I have a 4.5 month old daughter and my life has changed in the following ways:
- every day is much more structured around the baby. Get home from work, feed her, put her to bed at 8:30pm, she wakes up at 6am, feed her, go to work, etc.
-Its like being on-call 24-7 so expect very few opportunities to get in the "flow state" when working on your app/startup.
- I have a full-time job (not related to software) and in the past I planned to quit to work on a startup full-time but my risk tolerance just went to zero as I now worry about having money for the baby. My startup will need to be throwing off at least 2x my current salary before I consider quitting my job.
- Its hard to have your own time to do anything, let alone work on a side-project.
I've got a 4 year old and a 6 year old. All valid things you raise here, and they certainly still apply with mine at their current age.
A positive though, that may not apply to everyone, but certainly applied to me: They make you grow up
Suddenly there are other people that really depend upon you. Whilst finding the time to get a startup running is harder, I think the motivation to succeed is stronger than it was when it was just me with few cares in the world.
My kids are the same age and I agree completely. At some point after my kids were born I found that the change in responsibility made many other areas of my life simpler.
Once I began to understand how I could fully commit myself to my children and what it means to have kids that fully depend on you, many other things became easier to prioritize and commit to, or reject. It was easier for me to focus at work and realize that I need to make that time valuable, it was easier to exercise and eat right, it was easier to say to no to people and drop activities that were not core to what I was doing. Maybe clarity around priorities is what changed the most for me.
- every day is much more structured around the baby. Get home from work, feed her, put her to bed at 8:30pm, she wakes up at 6am, feed her, go to work, etc.
-Its like being on-call 24-7 so expect very few opportunities to get in the "flow state" when working on your app/startup.
- I have a full-time job (not related to software) and in the past I planned to quit to work on a startup full-time but my risk tolerance just went to zero as I now worry about having money for the baby. My startup will need to be throwing off at least 2x my current salary before I consider quitting my job.
- Its hard to have your own time to do anything, let alone work on a side-project.