
Finding time for side projects and keeping marketable skills current - AntcuFaalb
I&#x27;m six years into a CS-related career and I can&#x27;t complain. I chose an industry that provides not only big salaries in a somewhat-low COL area, but quite a bit of stability due to the nature of the work and the restrictions on who can be hired to get it done.<p>Anyway, I&#x27;m finding it hard to get going on side projects and I&#x27;m finding it harder to keep my marketable skills current. After my wife and I get our two kids to bed at night I have at most 3 or so hours to myself— on a good day.<p>And in that 3 or so hours I have to choose between hacking on a fun side project in a domain of my liking (e.g., low-level C and asm hacking; image&#x2F;video restoration filters) or learning a boring-as-hell skill (e.g., Apache Spark) I can market in my industry.<p>On most days I can&#x27;t decide and wind up focusing on one of my other hobbies instead: 35mm film preservation; collecting Laserdiscs. Three hours flies by. Sleep. Rinse. Repeat.<p>So I really haven&#x27;t gotten anything done. I&#x27;m a bit better of a programmer compared to myself in 2010 and I know a bit more CS, but the last project I worked on that I was truly proud of was my undergrad thesis.<p>The problem is that I have the ambition. It&#x27;s there. Hell, it&#x27;s swelling inside of me, but I just don&#x27;t know what to do. I have this desire to hack up something I&#x27;m proud of, but with such a limited amount of time I feel like I should be spending it on something that will help me keep my job long-term.<p>And I&#x27;m doing neither.<p>And I&#x27;m not learning more CS which I would prefer to either one.<p>And I feel like I&#x27;m decaying into a husk of my former self.<p>Help?
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nnn1234
Totally agree with setting a schedule, even better make that public atleast to
your trusted circle of friends. I have seen writers tweet number of words
written everyday on their latest projects. Having an accountability buddy
helps a lot, even better if you have a community. Faced with a similar
problem, I am building a network of people with cognitive surplus and the
drive like yourself, We are launching on Feb 8th. Check out crowdraising.co
Not .Com Thoughts and feedback appreciated

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kluck
Sounds like me. I always need pressure to actually get work done.

This probably does not help you very much, but you could try to find a job
working at the stuff you would want to do in your freetime - combining the
pressure of a work environment with the fun subject you care about. Not easy
though and might kill the fun in it...

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cauterized
Why not do both? Set yourself a schedule. Marketable skills Monday and
Thursday. Fun project Tuesday and Friday. Hobbies Wednesday and Saturday.
Sundays whatever you feel like, or nothing.

