After my first daughter was born but before my second came along, I became a religious adherent to time-blocking.
I bought a time block planner, and would spend Friday afternoon mapping out the contours of the next workweek. This made me a better, more productive employee. It also enabled time for personal admin stuff and the occasional quick workout when I worked from home. I was also much less prone to haphazardly checking Microsoft Teams and email every two minutes. For the most part, I was able to prevent work from bleeding into valuable family time.
There were many weeks, however, that I had to write off as “lost weeks.” My daughter had started daycare in September 2024, and from September 2024-February 2025, she was home sick constantly. We got RSV, norovirus, COVID, two strains of flu, rotavirus, hand/foot/mouth, and a nasty soup of other random stuff.
During those sick days (our daughter was between 12-17 months during this emergency sickness period), it was extremely difficult for both my wife and I to effectively do our jobs. We were both very fortunate that we had empathetic bosses who valued us as people, and cared more about quality work product than fake, proxy versions of productivity.
I worked remotely often, responding to messages while my daughter was sleeping on me, at the doctor’s office, you name it. Actual work got done in frantic periods in which (somewhat) uninterrupted focus was possible.
Ultimately, these emergency weeks were one of the reasons that factored into me leaving my job after our second daughter was born. We could barely juggle one daughter being sick, and knew that our previous strategy of both testing the limits of what we could get away with at work wasn’t something we could realistically do for the next 5 years.
In terms of viruses and other illnesses, we’ve largely lucked out this year. But this all changed over the past two weeks as the entire family (except me!) succumbed to a horrendous stomach virus that lasted over a week for each child + wife and required a trip to the ER, urgent care, the pediatrician’s office, and a full pause on anything else we had going on. The Knicks won the NBA championship, but I largely missed it.
With that, here are some thoughts about Emergency Weeks:
Work/Productivity
When you have that end of the workweek thought of “I could get this done now, but maybe I’ll just wait until Monday,” for the love of whoever you worship (God, the New York Times, cooking videos) pull yourself together and get it done now. On Monday there will probably be a fever and vomit, and you’ll be scrambling.
If you need to get something important something done and only allot yourself one inflexible window for this task, you are setting yourself up for undue stress and possible failure. When planning the next few days, include multiple time windows in which an important task could theoretically be completed. Buying yourself “time insurance” is essential.
Don't give into the all powerful procrastiNation-state. Abstain from checking off small, inconsequential tasks. Eat the frog and get the most important thing done as soon as you are able to. You never know when your day/week will be derailed.
Remote work clearly has made caring for a sick child a lot easier in the sense that for many occupations and roles, you can still technically do your job while dealing with these constant illnesses. That is certainly not nothing. The flip side is that the burnout is clearly intense and real. Previous generations certainly envy the setup that we have. But I’m not sure they see the full picture.
Family/Care
Caring for a sick infant is scary. Caring for a sick 11-18 month old is less scary, but majorly frustrating because they can't really communicate or understand what’s going on. Caring for a sick 18 month old and beyond is much easier, but way more heartbreaking.
There’s a quote from former Tottenham Hotspur manager Ange Postecoglou that I think about often. When dealing with an ongoing injury crisis he once said “Every time I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel it turns out to be an oncoming train.”
You need a village. However, that village can’t fully be relied upon during these times given potential for contagion.
Also, all villages (and villagers) come with taxes; be it in the form of monetary compensation, administrative overhead, ongoing family baggage and irksome comments, and more. In normal times, weighing the benefits of the village vs. their associated taxes is a carful science. In emergency times, you don’t have time to carefully lay out the beakers and bunsen burners.
The vast majority of the time, your child will pull through whatever scary illness they’ve been afflicted with. But in the moment, it’s very hard to quash that voice in the back of your head wondering the alternative.
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