I'm a father. Best thing I ever did, but it is work, it is hard.

In ways, it really crisped up my time working on work. My wife and I have some bottom lines, we're invovled, we have dinner as a family every day. We go to school events, all of them. We go to sports and activities, all of them (although there have been some times we had to split up and each to a different one.) I'm at the table when my kids have breakfast, every day except when I travel for work which is a week or two per quarter. It's great for the kids, it's great for the family but suddenly it feelds like your day is shorter. Personally, I have tried to find other "thought time" and that has resulted in much better execution when I get to writing code or plans or whatever. I used to sit at the blank editor and start to compose but now I am forced to think more before hand. I've built a few things I honestly don't think I could have built before kids, just out of necessity, I've had to be more efficient and effective.

There are also times of utter exhaustion but I had those before kids. I'll also went through the process of sort of cutting out extras to make time, once your kids are in that 10-11 age, they'll have friends and interests, I've added some of those extras back because they are busy on Sunday afternoons or whenever.