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Comment by j2d3 | Hacker News Reader

"When you have children, you can have exactly one hobby. Anything else is an exercise in futility, self-deception, and ineffectiveness. Cooking healthy food is a hobby. Exercising is a hobby. Maintaining a website is a hobby. Writing a blog is a hobby. Bringing work home is a hobby. You have time to do exactly one thing after your kids go to sleep, if you want to do it well."

Yes. Ugh. And I cannot pick one.

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I was also about to come here & highlight that phrase. It's completely true. I don't regret having a child for one single second because she is amazing. But sitting down in front of a computer late in the evening, after another night of interrupted sleep & trying to solve complex issues is not easy.

PG's essay on thinking about how you invest your time (and how much easier time is to misinvest than money) is relevant here.

http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html

I found when I had kids, I became a much better time investor, by necessity.

Relevant to the story earlier today, John Carmack has three jobs and two children. He tweets regularly, speaks at cons, and occasionally blogs on altdev. He also reportedly lifts weights regularly.

It's not impossible.

To be fair, John Carmack is probably a vampire.

Thank you sir! I needed a good (and audible) laugh!

I won't believe it till I see him sparkle.

But sparkling John Carmack is totally plausible.

your comparison is stupid

1 - he's a multimillionaire. He can afford to offload lots of cooking (restaurants), cleaning (cleaners), childcare (nannies), loss of income (stay at home partner), shorten his commute (purchase a house close to work, put a gym in the basement)

2 - even with all of the above, I still bet his wife does a big chunk of the household maintenance and childcare

> your comparison is stupid

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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  Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

  When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.

  E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

He didn't say the OP was stupid, just the comparison. I would say a variation of that, but might actually say 'stupid', depending on how amiable the group/person is, and how well I could inflect my voice to my funny instead of mean.

Er, I didn't say that he said the OP was stupid either

> E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say;

That's a poor example then. "Calling names" generally refers to attacking the person/people, not ideas/things. I saw nothing uncivil about the 'stupid' post, unless you chose to read it in an iflammatory tone of voice.

Take it up with PG

He's not the one who pointed it out; you did. ;)

Yeah, it's his rules, remember? ;)

Lol. He was right. The comparison was idiotic.

Perhaps, then, you should rather just say that "when you have children, each additional hobby you want to indulge in will cost roughly $1mm/yr in opportunity costs. In order to Have The Time, you must first figure out how to make that much money."

Possible, but you don't know what effect this has on his family.

I don't follow John Carmack closely, but I remember him telling in an interview that his wife took care of their newborn child for the most part so he could sleep 8 hours a night, which he needed to be able to work.

Not saying that his accomplishments aren't impressive, but being John Carmack probably helps doing the things John Carmack does.

He is also fully in control of his own destiny, being independently wealthy and running his own company.

If he wants to delay the next Quake engine by a couple days so he can speak at a conference, no problem. He can afford it, and it's up to him when his next product comes out.

Most people either answer to a boss, or are not rich enough to purposefully pass up on new business. So it's not impossible, but to do it well takes a level of means that most people don't have.

I'd frame this as: "You get to choose 3 between: work, spending time with your children, exercising regularly, maintaining a house, domestic duties, having a social life."

And I'd totally agree ...

I choose work, children and exercise ... but am lucky enough to be able to offload these other tasks

Depends what else you cut out, for instance I would add commuting in there. If you prioritize living close to work (or working remotely) then exercise can be your commute. IE Run or bike to work. Or if that's not an option do a karate class or get a climbing gym membership with your kids and exercise while spending time with them. Combining things you want to do is a great way to check off more things on the list.

lol, how do you offload "having a social life"?

You stop going to social events. It's not hard (or rather, the reasons it's hard are not the practical difficulty)

A good way to look at it, but you need to add "get remotely enough sleep" to your "choose 3" list. :)

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