Would you share how old are you? Sorry if you find that question out of place, but I'm 33 and have kids and I don't (yet?) make such observations as yours.
Not @avip, but I’m 47 and definitely feeling the time/family responsibilities crunch. Our parents have all just turned 70+/-2, we have two smart kids in elementary school who need to be fed almost every single day :), a house/yard instead of apartment, everyone’s healthy, but just managing school, activity, and holiday calendars is grueling. In my 20s and 30s, I could code like hell, have time to devote to learning new thing in depth, and play on 4-5 sports teams. Now, I’m still able to function almost the same mentally, but there are 20-40 fewer “free” hours in the week.
Something has to give and we’ve decided it’s not the kids... I wouldn’t go back and change anything, but it’s not the same.
Giving up Facebook was a huge win for me. People just don't appreciate how much of a time sink it is (by design). You might think "I'll just check it" then you look up and a quarter or a half an hour has passed!
For example I have 2x30min train journeys per workday. I used to spend them just idly scrolling the timeline, clicking like, maybe making some comments. Now I use them for reading on Kindle, or doing a module on EdX or Coursera. And that's even before all the other time I would spend on it. I literally got back 5-10 hrs/week, and it boggles my mind that I ever wasted that time to begin with!
Thanks for sharing! Now I understand what you had in your mind is yet to come for me, my children are still toddlers. I'm with you on huge time investment the family is, I am still in the phase where I'm hoping I can keep up by cutting sleep time but at some point during the day body finds its way to take back what was taken away from it...
