I am a married father of two working full time. I rearranged my life to spend 20h / wk building an indie game without taking time away from family or work. AMA!

How much more work has your wife taken on so you can follow your dream?

Thank you for your cheeky question ;)

The answer is none.

Since I am only moving time from after the children go to bed to before the children wake up. My wife was a creative director before the pandemic and is now homeschooling our two children, a choice we made together and she opted into - I offered to school them if she wanted to keep working.

How is the answer none when she’s homeschooling your kids?

Well, the simple answer is that she was homeschooling the kids prior to any of these changes.

The net effect of my changes on her time is zero. Which is the point of my post.

Everyone's life is different - not trying to judge, I don't know your wife or your relationship, so this is just my two cents since we have remarkably similar lives right now.

I'm a data scientist for a local academic hospital/college working in research. I am now fully WFH. Both my wife and I decided to homeschool our kids, with my wife taking the bulk of the responsibility since I still had a full time job. She stopped pursuing her career as a graphic designer to do this.

After about a month, the pressure was getting to my wife. Homeschooling is DIFFICULT and extremely time consuming, particularly for someone doing it for the very first time during a pandemic. But she avoided admitting this to me because she didn't want to burden me with my own work.

Fortunately, I noticed. We talked candidly about the difficulties we both were having (WFH is new to me and adjusting was difficult) but clearly her struggles were much more important given it was our own children.

Since our talk, I've taken on teaching the kids math 3 times a week with a music lesson on Fridays.

You're wife may not be admitting it, but she may be having a hard time but doesn't want to bring it up because she sees you struggling with your own work and dreams. I urge you to talk to her and ensure she doesn't need more help. Perhaps it would be only fair and just if you put off pursuing your own passion to help out your children and wife during a very difficult time.

I know you said you only do this during off times, but hopefully it's not taking away time you might have with your wife because you have to get to bed early? Putting so much of your mind and attention on something like this can have unintended consequences in areas you don't think are being effected.

Again, you may have already figured this all out with your wife. Just my two cents.

Thank you, this is great advice, I'll take it to heart.

At which time do you get to sleep? Or, I should rather say, how much sleep do you get on average?

On my end I am averaging 9 hours of sleep.. Waking up at 4 a.m. would mean that I'd have to go to sleep around 7 pm. That's not possible without sacrificing my social life

Great question, I'm mildly introverted. I go to bed between 9:30 and 10pm. I average about 7.5 hours, though feel best at 9 hours. I still lie awake some nights for an hour or so, but it's improving over time. I wouldn't say I sacrificed my social life, but I stopped enjoying night life about 10 years ago and most of my pre-pandemic social activities would be compatible with the lifestyle I've described here.

How much coffee do you drink, and when?

I have a pot in the morning which I think adds up to 2 or 3 cups. If I drink anything after 12 I've noticed it's harder to sleep at night.

I'm an occasional insomniac. I'll have no issues sleeping for a good year or two, then all of a sudden I'm completely sleepless for anywhere from 1 week, to 2 or 3 months.

Sometimes things are going on in my life that I obsessively stress over, and other times there seems to be no real reason. My head just spins and cycles through shit all night while I lay there wide awake getting more and more angry that I cant sleep.... and of course, the angrier I get about it, the harder sleep becomes.

I'm sure you totally understand exactly what I'm talking about... so that being said, how do you do it? When your heads going nuts, and your brain just wont shut off.. how do you go about turning it off?

Congratulations on the game by the way... my 11 year old son's biggest goal in life right now is to create his own one day as well. I'm going to share you're story with him for some encouragement.

Thank you, I know many people feel games are a waste of time. But I am of the opposite opinion and glad you are encouraging your son to follow his dream!

I can totally relate to what you are talking about regarding derailed sleep habits, and I still encounter these nights myself from time to time. I can only speak for myself, but here are some of the other routine practices that really help me:

1) I have a clear 3 year vision with a keystone goal and I have specific 90 days goals. Both of these milestones have measurable results. This is what gets me back on track anytime I fall off the wagon.

2) Before I go to bed, I journal for 15 - 30 minutes - I celebrate what I gained and I outline the next day and write down exactly what I will do, especially related to my project. This gets it out of my head and I can relax knowing I'll wake up and be able to hit the ground running.

3) I have a morning routine established: wake, brush teeth, drink water, meditate, stretch, then hit the project tasks I outlined the night before in a state of flow.

The result of these basic practices is that my mind is free all evening to be present. I also studied effective sleep habits to increase my success rate:

- Consistent to bed, consistent to rise, this is hard when weekends tend to be up later, I am still working on this.

- No screens for 2 hours before bed (hard)

- No water or food before bed

- Dim the lights in the house an hour before bed, and do everything I can to minimize noise and interruptions while sleeping (cats are bad for this)

- I also measure my sleep using an app so I can get data on which nights are bad and why, my wife makes fun of me for doing this, and she might be right.

How financially well-off was your family before you decided to follow your dream?

The reason I ask is that it’s a lot easier to follow a dream with financial backing and no real consequences for failure.

We are a single income family. I need to work to pay the bills.

What language(s) did you use?

If you are referring to the programming language it's C# - if you are referring to localization it's English and Simplified Chinese.

What kind of office chair do you use to work?

Kitchen table in the morning so I don't disturb my sleeping wife.

How many hours do you sleep a night?

7 - 9 hours depends onn discipline and how fast I go to sleep

Did you use any specific tools to organise yourself to maximise your morning hours?

Hey, yes, I use the Pomodoro technique which helps me to focus for bursts of time and reminds me to stand up and stretch every 25 minutes. I also use this technique during my work day.

When do you do the shopping, cooking and cleaning?

After work. We send out laundry (no in house apartment laundry) and order groceries for delivery. I will clean most nights while my wife cooks. If I cook I usually also clean, but that's 3 / 4 times a week.

How many hours before starting work is the optimal alarm time? You mention you get at least 2h of things done, but at what time do you start at your “normal” job place?

My alarm is for 5:30 I have it fade in and can usually catch it before it's loud enough to wake my wife. I start work around 9:30am.

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I'm guessing this didn't go as planned so OP deleted it?

Mods removed, I need proof, working on it.

What is your optimum sleep hours? Interested to try this, but my work start at 7.30am and i have to start getting ready latest by 6.15am, and i usually sleep late

I need 8 hours of sleep to feel good. 7 to be productive. I can do one day with 6.5 hours if the next day I make up for it.

How and when do you squeeze physical exercise in new routine?

I do either a 30 minute run or 20 minute HIIT from YouTube immediately after work.

I don’t really get what the ama is about. Doesn’t everyone sacrifice time to fit in their hobbies and passions despite adult life being busy?

I don’t get what would warrant it. The game isn’t anywhere close to be done and outside of that nothing fantastic was accomplished.

The AMA is about how to arrange your life to get more with less. I spend more time on my project and and more time with my family. I think that's AMA-able. But yeah, it's only been 3 months.

Step one, have a wife that does the bulk of the chores and childrearing.

Hey, you know, your comments prompted me to talk with my wife tonight. Just in case I was missing something. I'm proud to say she enthusiastically endorsed all the changes that I've been making and emphasized that life in our home has been way better. So I suppose I owe you thanks at least for that.

I'm glad your made up wife agrees with your made up story.

Lol

How much sleep are you sacrificing? You should be asleep by 9:30pm if you aren't sacrificing your life, which I bet you are. Getting anything less than 8 hours could be cutting your lifespan by 10 years. We know more about sleep deprivation now, and it's permanent damage, I wouldn't be bragging about your "dream" if it costs you your entire life.

Nice try making it sound like you figured out the secret to a 24 hour day.

Weird flex.

Every word of it is true. I just hate all this "you can reach your dreams of you only sacrifice your life!"

Go read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. You won't mess around with sleep anymore.

I sleep 7 - 9 hours a day on average. I think it's clear in my post how my sleep was suffering prior to these changes. I used to suffer severely from insomnia and sleep is one of the main priorities of the changes I've made. I am sleeping better than ever, since my hours are regular now.