HN. Don't check email.

Just stare at soemthing. Watch the road while driving, observe other people on the train. You have a whole hour of commute to clear your brain. Typical meditation/mindfulness is observing your breath - you can do this anywhere, before bed, as soon as you wake up, in the shower, while driving.

But simple advice is the hardest; it's like losing weight or saving money.

Instead observing your breath, an easier trick is observing your kids. There's a technique: https://watchwaitandwonder.com/

Just observe each of your kids for 10 mins a day. Don't tell them how to play, let them tell you how they're playing.

Take an hour for yourself everyday.

Do some exercise like situps or skipping early in the morning; have a pullup bar across a door frame to use when the kids are brushing their teeth, and some pushup handles. Much more time effective than a gym unless you're really into something in particular.

Do whatever they like in the evening, get engrossed, forget forgetting your work, forget yourself. Their time is fascinating.

Edit: Get an early night. Enjoy doing even more tomorrow, today's done with.

You’re out of home 10 at best (from 8 to 18). Assuming you sleep a regular amount of hours (8h), that leaves you 6h/day for yourself and your family. That’s not enough in my opinion. Luckily for me, covid happened and now I work remotely (so I regained the commute hours and honestly, I work 6 focused hours instead of 8h since that was the amount of hours I was working at the office anyway without interruption). In this setup you could regain up to 4h of the day for you/family, so 10h in total.

Find a remote job.

Most people cannot have a remote job. What should those people do to be "present"?

The people who know about and post to HN can get remote jobs.

Most actual meaningful jobs can't be remote. There are no remote firefighters or plumbers and very few remote doctors or nurses.

My experience with remote jobs is they leave you less present both at work and at home. I float through life in haze, completely detached from reality. Separate spaces and a commute creates a natural transition period so that I can be present at both.

I think the commenter you replied to meant there is high probability there are not that many plumbers visiting HN (I don't count some SW devs who call themselves plumbers :) )

Is your family a real priority? Genuinely asking. If so it should be a little bit easier to adapt the work to the family and not the reverse. This is the first step. I understand that your question is oriented more to your family than yours.

Think about quality time with your family. Quality time is not just time together. Weekends are a great opportunity for that and some weekdays could include special moments that are not just a copy and paste of the day before.

Regarding you, if you are relatively mentally healthy ;-) there should be a physical exercise and diet that helps you to start removing your mind focus on work. There are many other disciplines but it is important to remember that "If You Encounter the Buddha, Kill Him!" [1].

Regarding specifically work, probably you should negotiate stuff in favor of you. If you need help a good coach could be enough rather than a psychologist.

YMMV.

[1] https://academic.oup.com/book/38937/chapter-abstract/3381231...

This may be a feedback loop: in order to provide a better life, I need to work harder and learn as much as possible to stay on top, fortunately the work aligns with my interests. Currently, my wages can support my needs. We have enough but not luxuries. Maybe that can give you some perspective. I am trying to balance the priorities between my family and work.

In general the complex part is to balance the work side. Do you have a team where hard responsabilities could be distributed more and reducing yours?

What is a better life?

At some point on your commute (maybe when you enter your neighborhood), just stop. Pull off to the side of the road. Turn off the car. Stop for five minutes. In your mind, swap out your work. I mean "swap out" in the OS sense - dump it to disk, free up working memory. Swap in your family. Then start the car and drive the rest of the way home.

That's easy and not same time. You should become working on models, mean literally formulas, and ALWAYS think about family, but at work do what formula said.

You have an hours commute. Use it on the way home to focus on anything but work through audio. Listen to something funny, illuminating, challenging but not even slightly work related.

Worked for me.

Have a relaxing quality morning with the family from 6am-8am. Go to bed on time to make it work.

I think most of the people would not consider 6am-8am the best time range of the day.

It's an acquired taste.

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