Finding work-life balance

#1

When you work on your own project you can not stop. Especially if the project is gaining notable traction.

A huge risk of burning out is slowly approaching. Be sure that if you work 6 days per week 12 hours per day, you body will someday say “I’m done”.

So what do you do to avoid burning out and live a healthy balanced life? :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

#2

I follow these 3 strict rules

  1. Close laptop home at 6:00 PM. No working in the evening. Spend time on doing sports, hobby or hanging out with the family. A huge no on all work-related questions in the evenings.
  2. Going on vacation twice a year.
  3. If you feel sick on the work, switch to another project for a couple of days.

This is it. All 3 rules are about one thing: do as less work as possible :upside_down_face:

#3

This sounds cool but how do I combine my full-time desk job with my side-project and working less? :sob:

#4

Ha-ha, good question John!

I know it is a tricky and challenging :slight_smile:
But I believe there are ways to combine both desk job and side-hustle staying sane at the same time.

Companies always want you to be fully committed to your desk job. But what if you try to negotiate a free workday to do your own project?
Developers at Unicorn Platform have a one “startup day” per week. It is a day when an employee can work on his own projects for all day. It is not only good for a coder, but for the project too: because he/she gets a new experience and skills which can be useful at the main work.
AFAIK, Valve and Basecamp allow to spend 20% of work time on personal projects too.

Tell these examples to your boss and try to convince them to give you a free day too!

Also, time-management can be the answer. There is a guy on this forum named @KostjaPalovic . He is a father of 2 and he works as a full-time programmer. Yet, Kostja still somehow finds time to build his own product (https://appliku.com/). He also helps others to master Django by writing excellent guides in his blog.

#5

Thanks man. This sounds inspiring. I think I should stop my whining and actually try to find some free time.