I found this article really useful. It's important to note that the author is
explicitly talking about what you do in your leisure time, not what you do for
work.
I have often found myself trying to start side-projects that I didn't really
care about, because I had some abstract, perhaps irrational idea that I
"should" be working on this particular thing. Usually it's something that will
teach me a new skill.
Recently, I've gotten a lot better about evaluating whether or not something
is worth doing in my free time, but I still don't really have a good criterion
for when I should pick one thing over another: When should I spend my free time
learning about X, and when should I learn about Y instead?
One suggestion may be to pick whatever is the most useful or the most likely to
help you earn money in the future, and indeed this is more or less the rule I
have been using in the past.
I posted this article because I thought it gave some remarkably actionable
advice for picking between different side-projects, namely:
> The basic idea of personal energy management is that you should focus on
increasing your personal energy and lifting up your mood in your leisure
time, instead of working on things that drain your personal energy. Hobbies
should lift your mood, not drain you. This makes you better perform all the
other tasks.
This is a different outlook from what you usually hear, but it makes a lot
of sense to me when presented in those terms.
I have often found myself trying to start side-projects that I didn't really care about, because I had some abstract, perhaps irrational idea that I "should" be working on this particular thing. Usually it's something that will teach me a new skill.
Recently, I've gotten a lot better about evaluating whether or not something is worth doing in my free time, but I still don't really have a good criterion for when I should pick one thing over another: When should I spend my free time learning about X, and when should I learn about Y instead?
One suggestion may be to pick whatever is the most useful or the most likely to help you earn money in the future, and indeed this is more or less the rule I have been using in the past.
I posted this article because I thought it gave some remarkably actionable advice for picking between different side-projects, namely:
> The basic idea of personal energy management is that you should focus on increasing your personal energy and lifting up your mood in your leisure time, instead of working on things that drain your personal energy. Hobbies should lift your mood, not drain you. This makes you better perform all the other tasks.
This is a different outlook from what you usually hear, but it makes a lot of sense to me when presented in those terms.