Couple people asked me how to organize my time on my day job responsibility and my hobby projects like self-development, lifehack.org and Listible etc at night. It is pretty similar to what Chris calls a second life. Same as Chris, I use my second life to pursue my passions – but things are not always go well because of other elements – work and life. Frankly Chris handles it much better than me – but in here I want share my issues and my ways to help the situation.
Issues:
- Sometimes my concentration is not there at night, after I have worked whole day in the office.
- Unexpected things, like phone calls from my love one.
- Fall asleep, because of tiredness.
- Deal with day-job work, because things have to be done in different timezones.
On-going solutions:
- Move on and Relax: When I lack of concentration to do my projects, I will take some time off at night to get some rest – perform some relax activities and share your time with others, such as chatting or watching TV with my family. Is it a time inefficient for my project? Yes. On the other hand, this is a great family time – utilize it – as I do not require great deals of concentration for catching up with friends/family or relaxation. It is much better than forcing myself to work on the projects and being unproductive.
- Ideal schedule: I keep my ideal schedule in my calendar and execute it. This is important even if I know the issues may affect my execution of the schedule. It still gives me a target to aim for, and I could base on this schedule to review my performance.
- Communicate: Tell my family and love one that you have a time-slot that you want to work with the projects. Schedule some other time to talk to them.
- Day-job work in a time-slot: I do not see a problem if it has to be done. I focus those tasks in a block of time – don’t spread out, otherwise it will take whole night.
- Review hit and miss: Every week or month, review my progress – Was it going well with my ideal schedule? Did I push myself too hard? Do I need to adjust more of my second life to be more relaxing?
Do you pursue your passions at night? How do you balance your life, work and passions?
