How to find time to learn after work (2017)
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I also like giving my most productive/energetic time to my own projects/learning, as opposed to work, but that is just me.
After work time is for dinner, family, and fun projects that I don’t need additional motivation for
After work usually there is too much noise to get a large chunk of time. I do have 60-120 mins after my kid falls to sleep but I'm always in a gameplay only mentality during that time.
Sadly my most productive time, the time where I feel like doing the most work, is between 13:30 and 18:00, which has a pretty big overlap with "picking up kids, getting dinner ready and other household chores".
Me too, I almost blurted out something like this to wife today - that I can't help it, my best hours seem to be between ~13:00 and 19:00, which is exactly the time that's torpedoed by a series of distractors like "dinner", "picking kids up from facilities", and everything else that's going on. By the time we're clear of all that, I'm too mentally or emotionally drained to do or enjoy anything.
I’m doing grad school right now, while working full-time while maintaining family responsibilities.
My ways of working and achieving during undergrad (mid-afternoon to late evening sessions) are not mapping well to grad studies. Getting up early is hap-hazard and working late at night leaves me dead tired for the next morning.
However, I’m glad that my kids are getting the best of me during my peak productivity time.
This works well for me for getting a headstart on the workday, but I can't seem to "learn" anything in either the first hour or so in the morning, or the last hour or so before I go to bed.
Plus, with the latter, if it's anything interesting, it keeps me up at night.
Mornings are the only time I can learn what I want to learn and not what the man wants me to learn.
And what you're describing for time management is similar. You have influence over how much space you leave between you and the things in front of you on your calendar, but you'll never have much control over the end of the day, and how exhausted the final events of the day end up making you feel.
At night it is much more difficult to be consistent with a habit, with things coming up spontaneously (e.g. friends wanting to go out for dinner), time for family and also tiredness after working all day varies a lot. Whereas in the morning it was much easier to just block 1-2 hours with nobody interrupting and while I might not be the most productive/energetic at that hour, it is pretty much consistently the same every morning.
Of course, YMMV.
After a few weeks of a study plan and the motivation fades I find it really hard to "learn" for more than a few hours a day, which I was able to do while working full time.
It probably depends on your financial state and other motivating factors as well. It was easier to be motivated when I was poor in college than as a 40 year old that could do whatever I wants whenever I want.
By contrast, staying up to 12-1am is effortless and I get a solid 2-3 hours of independent time to catch up on work or learn
In my natural state, I wake up randomly between 09:00 to 12:00; the only way I can wake up earlier, or at specific time, is if someone else forces me out of bed, and makes sure I don't fall back asleep within the next 15 minutes. I've been like this for as long as I remember. So even without kids and their adjustable schedules (ready to get up as early as 04:00, but waiting for us to wake up until ~06:30), to get in that morning hour of learning, I'd have to ask my wife to wake me that hour earlier - which already defeats the point of having alone time.
And even if, my brain never really wakes up until ~12:00 - 13:00 anyway.
Having your biological clock stuck in an opposite timezone to everyone else sucks, but you only learn how bad once you start a family.
One thing I've naively assumed, is that having kids will awaken some instinctual facet of my psyche to respond to the stimuli inherit in having young children. Maybe that is still _likely_ true, but your experience was that nothing about your internal clock fundamentally changed?
Today is a perfect example. It's 10pm currently and I need to wake up in 9 hours and be walking out the door in 9.5 to make it to the office in time. On the 3 days I do not go to the office, I don't roll out of bed until maybe 15 minutes before our daily stand up at 9:30am. Even then, I might just get up with enough time to go to the bathroom and unlock my laptop. I should be getting into bed now, but I still need to take a shower and wind down. I'll be lucky if I'm asleep by midnight.
One thing that has changed since I was a kid, is that I can fall asleep in just a few minutes if I make a conscious effort. Unfortunately, that doesn't translate into better sleep quality as a whole, but it certainly takes one piece off of the table that many struggle with.
This ended up being ramble-y, but again, thank you!
Nope. The only thing that changed is that my 報復性熬夜 (revenge bedtime procrastination) went into overdrive and I'm nearly incapable of going to sleep before midnight now. Which is probably the reverse of what you're hoping for.
> One thing that has changed since I was a kid, is that I can fall asleep in just a few minutes if I make a conscious effort.
For me, it's a bit of a wash. I no longer get stuck in the loop of getting stressed over how little sleep time I have left, preventing me from falling asleep - a constant in high school. But how fast I fall asleep now depends on how tired and relaxed I am. Since latter hardly happens, it's mostly a function of sleep deprivation - i.e. I can fall asleep in minutes, provided I'm systematically undersleeping. Otherwise, it's a coin toss. Cooling down the bedroom helps - recent heat waves made falling asleep hard for me until I made the connection and started firing up A/C at night.
Morning is a good time to be productive and creative, but to learn?? No way, not for me.
Not everyone can (or want) to study this way, but devoted focused time give you far more benefits than one hour a day randomly whenever you can squeeze it. You can read most books (even technical ones) in under 8 hours, that's a single work day's worth. It's very likely your employees are wasting more than that over a two-week period on other things.
That requires someone who's driven to learn, who would appreciate this time for what it is (it's not vacation), but would foster an environment where people were constantly trying to improve themselves and apply those things to the work (because that's the best way to learn).
I study like crazy on my off time, mainly because I love learning, but it's definitely bordering on unpaid labor since I get all the best ideas after hours.
I like to think that IT workers learn on the job all the time, although usually only relevant to the current task at hand. But, I've always browsed sites like HN during work hours (instead of going outside to smoke for example), possibly too much, and consider it to be self-study.
It's resulted in me knowing a little about a lot of things, I don't know if it translates to actual skills or career advancement but at least it makes me feel smart. ish.
This was my policy with my staff. I straight up told them they can and should take a couple hours a week (tried to start small to make it achievable) on personal development, whether that's reading books, taking courses, etc. I'd even try and brainstorm with them on ways to spend the time.
Funny thing is, with one or two exceptions, few did it because they always felt something else was more urgent during the day...
In the case of training / education, a good solution may be to provide more structure. Get a group of people to sign up for an actual structured class (or run one yourself), and set the expectation that they actually go to the meetings and/or do the work for it. Just "figure out some time to read some books on your own" will work for some people, but lots of people thrive on more structure than that.
But that requires a fundamental change in organizational productivity culture and means this kind of policy probably needs to be implemented -- and critically, measured -- at the corporate level so people collectively recognize that learning time is sacrosanct.
No big deal!
I took a number of month long vacations before there was much in the way of internet and I had people come up to me and basically be in astonishment that I could do that.
I'm slowly leaving my phone behind and just trying to be present. Actually experience reality and not get my brain busy all the time.
Because of that I'd say, just don't try to be productive at all times. That "downtime" you're trying to cram another podcast into is actually necessary.
I like to work and study, but doing either of it for more than 8hrs is not sustainable for me. I expect to be writing the modern-day equivalent of Fortran when I'm 60. All the young bucks will look down on me for not advancing in my career, but I think I'll be happy. That's all I need.
Everyone has their own balance point. John Carmack can work 12hr days and improve at various subjects continually, so his balance point lies somewhere else. Don't try to be Carmack if you're not and you can still live a fulfilling life :).
My thoughts exactly. When I'm about to die, I suppose this is all that will matter.
Thanks, I needed this.
http://bookofhook.blogspot.com/2013/03/smart-guy-productivit...
So, if you're working a proper full-time job, it means you're incapable of learning or working on anything other than your $dayjob for 5 days a week.
I think this is the root for the "productivity drive" - you spend yourself out at work so you can survive, and then... there's the rest of your life, that you would also like to live, not just experience. For many (myself included) it's kind of a trap. Productivity here literally means autonomy - the things I do or build or learn after work are literally... my life.
Your parent is making this point about how when you go to the office, in addition to your commute, there's an extra 30 minutes of stuff like getting dressed and making coffee.
OK - 30 minutes.
This year, I went from an average of 4.5 hours a day of phone time to less than 2.5 (it's still dropping).
Two more hours every day to do whatever I want!
Show me any other "time hack" that saves 14+ hours per week.
I think I'll get my phone time down to 60-90 minutes eventually (basically just time spent eating meals alone, plus a few essential app tasks).
My days feel positively endless now. I finally read books again. 250 pages this weekend on a whim.
You can squeeze a phone addiction or a commute into your day, but not both. Of course preferably you have neither...
But your brain needs rest as well. Stop trying to keep up in the rat race, all the things you try to cram into your brain have a short half-life and will be forgotten or archived into the "things to half-remember and you'll need to look up anyway" anyway.
I mean if you enjoy listening to podcasts while commuting, have at it, I won't judge / you're allowed to have and enjoy things. But if you feel like you HAVE to, it'll cause problems down the line.
Don't feel guilty about "wasting time" either, if you enjoy watching TV, playing video games, or sleeping instead of doing a 5 AM run, have at it. Don't deny yourself too much.
There's a big one right there. Time lost due to commute times are actually much longer than the door-to-door time.
It's not just the 90 min that you're loosing with the commute, it's also the context switching before and after the commute: checking the weather outside to select the right clothing, getting dressed with the right attire that fits(unless you forgot to do the laundry), grooming and looking sharp before you go out (gotta brush off the dried dirt of the shoes from yesterday's rain), walking around your campus/building between your office and coffe-machine/water cooler to hydrate, setting up your laptop/desk to get in the zone, walking around looking for meeting rooms, all this adds up on top of those 90 min to more like 120 minutes or even more.
That's 2h/day, or, if we assume 8h work and 8h sleep, that's 25% of your leisure time left lost for nothing, just to go to work and back. Just let that sink in. 25%! A quarter! One fourth! Even though in practice it's worse than that as 8h of work doesn't include the mandatory unpaid (in my corner of Europe) 30min-1h lunch break, so you're not left with much leisure time between work and sleep.
And for me, 25 minutes on the train are not enough time for to get in the zone to actually study and learn something. By the time I get in the zone, I already need to start packing my stuff and get ready to board off the train. Trying to cram study into a short train ride brings me more stress than it's worth so I'd probably end up scrolling on HN/reddit in that short time on the train.
With WFH I can save a huge amount of time by bypassing all these dead times that don't benefit me and nor do they benefit the company I work for. It's just time wasted that's unproductive to both parties. I can quickly jump into work after I wake up, and I can quickly jump off work when I'm done and dive directly into my hobbies.
I wish companies would understand this and not see WFH as a tool or justification for slacking off, forcings everyone commute every day to waste everyone's time justifying some mystical "team bonding" that happens in the office that boosts everyone's productivity.
/rant over
Boy do I envy people who can live their life this way. I sure can't.
For flying, it probably helps that--much as I hate 4am pickups--my car service won't really let me cut things close in any case. But I also figure it's painful anywat so why stack on stress associated with possibly being late.
People can also live closer to work, or use other methods (biking, running, etc.) to combine exercise + commute. Many studies have indicate that people overestimate the happiness of a larger house and underestimate the daily happiness toll of a long commute
That's getting unrealistic since it's becoming unaffordable even for well-paid salaried jobs, it's a non-solution given the current housing situation in most of the major cities where jobs actually are.
> WFH is one solution, but it's not free in terms of collaboration costs.
Why should the employee bear the costs of it though? If collaboration is better in-person what can employers do to enable that? I shouldn't be paying with my lifetime for the eventual benefit the corporation gets with in-person work, I surely wasn't happier nor more productive when I had to work in crappy open-plan offices with all its distractions: people passing by, doors being open/closed, chatter from other groups, interruptions from people wanting to ask questions right-the-fucking-now, having to work 100% of the time with headphones to be able to focus, etc. On top of that I had to pay the commute both in cash and time, the only way I'm going back to the office is if there's a significant increase in pay to compensate the inconvenience.
The increase in pay can come as a 4-day work week as well, then I wouldn't mind at all going back to the office even if my commute is 2h/day. A completely free day is much more valuable than the snippets of free time I get after a work day, days I don't have much energy left to do what I actually want in my life.
Not in America. We have a thing called "suburbs" here. That's where people live. For cost, quality of life, school, etc. reasons. Some cities don't even have a center, such as LA which is just sprawl in every direction as far as the eye can see. You may work in Santa Monica and your spouse works in DTLA. At least one of you is going to have an absolute hell of a commute. SV isn't better. Your place of work probably is the suburbs. Just not your suburbs.
> no one thinks college is better remote
Says who? My college experience: go sit in a giant auditorium with 60 other people and listen to a lecture with no actual interaction with the professor. I could have stayed home and watched a YouTube video with less distraction and more comfort. In college you are entirely on your own to learn the material. That's the best time to go remote. I can sit and rewind a video until I understand it. I can pause and take a break.
> happiness of a larger house
That's probably the last reason you buy a house in CA. But you don't have to make that trade-off today. Because remote is a thing.
Today I went and took a shit in my private bathroom. I didn't have some guy come in and sit down not even 2 feet away and start gassing me with his morning diarrhea. I also didn't go back to my open office hot desk under the harsh florescent lights and try to read my morning email with people walking and talking behind me wondering if these people are looking at my screen.
Not in Europe as well. You can't afford to uproot your family just because your new employer is on the other side of the city, and yet you're expected to if you want the job. A lot of my friends in Germany commute by car to work just because they don't liver within sensible cycling/public transport distance.
You're still young and developing in your college years. By the time you're in the workforce at >21 years, you are already socialized and more fit to handle remote collaboration.
</college-rant>
It's poisonous, because you end up blaming yourself because you are not living up to constantly changing external demands.
It's okay to say no to what challenges your well-being. Otherwise you'd be at risk of losing your own autonomy. Accept your limitations, cherish them, and know you don't have to (or even can) change them.
I'm not saying you should say no to everything, but not everything is necessary.
To me this sounded like the author likes to read and learn about things, but these just happen to also be tech. So they found a way to make time and describe how. I don't see any holier than thou "this is how you must do it", just a simple "this works for me". But YMMV.
> My software developer colleagues often ask me where I do get all the time for reading all the tech books or articles, watching conference talks and listening to podcasts.
They're not talking about learning about woodworking on the side, or learning about tech for fun. They specifically situated the piece in the world of work right at the start, going so far as to present themselves as some kind of mysterious marvel that their co-workers have tried to unravel.
This is just another tech productivity hacking piece. Good ol' workaholic porn, in the same vein as "Wanna get hired? Start a dozen side projects!" or "Hack leetcode in your remaining waking hours for fun and profit, except without the fun!"
It's a trope at this point, and an unhealthy one.
Want to have a better partner? Become a gym rat! Work on your personality! Want to be make more money in life? Learn more, grind more!
I've shipped several books, and currently run a SaaS product this way.
It's OK if it looks bad, it looks bad for most of us. I'm just saying to acknowledge uncomfortable facts.
Whether you have the energy to use that time differently is another matter. I can share that it will become ever harder as you age. It's a typical tech/knowledge work problem. Pay is good but the price is high.
I have friends having many different professions and their skill set is largely stable over time. The idea that one must make daily effort in their free time to learn new things and do side projects is ludicrous to them.
That's the nature of tech. Complain all you want but it's not going away. So stop complaining and be pragmatic. Don't learn random things, make a short list of things that count. That are marketable and in demand. Next, cut each topic up into tiny tasks. Make it achievable.
Do your React "hello world" on day 1. Spend a few minutes on it in the evening and then reward yourself by going back to your Netflix. Read one deep article. Solve one bug. Do tiny stuff and do it all the time. Keep the train moving. The only thing that matters is that it's moving, don't worry about how much it moves on any given day.
I’m all for listening to enriching content while doing dishes etc… I have a vested interest in this as a host of a podcast… but sometimes, you just need to hear the dishes clink, the train wheels rumble, or the sound of the air conditioner while you sit idle.
You need space for your brain to expand and recover. Don’t fill every second, or you will regret it in short order from massive burnout, and in my opinion, increased levels of anxiety and a sense of never quite being “done” with anything.
I too often find myself in this oscillation between soaking up new knowledge and actually using it. This cycle between passive/active consumption is intriguing but might have its drawbacks IMHO.
There are moments when I question if I should be buried in learning new topics instead of tinkering with what I already know. Learning is invaluable, no doubt—certainly better than mindlessly scrolling through TikTok.
But it does beg one question: What's the point of incessant learning if we're not applying it in any meaningful way?
I too love to soak up on new knowledge, regardless of it has practical use or not. I just love to learn about things in general.
The problem is that I have limited capacity.
So instead of subscribing to dozens of newsletters, listening all new episodes of podcasts, etc... I'm reaching for that knowledge when I need it.
The flow I'm trying to implement is this:
1. Want to actually DO something
2. Look for information about that
3. (harder) Actually do it.
Whereas before it was (still is):
1. Learn about ALL THINGS, maybe I'll need it
2. Don't actually need it, forget 99% of what I read/watched
3. Want to actually DO something
4. Look for information about that
5. (harder) Actually do it.
Show up 15 - 30 minutes early to work and pick the most useful skill upgrade that will get you promoted or make your job easier / make you faster.
This is bare minimum to get constant promotions. Stay 15 min after work and do quick analysis what did you do and how to do it better.
During work always volunteer for documentation or training. Make sure you squeeze little research into both. And do proper detailed paperwork for both.
Harass your boss for training, labs, conferences at every moment esp when someone compliments either you learning something new or your performance / execution.
Study vacations. I have 25 days off and 5 of those are for intensive courses. somewhere interesting. This does not have to be directly related to job skills. You still have to be social and talk to people so language learning and cooking /dancing abroad is still beneficial.
Once you train yourself how to do this try not to think and stress about it. Learning needs to be intense but with playful fun approach and mood.
What's supposed to happen is you learn on the job but that rarely happens because unless you graduated from a top 10 school you're typically hired to do drudgery that exists due to poor tech management.
So if you are actually a normal person in tech with things going on in your life you will inevitably fall behind.
Definitely not technical books.
Thank God I don’t commute.
If you want to work after work - don’t have kids.
I understand now how people stagnate in midlife.
Only way to gain some advantage is to delegate/hire help. Which is beyond the reach for most ppl. At the same time, there is a lot more filler admin-work for adults.
Wondering, are kids (after a certain age) more helpful around the house? So parents get back time?
Should schools offer extra tutoring and support for kids and families that need it? Sure. Should people limit what they learn at home or out-of-school? No.
You'd be even more surprised to learn that learning can happen anywhere, anytime and from anyone in any kind of form.
Helping kids at home with school work as a parent is not only accessible to rich families. You should help your kids when they really need it regardless of your socioeconomic background.
Now if you're talking about personalized/paid tutors outside of school, then yes - it's much more accessible to richer families but there is fundamentally nothing wrong that. What you decide to do with your kids outside of school is your choice.
I'm not going to deny that schools can probably do better, but telling people you need to be rich to help your kids with school is, in my experience, not true. I think the bigger problem for many is relationship dynamics - most parents I know lack the patience to help their kids with homework.
Very well; I grant it. Now, does that invalidate the rest of my point in any way? Some kids are still going to have a large advantage over other kids, whatever the cause. If teachers are aware of this, would this be a reasonable way for a teacher to handle education? To just dole out homework, and leave any help or not to the vagaries of chance depending on that kid’s home situation? And any kids getting help would probably getting this consistently over other kids, giving some a huge permanent advantage over a long period of time. Why would teachers do this? I chose, instead, to charitably assume that teachers meant for homework not to be done with assistance by parents or tutors. In which case “helping” would indeed be cheating.
My father died when I was five. My mother never finished high school and worked in a medical factory. She still found an hour to try an teach me and help me learn (even when I was beyond her upper skill limit).
Nothing about helping someone better understand something is cheating. Helping your own child? That is just natural. I find what you said revolting.
If you want to argue that the teacher understands that parents are helping their kids with the homework, then:
1. Why aren’t teachers sending study aids, pedagogical material, etc. to the parents, on order to aid in the further education of the kids? Why are teachers universally acting as though kids are supposed to do the homework on their own?
2. This would still only help kids with rich parent who can afford the time to be a part-time teacher to their kids.
In summary: If teachers assume that kids do all their homework themselves, unassisted, then “helping” is (culturally normalized) cheating. If teachers instead assume that kids get help from their parents, it would be burdening kids with poor and/or busy parents with a severe disadvantage.
I'm sure you also know that not all school districts, teachers, and children are equal. Some are funded better than others, some are better trained than others, and some learn in different ways than others. If my child is struggling for one reason or another, I am going to be engaged in several ways. First, I may speak to the school and/or the teacher to understand the details. Second, I may speak to my child about their assignments and offer to explain unclear concepts to them. I won't take a pencil and start solving the problems for them.
Please don’t do that here.
> children that have active and engaged parents have an advantage over those who do not.
You’re not answering my questions, or responding to my summary. Either teachers are aware of this – in which case teachers should logically help the parents, not arbitrarily assigning homework to kids – or teachers are unaware, in which case parents helping kids is skewing teachers’ perceptions of the kids’ abilities – i.e. cheating. I made the charitable assumption that teachers are acting reasonably based on what they know.
> I won't take a pencil and start solving the problems for them.
But this is what the stereotypical, commonly depicted, behavior is. It may not be universal, but I am sure it is not uncommon.
Without "help with homework", the child may have gotten no individual instruction/teaching, so how are they expected to learn?
Even beyond that though there's the possibility of needing more and/or unique care. Parents are the end-of-the-road for ensuring that they raise a capable, educated human. Some children just struggle in standard school settings.
It honestly sounds like you're arguing against "Interact with your child, help them if you think they need it", which seems.. odd. You could perhaps be arguing that parents are wrong usually, and should go against their intuition on helping the child - but that's also a mixed bag.
No one is saying parents should hand-hold and hurt their children by way of robbing them of essential experiences. What i am saying, though, is that parents are the last-mile. The only ones who are ultimately responsible.
It sounds like you're ignoring a very wide gulf between doing nothing and doing the homework for children. Kinda sounds like you advocate sink or swim style learning. Which works great for those who swim, perhaps. Less so for those who sink.
However there is of course the important matter of what we, or parents, define as inadequate. You argue that children are fine to receive inadequate attention. which seems.. odd.
I also said nothing about "constant attention". Rather all i said was the more inadequate the attention, proportionally the more attention they're likely to receive at home. Which is a very reasonable statement, no?
Do you not expect parents to fill in where they feel their school is failing to teach?
Yes, also because it creates inequalities very early between children with parents who can afford spending time helping them (or paying someone to do so) and those who can’t.
Is that weird?
If I didn't do this my oldest would have easily flunked math last year. But just a few minutes per night of making sure she understood the concepts was the difference between that and her acing it.
I started this because we had a teacher that was really bad at noticing if one of our kids was understanding things or not. For example, we got worksheets back from school where everything was done incorrectly and there was just a giant star on it. Fuck that.
Wake up at 4AM. Stretch Achilles (gets stiff when I sleep), make a coffee and check emails/prep for the day in my notebook. From 4:20 to 5AM I run 5K and then shower. From about 5AM to 7AM I work on my own stuff/learn/whatever. At 7AM I wake up the wife and help get kids ready for school. I walk with the kids to school at 8AM. From 8:30 to 3PM I work on my stuff and have lunch somewhere in there. I walk to the kids' school and pick them up at 3PM. Work on my stuff until 5-6PM. Help out with dinner, kids, play, etc. Put kids to sleep around 9PM.
Breakfast
Work
Play with kids while (slowly) teaching, working side projects.
Eat and Post dinner tasks (bedtime stuff)
Learn/Build for 15-60 minutes during wind down.
Bed at 10pm
Learning is done while at work, during naps, weekends.
Working after work is possible. Having kids brings clarity to our priorities. Mine at the moment is to maximize peace and stability.
I was cleaning the workbench and provided a few boxes of random screws, nails, nuts, and bolts - had him sort them by size and shape. This teaches pattern recognition, sorting methods, names of objects, function of objects, and fine motor skills. If I ask for a 10mm socket the 3 year old can identify it including telling me it is used for tightening bolts.
No, I am not going to optimize in additional professional learning in my off hours.
I have a life. And I'm allowed to have idle time where I spend it just being instead of doing. My existence isn't to be maximally productive at all times, and this type of hyper optimization isn't going to make me wealthier or happier.
If you're learning for work, learn during work hours. Anything else is just free labour.
Edit: as a random ranty example, I recently discovered sites specifically for music that supposedly increases productivity. We can't even enjoy art anymore. It's gotta be art that makes us better little cogs.
However, I do feel like working through projects like this and coming out the other side with something tangible is a high like no other, and I despite how hard it might be, it's really invigorating and gratifying.
You're treating tech as a hobby and engaging with it accordingly.
This piece literally started with:
> My software developer colleagues often ask me where I do get all the time for reading all the tech books or articles, watching conference talks and listening to podcasts.
Immediately we, the reader, know this isn't about having fun in your spare time or learning and building purely for pleasure.
It's all about achieving, about being that person that other people look to and think "wow, where do they find the time to be so productive??"
If it were as you say, I'd have no issues with the piece at all.
The things I may want to learn or do in service of a hobby or personal interest are very different from those topics relevant to my professional life, and the motivations and the value I get from it are entirely different as well.
And this article is clearly written with a professional context in mind.
Unless you think that when he mentioned how his "software developer colleagues often ask me where I do get all the time for reading all the tech books or articles, watching conference talks and listening to podcasts," they were marveling at his woodworking hobby?
I've certainly gone through periods where that happened, and others where it didn't.
I don't think it's correct to judge anyone for not wanting to do job related stuff out of the job, but neither is it correct to judge someone who's so interested in their work area that they spend their spare time learning more about it.