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Comment by ArkyBeagle | Hacker News Reader

I think having something else to also do is critical. I'm a musician and I kept 70+ hour weeks in school, but 16 of those hours were at gigs, and Sundays were off limits for anything at all - no work at all.

It wasn't gigging but just jamming when I later was in startup land for a few years. I found the effect the same. You need something to get your mind completely off work.

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To be honest, my current problem is exactly the opposite - I can't get my mind on work. There're always at least three other projects occupying my mind that would be a much better use of my time than the day job except I wouldn't be able to pay my rent with them :(.

I recommend the book _Refuse to Choose_ by Barbara Scher. It is about how to use that Edison-like tendency of yours as an asset rather than having to stuff it all the time.

Maybe the side projects are too close to the day job? That's kind of what was nice about playing music - it was totally different.

If anything, it would be the job being too close to side projects. I learned programming to build cool things, the career was only a lucky accident for me.

Maybe just tell us about them.

One is a Mars colonization roguelike I'm designing every spare minute I have, the other is half-finished haptic device that only needs me to find the time to design and make a PCB (and solder components I already have), and the third would be a set-up for notifications from various home appliances via processing the noises they make. I have all the hardware for this already in place, but lack the time to code the required DSP.

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