Ask HN: How do you find time to do all the thing you want to do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you find time to do all the thing you want to do?

26 pointscgb22317 comments

I'm one of those weird people who loves learning new things, has lots of specific hobbies, and also has some semblance of a social life on top of all that.

Specifically, I'd love to learn a new language, code a side project I've been meaning to work on, keep in shape, and hang with friends maybe once a week.

As I grow in my career, I find I have less and less time to do even 1 of those things. And if I have the time, I am frequently too exhausted after work to put my mind towards doing any one of those consistently enough to make it a practice, with the exception of working out, which doesnt require a lot of thought.

How do you find the time and _energy_ to actually do the things you'd like to do consistently enough that you actually make progress on them?

What strategies exist to help with this?

I have so much I'd like to do, and for years I've accomplished nothing...

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I don't. I prioritize the couple most important things and ditch the rest.

There's just no way with family and other life obligations.

Sometimes, if I'm just obsessed with a topic and it's not at the top of my priorities, I'll give it a few hours, just to shut my mind up. But it only gets that little slice of time.

Reposted comment from an earlier thread[0] about ADHD (My own comment...)

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27063872

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27076941

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I prefer to split tasks into two types!

Marathons. So if I'm not over-tired and I've had my morning coffee, and a good night's sleep, I will do a marathon session of 4-5 hours of solid work, no interruptions apart from social media feeds where I need to know what's going on in the world so I have context for what I'm working on. (If Github's down for example, I need to know that).

Sprints. These are smaller tasks that take 5-10 minutes, but I treat them as micro-habits that compound over time, or in other words; many-littles-make-a-lot and the desired outcome reveals itself over longer periods of time.

It's good to know which mode you're in, because with ADHD, you need to pre-allocate time-frames to the important things and know when you're in sprint-mode vs marathon-mode. Some people mix them up and end up doing 4-5 hours on something that should be a 5-10 min sprint, and needs to be incrementally improved on over a long duration (we're talking months or years of progress here).

One of the biggest energy sinks is social media (that includes HN). I took a few days away from the internet recently and it was amazing. An hour passing felt like 6 hours otherwise.

The other is doing too much. You have to prioritize and do it one at a time. Clearly identify why you want to do what you want to do. Another risk, especially in this industry is to want to learn everything - CSS, Vue, React, React Native, SCSS, etc, etc. It becomes a bottomless pit and that's just career.

Why do you want to do it? Are you trying to be a designer? Do you care about that side project or are you sharpening your skills? Figure out one thing you really want to do, and work backwards from there. Personally, my goal is to make a full production app within an hour, so I optimize for that.

And then there's your personal goals. I like storytelling, but more the meta of it (story structures) rather than writing the stories. Combined with AI, that's a lot I can play with forever.

No emailing/ surfing either?

It was half a week out of town so I didn't have a choice. I downloaded documentation and drafted messages.

I'm notoriously slow with emails. It took me half an hour to write this comment. I think the brain tends to juggle multiple thoughts when it has internet access and the switching cost is what makes time fly by.

I started doing personal time tracking a few years ago and noticed the one thing that most correlated with my own energy was _who_ I was working with. Not what or how or how long. Just what team it was like. Find other people who learn languages and code side projects and spend more time with them!

Literally write out every single thing you are doing in the day and then you will realize where the waste is coming from. If you want to do something, put it in your calendar and do it.

Don't clean the house very often, let the yard go wild, hire others, build on existing systems instead of from scratch.

You may be squandering your energy on things you don’t want to, and don’t realize how large of an impact it’s having, so investigate that first. You mention “grow in my career” which I’m interpreting to include “getting older”. If I’m wrong please excuse me, but you could get bloodwork done to see if you’re deficient in some micronutrient or something else. Common ones include B12, D, and magnesium, all of which lead to lower energy. Poor sleep may be leading to lack of energy. In short, there’s a long list of things that can be sapping your energy.

As far as finding the time, you are limited in how much time you have. I’ve found it helpful in the past to focus on one large project and one small project per year (or whatever arbitrary timeframe works for you). Strictly scheduling all my waking time has also helped me be more productive.

Are you lacking time and energy or time and motivation? Do you feel like you’re on the cusp of a burnout?

If you could afford, take some time away from work and from your computer and do nothing. Also make sure you pass a health check, have no major lack of nutrients and vitamins, have some phisical exercise, it could even be walking but more of it. You’d know if you’re sedentary anyway..

And try to spend time doing your hobbies outside of a computer workflow. Learning a new language? Use a real notebook, pen and paper. I actually got into painting and sketching and found a lot of satisfaction in it. After a while of doing that I started getting the programming flame re-ignited with learning Scheme and Racket and doing hobby projects.

At the age of 18 I got the idea to learn every piece of knowledge in the world. At 25 I figured maybe I could master two or three fields. Starting from 30 I thought I could focus on two hobbies. Now I think I can keep at most one hobby and work on it a couple of times per week.

Key take: focus on what you really really enjoy (if you are not obssessed to it like water or air for 50% of the days then it's at most a hobby and you can drop the priority). And don't have kids. Kids are big time and energy sinkers. You get a kid and you can kiss goodbye to a lot of your old buddies.

Check out “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” by Cal Newport -- he talks quite a lot about managing your time and energy effectively. I've found his ideas supremely workable and his viewpoint refreshingly sensitive, intelligent and erudite.

https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/

For work that needs more concentration and deep thinking, I used to dedicate 1-2 hours in early morning. No distractions from family or feeling tired from daily grind.

For regular work like maintainance, use lunch hour. I eat lunch at my desk.

Few tricks that helped in improving productivity :

- Use of feature phone instead of smart phone. This helps me in reducing time wasted on social media.

- Listen to Audio books while working on chores like house cleaning or commuting

- Sleeping for 8 hours and eating healthy

If you're a male and feeling tired all the time, go check your testosterone level. I spent most of 2020 feeling exhausted before midday and unable to do anything. I checked it at the end of the year and it was on the low end. Since then I started working on it, drinking a lot more water and taking vitamin D (where I live the sun rarely visits) and I'm feeling a lot better.

I usually dont struggle to find some free time, its maybe rather sometimes problematic to convince myself to start doing it. My typical strategy is "just do something for 5 minutes". but it may be not your problem or solution.

I don't. I just get worse and worse at it every year, it seems.

I don’t :(

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