Maximizing Progress: Rethinking Daily Leisure Time for Skill Development

Intro

Let's imagine: you are working hard on learning to code. But at the end of a hard day, you want to chill by watching a movie or an anime, or even to play a game for an hour or so. This is what I wanted to do, and I did for a good amount of time. After some time, instead of chilling for one hour a day, I did something different that benefited me more than if I had one hour of leisure time. In this post, I'll discuss my take on the situation, where you want to do both things at the same time, and the conclusion I reached about balancing learning and leisure.

Disadvantages of Chilling One Hour a Day

What I found is that if you chill every day or almost every day for not very much time, like an hour a day or so, you may have these disadvantages:

Random Thoughts Pop Up During the Day

The more you do something, the more you think about it. By spending regular time enjoying leisure activities, you will likely have some random moments during the day, where you suddenly start to think about fun stuff. This means that you think about your learning less than you would thought if you didn't chill every day. Therefore, you are less focused on the task at hand.

Unwillingness to Do Something During Your Chill Time

If you chill regularly, you may not want to pause and do something that suddenly comes up. For example, someone asked you to do something, but you really do not want stop your activity. And it may not happen every day, or may almost not happen at all, depending on your living environment. But for some people, it is definitely a thing, I believe.

Less Time for Your Learning

The obvious one. If you spend an hour a day doing leisure activities, you spend less time on your learning. If chilling for an hour a day is just one hour, in a week it will be 7 hours, and in a month, 30 hours. And I don't mean that you shouldn't chill at all; I am just stating the fact here.

An Hour a Day Is Likely Not Enough

If you chill for one hour every day, you may not want to stop when the timer is up. This definitely isn't amazing about one hour a day chilling. Some people may not even stop their leisure activities when the timer is up, which could ruin their one-hour-a-day plan altogether.

Maybe there are other disadvantages as well, but these are quite evident.

When Do I Chill Then?

As we saw earlier, an hour a day of chill isn't that good. But you still want to watch movies, anime, or even play games, what should you do? I have an answer to that. Let's keep going.

My Story Before I Decided On The Strategy I Currently Employ

First of all, I didn't just suddenly decide to use the strategy I currently employ. This happened after a long period of time. You see, I wasn't willing to give up the everyday chill. First, here is the story about what happened before I decided to use my new chill strategy. I remember that about 1.5 years ago, I decided not to chill at all for three weeks. Before, I chilled pretty much every day. Not chilling almost didn't happen for 8 months or more. In the first couple of days, I became sick, I guess because of a viral infection. While I was sick, I couldn't do much, so I ended up watching anime because I decided that it was okay in that situation. It was for one or maybe two days, I can't remember for sure, but after that, I didn't unwind until those three weeks passed. The goal was to chill for 5 days straight after those 3 weeks passed.

Do you think I wanted to repeat the experience of not having chill time for three weeks after that? You can likely guess, I didn't. I decided to try another approach. Instead of a long three-week work period, I started to unwind during a couple of days every week by allocating a certain number of hours. First, it was 15 hours of chill, then after about a month and a half, it was reduced to 13, because 15 was too much. And after about two months, I reduced it to 6:30 per week. And it was so for about 9 months.

The question is whether chilling every week by allocating some time for a day, or two, or even three, feels good? It feels good when you are chilling, but it doesn't when you wait for it. With this weekly strategy, you are kinda waiting every week for this. This is why I decided to chill every day again! This is definitely not the end of the story; it was started on this note. I did this because I was tired of waiting.

The Work-Chill Strategy I Have Chosen

And the strategy is this: three weeks of work and 15.5 hours of chill across 5 days. This may not necessarily be three work weeks; it may be more. I think that a three-week period is a good option. Because it isn't too long and isn't short. I already tried the three weeks. But why did I decide to try this again? The reason is that my mental frame changed, and now I actually like this period of work.

Let's continue with the strategy. Why is it exactly 15.5 hours of chill? Let's find out. With one hour a day, there is chill time for these 21 days + 5 days, it will be 26 hours. This only works if there is enough discipline to follow your schedule. And it may not be easy to do that. With my strategy, you use only half of the 21 hours. This is 10.5 hours. During your 5 days of chill, you get an hour a day. Therefore, 5 hours total. This means that you get 10.5 + 5 = 15.5 hours to chill during 5 days, or maybe even quicker if you want, as long as you do it for no more than 15.5 hours. And of course, the work comes first, and the chill comes after those 3 weeks of work pass. And after that, you do this cycle again.

The Advantages of the Three-Week Work Time And Five Chill Days

Time

First of all, we get more time. Instead of 26 hours, when we do one hour a day chill, we only chill for 15.5 hours with the three-week work time. Therefore, we spent 10.5 hours on something more useful. This means that every 26 days, you save 10.5 hours, which you wouldn't save with the one-hour-a-day strategy.

Focus

During the 5 days chill, you have more time in a day to enjoy yourself, and you do not need to stop on interesting moments every day, like with the one-hour-a-day mode. You also have more time for learning during the 21 days, and you think less about your leisure moments during work time.

Not Really Waiting For the Three Weeks to Pass

What I mean by not really waiting is that three weeks is quite a long time, and you know that it won't be soon. Therefore, it is easier for you to concentrate on your learning. While with the chill per week, you are waiting, because it is a short interval.

You Are More Receptive to Other People's Requests

Because you are not chilling every day, there are fewer situations when you are unwilling to help someone with something. Which means you will have a better time overall.

Mental Frame

Remember, I talked about how I tried not to chill for 3 weeks, and I didn't want to repeat? First of all, after chilling every day and suddenly not doing that for 3 weeks, it was not that easy to accept this strategy and do it again. In my case, the acceptance came with time and experience. I guess I was hungry for some progress in my developer journey, and I started to consider it a good thing that I did not chill for some time. This way, I have the advantages I listed above. I look at this strategy not like depriving myself, but like excelling in my craft. And I know that I am gonna chill nicely when the time comes. This is why I like it.

What Can You Do?

I understand that it isn't that easy to implement the strategy when you are so used to your leisure time every day. But ask yourself, what is your goal? Do you want to become at least a good developer quicker by implementing the strategy, or is it enough for you to chill every day, which means that accomplishing your goals will take a longer period of time, and having the disadvantages I listed above? All this depends on you, what is more important to you. It is your choice, your life.

Conclusion

That's it! This is my story and the strategy I use to excel in my developer journey. What path do you choose? If you like this article, please share it with someone who might find it interesting too. Like my blog? Subscribe to the newsletter.

Got questions? Send an email to commitnobug@outlook.com.