[ryandrake]

Yes, it teaches you to manage your precious time to the second, but it also teaches you how to effectively get things done when you only have sparse 15-30 minute chunks rather than long stretches of time to concentrate. It used to take me 30 minutes just to "get in the zone." Keep that up and you'll never get anything done as a parent. You need to be able to snap yourself into the zone in 30 seconds, get something accomplished, and then go deal with throw-up.

Your life becomes interrupt-driven rather than batch processes. Even if you have the same quantity of time (you won't), you need to live differently to handle it.

[thatwebdude]

And applying parallel processes in your life when possibly also really helps. Especially in the morning.

Explaining the concept to my 4-year-old daughter was fun, and is trusted enough to execute these processes in a timely manner (without killing someone).

[wj]

I still struggle with this. Anything for me that needs creativity or critical thinking (programming and writing mostly) really suffers with the interruptions.

[kemiller2002]

Steven King wrote something that really made me focus on changing this. He essentially said that the difference between an amateur and a professional writer is that the professional write even when not in the mood. That made me think a lot about how I write code etc. and how I can use my free time even when I don't want to when I have to absolutely get something done.