I wish I had time and energy for projects like this. Like the olden days.
How do you keep this curiosity alive into adulthood?
How do you keep this curiosity alive into adulthood?
On the other end of the spectrum, I've mentored college grads for a while who would always complain that they never had time to do anything. I'd often ask them to open up the screen time report on their phone and they'd be shocked to discover they were spending 4 hours per day on Reddit or Netflix or something.
You have to choose to make things a priority. It's fine if you just want to relax in your spare time, of course, but the key is to be deliberate about those choices rather than letting the flow of entertainment media carry you away.
If you see it as another project, and then you see other things as entertainment and the things you do to relax, it feels like there isn't enough time.
I always envy those people that find true entertainment and enjoyment in active activities like this, instead of just passive entertainment to "rest".
Assume your kids are going to school and the parents go to work. Then the only time when everyone converges at home is ~4 to 5 hours between 4 and 9pm. This is the time slot when you have dinner together, bathe, do homework, go to the playground, do sports, do house chores, go grocery shopping, etc. By the time you are done putting them to bed you are exhausted and there's still house chores to do for the adults, tidying up for the next day, preparing school activities, etc. And you have not been able to spend quality time with your partner yet.
This is just reality. You can't get around it. You may me able to squeeze extra hours from here or there, such as by not sleeping 8hrs, but most people can't do that consistently.
Therefore, if you are in the above situation then it's incredibly difficult to spend time on hobbies, no matter how motivated you are, because it is a question of time, not motivation. So don't feel bad if you prioritize spending time with your children for now because this time won't ever come back. You can always start a new hobby but you can't always take your child to the playground.
As they grow older you might be able to align your interests with them and spend quality time together, but even then you have to align yourself more to what they want than viceversa. You won't be modding a Starlink terminal with your child and have him remain interested and engaged the whole time. But together you might build a cool world in Minecraft or whatever.
Spend your time wisely! It doesn't come back.
To accomplish all of this with a family, I can only assume they must have an easier than most work schedule/assignments.
I can still use the internet, but blocked most social media sites and apps, reddit/etc. My good friend has the passcode.
If I need them I can use my laptop/desktop, but it’s not as gratifying and right there. My screentime dropped by 4-5 hours per day, it’s insane. Now I get bored occasionally and (unintentionally) frustrated my phone can’t solve that, but I do read more, and work on more hobbies.
I'm not being glib. That's really the answer. Sometimes, it just isn't possible to achieve, and that is both frightening and demoralizing. Doesn't make it any less true.
Really.
If you’re lacking in motivation, there is almost always something broken somewhere. If you think not, it’s probably because you’ve trained yourself to ignore it, or refuse to believe it.
One or more of these obligations is broken if there is no motivation for enjoyable personal activities.
Broken may not be immediately fixable or remedied. There may be stress inducing obligations that are simply unavoidable.
Sometimes the fix is simply recognizing the emotional and mental cost some activities and obligations impart.
Having more hobbies to do than can be reasonably done, but not feeling like you can or should stop is a sign of something wrong elsewhere.
Why feel compelled to do them then, after all?
The root cause, in my experience, almost always boils down to not enough understanding, awareness, and acceptance of what actually is vs what someone feels should be, could be, or wants to be.
Sometimes for good reasons, that matter. Sometimes for bad reasons. Sometimes for no apparent reason at all.
The most common factor I see all the time is emotional/mental overwhelm, as in my experience that is the root cause of almost all other causes, as it stops someone from seeing and reacting to the other problems when they occur (like lack of knowledge and bad information, misleading or manipulative other actors that don’t get properly handled, signing up for things that are not realistic due to lack of proper self awareness, lack of healthy coping mechanisms, or over reliance on healthy ones, etc).
If you want to read a overly analytical 312 page manual from the Army on exactly this topic, here is the link [https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN34875-TC_3-2...].
A lot of key Army doctrine involves how to get inside and lengthen the awareness/decide/action loop of the opponent, while shortening theirs, as it is a key tactical advantage.
It’s a large part of why the Ukraine war is going as well for the Ukrainians as it is.
The lessons apply to us all however. The sooner you can become aware of what is really happening, decide on/synthesize it into a course of appropriate and effective action (or inaction), and then follow through on it effectively, the healthier, happier, and more successful we tend to be.
With our bodies, rational analysis is almost always too slow, and can easily lead to self delusion. Mindfulness, breathing techniques, etc. are generally better. However, as Buddha was well aware of and cautioned against repeatedly, delusion is an ever present threat and can easily happen during meditation as well.
Both are often needed, IMO, for different parts of the problems we all face.
Finding hobbies in different (even related) fields is a lot easier.
When I was a kid/teenager, I worked on a lot of game console reverse engineering projects. As an adult, I wanted to get back into systems reverse engineering, but game consoles felt both too "useless" and too locked up. So, since I already had a major car hobby, I decided I'd learn how to calibrate OEM automotive engine control units - both the software reverse engineering and exploitation side and the actual mechanics and engine control side.
This turned out to be a great idea because everything fell into a cadence and a nice "proximal development" area - novel enough to be fun and engaging, but achievable enough to get hits of success. There was always something new to learn, but it was always something easy enough to be a week or two away. And there was absolutely no timeline besides my own, so it remained fun.
For me as an adult, the two major detriments to curiosity are a timeline (now it's work) and a lack of purpose (now it's just fiddling around). Setting a goal but not a timeline is what really gets me going. YMMV.
If I'm not feeling success, I aim at a more achievable goal, or pick up another project. If I'm bored, I aim bigger. And if I feel like I have no "free" time, I rethink priorities. Yes, sometimes work sucks, or an unexpected obligation is a drag, but by and large, as an adult with a marketable skill, I and I think most HN readers are blessed with pretty broad autonomy to decide what to do next.
For example: lately, I've left most of these projects behind in favor of day job security and preparing for a family life, but I don't feel stressed out or like I lack "time and energy" - my goals have just moved along as I have.
Added bonus not waking up tired. Took me about a month to adapt to this routine given I've never - ever - been a morning person in my life. And I'm still not if I go to bed late.
Completely cut out all alcohol which ensures better quality sleep - ready to start the day by working on a fun project.
I guess the best way to keep your curiosity after X years of age is to start with a really challenging project that you know has steps of micro-success. Also, find a motivating community where you can chill, rant or discuss things with. That's why I am here, you are here. You need to have some level of familiarity with the domain of knowledge so, you know what you can achieve in what amount of time. There needs to be the idea of challenge, definite success and somewhat familiarity involved.
My example: I like the old school WSB community. If you know, the tesla-short era. So, I attempted to build tooling that they will enjoy, and I will have fun discussing. My checklist of accomplishments was things I knew can be completed in a few hours. The progressive dopamine hits kept me focused. I was doing great.
Why did I fail? Community itself become not the same. Fun discussions were harder to find. Market kept going up, meaning tools that I made is worthless because anything I didn't make sense because stonks go up. A Complex JavaScript project felt harder to write than I anticipated. So again, community, challenge and knowing your limits.
If you are looking for hardware hacking motivation, these two videos blew my mind. Joe Grand, crypto wallet hacking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT9y-KQbqi4&t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icBD5PiyoyI
This channel is also good, but it is a bit wacky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icBD5PiyoyI
Edit: Also validation.
When WSB got extremely popular, and it was being spammed. Subreddit was flooded with spam and mods removed posts aggressively. It wasn't the place to show, "look what I made". Not blaming the mods, I just didn't belong anymore.
If you can achieve validation by yourself internally, that is incredible. But the average human needs other people to say, "Good job :)"
Finding a way to get validation from your projects is fantastic, a friendly community and likes on your YouTube videos or blogs can have immense impact.
Messed up the link. This is the correct one.
I’ve gone through long stints of neglecting hobbies, but it’s always my fault.
Lately I love building out and refining my hydroponic garden’s automation and related application. At the moment I’m expanding it to a mushroom spawning and fruiting system. I spend a few hours a week on it, but I love it. I’m awful with hardware but learn so much every week.
Your situation might be different, but I highly recommend literally forcing yourself to make the time. I know that has been my mistake over the last 15 years – never acknowledging and then accommodating the need to just do fun and interesting stuff.
I'll bet you probably have tons of energy, but also more responsibilities and even in your youth you were not that dedicated - you just had moments of intense interest and did stuff for fun without too much diligence and no other worries.
Maybe carve out some 'me time' for whatever.
And a bit of cardio really, really helps.
In their spare time they are probably watching porn/netflix like everyone else.