Ask HN: How to find motivation for personal projects after work?

I love programming and made it my trade. Nowadays I rarely find energy after to work to continue on my personal projects. How do you manage to do so?

bitxbitxbitcoin · 5 years ago

Sometimes it is easier to do personal projects in the morning and let that low energy feeling be the end of your work day instead :).

markus_zhang · 5 years ago

Yeah can second this. Always spend the premium time on premium projects. A couple hours per day is good enough.

marto1 · 5 years ago

It also happens to require significant amounts of discipline to implement :-)

JudgePenitent · 5 years ago

this 100%

1 hour each morning when your mind is the sharpest and most ready is so much more valuable to me than 3 hours late at night when i am tired from the work of the day

atatatat · 5 years ago

If none of this other great advice works, and you only have 1-2 hours anyhow, vaporized cannabis.

DrOctagon · 5 years ago

Put on some music you like and work for as long as it takes to drink two beers. Work with joy.

tkiolp4 · 5 years ago

Work less. Keep you brain with enough energy for the important things.

brudgers · 5 years ago

Find projects that are motivating.

I mean it's ok and maybe even good if programming all day at work is enough of the thing you love before bed. You can do something else that makes artifacts like woodworking or Youtube videos or photography that's different.

It's ok and maybe even good to be multi-talented. Good luck.

the__alchemist · 5 years ago

Take local leave, depending on your job - ideally contiguous with the weekends. It's how I do it.

knikes · 5 years ago

For me, working on a project that I feel has a high potential for success gives me the 'motivation energy' to continue writing code after already having spent hours writing code at work. It just doesn't work for me if I'm not working on something motivating.

d--b · 5 years ago

I did it in the mornings. 1 hour every day. I was surprisingly efficient

ffhhj · 5 years ago

This. Keep a clear list of tasks to do, when you wake up earlier in zombie mode you will just see the tree in front of you and won't get lost in the unsolvable forest of the day before.