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Discussion on: Journey to My New Career: Working After Work

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tatianacodes profile image
Tatiana • Edited

I relate so hard.

Except at my 8-5, I'm doing freecodecamp for reviewing concepts/staying sharp during my downtime, which is pretty much at least 3 working hours out of 8 because I finish work tasks very quickly. Since I work in higher ed on a work desktop, it limits the content I can actually look at (aka, I can't burn hours on social media like I could when I used to use my own device at an old job, at least this is considered "educational"). So a few hours on and off of freecodecamp during working hours, then another hour of working on personal projects or my Udemy courses during my lunch break on my personal laptop that I bring in.

Then maybe another hour after work to continue the personal projects or Udemy courses from earlier if I left off in a weird spot or I know I won't be able to put time in on those the next day.

From there, it's doing household tasks which coincidentally also include hanging out with the GF and our pets. My biggest challenge has been actually putting in more time after work, because that's when I can fully focus on coding and coding alone, not running a request for my supervisor or checking the time until my lunch ends. But I tend to give more time to my other responsibilities because I already did so much at work (both actual work AND coding!)

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ryandotfurrer profile image
Ryan Furrer

Ohh I used to have at least 2 hours/day of downtime at work until I took on more responsibility - at least it came with a pay raise! Although it did take away the time I had to code at work.

I am allotted a 30 minute lunch break. I probably only take it 1-2 days a week and on the days that I do take it, the remaining time after eating just isn't enough to get anything done -_-

Can you get away with reading books during your down time at work? I might recommend that rather than squeezing in coding - that way when you get home you can focus on solely coding and nothing else.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my blog! I hope you'll come back for more :)