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Here& #39;s why you feel like you& #39;re not getting anything done even though you also feel like your kids aren& #39;t taking *too* much of your time (as proven by data science):
The other day I was the "parent on duty" for 3 hours. What that means is that my spouse was working in her office, I was working in the dining room, and the kids were told that if they *need* to interrupt someone, it should be me ...
...but they should try to solve problems on their own and only interrupt if really necessary.
As an experiment, I timestamped the beginning and end of each interruption, and did a little data analysis. Here’s what I found.
As an experiment, I timestamped the beginning and end of each interruption, and did a little data analysis. Here’s what I found.
* Over the course of 3 hours (plus lunch), I was interrupted for a little over half an hour in total, and got almost 2.5 hours to work.
That doesn’t seem too bad. But:
That doesn’t seem too bad. But:
* I was interrupted 45 times, an average of 15 times per hour.
* The average length of an uninterrupted stretch of work time was 3.4 minutes. The longest uninterrupted stretch was 19.6 minutes.
* The average length of an interruption was 0.9 minutes. The longest interruption was 9.6 minutes.
This plot shows how I spent my time. The green segments are when I wasn’t interrupted; the orange segments are when I was interrupted by 1 kid; and the red segments are when I was already interrupted by 1 kid when the other interrupted that interruption.
An “interruption” can mean anything from “I need help with my math homework” to “can I have a snack” to me having to intervene when they are screaming at each other.
But I didn’t count violin practice in the next room, video games in the next room, shrieks of laughter, and the many other inadvertent interruptions that punctuate the day.
These are great kids. Responsible, self-sufficient, mature kids. But working from home and parenting from home simultaneously just seems totally impractical.
