Intro
We have so little time when we are working. Projects, deadlines, meetings, sometimes business trips, commuting. Family life also requires much time especially when there are small children, not to mention everyday home related tasks. We need some sleep maybe as well? This is all good of course.
The problem
I assume many people would like to also spend some time doing things which are not directly related to their tasks in the company, but which are related to their interests and will allow them to improve their skills - technical or non-technical ones - to better do things they are passionate about. This might be some pet project or open source project or maybe just reading things (books, blogs), listening to podcasts to learn new things.
Anyway, I personally need spare time for such activities and I many times hit the problem of the day being too short.
My solution
There are 2 things which work for me.
The first one is when I read something interesting with the intention to learn it. As I do not need long uninterrupted time for this, I can use free minutes which are always there during the day: commuting by public transport, waiting at the doctor, waiting for kids at the school etc. Reading in the night doesn't work for me as I am tired: only fun facts at this time!
Technically, I do not use laptop nor smartphone for reading. I need to make notes, do some highlighting, be able to quickly navigate through pages and most importantly be able to see the text in the middle of the sunny day. Luckily, last year I discovered something which is called e-ink tablet and which significantly boosted my learning capability. I just export everything as epub or pdf and send to the device.
There is second type of tasks I do which requires uninterrupted period of time with laptop in front of me. Like writing this article or doing my pet project. For this purpose, I use Eisenhower matrix approach. As you can see, there are 4 quadrants there. Something which is A: important and urgent, B: important/not urgent, C: urgent/not important, and D: not important/not urgent.
A is often related to our personal life or duties at work. We need to do it immediately or at least start it. Similarily, C is there as well but this is enough to delegate (if there is anyone we can delegate to, of course). Let's try to always recognize and skip D things. What is the difference between urgent and important you may ask? This is about what happens if we ignore them. Undone urgent tasks imply unpleasant consequences that may show up very soon and undone important tasks undermine long term goals. Do urgent things to avoid consequences and do important things to make long term achievements. This is exactly where self development is located. We want to improve our skills in long term. It is B so it needs to be scheduled.
This is exactly what I do: when few free hours in some coming workday seem to show up or there is going to rain all the time during the nearest weekend I schedule few hours to work for myself. It doesn't happen often but at least I am able to do it frequently.
Summary
This way or another we need to find spare time for self development if we like what we do, if we want to be better at what we do. Because of the limited number of hours during the day we should have some concious approach for this.
What is yours?
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