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Managing free time in working life?

For random rambling. Please keep your posts tasteful and respectful.

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User avatar ividyon
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Subject: Managing free time in working life?

Post Posted: 21 Sep 2015, 11:48

Hey all,

it's not hard to tell that I've been rather distant lately, with less and less time spent on the site. Besides the fact that I have not yet set up Unreal/UT to work on my Linux install, a lot of it comes down to the fact that I'm now employed as a full-time web developer, which leaves less space - and, due to dealing with it throughout the day, less motivation - to do hobby web work.

As the administrator of a website housing a pleasant, skilled and beautiful community, my inability to work on the site regularly strikes me with guilt. And so I was hoping to get some thoughts by other community members who deal with university/work/other occupation, and yet find the creativity and enthusiasm to work on hobby projects in their spare time.

I confess that my line of work, and my office environment are both "easy mode"; I am surrounded by 4-5 like-minded, relaxed people, and my work is mostly fun and simple (light PHP coding, SCSS styling and clicking things together in web interfaces). From what I heard of others, I must really be living the life and even so I'm not up to speed with hobby "duties"!

How do you do it? How do you escape the lure of mindless gaming, TV watching, browsing, napping etc. and manage to concentrate on hobbies that involve some form of effort? Perhaps there's some secret I haven't caught onto yet?
UnrealSP.org webmaster & administrator

User avatar salsaSkaarj
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Subject: Re: Managing free time in working life?

Post Posted: 21 Sep 2015, 13:55

ividyon wrote:Hey all,

it's not hard to tell that I've been rather distant lately, with less and less time spent on the site. Besides the fact that I have not yet set up Unreal/UT to work on my Linux install, a lot of it comes down to the fact that I'm now employed as a full-time web developer, which leaves less space - and, due to dealing with it throughout the day, less motivation - to do hobby web work.

As the administrator of a website housing a pleasant, skilled and beautiful community, my inability to work on the site regularly strikes me with guilt. And so I was hoping to get some thoughts by other community members who deal with university/work/other occupation, and yet find the creativity and enthusiasm to work on hobby projects in their spare time.

I confess that my line of work, and my office environment are both "easy mode"; I am surrounded by 4-5 like-minded, relaxed people, and my work is mostly fun and simple (light PHP coding, SCSS styling and clicking things together in web interfaces). From what I heard of others, I must really be living the life and even so I'm not up to speed with hobby "duties"!

How do you do it? How do you escape the lure of mindless gaming, TV watching, browsing, napping etc. and manage to concentrate on hobbies that involve some form of effort? Perhaps there's some secret I haven't caught onto yet?


For one, decide on which hobbies are most important to you - most important in the sense of providing the most relaxation, feeling of pleasure and feeling of accomplishing sometrhing worthwhile. Those are the ones you should plan for, the rest is secondary.
Don't make the mistake I did in trying to continue with everything, in the end you will have to cut under pressure while now, you can still make calm choices.
Next thing, with a professional life, planning becomes more important and procrastination leads to failure in your non-professional goals.
And last - when planning, make sure you stll leave some spare time so that pressure doesn't build up.

Esay for me so say, 10 years ago I continued doing everything I wanted to and more and ended up sleeping 4 hours a day (no mistyping). Needlees to say after half a year I was a zombie.

User avatar ebd
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Subject: Re: Managing free time in working life?

Post Posted: 21 Sep 2015, 16:59

Don't ever talk about your hobbies at work. Not only is everyone a judgmental prick but if the management hears it they will assume that because you even acknowledge having hobbies that means you aren't working hard enough. I made the mistake of adding a co-worker on steam and then he proceeded to go through my games played and tried use that information against me because it deviated from the social norm of Call of Duty. Just the other day I was speaking with someone I thought was trustworthy when they decided to literally shout out what my non-video game hobbies are so that everyone in the break room could know.

At least that's been my experience anyway.

I'll edit this post later this evening when I have some time. I will make a new post.
Last edited by ebd on 22 Sep 2015, 04:04, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar editor Dave
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Subject: Re: Managing free time in working life?

Post Posted: 21 Sep 2015, 17:23

It's a struggle I've been having for a long time now. In my school days, mapping was a form of relaxation, something I did because it was fun and because I saw improvement over the years which I could share with welcoming communities with several releases. After my graduation, I still had the urge to conclude the story I began with Unforchers, but the motivation to actually do so, somehow dropped, even though I had the time to map for 2+ hours a day as before. I felt I needed to change my mapping style (it stagnated) which made mapping harder for me (in the result more varying, though), thus resulting it to be rather a job than a hobby (on the other hand, I still had plenty ideas, but not the will to translate them into practice immediately). Sometimes, when I felt like it, I continued mapping, but on very few days - something I always regret, and I regret now even more so. Now, a year before my Masters degree, I feel I have to finish my business, because I would have even less time afterwards, and we all grow older. At the moment, pressure is the most effective motivation I have. Maybe the fact that I can sense the end of tunnel drives me as well. However, I doubt, you wanna put pressure on yourself to finish the website change. Neither do I.
Prisons of the Unforchers Retold - more info: https://www.unrealsp.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4565

User avatar YappieChappie
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Subject: Re: Managing free time in working life?

Post Posted: 22 Sep 2015, 01:28

It's not easy, is it? Gets to a point where even hobbies feel like work, and laying in bed feels like work.

Only real advice I can give is just do it in small bite-size chunks everyday. It's the only thing that's made it bearable for me and I still have to mix up what I do a bit. It'll take you forever to accomplish simple things but I realized that getting a little done everyday is better than nothing getting done for weeks because you feel bogged down.

ebd wrote:Don't ever talk about your hobbies at work. Not only is everyone a judgmental prick but if the management hears it they will assume that because you even acknowledge having hobbies that means you aren't working hard enough. I made the mistake of adding a co-worker on steam and then he proceeded to go through my games played and tried use that information against me because it deviated from the social norm of Call of Duty. Just the other day I was speaking with someone I thought was trustworthy when they decided to literally shout out what my non-video game hobbies are so that everyone in the break room could know.

At least that's been my experience anyway.

Same here; not just at work, either. Big ditto that most people are close minded idiots, and their 'weirdo' tripwire is remarkably (almost scarily) easy to trigger, too.

User avatar ebd
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Subject: Re: Managing free time in working life?

Post Posted: 22 Sep 2015, 04:22

YappieChappie wrote:Same here; not just at work, either. Big ditto that most people are close minded idiots, and their 'weirdo' tripwire is remarkably (almost scarily) easy to trigger, too.
I want to believe people aren't that close minded and are rather afraid of being perceived as one of the dorks, weebs, or nerds, so they distance themselves as much as possible from them. A lot of the people in management positions at every company are highly conservative normies, or so it seems.

As for hobbies, it is just hard. I'm obvious not good for a source of advice for this since I am made to work 60-80 hours a week for terrible pay and I've heard from recruiters so many times: "We really like your skills and background but uh, we can't legally discriminate on age so we are going to say we are looking for candidates with more experience. You can't sue us for that lol!"

When I have the energy to do anything at all I try to seize the moment. Once I get started it is easier to keep going. Otherwise I end up spending a lot of time just trying to mentally relax and get away from the stress of work, finances, and other things.


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