How do you organize your time?

I feel you! My 9-month-old is incredibly clingy if I’m not engaging with her constantly and my 3-year-old can only watch so much TV before I start feeling like a bad parent. I also work full-time and my husband is a firefighter and works a lot. Most of my coding is done on my lunch breaks at work and on my phone while I’m lying in bed next to my 9-month-old after she has gone to sleep. I desperately miss the days when I could spend an entire weekend coding a website just for fun. :sob:

In other words: YOU ARE NOT ALONE. :heart:

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I’m struggling and don’t find time to code everyday. I use my commuting time to read online and do coding challenges or at least research the techniques. Once my son goes to bed, I try to practice for another hour or so. When he’said playing on his own, I sometimes watch course videos and then redo them in the evening. A smart phone comes in handy :slight_smile:

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Thank you so much for your kind and encouraging words of advice, and also for sharing your personal stories! Seems to be a truly good community here!

I‘m sorry for not being able to reply to all of you in detail.

Thankfully I’m not alone with my daughter. My husband is helping me every free minute, but has to work full time until I’ll go back to work in April. Then he is going to take several month of paternity leave. Afterwards both of us would like to reduce our working hours as much as possible.

@danielamonteiro
I already started to work with that priority list you suggested. It seems to be very effective.:eyeglasses:

@adityaparab
Yes, you‘re right about this being more about setting priorities than about time management. Thank you for pointing this out. Of course, my daughter is and always will be first priority – that goes without saying. :heart: :baby_chick:

Slow progress still is progress and worth being made, right? :seedling:

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I too have a small child to tend to Morning/Night and I also work 40+ hours a week. Here is what I recommend. Create a solid daily routine and “TRY” to stick to it as much as possible. I typically have no time in the morning or after noon when I first get home and unfortunately for me my child does not like to sleep. So bed time is around 10 every night. So I typically force myself to stay awake 1-2 hours after she falls asleep to get things done (depending on how tired I am). It doesn’t always workout that way and some nights I may only get 1/2 hour of work in. The important thing is that I code everyday for x amount of time. We may not move along as fast as the 20 somethings with no kids but eventually we will get there. Just remember, things compound! So even if you only get 15 minutes of coding in, that’s 15 minutes further along then you were before. Also if you have a long drive into work like I do, I recommend listing to the following podcasts: CodeNewbie, Developer Tea, Shop Talk Show, Learn To Code With Me, and Javascript Jabber.

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I managed by quitting my corporate job a year ago, taking a part-time teaching job, enrolling on a computer science degree program and been coding ever since. With the time i have left, I work on completing my freeCodeCamp certificates. I keep a daily log of where all my hours go, and try to maintain at least 14 awake hours a day and 10hrs a day of some level of coding either through my classes or FCC. Coding takes time, it may take 2-3 years to know when you’re ready but to me, those 4-6month success dev job stories seem a little too ambitious. I’d like to take my time and do it the right way. If you think about the entire course of your life, is 2-3 years really that much time? I personally enjoy this episode of my life and my classes are really fun, it feels a lot more real than online modules.

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Lots of good pointers/ideas.

I have a 2 & 5 yer old with me all day so focused time at the computer for me is limited (and often interrupted). I find it helpful to have an idea of what I can do in the time that I hope to have. If I know that both kids are engrossed in a toy/activity then I try to use that time to (usually clean) try to work on a small issue or feature of whatever FCC project I’m on. I can also ideally get about an hour before one wakes in the morning plus about 30 minutes before I start breakfast (and the rest of the day). Naptime is split between teaching (or just spending time with) the 5yo, getting a run, and coding.

Doesn’t always work out for reasons. I try not to stress it and just enjoy my kids while they are little.

For days when sitting at the computer is not happening I tend to listen to a podcast and read tech/programming-related article(s) that interest me on my phone. I also like to hand write out any problem that’s fresh on my mind, like CodinGame challenges or even sketching out a project’s design and attempting some pseudo-code. Writing in a dedicated notebook has definitely helped focus with the time I do get on the PC.

Last thing (sorry that I wrote so much), having someone you can check in with and talk to about concepts has been encouraging to me when I get stuck or even just to celebrate some ‘small’ achievement.

Congratulations on your little one! I wish you the best of luck on your journey! Just because something is hard doesn’t mean it’s impossible :wink:

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I usually code about 20 hours a week.

I schedule my coding time around my full-time job and gym time.

Some days I study 2 hours, 4 hours, or 6+ hours.
I always practice algorithms in the beginning on codewars.com for at least 25 minutes.

Then, I move onto whatever I’m focusing on, be it a book I’m reading through or a project I’m working on.

Keeping a coding journal, or concisely writing down what I did and how long I did it, has helped motivate me by seeing my progress and by keeping myself accountable to doing work.

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I have three kids, the oldest is 9, so I think I became an expert of juggling time between studying, work and family life :slight_smile:
My main suggestions is: divide always family time and coding/studying, trying to code when kid demand attention is frustrating for both. Plan coding time, when you can concentrate only on that (with the help of partner, grandparents, friends, etc…)
And don’t be too hard on yourself! I had full weeks when I didn’t code at all and just concentrated on other things, at the end there is much more in life than coding and kids are a great part of it.
It will take more time but you will get reach your goals!

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My approach to time management is primarily concerned with how to make use of time and secondarily how to organize chunks of free time around daily life maintenance. How one makes use of time is actually more important than how much time one has available because each unit of time can become more valuable over time. Sounds complicated but most often we cannot chose how much time we have available but we can chose how to use time when it is available and how efficient we are with it. Hope this helps, good luck!

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Can you tell us what underbar.js is?

It’s pretty much a long and, depending on how much you know, complicated sort of “function practice”. You recreate, from scratch, most of the Array.prototype models with only a small explanation as to what each one does. You run the code on a separate HTML file that tests your functions.

I started it knowing almost nothing about JS. It helped me understand how functions work, good resources to use (loving that MDN), and helped me discover new ways to make functions run nicer.

I don’t know where my friend got it from, so I’m not sure if I’m at liberty to share it.

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Very cool. Thanks for explaining it!

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