I’ve been wrestling with this for a long time (my entire life): I love coding and building software. A lot. I started when I was 8 years old. My nervous system developed wrapped around a computer.
I hear a lot of “have work/life balance” and “touch grass” and while this is actually sound, coding is not work for me: it brings me so much joy, meaning, and purpose that few other things even come close to and really only one other thing vastly exceeds.
I code on the weekends and at night because I derive a lot of joy from it. It’s my greatest hobby and I have the privilege of it also being a significant portion of my job. I see nothing wrong with that and definitely don’t expect others to be the same, but to me this is not “wrong”. It’s just a chill dude who loves his craft.
For years, I’ve tried to avoid my beloved hobby on the weekends because of self-doubt that others amplified: “the weekend is for relaxing!! And family!!”—but aren’t hobbies a wonderful creative relaxing escape? Not sure how others do it, but my closest family and friends enjoy their hobbies (baking, climbing, etc.) on the weekend—sometimes with others, sometimes alone to recover. Why should a hobby that happens to be a part of my job be different?
While trying to live by other folks’ rules and avoid coding on the weekends, I often found myself doing similar things: playing puzzle games, getting deeply invested in other logic-oriented tasks that also have a creative element... it was the same neural circuitry as coding but not actually coding. I really was just coding (in a sense) but fooling myself and others that this specific logical game that gets all my attention was somehow different.
My brain works the way it works and loves what it loves. There is no divorcing me from something so foundational that I started as a child.
And so finally, the best conclusion I can come to today is this: doing what one loves and gives them purpose is never really a problem. In fact, it’s a gift! There are so many people out there looking for that thing who haven’t yet found it and my heart genuinely goes out to them. I wish they are able to feel a fraction of the joy I feel in this wonderful hobby of mine as regularly as I feel it.
So… when does it become problematic?
It Becomes Problematic when it Becomes a god
I think this is a question of worship. We don’t talk a lot about that in highly intellectual and logical secular STEM, but if I look around, it’s quite clear to me that there’s a lot of worship around: where we devote ourselves to ideas, things, people, or ourselves; where one thing and our devotion to it eclipses other things including rest, relaxation, restoration, and relationships with family and friends.
This is the line that ought not be crossed: if I worship my hobby and offer myself up to it like a living sacrifice, me and everything and everyone around me crumbles. I place a weight on it (and myself) that neither party can bear. In plain language, “too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing when it becomes a god thing”.
This is validated in this October 2024 research article from Nature that found that sports work among school students had a bell-shaped curve where there was a peak in cognition at about an hour of physical work per day, but a steep decline after 2 hours. We're likely all not school students doing sports, but the law of conservation of energy represented here stands: if we give most/all of ourselves to topic A (in this case sports), then other topics will suffer. There's no two ways about this. We cannot (yet?) negotiate with the laws of thermodynamics.
So, how do we prevent things from becoming gods? Science tells us that the best way is to maintain multiple sources of meaning and engagement rather than intense focus in any single domain for extended periods of time. This involves:
- Regular assessment for signs of imbalance like neglect of relationships or decreased life satisfaction
- Maintaining both individual pursuits and social connections
The key is cultivating what researchers call "psychological richness": having variety in experiences and perspectives rather than intense focus on any single pursuit for too long: all our endeavors have an expiration time, or if you speak engineering, a TTL. In the case of the kids doing sports, it was about 2 hours. For us, we might spend all day, night, and weekend coding, but at some point we will hit a wall. I know I do.
When I hit a wall, instead of becoming frustrated at myself or my equipment, I've learned to recognize that this is time for some psychological richness: I'll message my friends and family and see how they're doing, which will usually result in sharing a meal together and enjoying them. After an interaction like this, I realize I've completely forgotten about the thing that was irritating me as I hit my wall. I then go back to it and fix whatever issue I had within 15 minutes and not a lot of effort. I bet this experience I'm sharing is not unique to me given that I hear it constantly from other software engineers. Let me know if this is relatable at all on 𝕏.
It Becomes Problematic when We Expect it of Others
What works for us may not work for everyone. I realize that not everyone started coding at age 8 and likely has other interests. Good for them! Some developers find fulfillment in completely disconnecting from code outside work hours, while others might prefer to blend their passion across their entire schedule. Neither approach is inherently superior; they simply reflect different personalities and life circumstances.
Pushing our own work patterns onto colleagues can create toxic environments where people feel pressured to match unrealistic expectations. This is especially problematic for:
- Junior developers still finding their path
- Parents and caregivers juggling multiple responsibilities
- Those who need clear boundaries between work and personal time
- People who find meaning and joy in other pursuits
This is also exactly why doing work work outside of work is not ideal: you'll inadvertently and (hopefully) unintentionally make the rest of your team look bad, while simulatenously getting annoyed that the others aren't doing as much as you. You'll also likely get your head puffed up with "wow, I'm so great! Look at all I'm accomplishing!" and become a real nuisance to most everyone around you. I've fallen into this pattern before when I worked at G2i and the outcome was not positive: most of the engineering org quit and mentioned it was because they couldn't work with me in their exit interview.
Instead of going down that path, if it's truly the craft of coding alone that we enjoy, then we recognize that there are other applications of the craft outside of the work domain—like that side project you started but never finished. Maybe actually do something with all of those domains you keep paying for.
One of the top reasons for all the things we hate in the world is folks imposing their modus operandi on others. Perhaps we'd all be better off if instead of imposing, we stick to proposing ideas and letting our peers do whatever works for them and figure it out along the way. This too is backed by science, specifically this research paper that examines over 50 years of findings on team effectiveness and provides insights into how teams can be made more effective. Unsurprisingly, one of the main findings is that teams achieve greater effectiveness and stronger collective climate when team members collectively develop and agree upon frameworks, rather than having them imposed by individuals.
What does all this mean for us practically? Just let people be. If you like coding on nights and weekends, great. Do it. If others don't and it works for them, awesome. Good for them. There's no need for everyone to follow one specific way that works for one specific people group with some common attributes. In fact, there's beauty in the diversity.
It Becomes Problematic when Others Expect it of Us
I've been in situations where when you repeatedly exceed expectations, then the expectations rise to where what was once considered exceeding them is now just meeting them. When this happens, any average level of output due to any reason: fatigue, other priorities, new hobbies, is suddenly below average and this reflects poorly on your performance review despite you still performing on an average level at worst. As my coach Carter says, "the prize for winning the cake eating contest is more cake". Expectation management is extremely critical here.
If this goes wrong the outcomes can be drastic, resulting in:
- Implicit pressure to work nights and weekends
- Using enthusiastic developers as benchmarks for team productivity
- Celebrating unhealthy work patterns as badges of honor
- Conflating personal coding projects with work obligations
To prevent this, we must proactively manage expectations through clear communication and realistic goal-setting. This alone will be exceptional, because expectations are rarely addressed proactively, not even by most leaders, which threatens organizational performance. Good leaders proactively manage expectations and make them explicit. Poor ones do not.
This idea is further reinforced and validated by this 2024 research study from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) titled "The Role of Expectation Management in Value Creation" which proves that misaligned expectations significantly undermine job performance, organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The paper itself talks about how municipal managers have to improvize under strong economic pressure that forces them to rethink value creation when providing housing services with significantly less money than ideal. What they found was that the keys to creating value (read: delivering their housing services) heavily depended on:
- Managing expectations effectively
- Building long-term relationships with their "customers"
- Balancing planned vs. urgent matters
While I bet most of us here aren't municipal managers helping residents with housing, there's a high probability that the work we do everyday is value creation work all the same and so, these principles apply. When we are able to clearly maintain appropriate expectations that the coding we do during nights, weekends, and off hours is hobby work and done just because we love it and we may stop when we want and start when we want and follow the whims and ways of our desire, then we're likely to be in a healthier space where we retain the agency to do with our time that which we wish and don't slowly become slaves to the expectations of others.
A Way Forward
With all that said, here's a protocol that works exceedingly well for me:
Accept that I just deeply love my work, the work that found me as a child, and the work that I’ll probably die loving.
Recognize that this doesn't affect "work/life balance" because this is a deeply rooted part of my life with or without "work" (a job).
Set my heart and mind on the right priorities: human beings, friends, family, and relationships are imbued with something so inherently and intrinsically beautiful and divine that sets them/us so far apart from any hobby that could ever exist. I intend to never lose sight of this.
Maintain awareness of seasons and cycles. There will be times when coding feels energizing and times when I need space from it. I try to listen to those rhythms rather than forcing myself to either code or not code based on external rules. Most external rules are made up and don't matter anyway.
Pay strong attention to warning signs: decreased ability to psychologically detach from work, reduced sleep quality, elevated stress levels, declining social connections, and adjust where needed.
At this point in time, at 31 years of age, going through all that I have gone through and suffering all I’ve endured, this seems like the ideal, optimal, and most fruitful path for me. What do you think? Let me know know on 𝕏.
Top comments (1)
This is a very interesting read. Just like you I enjoy coding very much. In my job I get to solve a lot of problems with my coding experience but early morning and evening I use to study new things and topics I might need for work or I am interested in learning. It can be hard to find a balance, but I feel that most of us that strive hard to progress will inevitably find ways to squeeze the extra effort. I like TTL concept you made ..