Ilona Codes
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Do you have any energy and time for your personal goals after a full day of work at your job?
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Top comments (65)
If I didn't pursue my personal goals I'm end up with no energy for life. As it hard as it can seem, your personal goals are the ones that matter. If you dedicate everything to work, and it's not one of your personal goals, you'll find yourself burning out and in a terrible situation.
It's similar to sports. Getting exercise every day isn't an optional activity. If you leave it out, you'll suffer for it. It's irrelevant whether you think you have time or energy, there is no way you can avoid it and remain healthy. I find the same is true of personal goals.
Sure, I'm exhausted some days, and have a terrible lack of time. But the only thing making it worthwhile is that I'm pursuing my own goals.
You are right! It's very important to have personal goals. They can boost and motivate us to live and help avoid daily routine.
Well said!!
The answer is complicated.
The easy one here is time. One of the things I realized by getting older is that time is scarce. Since getting older involved getting married and having two kids there is very little time left for personal - in the sense of individualistic - goals.
The answer to that part is: I have little time.
Next is the part concerning energy. The answer here is varying due to workload, daily performance level, food consumption, sleep etc.
So the answer here is: Yes, there are days where I have energy left which wasn't consumed by something else.
The really hard part is about personal goals.
That shifted a lot, because of the varying interpretation of what my goals are. And having little to no time helps focussing on what your goals are.
So setting realistic goals is helpful here.
If you accept that, you could say: »No, I do not do any sideprojects and code irregularly from time to time in a language I like just for the sake of doing it« and at the same time:
»Yes, I have energy and time for personal goals«.
That interpretation of the question doesn't fit in a headhunter's profile but in my definition of work life balance.
Thank you for so the expanded answer! I appreciate it 🙂
I am assuming that for personal goals you mean career and/or side projects related goal.
For me, It's all about energy and doing different activities.
If I spend all day coding, then I have no energy left to spend in front of a computer (or TV or any device) so I prefer doing sports, hanging out with friends (other personal goals) read: taking care of my body and brain, build and preserve important relationships.
If I spend the day in meetings or communicating with people (planning etc.) then I have some emotional and intellectual energy left to work on a side project at home.
It's important to set goals in order to achieve them, but it's also important to diversify the day :)
I see your work-life balance is right and, moreover, gives your wellbeing a boost along with your career 🙂
I would say achieving your personal goals is the reason you keep motivated regardless of your full day of work. It's totally OK if you want to take some rest or procrastinate once in a while. Take good care of your health is also the key to keep you going to do things you love. FWIW, I mean mental health and physical health. So, keep it up on your hard work and make sure you have work-life balance to be awesome.
I've dealt with this for a while and recently I came to the conclusion that I was actually very burnt out. Let me give a little context.
I originally started out in college as a CS major. My freshman year, I decided to start a company with a friend I had met. He was non-technical, so I ended up doing a lot of the programming work on the application. Between the company, school work, and extracurriculars, I wasn't really sleeping much and I was drinking a ton of caffeine. This culminated in my sophomore year with me feeling like my heart was going to beat out of my chest at 3 in the morning after a couple hours of coding. At that point, I decided I needed to do something differently. I stopped working so much, switched majors, and took better care of myself.
I figured I'd recover pretty fast if I stopped burning the candle at both ends. I was still doing a lot, but it was all stuff I really wanted to do. The company ultimately didn't go anywhere, but I started working on other things. I had a lot of things that would burn out pretty quickly. I didn't seem to have a lot of motivation. This persisted for about 4 years, but was so minor I didn't really think anything of it.
Recently, I've been much more motivated to work on things. All of this to say I think I burnt out so hard that I had perpetual, 4-year long burn out. Let's call it cosmic background burnout.
This isn't to say that this is the only reason it can be hard to work on personal goals after working all day long, but for me realizing this as burn-out and taking steps to deal with that has been a real life-changer. I find it much easier to work on personal goals outside of work now that I am actually addressing my burn-out. Take a look at the other things you are doing, and see if there is something you can cut that is burning you out.
Hopefully, this helps! Good luck!
Thank you so much for your story! 🙏 It's tough to detect when we have reached the point of burnout. The stress that contributes to burnout can come mainly from our job, also from our overall lifestyle, and personality traits and thought patterns, such as perfectionism and pessimism, can contribute as well. I am glad that you have overcome burnout and regained your balance! 🙂
Nice advice. Btw What are the steps you took to control the burnout?
Depends on my daily workload. There are days in which I have little work so when I get home I usually continue with my projects for an hour or two. This doesn't happen very often but I try to work on them at least an hour a week.
You are consistent! I believe the consistency is more important over quantity of hours on the way to success.
I've been trying for weeks, since I have some online courses that I want to finish, but some days I got home so tired that I just want to watch tv. One thing that I do to do my personal goals is when I'm making dinner, I also watch some videos from those courses.
Balance is everything. Unfortunately, fatigue has become a part of our daily routine and when we feel that there is no energy to do anything, then it's time to take a rest.
Not necessarily all the time. I think I need to set a schedule or something.
I'm trying to learn Japanese since I want to go to Japan in two yeah, play the guitar and learn some basic music theory since I graduated and have a job now, and also trying to stay up to date so I can be relevant for work.
It's tough, because after my commute, gym, and making dinner I'm beat.
I just need to set a schedule starting today and this post motivated me to take action.
Have you tried to plan your day the night before?
Not recently, life was a little mess so trying to put pieces back.
Making it the week of change and a day at a time.
I find it's easier to wake up early and start the day off well before work. Hit the gym or cycle into work, this gets my first aim of health completed for the day, also helps me feel better at work generally.
Plan my day to figure out when to have lunch with my book of the month, this means that I am going to be reading it during the day and not wait till the end of the day to do this. This month it's design patterns.
Side projects generally fit in the evening around children, they are rare but i use some other techniques like weekly learning goals at work to improve my skills.
You are so lucky that you can spend morning hours on your personal goals 👍
Before I had children I would get up at 630 to get the gym in each day.
Now the children get up at 630 so both myself and partner are up earlier, once they are dressed fed and watered, then I'm off :)
These days (and for quite some time now) I have neither the time nor the energy. And even when I have both (rarely), I use them for other things (chores mainly).
It's been a while since I had the time and/or motivation to work on (or even start) other personal goals (projects, blog, learning guitar...) after a day of work. Even week-ends are no good to work on those because I just want to rest, chill and do other things (go out with friends for example).
I agree with that. Focussing on the goals without any motivation is difficult. Especially, if the body and mind just want to take a rest and relax.