[burmanm]

In which world? I started working remotely in 2014, when my youngest one hadn't even born yet (I only had 2 back then, and they were small).

Yet, there was more peace and ability to concentrate at home than there was at my previous office. Less interrupts, no time wasted to driving. And my kids weren't at the kindergarten.

The remote possibility even gave me enough energy to finalize my MSc finally (at evenings), something I wasn't able to do while working at the office for many years. Weird, huh?

I do miss beers with my colleagues though. But that's a bit difficult when none of my colleagues work in the same country, not much difference whether I would be in the office or not.

[hzay]

What setup enabled all this productivity?

I hope I'm wrong but this comment reads like it came straight out of this piece of satire - http://www.columbia.edu/~sss31/rainbow/wife.html

[burmanm]

I don't think there's any "weird setup", other than having a separate room for work/computer. It's pretty good insulator for all the interruptions. And of course, better coffee.

The additional productivity probably came from the added time per day and reduced fatigue from lower amount of noise (office room vs. open office floor). I don't think there's anything weird about it, I at least found working at the office very tiring since concentration was difficult and required energy.

[hzay]

Sorry, I meant what setup keeps the kids away from your productive time.

[burmanm]

Mostly teaching them. "When dad works, don't bother him". And since I do come out of the room in any case often enough (coffee/toilet/eat/etc), they saw me enough often. But it's not like single productive period is a long time, rather it's a patches of smaller events during the day.

Of course now that they're bigger, everything is a bit different.

[JonChesterfield]

This strongly implies you had a partner watching the kids while you work, which has scaling problems if you both want to work at the same time.

[hzay]

Let me ask this directly. Is your wife watching over the kids while you get productive time?

If so, then that's not a luxury many people (including, you know, many wives) with small children have. Hence the comment that you originally replied to makes sense.

[burmanm]

Yes, she was on maternity leave (which isn't unusual in Finland and more like a norm).