[jjulius]

Nah, you can do it with kids! I have two that are about to be 4 and 6, here are my weekdays:

- Alarm at 4:30. 5 mins of breathing exercises, 20 mins of meditation.

- Make coffee, have breakfast, out the door to work by ~5:30.

- Get to work's gym by 5:45, cardio for 60 mins.

- In my office by 7:00-7:15.

- 3:30, 25 mins of breathe work and meditation again. Tuesdays and Thursdays, this is 3:15 so I can fit in ~30 mins of strength training.

- Head on out, pick up my youngest from school, home by ~4:15-4:30-ish. Ballpark depending on traffic, actual gym times, etc.

- Cook dinner (kiddos often like to help), eat with family, hang out with and play with my kiddos until 7:00PM.

- Kiddo bath and bed time, wife and I take turns doing this every night. Whether I'm "done" at 7 or 8, it only takes me ~30 mins to shower and prep my shit (clothes, lunch, etc.) for the next day.

- Leaves me with ~1-2 hours each night to hang out, read a book, and enjoy my wife's company before heading to bed at ~9:30.

It's busy, but I don't feel like I'm overstretched and I don't feel like it leaves me missing out on anything.

[sarchertech]

There’s a few things required to make that work for you.

You fall asleep instantly every night or function on less than 7 hours of sleep long term. You have a 15 minute commute. You don’t seem to need any slack time to deal with any issues that pop up.

4 year old has a meltdown because the 6 year old ate the last fruit snack. One of the kids decides to wake up at 3am. Friends come over for dinner and throw off the routine. Oops forgot to buy an ingredient for dinner, now you have to load up all the kids and go to the store. Ugh piece of plastic is lodged in the garbage disposal better get the flashlight and chopsticks.

And that’s not even mentioning regular household maintenance. Laundry, dishes, cleaning, grocery trips etc…

I’d need at least 2 extra hours in every day to handle all of those unexpected and expected issues. Probably closer to 3.

[jjulius]

So I made my original post knowing full well that my situation is my own and YMMV, but to speak to those concerns wrt my schedule/life...

>You fall asleep instantly every night...

Actually, yes! Two points there. First, when I'm out of my routine, not working out, drinking lots of coffee and eating like garbage, I sleep like ass. When I'm in my routine, eating well, and only having a cup of coffee with breakfast, I'm incredibly energized throughout the day and end up suddenly feeling tremendously tired right around 8:45/9:00.

The second part is that my father's side of the family is notorious for falling asleep anywhere, anytime. There's a litany of photos of us passed out on couches in the middle of packed parties.

> Meltdowns

They happen, but they don't really rock the schedule in my experience. Bedtime somehow always ends up being bedtime. Might shift by ~15 or so occasionally, but never in a way that nukes my bedtime or anything.

>One of the kids wakes up at 3am.

This is entirely YMMV, but we sleep trained. For whatever absolutely fucking weird reason, neither kid has ever got themselves out of bed in the morning, they always wake up and wait for us to come get them. Earliest I hear one of them is occasionally 6 on the weekends, usually closer to 7. I feel tremendously lucky here, and recognize how not normal this is.

>Forgot dinner ingredient and load kids up...

Nah. I do my best to buy ingredients on the weekend for the week. Definitely isn't foolproof, but usually we just pivot to a meal I'd planned for another night, or we always have easy to make shit like mac and cheese or grilled cheese and tomato soup lying around to fall back on. Life doesn't need to be perfect and I'm cool with pivoting and not sticking to plans.

>Friends coming over

For our own sanity wrt my wife and I's schedules, we hang with friends on the weekend. Weekends are a lot more freeform for us.

>Household maintenance

Naturally, whoever isn't playing with the kids just falls into keeping the laundry moving and cleaning the kitchen. I'll take the kiddos to the grocery store on Saturday. Dishes happen quickly, we all help there.

[_whiteCaps_]

I'm genuinely jealous of your ability to either:

- fall asleep at 9:31 and function on 7 hours of sleep

- or fall asleep at 10:30 and function on 6 hours of sleep

If I'm not getting 8 hours, I feel like a zombie the next morning.

[jjulius]

Sorry to confuse, it's 9:30 every night. Anything less than 7 and I'm wrecked. 7.5 is ideal, but I also feel great with 7. My non-scientific guess is that I spent so much of my teens and 20s getting less than 6 hours that my body is delighted by 7+ lol.

But yeah, I imagine I'll need more as time continues to pass and I get older.

/shrug

Edit: To say nothing of my mild fear of an inadequate amount of sleep in middle age possibly contributing to dementia, but I digress...

[keybored]

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[jjulius]

Nah, I typed it up in like three mins lol

[beams]

This sounds utterly horrific but I'm glad you're enjoying it.