Congrats to you that you've made this work. I've made attempts at the "super efficient optimise every moment" thing and it always eventually collapses for me with severe mental exhaustion. I cannot be "on" that much. It just isn't in me.

Yep absolutely, it's not for everyone. One question I'd ask of you is do you exercise regularly? The one thing I'd say that gave me the kind of energy to be "on" all the time is having a daily exercise/cardio routine and changing my eating habits. Not saying this works for everyone, but the effect that doing that had on my life was enormous.

I lift weights. Not too big on cardio, after many attempts at doing it (running, cycling, swimming). Lifting weights is the one thing that I finally found I can stick with. My diet is decent, mostly cook for myself and avoid highly processed foods and a lot of sugar. I am not strictly following any dietary program though.

I like the effect the weightlifting has on my body. It's nice that I have some definition and strength. But honestly cannot say it's had a big effect on my energy, motivation, outlook, etc.

I have tried enough things that other people say have made a tremendous difference in their life, from exercise to supplements to diet to reading philosophical books and they just... don't. I still feel like the same person. I don't think there are any secret tricks. People are who they are, fundamentally. Accepting that feels like giving up sometimes, but also brings some peace and freedom.

Kranar, with all due respect, you are lucky to have a partner who shares the responsibilities equally. All it takes is for one 1/2 not to contribute equally - or to be a single parent - and your plan would simply not work.

I am very lucky and never said otherwise. I am lucky to have an amazing daughter, to live in an amazing country, an amazing wife, to have had all of the opportunities afforded to me.

Not that you explicitly state it, but don't assume that because someone is successful or is giving advice to people about potential paths they can pursue, that they are ungrateful or don't appreciate their life circumstances. One of the other things I'm grateful for are the mentors and role models who have shared their knowledge with me and I'm happy they did so without being drowned out by people dismissing their success as simply due to luck.

Thanks for the flippant comment. You completely missed my point, but that’s ok, this is the internet.

Didn't miss your point at all, just informing you that on the whole it's superficial and implied from my post. There is a myriad of things that many of us posting on Hacker News are lucky for, and it's not necessary to point them all out since it can be assumed from context.

To the extent that your reply telling me that I'm lucky to have the wife I have could possibly serve a purpose, it's to be dismissive and to make huge assumptions about me personally that you're frankly not in a position to make. It presumes that my marriage is the result of luck and happenstance and ignores the incredibly hard work and amount of effort that successful marriages require in order to make sure both partners are respected and satisfied.

To be honest, it's not at all uncommon for people who fail to find meaningful relationships, whether it's strong friendships or love to think that they just happen on their own through chance, instead of being something that actually requires putting in effort, compromise, communication, sacrifice, and yes it's true... it also involves luck as well.

Given the context and the general audience of people on this website in a position to meaningfully talk about starting a business, it is likely that said audience is very lucky for many many things; we don't need to point those out, what we need to do is determine how to best put that luck and the opportunities afforded to us towards a meaningful and productive life instead of squandering that luck away.

And finally, when someone prefaces a post with "with all due respect", that's usually a passive aggressive way of telling them off, so if you want people to afford you some degree of respect in the future then think about cutting that out.

Me too on falling at it.

The answers to do that is not in our current selves. Had to read a lot to learn ways.

As a counter-balance: I have 3 children, twins who are 3 (and I am the twin parent) and a 1 year old. My wife is still in recovery and on partial (she works 20 hours / week right now) disability from the birth of our youngest.

I've reduced my hobbies down to: 1) reading before I fall asleep at night, 2) exercising during my lunch hour on work days. That's it. I managed to change jobs earlier this year but it was challenging and it remains a challenge to remain ahead with my current role due to my family obligations.

My situation is somewhat unique but is certainly not an outlier.

I’m a twin parent as well. Similar situation for a bit.

Becoming a parent during the pandemic or shortly before is no joke on its own. Wish there was a way to connect with them at scale lol. Maybe we can start up a discourse forum together.

Hang in there.

It was nice to see another parent here identify as a twin parent.

Can second this. My arrangement with my spouse is the opposite. She takes care of the mornings and me the evenings, and then I take weekends. It gives me a lot of free time.

The chain you are responding to is talking about working full time, and working a startup on the side, and still having a family life. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like you are able to focus on working your company.

My experience is that with two parents, both working full time at demanding jobs, challenging kids under 7, there is hardly time for even the necessities. That said, we do know one-earner families with easy kids, and they do seem to have time for it all.

There’s a theoretically spare hour or two in the evening after bedtime, but at that point both parents have been going flat-out for about fourteen hours, so exercise and passion projects are only going to happen through sheer grit- which both parents have pretty much used up over the last half decade.