Alan Henry writes on Lifehacker about various ways to stay alert and productive on after-work projects:
Get Started As Soon As You Get Home
If you wait until you’ve had dinner or spent some time with your family, it’s too late and your energy is gone—you’re too far out of “the zone” to really get back into it. The solution? Walk through the door, say hello to everyone, and head right for your workspace at home to do a little work.
I get this one bigtime. If I sit down on my couch, it’s really difficult to get back up again. (It’s a really comfortable couch!) But if I don’t stop moving, I stand a better chance of starting and finishing the minor tasks that had built up in my to-do list – laundry, walking the dog, doing the dishes or at the very least, starting dinner – and then moving on to my recreational projects.
Get Out of the House
If the siren song of your couch or bed is just too much for you to bear, the key for you to make headway on your pet projects may be to get out of the house and go somewhere you can work or learn something new.
I’ve never really resonated with the whole working at a coffeehouse setup but I’ve been thinking about trying it out. It seems more like working for the sake of being seen working. However, some of my favorite overseas bloggers work exclusively at cafés because that’s where the good internet is located so perhaps I’ll check it out sometime. (Just not at Starbucks. Let’s not get that cliched, ok!)
Give Yourself 10 Minutes, Just 10 Minutes
If he can drag himself off the couch for 10 minutes of focused work, that’s a success—and at the end of that 10 minutes, if he feels like working some more, he does. If he feels like closing up shop and going back to the couch, he does. The important thing here is that he makes himself get started, and even on those nights when he doesn’t feel like doing anything, he at least gets 10 minutes of progress towards his goals.
I’ve used this mindset/trick before. It’s good when combined with a weekly list of just regular, household chores that need to be done. So yes, it’s a pain to vacuum but if tell myself it’s just 10 minutes and set a timer for those 10 minutes, it’s amazing how much vacuuming can get done in 10 minutes.
Also, it’s true that if you start something more, let’s say, intimidating, with the mindset of doing only 10 minutes, you might find yourself working past the 10 minutes. This applies to your recreational projects/hobbies. A couple years ago, I bought an Arduino set. But I’m not the engineering type. Still, I find that if I set 10 minutes, I’ll end up working on it till completion of a particular set.
Pick Projects You Love
“The best exercise is the exercise that you’ll do.” Brilliant and so true, and also true for hobbies. Choose hobbies and side projects that you’ll look forward to when you get home. Avoid things that you ‘want yourself to do’ but that will get all of two days’ worth of attention from you, and then leave you sitting in front of the TV feeling even more rotten.
Furthermore, don’t pick projects that you feel you should do. It’s true that there are some projects that just need to get done, like painting the walls. But most of your after-work projects should be tasks which you happily anticipate doing.
A quick aside that I don’t consider regular household chores to be projects. Those just have to be done. Put them on a separate to-do list. Your projects, your hobbies should be considered separate from your chores. Otherwise, you’ll be even less motivated to do them after a long day at work.
I think one of our instincts as Project Managers is to try to plan many aspects of our non-work lives. Plan the work. Work the Plan. And that serves us well in most cases, especially in pushing us forward with recreational projects, such as me trying to learn Arduino. But if you’re like me, you’re also pretty tired after work. And if you’ve over-planned your household projects, if you’ve done too many chores at once, you’ll be less likely to jump into them with the enthusiasm you felt while planning. Such as me trying to learn Arduino.
Resist the temptation to plan every minute aspect. Get yourself moving quickly after work. And most importantly, do things you enjoy.