017: Work and Family Boundaries

In this episode, Chris Arcand joins the panel to talk about ways to balance working from home with a child in the house. They discuss options for childcare, how to minimize interruptions, and how to improve your mental presence with your family when you are not working.

An episode of the Parent Driven Development podcast, hosted by Parent Driven Development, titled "017: Work and Family Boundaries" was published on November 28, 2018 and runs 36 minutes.

November 28, 2018 ·36m · Parent Driven Development

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Summary

Parent Driven Development Episode 017: Work and Family Boundaries 00:16 Welcome, Chris Arcand! Chris is a Software Engineer at HashiCorp where he works on Terraform Enterprise, a product that adds collaboration and governance features to the popular open source infrastructure tool, Terraform. As an advocate of distributed teams and open source, he’s spent the majority of his career at other distributed, open source companies such as Red Hat. He calls the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota his home where he organizes the local Ruby users group, RubyMN, as well as moderates the ‘MSP Tech’ community Slack. Outside of software, Chris is an avid backpacker and amateur ice hockey player, as well as the father of a rambunctious little 19-month-old. 01:32 Balancing Working From Home with a 19-Month-Old The Aspect of Literal Time: Utilizing time when kids are napping/otherwise busy "Shift Work" vs Having Flexible Hours Hashicorp's "Flexible Time Off" Policy vs "Paid Time Off" Approaching Work and Dividing Up Your Day 06:46 Making Family Plans 09:29 Commuting Vs Working From Home Location is Vital Having an At-Home Nanny 13:28 Choosing a Nanny Over Daycare 18:19 Maintaining Balance and Avoiding Excessive Interruptions Noise. Cancelling. Headphones. Shutting The Door 21:14 Improving Mental Presence When Not Working Give Yourself Time to Decompress Before Family Time Mindfulness/Meditation 25:23 Exposing Kids to "I'm working, and this is how I'm working." 43:42 Genius / Fail Moments JC: Has successfully kept his kid alive for 18 years! (#Genius) Also, his sophomore is starting in varsity football! (#Genius) Also, also, he is the team photographer which is a great hobby to have. (#Genius) Josh: Andrew Bredow's Chore Chart Chris A: His hockey room! His son is showing interest! (#Genius) ...But, having a new roof put on his house during naptime was probably not the best plan. (#Fail) Chris S: Let his kids help him paint a room! (#Genius) ...But, it turns out they weren't very good at it. (#Fail) Follow & Support Please follow us @parentdrivendev on Twitter or email us at [email protected]. Our website is at ParentDrivenDevelopment.com. Support us via Patreon and get access to our our Slack Community. Panel Chris Sexton JC Avena Josh PuetzSpecial Guest: Chris Arcand.

Episode Description

Parent Driven Development Episode 017: Work and Family Boundaries 00:16 Welcome, Chris Arcand (https://twitter.com/chrisarcand)! Chris is a Software Engineer at HashiCorp (https://www.hashicorp.com/) where he works on Terraform Enterprise (https://www.hashicorp.com/products/terraform), a product that adds collaboration and governance features to the popular open source infrastructure tool, Terraform (https://www.terraform.io/). As an advocate of distributed teams and open source, he’s spent the majority of his career at other distributed, open source companies such as Red Hat (https://www.redhat.com/). He calls the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota his home where he organizes the local Ruby users group, RubyMN (https://www.meetup.com/ruby-mn/?_cookie-check=tTPtT3O5bUmbVkoy), as well as moderates the ‘MSP Tech’ community Slack (http://msptech.herokuapp.com/). Outside of software, Chris is an avid backpacker and amateur ice hockey player, as well as the father of a rambunctious little 19-month-old. 01:32 Balancing Working From Home with a 19-Month-Old The Aspect of Literal Time: Utilizing time when kids are napping/otherwise busy "Shift Work" vs Having Flexible Hours Hashicorp's "Flexible Time Off" Policy vs "Paid Time Off" Approaching Work and Dividing Up Your Day 06:46 Making Family Plans 09:29 Commuting Vs Working From Home Location is Vital Having an At-Home Nanny 13:28 Choosing a Nanny Over Daycare 18:19 Maintaining Balance and Avoiding Excessive Interruptions Noise. Cancelling. Headphones. Shutting The Door 21:14 Improving Mental Presence When Not Working Give Yourself Time to Decompress Before Family Time Mindfulness/Meditation 25:23 Exposing Kids to "I'm working, and this is how I'm working." https://uploads.fireside.fm/images/e/ef187756-b31b-4346-99a0-4797a7967913/XiTktlyT.jpg 43:42 Genius / Fail Moments JC: Has successfully kept his kid alive for 18 years! (#Genius) Also, his sophomore is starting in varsity football! (#Genius) Also, also, he is the team photographer which is a great hobby to have. (#Genius) Josh: Andrew Bredow's Chore Chart (https://github.com/andrewbredow/kid-chores) Chris A: His hockey room! His son is showing interest! (#Genius) ...But, having a new roof put on his house during naptime was probably not the best plan. (#Fail) Chris S: Let his kids help him paint a room! (#Genius) ...But, it turns out they weren't very good at it. (#Fail) Follow & Support Please follow us @parentdrivendev (https://twitter.com/parentdrivendev) on Twitter or email us at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]). Our website is at ParentDrivenDevelopment.com (https://parentdrivendevelopment.com). Support us via Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/parentdrivendev) and get access to our our Slack Community. Panel Chris Sexton (https://twitter.com/crsexton) JC Avena (https://twitter.com/jcavena) Josh Puetz (https://twitter.com/joshpuetz) Special Guest: Chris Arcand.