Managing one's time to better enjoy life and learnings

[selmitto]

How do you guys manage your work/ study/ social/ fun times? I'm sure I could do a lot better job with this.

My life has changed this year and now I'm living by myself, working a lot and have improved my social life significantly. But, a huge part of me can only be satisfied by some game/ level design studies, practices and etc. This gets me really frustrated with myself and I know that I'm my biggest (and only) obstacle to achieve my life dream.

Problem: I usually am so tired to do anything that asks for a minimal percentage of my intelligence. AKA study. So I might arrive at home and play games (shooters, because everybody knows that only dumb people play that LMAO, jk <3), listen to music or go out with friends/ ladies.

I know that "balance is key" and I should try and be more disciplined with my time. But...but.

I'm sure many people deal with similar problems and are way more experienced on this than me. How could we solve that?

Share your thoughts!

Thrik, I summon you! Enlighten Hurg with thy grandiose knowledge!

Source: http://www.mapcore.org/statuses/user/18083-al-anselmointelect0/?status_id=682

Edited September 27, 2014 by Al Anselmo~Intelect0

[KoKo5oVaR]

This may not help at all but ... enjoy your youth while you still have it

 

Maybe you should tell yourself that once you will finish your studies, you will be able to chill out more at home when you will be employed somewhere (although this is only partially true), so work your ass off until then ! Would that help ? 

[Sprony]

Ah, growing up and having responsibilities. Say goodbye to all that free time and those endless hobbies. Now it's work, run the household, keep an active social life and when you do have a moment, it's usually spend watching movies or playing games (you know, things that don't have you leave the couch). If you want to get stuff done you need to prioritize and plan. Have discipline and do what you set out to do but keep it real. It's useless to plan a study night after a week of hard work. No, pick your moments efficiently. 

[tomm]

dunno if revelant, but it's basically what sprony says

 

[text_fish]

You allocate fucks to family

 

[dux]

I bought a car that I'm in the process of modifying up. It's basically a distraction for me from other things that I don't want to focus on. And just to get away and relax. I always feel better after spending time with it. What I've found out about myself recently is I crave structure and stability. Weekends are actually my worst days now, I use them to relax but then I feel as if I've never got anything done. But if I didn't take them to mong out I'd just collapse on my face. The UE4 Challenge has been another nice distraction that I tend to do a bit of in the evenings to feel satisfied with myself.

 

What I find myself doing at 27:

 

- Drink with friends on some evenings or on every other weekend to catchup and talk. I don't get wasted like I used to. Just "merry". Happy and chatty, not passed out on the floor.

 

- Always put at least 25% of my pay cheque into savings. Always try and spend wisely.

 

- Only keep people in your social circles who benefit you, not put a drain on you.

 

- Weekdays with work I'm always focused on my tasks but do it in a manner that I won't stress or overwhelm myself with. Took a while to learn this.

 

- Find things that make you happy and allow you to take your mind off of stuff so you can come back refreshed. For me, as mentioned, is my car, games, books, music, tea, food, just going out for a walk and enjoying the scenery and world around me. Anything!

 

- Eat well. A good diet does wonders for your mentality and of course; body. Cooking for yourself is an immense benefit and rewarding as well.

[Steppenwolf]

Play less games. Gaming is the biggest time waste. As Feng Zhu says in his videos student's shouldn't be playing games even when they strive for working in games.

Takes a lot of discipline to spent that time with learning and practicing instead but that's just how it is.

[spence]

What benefits me most is trying to stick to a schedule/routine. When I'm not doing this I tend to put things off, and it makes me even more frustrated/upset about not getting things done. Try not to compromise or sacrifice on your routine too often, lest it starts to slip, and then you're back to where you started from. Personally I have to be well rested to be productive, so this means no all-nighters or heavy drinking sessions if I'm going to be doing anything useful the next day. If I'm working late into the night and getting tired, I stop and go to sleep, because I know I'll be able to do more when I'm well rested than if I force myself to stay awake and work. 

Another thing that helps me a lot is to keep a written to-do list of tasks. It sounds simple and obvious - and it is - but it really helps me to stay focused. When I don't do this, I tend to get lost on other things that are unrelated or less important, and it takes me a while to get back on track and into full-on 'work mode' again. I combine this with working in smaller, focused blocks of time (hour or two-hour long increments with a break for snacks/tea). If I can manage to squeeze in an hour to get one or two tasks done before going out, cooking dinner, etc, then I feel better at the end of the day and I'm also one hour closer to completing whatever I'm working on. Keeping lists and working in this manner also motivates me to keep going, especially if I can easily get a picture of what remains left to do, rather than trying to build a picture in my head and becoming swamped with ideas and tasks. If you feel like you have too much to do and you aren't making any headway, it's super easy to get discouraged and lose your focus or motivation. 

Stay conscious of how much you enjoy what you're working on. There are always times when you lose confidence in what you're creating, but if you're repeatedly not enjoying the work and having trouble coming up with good ideas or solutions to the problems you encounter, it's worth considering why this is the case, and what you can do about it, whether that's talking with others and getting feedback earlier on in the process, cutting a portion of a level/environment to make way for better ideas, or putting a project on the back burner if there's absolutely nothing else that can be done at that point in time. 

Managing your motivation and task management is just a skill like any other, it gets easier and more effective with practice. 

[Nysuatro]

Found out which habits you, you wan to have and the ones you want to get rid of. Work on this every day around 15 minutes.

 

Keep it as simple as possible for you. You will quickly evolve in a week. Imagine a month ...

[AlexM]

I'm constantly re-evaluating ways to keep improving myself. I'm not sure if I have a great system yet but constantly re-evaluating my goals and logging my progress has definitely made a huge difference. 

 

The only things I can say that really help for sure is to get a decent amount of cardio per day. Some type of strength training (I usually just do some pushups and situps with a touch of hot yoga) to keep your metabolism up. Also have a decent diet and don't eat too close to bedtime. 

[Minos]

* Try to do different stuff at home than what you do at work - it's pretty fucking hard to work on something 8+ hours straight to go home and do the exact same thing

* If you are losing passion for your current project put it on hold and work on something completely unrelated to it.

* Learn new skills, even if you don't necessarily need something for your job right now it will aggregate value to your career and probably come in handy one day.

* If you have time to play a lot of games then you probably have more than enough time/capacity to do work - I noticed over the years that physical fatigue is somewhat independent from brain fatigue. While sleeping takes care of the former it's rarely enough for the latter. What you need to do to rest your brain is just doing whatever you enjoy (watching a movie, playing games etc...) The trick however, is to treat those activities the same way you would treat sleeping: necessities in order to function well and be in good shape to do quality work.

 

I remember a few years ago when I wasn't aware of this fact I would feel like shit every monday after spending an entire weekend playing games instead of doing personal work. But once you treat those as necessities and not "wastes of time" you can draw a line and stipulate how much you really need. Just as someone can spend an entire weekend playing games they can also spend an entire weekend sleeping or drinking...or working! it's up to you to decide how much you want to dedicate to each

 

TLDR: keep a good balance between having fun and improving yourself, sleeping and working

[Pete_H]

http://www.peterharries.co.uk/blog/10-tips-on-working-on-a-personal-project-whilst-holding-down-a-full-time-job/ 

 

relevant-ish, maybe? 

Edited October 12, 2014 by Pete_H