No Time for Side Projects?
Discover your priorities to find the time you need.
One thing I frequently hear as feedback for my “One Project per Month” Challenge is:
Sounds like fun! But I have a full time job…and this and that… So I don’t have time for side projects.
If side projects have no priority for you, it’s ok. I will explain below why they nevertheless should have. But in any case, think twice whenever you use the phrase: “I don’t have time”!
The thing about time is: everyone has the same amount of it, 24 hours a day.
Whether we are “having” time or not depends largely on how we perceive it and how we decide to spend it.
The phrase “I don’t have time” could indicate that you have different priorities, or you actually perceive that you don’t “have” the time. Maybe because someone else has it? This would mean that you are not in control of your time. Both aspects are worth thinking about.
The perception of time depends on multiple factors. First of all, on your age. For example, for a child a week is a long time, while for an old person a year may seem short.
Why is that? A child is constantly processing lots of new input, seeing and hearing things for the first time. Grown ups on the other hand often experience familiar patterns over and over again.
The brain has no reason to create a new memory if there is already a very similar one. It just overwrites it. You will surely remember where you parked your car the last time in a street, but probably not where you parked on the 15th of July two years ago.
That is why a week of holidays sometimes can create more lasting memories than most of the rest of a year. Therefore doing new and exciting things is a valuable investment of your time!
The other factor to “having” time are priorities. Whenever I hear myself saying “I don’t have time”, I try to step back and think about them.
What are my priorities at the moment? Did I define them myself or do they come from the outside? Am I using this phrase as an excuse?
Priorities are deeply connected to who we are, how we see ourselves and how we want to be seen. For example, if you see yourself as a very busy worker, you will often volunteer to do overtime. If you want to be seen an excellent parent on the other hand, you will probably leave the office at 5 p.m. sharp whenever possible.
Now, I see myself, among other things, as a software developer and not just a person who happens to develop software from 9 to 5. I want to be good in what I’m doing. Not only because I’m economically depending on it, but also because it’s more fun and satisfying to do it well. In addition, I value independence very much.
These two personality traits make learning essential to me. If I’d stop learning, I would soon be in a position where I could only work on my current, or very similar projects. Since the industry is constantly changing, my field of work would get smaller day by day. Any problems in the project or the company would become very stressful, because I would depend on it.
Since learning has this high priority, I decided to spend a minimum amount of time per week on this activity. For me, that amount are four hours. That means usually two evenings or one morning in the weekend.
That makes about 20 hours of learning a month. I could read one or two books in that time or some blog articles. However, my new method of learning are side projects. To me, learning by doing sticks much better than just reading. Also, it’s more fun to create something than to acquire knowledge without using it.
Mubashar Iqbal showed recently, that one can make a decent project in one evening. There is a lot of fun stuff one can build in 20 hours using modern technologies. And there is a lot one can learn doing even a very small project using unfamiliar technologies.
So I don’t really have to make time for side projects. I just use my learning time, that I view as part of my job, for something fun.
Lastly, consider that while we like to define ourselves by our intentions, the outside world perceives only what we actually do. So whenever you find yourself being a TV-watcher, a social media reader, a couch potato or doing stuff on behalf of someone else, think if this aligns with your priorities, with who you are, who you want to be and act accordingly.
