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Discussion on: I switched careers to Software Engineering in my late 30s while nursing a newborn, Ask Me Anything!

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Arit Developer

Great question Christian! Well early on, I prioritized training her to sleep longer stretches at night. During the day, I nursed her frequently to fill her tank lol. She would sleep from 8pm until 11pm or 12am, which is when I would do more intensive, concentrated coding. She'd wake for a feed, after which I'd go to bed during her second night stretch.

During the day, I'd focus more on tutorial videos, or working on short coding challenges (like on LeetCode or CodeWars), which are tasks that frequent interruptions from my baby wouldn't be so impactful.

One day a week, I'd do NOTHING coding-related, to rest my mind.

Early on, I'd set time-based goals but would feel very defeated if my baby was especially needful of me that day. So I switched to setting small task-based goals (like: configure one method in a class), which left me feeling accomplished even on very busy days.

I must say that a major advantage I had was not needing to work; my spouse supported our family during my learning.

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