How do I make time for hobbies?
July 5, 2010 8:54 AM Subscribe
Like a lot of people, my work keeps me quite busy. I'd like to hear how other people manage to carve out time to commit to a serious hobby or side project.
I imagine my situation is quite similar to a lot of people's. I'm doing a PhD in the sciences, which in general necessitates long hours and flexible scheduling. I'm quite seriously interested in writing, but I always find myself putting it off in favor of seemingly imminent work deadlines.
My problem is compounded by the fact that I am a serious monotasker. After three years in my PhD, I have just now reached the point where I manage to balance doing work with going to the gym regularly, and even this seems to be at the expense of, for example, cooking meals as frequently. In order to do something, it seems I really need a couple of hours of devoted time.
So I guess I have a two-pronged question:
1) How have other people managed to set aside sufficient time to seriously devote to a hobby?
2) How can I become more flexible with changing what I'm working on, so that perhaps I can capitalize on 30 minute lulls better?
I imagine my situation is quite similar to a lot of people's. I'm doing a PhD in the sciences, which in general necessitates long hours and flexible scheduling. I'm quite seriously interested in writing, but I always find myself putting it off in favor of seemingly imminent work deadlines.
My problem is compounded by the fact that I am a serious monotasker. After three years in my PhD, I have just now reached the point where I manage to balance doing work with going to the gym regularly, and even this seems to be at the expense of, for example, cooking meals as frequently. In order to do something, it seems I really need a couple of hours of devoted time.
So I guess I have a two-pronged question:
1) How have other people managed to set aside sufficient time to seriously devote to a hobby?
2) How can I become more flexible with changing what I'm working on, so that perhaps I can capitalize on 30 minute lulls better?
There are very few things that can't be put off for 15 minutes. Set a timer, write for 15 minutes. Do it every day. You don't have to stop when the timer is done.
(On preview, what francesca too said.)
Do you watch TV? Stop. That will free up 4 hours a day for the average American.
posted by Ookseer at 9:43 AM on July 5, 2010
(On preview, what francesca too said.)
Do you watch TV? Stop. That will free up 4 hours a day for the average American.
posted by Ookseer at 9:43 AM on July 5, 2010
I don't watch sports, at all. I might go to a game once a year or so, but subtracting watching and discussing sports from my life has given me many more hours a week to play with.
posted by MrMoonPie at 10:04 AM on July 5, 2010
posted by MrMoonPie at 10:04 AM on July 5, 2010
Writing is hard to do in fifteen minute chunks unless you also have downtime where you have been able to think about what you want to write. Are there any relatively mindless activities that you do where you can also think about the writing? I know you say multi-tasking is not you, but for example commuting, or riding an exercise bike, or lying in the bath. If you play music while doing things like this you may want to switch it off so you can focus more on your thoughts.
It could help to make a fixed schedule of a big block of time. For example, regardless of every other commitment giving yourself four hours on Sunday afternoon is enough to get your teeth into a writing project. It might even be easier to do this than to schedule four half hours during the week and your PHD studies might be easier than the writing to work on in small blocks since you already have a handle on that.
If you have trouble switching attention from one task to another you can try kinetic methods. So, for example if you are working away on your thesis and you know you ought to be switching to the exercise program or taking a break, but you habitually find yourself "just finishing this paragraph" for another two hours, try moving the parts of your body that are not engaged in the project you need to tear yourself away from. On a computer you need your eyes on the screen and your hands on the keyboard, but you can stand up, when the fleeting thought hits that your really had meant to stop twenty minutes ago. And this in turn will make it easier to move your eyes away from the screen. (This may be totally irrelevant to you.)
If you are having trouble starting things, sometimes having to start in the middle can draw you in faster. So with a writing project leaving the editing of yesterday's work to begin with can help. You start by re-reading, correcting spelling, simple stuff, making a sentence clearer and then when you get through the work you did yesterday, finding a dangling unfinished sentence can draw you in with the curiousity of how in the world that sentence was going to end.
Some people need to turn around three times on the spot and knead the pillow before they can go to sleep. If you also need this kind of transition a ritual can help get you started on that thirty minute block of usable time. First you bring your tea to your desk, then you draw the curtain so the light is not in your eyes, then you get out the blue and the red pen... Your ritual will vary and obviously it has to be a short one, but this can also help if the problem is sitting down hurriedly at the desk and then finding yourself staring into space with no idea how to start in your head.
Another thing that helps is rehearsing your subject mentally with simple questions when you sit down to work: Who?: My protagonist, the detective. Where: The murder scene. What?: Blood on the wall. This can help you get over the problem of going blank and then having your attention wander.
It is worth experimenting with different times for your side projects. Many people set the alarm an hour earlier and get up and write for an hour before work. Other people are so sleep deprived that any writing done under those conditions would be incomprehensible. You may find that immediately after getting exercise your brain works better for writing. or you may find that immediately after reading it works better. Or you may find that writing during meals works for you, albeit with the result of eating a lot of cold toast.
Sometimes inability to tear away from social stimulus leaves people with no time for productive work. Does your IM and your phone make it hard to focus? Do hours disappear when you realize that you just talked about nothing much and have no time to get started on that task after all? Figuring out strategies to limit this can help. For example when communicating with a fellow student on a project you are collaborating on you can find that instead of forty-five minutes talking about it, a two paragraph e-mail from you conveys the information you want concisely and accurately and gives them something to refer back to if they need to review. People time is the hardest to fit into a schedule and can be a huge hole for your time.
Another thing you could try to do is to start really small with your writing. Instead of beginning with a text book, begin by writing a very short essay. Instead of beginning with a novel begin with a ultra short story. This can help get you into the mindset that Sunday afternoon is for writing and it is worthwhile to start chipping away at the projects, even if you aren't going to get the book completed by 5 p.m.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:18 AM on July 5, 2010 [2 favorites]
It could help to make a fixed schedule of a big block of time. For example, regardless of every other commitment giving yourself four hours on Sunday afternoon is enough to get your teeth into a writing project. It might even be easier to do this than to schedule four half hours during the week and your PHD studies might be easier than the writing to work on in small blocks since you already have a handle on that.
If you have trouble switching attention from one task to another you can try kinetic methods. So, for example if you are working away on your thesis and you know you ought to be switching to the exercise program or taking a break, but you habitually find yourself "just finishing this paragraph" for another two hours, try moving the parts of your body that are not engaged in the project you need to tear yourself away from. On a computer you need your eyes on the screen and your hands on the keyboard, but you can stand up, when the fleeting thought hits that your really had meant to stop twenty minutes ago. And this in turn will make it easier to move your eyes away from the screen. (This may be totally irrelevant to you.)
If you are having trouble starting things, sometimes having to start in the middle can draw you in faster. So with a writing project leaving the editing of yesterday's work to begin with can help. You start by re-reading, correcting spelling, simple stuff, making a sentence clearer and then when you get through the work you did yesterday, finding a dangling unfinished sentence can draw you in with the curiousity of how in the world that sentence was going to end.
Some people need to turn around three times on the spot and knead the pillow before they can go to sleep. If you also need this kind of transition a ritual can help get you started on that thirty minute block of usable time. First you bring your tea to your desk, then you draw the curtain so the light is not in your eyes, then you get out the blue and the red pen... Your ritual will vary and obviously it has to be a short one, but this can also help if the problem is sitting down hurriedly at the desk and then finding yourself staring into space with no idea how to start in your head.
Another thing that helps is rehearsing your subject mentally with simple questions when you sit down to work: Who?: My protagonist, the detective. Where: The murder scene. What?: Blood on the wall. This can help you get over the problem of going blank and then having your attention wander.
It is worth experimenting with different times for your side projects. Many people set the alarm an hour earlier and get up and write for an hour before work. Other people are so sleep deprived that any writing done under those conditions would be incomprehensible. You may find that immediately after getting exercise your brain works better for writing. or you may find that immediately after reading it works better. Or you may find that writing during meals works for you, albeit with the result of eating a lot of cold toast.
Sometimes inability to tear away from social stimulus leaves people with no time for productive work. Does your IM and your phone make it hard to focus? Do hours disappear when you realize that you just talked about nothing much and have no time to get started on that task after all? Figuring out strategies to limit this can help. For example when communicating with a fellow student on a project you are collaborating on you can find that instead of forty-five minutes talking about it, a two paragraph e-mail from you conveys the information you want concisely and accurately and gives them something to refer back to if they need to review. People time is the hardest to fit into a schedule and can be a huge hole for your time.
Another thing you could try to do is to start really small with your writing. Instead of beginning with a text book, begin by writing a very short essay. Instead of beginning with a novel begin with a ultra short story. This can help get you into the mindset that Sunday afternoon is for writing and it is worthwhile to start chipping away at the projects, even if you aren't going to get the book completed by 5 p.m.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:18 AM on July 5, 2010 [2 favorites]
A few thoughts:
For me, it's easier to switch back and forth between tasks when there's a regular rhythm and routine to it. So for me, that means less flexibility and more scheduling. If a random, 30-minute lull shows up, I can easily waste half that time figuring out what to do during it.
I wake up at the same time every day, work during the same stretches, attend to family matters during the same times/same days of the week, engage in my hobby at the same time on the certain days of the week, cook dinner at the same time, walk the dog at the same time--I even go grocery shopping on the same day and time, once a week...
Every summer when school gets out, and the kids' schedules and demands from me change, it throws me in a minor tailspin for weeks.
I don't know if that kind of routinization will work with your academic demands, but I'd be surprised if there are aspects to your schedule that you can make more predictable than they currently are.
And yeah, I don't watch much TV, and I don't follow the news in any format except a couple of episodes of the Daily Show a couple times a week.
posted by drlith at 10:26 AM on July 5, 2010 [2 favorites]
For me, it's easier to switch back and forth between tasks when there's a regular rhythm and routine to it. So for me, that means less flexibility and more scheduling. If a random, 30-minute lull shows up, I can easily waste half that time figuring out what to do during it.
I wake up at the same time every day, work during the same stretches, attend to family matters during the same times/same days of the week, engage in my hobby at the same time on the certain days of the week, cook dinner at the same time, walk the dog at the same time--I even go grocery shopping on the same day and time, once a week...
Every summer when school gets out, and the kids' schedules and demands from me change, it throws me in a minor tailspin for weeks.
I don't know if that kind of routinization will work with your academic demands, but I'd be surprised if there are aspects to your schedule that you can make more predictable than they currently are.
And yeah, I don't watch much TV, and I don't follow the news in any format except a couple of episodes of the Daily Show a couple times a week.
posted by drlith at 10:26 AM on July 5, 2010 [2 favorites]
I'm a freelancer, and for many years had a terrible time with work time bleeding into life time: I always had work to do, and never felt comfortable sitting down to do something that wasn't work because there was always more work to do.
The solution is pretty damn simple: the weekend. Treat it as a weekend. Do no work on weekends. Weekends are for play. Problem solved.
Seriously, it took me like eight years to figure that one out.
I find that if I'm relatively strict about delineating blocks of time for work and for not-work, I will get just as much work done as when I was 24/7. Because I won't be doing that "oh, it's friday and nobody will be looking at this over the weekend, so that's like two extra days I'll have to finish this, so I don't have to rush right now" thing; instead I'll just bring the thing to closure on friday. And when I come back to work on monday I'm a better worker because I'm actually relaxed because I didn't spend the whole weekend trying to get extra work done, and there are fewer of those 30 minute lulls.
posted by ook at 10:30 AM on July 5, 2010 [2 favorites]
The solution is pretty damn simple: the weekend. Treat it as a weekend. Do no work on weekends. Weekends are for play. Problem solved.
Seriously, it took me like eight years to figure that one out.
I find that if I'm relatively strict about delineating blocks of time for work and for not-work, I will get just as much work done as when I was 24/7. Because I won't be doing that "oh, it's friday and nobody will be looking at this over the weekend, so that's like two extra days I'll have to finish this, so I don't have to rush right now" thing; instead I'll just bring the thing to closure on friday. And when I come back to work on monday I'm a better worker because I'm actually relaxed because I didn't spend the whole weekend trying to get extra work done, and there are fewer of those 30 minute lulls.
posted by ook at 10:30 AM on July 5, 2010 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Francesca too: I like the idea of using timers. I think one thing I am in need of is some sort of external motivator; as it stands, I have an awful lot of "Wow, it's 11:30 at night" realizations when I get lost in thought at work.
Ookseer and MrMoonPie: I barely watch TV or sports as it is. My one big time waster is probably the internet, but it gives me a feeling of knowing what's going on in the world that I'm somewhat loathe to relinquish. That said, I've contemplated banishing certain timewasting websites from my computer.
Jane the Brown: Thank you for the wonderfully detailed response. I purposefully walk to work in order to give myself time to think. (I actually think approximately ten times better while in motion, to the point that I'll purposefully go for walks in order to figure things out.) I really like the "kinetic" methods you describe, for a similar reason to Francesca's timers.
drlith: I've unfortunately never been much of a planner, which is why I seem to be only capable of doing one thing at once. Did you have a moment where you suddenly got good at it? (I imagine having kids must necessitate this to some degree.)
Ook: I'd love to set up something like this for at least one day per week. As it stands, I definitely run into the issues you say, where I feel that I've failed productivity-wise during the week and then tell myself "Oh that's ok, I can just make it up on the weekend." How did you overcome this anxiety? Alternatively, how did you build up the resolve to tell yourself to work 100% during the week?
Thanks for all the replies everyone. Keep 'em coming. One other thing: how do you all keep up the energy for your hobbies? Some days I'll literally work 12-14 hours, and at that point all I have left in me is surfing the internet.
posted by dubitoergosum at 10:54 AM on July 5, 2010
Ookseer and MrMoonPie: I barely watch TV or sports as it is. My one big time waster is probably the internet, but it gives me a feeling of knowing what's going on in the world that I'm somewhat loathe to relinquish. That said, I've contemplated banishing certain timewasting websites from my computer.
Jane the Brown: Thank you for the wonderfully detailed response. I purposefully walk to work in order to give myself time to think. (I actually think approximately ten times better while in motion, to the point that I'll purposefully go for walks in order to figure things out.) I really like the "kinetic" methods you describe, for a similar reason to Francesca's timers.
drlith: I've unfortunately never been much of a planner, which is why I seem to be only capable of doing one thing at once. Did you have a moment where you suddenly got good at it? (I imagine having kids must necessitate this to some degree.)
Ook: I'd love to set up something like this for at least one day per week. As it stands, I definitely run into the issues you say, where I feel that I've failed productivity-wise during the week and then tell myself "Oh that's ok, I can just make it up on the weekend." How did you overcome this anxiety? Alternatively, how did you build up the resolve to tell yourself to work 100% during the week?
Thanks for all the replies everyone. Keep 'em coming. One other thing: how do you all keep up the energy for your hobbies? Some days I'll literally work 12-14 hours, and at that point all I have left in me is surfing the internet.
posted by dubitoergosum at 10:54 AM on July 5, 2010
how did you build up the resolve to tell yourself to work 100% during the week?
Basically, I snapped, and just couldn't take it anymore. I decided I was completely burnt out, and that it was time to retire. Then I discovered that idleness made me even more miserable, and eased back into working again but on a more sane schedule. In retrospect I wish I'd have skipped the retirement phase and gone straight to the more sane work schedule.
That I managed to get the same amount of work done during the five day week that I used to do spread over seven days was an unexpected happy accident. Since I bill by the hour, this does mean my income is lower than it used to be, but that's preferable to grinding myself into the ground, which is what I was doing.
(Now that I'm a dad this has gone a bit out of whack -- my official work week is now only three days long, but I do often fill in extra hours during naptimes the rest of the week. The essence of it is the same, though: there are delimited hours during which I am At Work, and others during which I am officially off the clock.)
how do you all keep up the energy for your hobbies? Some days I'll literally work 12-14 hours, and at that point all I have left in me is surfing the internet.
Again, this is easy: don't work 12-14 hour days.
Maybe it's just that i'm getting older, but if I go more than eight hours in a day I wind up having to undo most of those extra hours' work the next morning, because it's crap. But if I just call it a day at the end of the day, often as not my subconscious will have untangled whatever knot I was struggling with overnight and it all falls into place before lunchtime.
(I also find it easier to get started in the morning if I left a task half-completed the night before, because i have an obvious entry point. If I work until I find a stopping point at the end of the day, it can take a while for me to figure out what to start on the next morning.)
Seriously, if you're routinely doing 12 hour days your work/life balance is completely out of whack, and I'll wager that most of those 12 hours are relatively unproductive. It's not sustainable.
Do an experiment. Commit to a traditional, 9 to 5 five days a week schedule, no more than that, for a month. I think you'll be surprised to discover that you don't actually fall behind; you may even find you're getting more done than ever before. For me, at least, a couple hours of work when I'm rested and balanced is worth more than a full day of exhausted crunchtime.
posted by ook at 12:40 PM on July 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
Basically, I snapped, and just couldn't take it anymore. I decided I was completely burnt out, and that it was time to retire. Then I discovered that idleness made me even more miserable, and eased back into working again but on a more sane schedule. In retrospect I wish I'd have skipped the retirement phase and gone straight to the more sane work schedule.
That I managed to get the same amount of work done during the five day week that I used to do spread over seven days was an unexpected happy accident. Since I bill by the hour, this does mean my income is lower than it used to be, but that's preferable to grinding myself into the ground, which is what I was doing.
(Now that I'm a dad this has gone a bit out of whack -- my official work week is now only three days long, but I do often fill in extra hours during naptimes the rest of the week. The essence of it is the same, though: there are delimited hours during which I am At Work, and others during which I am officially off the clock.)
how do you all keep up the energy for your hobbies? Some days I'll literally work 12-14 hours, and at that point all I have left in me is surfing the internet.
Again, this is easy: don't work 12-14 hour days.
Maybe it's just that i'm getting older, but if I go more than eight hours in a day I wind up having to undo most of those extra hours' work the next morning, because it's crap. But if I just call it a day at the end of the day, often as not my subconscious will have untangled whatever knot I was struggling with overnight and it all falls into place before lunchtime.
(I also find it easier to get started in the morning if I left a task half-completed the night before, because i have an obvious entry point. If I work until I find a stopping point at the end of the day, it can take a while for me to figure out what to start on the next morning.)
Seriously, if you're routinely doing 12 hour days your work/life balance is completely out of whack, and I'll wager that most of those 12 hours are relatively unproductive. It's not sustainable.
Do an experiment. Commit to a traditional, 9 to 5 five days a week schedule, no more than that, for a month. I think you'll be surprised to discover that you don't actually fall behind; you may even find you're getting more done than ever before. For me, at least, a couple hours of work when I'm rested and balanced is worth more than a full day of exhausted crunchtime.
posted by ook at 12:40 PM on July 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
It might also make a difference what kind of hobby you're trying to get yourself to do. When I was working on my PhD, I also had aspirations to write in my down time, but I found that the PhD took so much intellectual capacity that even when I had time, I didn't have the mental freshness to do anything with it. Once I started focusing on other, non-intellectual hobbies, it was far easier to eke out the time to do them. So maybe try something else -- running, building furniture, painting, singing -- rather than something that uses your brain in a similar way that your job does.
It is really difficult though, though. Maintaining a work-life balance is really hard when you have a consuming career that you also truly enjoy.
posted by forza at 4:22 PM on July 5, 2010
It is really difficult though, though. Maintaining a work-life balance is really hard when you have a consuming career that you also truly enjoy.
posted by forza at 4:22 PM on July 5, 2010
What works for me is to have breakfast at a local coffee shop and bring my laptop. There, I work on my hobby project for an hour while I eat. It's not a big block of time but it's (mostly) always there and my brain has gotten used to using this slot of time for my hobby so I can (usually) just dive right in.
posted by suetanvil at 8:00 AM on July 7, 2010
posted by suetanvil at 8:00 AM on July 7, 2010
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(I can't quite remember the last time I had four uninterrupted hours for myself)
posted by francesca too at 9:25 AM on July 5, 2010