Ask HN: How do I find energy to work on hobbies after the work day ends?
I’m sitting here in my bedroom looking at a book I’ve been meaning to finish for months, but it’s complex enough that when I start working on the next chapter, I get a quarter of the way through it and have to put it down, because I just dont “get it” when I feel this way.
Across from me is my desk, with a computer where somewhere on it, is a half built personal website I was using as a way to teach myself web development. But when I open it up and start working on it, I feel like I’m missing that spark that makes the right connections to learn new things like JavaScript objects and how they work.
I have Duolingo on my phone, which I complete in spurts lasting 2 or 3 days then I drop for maybe a week or so, even though I know it’s only “10 minutes a day”. If I do it now, I won’t remember most of it tomorrow.
My job isn’t particularly demanding. It’s average. I don’t work more than maybe 8-9 hours a day on stuff that I understand most of but still have a chance to learn new things. My point is it’s not like it’s a brutal work culture at all.
I even exercise mid day or after work (depending on how busy I am) which is proportioned to give one energy, not take it away.
But yet at the end of the day, I’m just beat.
How do you find the motivation to do the things you genuinely enjoy, when you’re too wiped out to do them?
Is this normal?
138 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadI switched to consulting work so I could dedicate a week a month to work on non paying open source work that makes me happy.
Little by little, one at a time, I reduced my upkeep expenses, until I could reduce my paid work, first to part-time, then to nothing!
These days, I live completely off my personal work. Doing it the fregan way, I accept no direct financial contribution, and instead accept housing, Internet access, web hosting, etc. from supporters.
I can't say it was a comfortable transition, but I've made other transitions in my life before, and those were not easy either. I had some guidance, which I didn't always follow well, and I was still able to do it.
I would recommend this route to anyone with a clear goal in mind and predisposed to spiritual, meditative, minimal, ascetic, and slow lifestyle.
How did you start out? What was the hardest challenge?
The hardest challenge was probably giving up my deeply held BELIEFS that "financial independence" was mandatory, and that depending on others (without paying them money) was somehow shameful, cowardly, or otherwise undesirable. In reality, it has formed the foundation of the best relationships I've got.
Another huge obstacle I was able to overcome was LISTENING to and learning particular useful skills or knowledge from people whom I did not agree with or want to become like.
It's easy to want to learn from and follow follow someone who seems hugely successful. I found it challenging to even notice or pay attention to, let alone try to learn from someone I did not admire or want to become like.
Yet most of my USEFUL knowledge, laboriously skimmed and filtered, came from people on the FRINGE: lonely divorcees, poor elderly people, criminals, drug addicts, homeless, travelers, outdoorsies, etc. My journey would be much more difficult without them.
On the other hand, most things I learned about Elon Musk and Berkshire, in part due to the broken telephone effect, have been useless. I've learned that the most valuable knowledge to be found is firsthand or secondhand, everything past that is of questionable truth.
In case it's not clear, I'm not suggesting shooting up heroin or becoming a criminal. But I learned a lot about living minimally from them. Their lifestyle is of forced minimalism, and they're very good at it, or they don't survive.
As you can see, much of it was in my head. The actual physical changes were a piece of cake in comparison, believe it or not.
Are you able to do some of your project work at work. Included in this is building an internal web based application for your customers/users, automating things. I built things at work and home while learning the Java Spring Framework for example.
I also worked on stuff during my commute on the bus to and from work.
I find I have to stop working on a computer by 9pm or I won't sleep that night.
There's heaps of things I can't get done in a day or put off as I'm too tired. Trying to reduce TV consumption and social media consumption can help!
For a person to do something, there are two components: 1) motivation, and 2) activation. Activation is how "easy" it is to get going. Activation has an aspect of mental state to it, and an aspect of engineering (e.g. many dark design patterns work by reducing the activation needed to do what the designer wants you to).
People with ADHD need much more activation than the usual person to get going. So, a common refrain is "I must be lazy, because I can't bring myself to do the things I care about". Once an ADHD person is over the activation hump though, they face a different challenge: stopping. Stopping in a timely fashion is necessary for good health (need to sleep, and eat), and consistent progress (doing a little bit every day is much better than "a lot" one day in two months).
But, whether you have ADHD or not, don't discount the impact of the $$$ spent engineering various services so that they require as little activation as possible. I'm not yet sure what the solution to this is, but I think being aware of the activation/motivation distinction is a good first step to eventually reaching a solution.
> being aware of the activation/motivation distinction is a good first step
what’s the second step? :)
Do you have thoughts on adderall?
I was thinking more along the lines of: any personal experience? have you found that it helps with the activation problem you're describing?
I was diagnosed with ADHD-inattentive last December, so I've been on a very low dose of what I'm told is basically just timed-release adderall for about 4 months.
So far it's been positive. I find it helps me change contexts more easily and not bounce off of the new context and revert to phone scrolling. It helps me get over that activation hump more easily I think as well. One effect that I didn't anticipate is since I started on it I find I sleep better, wake up groggy less, and have an easier time getting out of bed in the morning.
That's probably partly related to this: I had to cut out caffeine almost entirely because it would make my heart race. If I want coffee I can have decaf that seems ok. I can have a mug of tea but if I have two my heart is pounding. Same with soda. I used to drink a can of diet coke a day. There is caffeine free diet coke too which I have but I find I drink it much less frequently.
The heart racing has been the only negative side effect I've noticed and cutting out caffeine has fixed it so overall that's probably for the best.
Sorry for the snark before. I don't actually know if Adderall is prescribed anymore, it might be. When I was looking for advice on how to approach a doctor about a possible ADHD diagnosis as an adult one of the things I was told was "don't mention medication, especially not Adderall, they might think you're drug seeking. Focus on the diagnosis first, then treatment". So I reacted poorly. Sorry again.
Sometimes instant release (Adderrall or Dexedrine) is prescribed to supplement a time release version, particularly if you experience "the 5 o'clock crash".
If your on something like Vyvanse, you might have to up the dose after months, possibly even years, as your tolerance builds. Supposedly it's possible to reach a dose that balances against your metabolism, and you won't need to increase it again.
I found that, at a high enough dose, my jaw started clenching quite a bit, and I had the occasional heart murmurs. I do drink the equivalent of 3-4 cups of coffee on a regular basis.
If anyone experiences those side effects, I highly recommend chelated magnesium. Worked wonders for me.
> If your on something like Vyvanse, you might have to up the dose after months, possibly even years, as your tolerance builds.
I think I might be reaching that point, it's nice to hear that it's normal and expected. I am on the lowest dose of Concerta that my doctor can give me and it was great for a while but I feel like it's less effective.
I can only really speak to what I've seen working at a hospital in the northeast US, but it seems that as of 2018 amphetamine was the most prescribed drug type for ADHD across the country, and actually going up: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6261411/#!po=21...
The activation, or executive function, is often missing with folks who have ADHD. Things that I have found which help:
1. Set a timer/alarm for you to get up and start. 2. Set a timer/alarm for you to stop and zone out or take a break. 3. Try to keep a list of actions you can take instead of the one you can't start
And be gentle with yourself when you enter the mental state of "I need to get up to do X now" but your brain simply won't let you. It happens and is frustrating, but don't let that feel like a failure. ADHD brains just can be very difficult sometimes. When this "stuck" feeling happens, I try to cycle through other things I could do until I eventually find on that allows my brain to let me get up. It can be as simple as deciding that I should go pet my dog.
"You don't have to write, but you can't do anything else."
Replace "write" with "code" or whatever you need to do. His process was to set a fixed amount of time to work (having a defined length is important), sit down, start the timer, and either write or sit and do nothing.
Removing the mental pressure of "oh no I have to get this thing done" by making _doing nothing_ an acceptable outcome was huge for me. It took a few tries to actually stick to the "do nothing else" part--no HN, no phones, etc--but now I find I can dispense with distractions and get work done much more easily.
You should question if you really are enjoying those things or rather pretend to. If you were really enjoying them you wouldn’t ask how to get started doing them (which is procrastination) but would do anyway.
My solution would be to take some real rest (i.e. a nap and no TV) before doing anything else.
People find/make time for the things they want to do (for their hobbies). Hobbies are typically enjoyed, if you’re not enjoying things, try something else?
I have a dozen books I’m “currently reading.” Sometimes I finish three or four books while still only 20 pages into another. Reading also compounds (the more you read, the more you can read—and understand).
Maybe a good audio book for you would be Atomic Habits. Maybe you can start with doing something you enjoy for just 10-20minutes a day, consistently. Consistency compounds.
After a long period of depression a few years ago, I started running. I had never done this before. The first few runs I would have negative, depressing self talk, like how I am failing to live up to my potential and will probably continue to fail because life is hard and what's the point. Then after a few weeks I began to have self respect. The self talk was positive. Then after a few months the self talk turned to rage. An angry father figure archetype in my head yelling at me for every mistake.
While running one day, I realized: the self talk doesn't matter. All that matters is that I don't quit.
It doesn't matter how you feel, it matters what you do.
It doesn't matter that you don't want to get up earlier, it just matters if you do it.
It doesn't matter if your not motivated if you just don't quit.
For me, I put myself through painful things because not doing that is more painful. I hold myself to a high standard and am hard on myself when I don't achieve my goals. Bright light. Dark shadow.
Over the past decade of this, I have bounced between the poles of this spectrum: highly motivated, working a lot, and irritable, arrogant... Unmotivated, weak, tired, bored, kind... At this point I have learned to navigate and manipulate my emotional state such that I am stable over a long term.
The place where you are in, to me, has one clear solution: rage. Internally focused anger has always brought me out of depression. It is not something I choose, it arises slowly over long periods of failure. Many people who fail for a long time will let their anger spill out into the world, wasting their only chance to change themselves. Instead, you must keep the target of your rage on yourself, the part of you that has failed and will continue to fail.
Your better than him, aren't you?
However, for me it didn't. Trying to "power through it" for me lead down a dark path towards a burnout.
Everybody needs their own narrative. What matters in the end is getting rid of negative thoughts that tell us we are not good enough. The way we get there probably is very different for everybody.
Are you sure about that? What if we are truly not good enough? What if we are sleep walking into climate disaster and despotism? Life isn't just about feeling good. Life is mostly not about feeling good. I'd frame this as "What matters in the end is getting rid of our negative actions that harm ourselves and those around us". Negative thoughts are important and useful. We pummel ourselves with media, trash food and dopamine in order to suppress our negative thoughts, meanwhile multiple existential crises are unfolding around us, do you really think "getting rid of negative thoughts" is wise?
"Oh, you're in pain, you should try harder, you're weak, pathetic, and useless." -> Try even harder. -> Debilitating injury -> Tiny bit of progress towards recovery. -> "Come on, you're a total weakling, you shouldn't have taken a break, work harder." -> Injure self again.
I haven't figured out how to fix this cycle. It was much easier before lockdown when I had external feedback (gym buddies, etc.) on what was just cowardice and what was actually pushing myself too hard.
The softer approach now is that I understand that the "I am not good enough" mindset is a powerful one that is behind many successful people's motivation. It's kinda a paradox, because you basically think "I am the best", but also "I am not good enough"... Putting it together into something cohesive is more like "I am capable of being better than I currently am".
The emotional stuff is kinda like "I will suffer more if I don't do this". Like self imposed suffering caused by dissapointment.
1. I think it's normal yeah. Social media and advertising make us think everyone else is a super achiever but that's mainly nonsense. Us modern humans are over-stimulated mentally to an extent that would have been unrecognisable to our ancestors. We're not adapted to be thinking, talking, reading, studying, watching things all day. It would be exhausting to not sit down all day right? The mind isn't so different. Find ways to enjoy doing nothing. Could be meditation, gentle slow yoga, listening to some quiet music, nothing too mentally taxing. Your mind needs time to idle and reset, it's almost like your mind's 'garbage collection" kicks in and clears out the junk. It can't be processing all the time. Take time for being, it's incredibly restorative.
2. I'm a big believer in hobbies. As a father of two very young children my time is limited to I rely on the little and often approach. Don't knock the power of small daily incremental practice. I've made good progress with programming and piano in this way from very little time.
3. Doing non "thinking" hobbies is also important to me. I'm a bit addicted to over-thinking (like many of us I suspect) and something like piano is a counterforce to that. Find fun hobbies that you do for the pure intrinsic joy.
4. Assuming like many of us you're a covid home worker, don't knock the massive effect this has had. All of my colleagues seem to be feeling burnout to one degree or another. Again self care and self compassion are key here.
5. Check in with your doctor. You might have a deficiency, maybe you have a bit of low lying depression or something like that. Very common in both cases but it's good to seek help just to eliminate these things.
This has been a trend I've noticed with all of my friends who are work-at-home due to COVID. Everyone is pretty fried and feeling heavy burnout.
I was 100% remote before COVID and even though my work life hasn't changed I'm still feeling it as well, both due to not having places to go (gym, bar, theater, etc), as well as just via secondhand stress; e.g. the boss is burnt and takes it out on you.
- Work on things that interest you. Sounds simple, but a lot of people screw this one up. They'll work on things they think they're supposed to be working on, or they'll brainstorm the most lucrative ideas they can think of and work on those. For most people, this kills motivation. Give yourself a treat and work on that thing you're curious about but that other people think is a waste of time.
- Drink a sugary beverage. This one runs counter to all modern dietary advice, but was my secret technique for a good number of years. Next time you have an idea you want to work on but it feels impossible to focus, try downing a can of soda. Thank me later.
- Create a productivity playlist. This was my other secret technique. This can be as simple as a single album that you leave on repeat while you work. Doesn't matter if it has lyrics or whatever. Just needs to be something that your brain is extremely familiar with. If you do this often enough, listening to that music can help you get back in the zone when you're out of it.
- Finally, go easy on yourself. Peaks and troughs are common. If you're in a trough, give yourself space to relax and do nothing, and have faith that the motivation will return one day soon.
- Small victories. Rather than jumping immediately to your big giant task, build up to it with small victories. Brush your teeth, wipe down the counters, something small that's quick to do. While I do this, I remind myself "small victories". I build up a few of these (make the bed, brush my teeth, clean up the kitchen) then move onto my computer tasks for the day.
If I am feeling defeated, I start back at small victories: put the dog leash away, clean off my desk, etc.
Definitely hokey and weird, but it's all about momentum and building up activation energy (stealing from another post).
Works for me. I have to be very careful about how I expend my energy, while being aware that many things demand my effort. So everything gets broken down into pieces, and no piece is too small.
I'm getting into Lego as a hobby, and if I'm too tired I'll just do a step. It may or may not lead to more, but there it is.
I like sim racing too, so if I'm too tired to race, I'll boot up the sim and do a few practice laps. Or just one, whatever.
It is possible and even likely that you are using up all of your focus time each day on your day job.
Also, for a lot of people, this quantity reduced a lot over the last few months or half year: it’s been a long and stressful and uncertain year, full of unexpected sacrifices for everyone in society, to varying degrees. It’s okay to feel exhausted and drained given the circumstances of the pandemic.
PS: duolingo isn’t a good way to learn a language even if you somehow manage to be super-diligent about using it.
I guess it depends on someone's personality. I heard people complain about it, but I've had good experiences with it. It really helped me, because it automates parts of the learning process, including spaced repetition.
Duolingo by itself won't be enough to get to fluency. But it's a cheap and convenient way to get a foundation.
If Duo doesn't work for the OP then they probably need to look for something else.
- Go to bed early and get enough sleep [For me this is the most important point]
- Drink enough water
- Eat a balanced diet
- Cut back on processed sugar
- Cut back on caffeine (or completely stop)
- Exercise, but don't overdo it if you want to save some energy for projects
- Block yourself from wasting time on social media
- Limit your consumption of "news"
- Cut out TV
- Lastly, if you haven't taken time off work in a while, take a week or so off
Step 2:
- Reevaluate
I find great benefit in walks with no additional inputs other than what I am seeing as I walk.
10/10, highly recommend if your hours and location are convenient.
Especially limiting "news" (I would also emphasize their "quality" with quotes..) and social media. I feel so much better since I quit twitter, for some reason it feels just like a giant pit of awfulness.
The only two things I'd add or say differently is that a) this helps (or at least helped me) not to be more productive, but just in general happier. Being happier brought more energy which in turn means just doing more things, or just other things. The other thing (b) is, with the exception of social media which I outright quit, I'm not strict with limiting or rather going over limit with some of the negative things on your list. Do I feel like eating cake after lunch and having my third coffee after dinner? OK, as long as it doesn't become an everyday habit, I just do it..
>- Cut back on processed sugar
>- Cut back on caffeine (or completely stop)
---
Not everyone processes food the same, even normally functioning bodies will have different responses to the same foods.
Absolutely you should target healthy food and I would discourage anyone from eating cheeseburgers every day, but if salad makes you feel like crap: don't eat salad.
There is no one most optimal way to eat. You need to learn and feed your body what it needs (and occasionally wants).
Your productivity will (probably) not plummet because you caved and ate a cheeseburger for lunch. Neither will productivity cave because you had a bottle of Coke.
I've been wearing a continuous glucose monitor (not diabetic, just curious) for the past few weeks and I've noted that some "healthy" meals are actually worse blood sugar wise than "bad" meals.
McD's cheeseburger: pretty steady blood sugar.
Small bowl of granola (not the shitty sugary kind): stupid huge spike.
Well, you're absolutely right about that. Granola, and indeed all cereals, are really not healthy at all. Salads also won't satiate you (which drastically increases chances of someone "cheating") and usually get drenched in dressings by most. Though blood sugar is not the prime indicator of health, it can be wearing on the body to have it spiking multiple times a day, which is why I practice IF.
That is the problem right here. Stop beating yourself up. Everybody is lazy. All these people having sideprojects make 90% of a months progress on 1 weekend or a single day they have off from work.
For me it helped to spend less time on HN.
Regarding hobbies: They should be fun first and foremost. Don't focus on the progress. Focus on having an easy and relaxing time.
Trick I'm using for my current job is that I carved out a part of my living room dedicated to work, so that my brain can associate that particular desk with getting things done despite associating the rest of my apartment with chores and slacking. Took awhile to adjust, but it seems to be working out.
The next step is a bad one - you actually have to turn the television off, it won't do it for you.
I think also you may be a bit overwhelmed by all the things you feel you should be doing, to the point you don't want to do any of them. So try to forget about them for a while.
Take walks in your neighborhood. Try to notice something that has changed, or is still the same.
In a few weeks maybe the mood will strike to have a cup of tea, and do some reading. Maybe not, maybe next week you'll learn something new.
now that i can choose when to watch things, i pick the shows i follow, and when i have time for tv i just take an episode of these shows, ignoring everything else.
1. Acknowledge that passive media consumption is actually not that interesting to me and just turn off the TV. Or when watching TV sometimes look at tutorials etc for the technologies you are trying to learn. If you find a good teacher this can be very entertaining too.
2. Have 2 Projects - 1 is permanent and the thing you actually want to achieve. The other is dynamic, meaning you can just switch to something else if you feel like exploring a new technology.
3. Give talks on some basic topics. Expectations are not high, but you are forced to learn it so that you can prepare the talk in time. Also this is very rewarding and efforts are very predictable.
The website and the book have successfully distracted you from the TV for a while. Now they're making you feel bad. That's not the function of a hobby. Maybe it's time to find something else.
1. Work on your hobbies _before_ your actual work (or when you feel rested the most).
Don't spend all of your "prime time" in your job. In the morning, when I am rested and focused, I dedicate the first one or two hours of the day to work on my things. Of course this pushes my schedule and I finish work later, but at the end it feels like an accomplished day. There's no feeling of guilt because you "only worked on your job". This of course only applies if you have a flexible job.
2. You cannot do everything at once.
I had very similar goals as you in the beginning of the year. I was trying to write posts for my blog, learn my partner's language, study for the Terraform associate exam, and exercise daily. All combined with a moderately demanding job. We simply cannot have that many things in our buffer. Try to focus on what's more urgent or important for you. Do one or two things at a time.
For me it used to be work 100%, hobbies 0-10%. By frontloading my hobbies and doing them first, it's now work 90%, hobbies 90%. A good net gain. At the same time my happiness has increased by a good 20%, because as you know, no one feels great watching TV for 3 hours.
The reason why this works is, if you work like a semi-normal human even if you are tired you will do the thing. However hobbies, being "optional" you will skip. By flipping things around you still have that push to perform well at work, so it stays relatively the same.
By the way, with kids, frontloading becomes even more important.
Edit: I try to have 5 main todos every day. 1 work, 4 hobbies. It averages out to about 11 hours (work being 8). I use my "hour" of lunch to play guitar, which is another hobby of mine, but it's the only time I can squeeze it in.
Any bright ideas to apply when you have to run to work early?
I don't believe this, and I don't see how it squares with "the number of hours you can be productive is limited."
If I'm paying an employee $150k, and he says "the number of hours I can be productive is limited," and then I hear he's waking up early before work to put in 3 hours on a personal project... I'm going to assume that means I'm losing somewhere approaching 3 hours of his productivity.
If i had to guess, i'd say people don't perform well for 8 hours a day. A significant portion of people's butt-in-chair is just that, a butt in the chair. For sake of discussion, lets say only 5 hours of real work is done during that 8 hour stint.
So i think the real question is does 2 hours of side-work before the 8 hour butt-in-chair impact the 5 hours of primary-work? Because if 3 hours are wasted in your 8 hour butt-in-chair, they _might_ not matter where the waste/mental-breaks/whatever are allocated.
Ie, if you mentally need a break from the 2 hours of work, during your butt-in-chair time, perhaps that's a net-wash with other time-wasting behaviors already taking place.
All hypothetical of course. I do know that i've seen numerous studies about how efficient we actually are over 8 hours of butt-in-chair. It's not pretty.
Fixed it for you
I'd much rather have an employee work on personal things first then come in refreshed vs burning out and never recharging because I'm demanding their peak "productive" hours.
Every employee I've had that has medium or larger scale hobby outside of work (both in and out of domain) has been a better hire than those who don't. They attack problems differently, they're better organized, and have never complained about burnout.
However, teams that have had a string of mandatory meetings in the AM are measurably less productive in my experience. I think there's something to this.
You can't just demand all of the results.
1. "All other things equal" applies to productivity pool.
A happier person or a more flexible thinker might gain productive hours.
2. With hobbies you (probably) have to do everything by yourself.
At work you can lean on others for decisions, graphic design, frontend/backend and other things that might drain you more (because its not your expertise)
3. As others have said: Hobbies are optional
Which probably affects you eventhough you _might_ still have productivity-reserves
4. Work is SO much more than 100% productivity.
Meetings, social time, administration, clean-up, etc... might be things you can do while not 100% focused.
And as others have said, everyone will be better off if you start valuing outcome, employee happiness, and other things as well.
It comes of as kindoff entitled to presume that all personal productivity it something that you as an employer have "lost".
$150k in the US Midwest is a lot better than $300k in SF or NY.
Give your job second best, give yourself your freshest morning hours.
Go to bed early.