Work-Life Balance

How to keep learning new skills and advancing as software engineers while maintaining a work-life balance.

Nov 21, 2024

Hi Friends,

Welcome to the 98th issue of the Polymathic Engineer newsletter. This week, we will answer a question that every software engineer has.

How can we keep learning new skills and advancing in our careers while maintaining a work-life balance?

The outline is as follows:

Learning and Work-Life Balance
Strategies for Creating Time
The Importance of Focus
Finding the Right Balance

Project-based learning is the best way to develop technical skills. CodeCrafters is an excellent platform for practicing exciting projects, such as building your version of Redis, Kafka, HTTP server, SQLLite, or Git from scratch.

Learning and Work-Life Balance

As software engineers, we all know how important it is to keep learning new things and set aside time outside work to practice and improve our skills. Technologies evolve, programming languages change, and there is always something new to learn.

However, life is not only work. We have families, friends, and interests beyond our keyboards.

For example, I have a wife, two kids, and two cats I adore and wish to spend much quality time with. I'm also actively involved in the football association in my neighborhood, where I coach a junior team and play with friends in a senior team.

Finding extra time is challenging in our field because we already spend a significant portion of our waking hours at work, including commute time for those who don't work remotely.

Also, maintaining a healthy work-life balance is important to having a sustainable career. If we neglect our personal lives in favor of work, we risk burnout, decreased productivity, and health issues.

But how can we balance the need to dedicate time to learning with having a healthy and fulfilling personal life?

It's easy to convince ourselves that we have no time for anything, but this mindset often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We all have the same 24 hours in a day, and how we choose to use them makes the difference. We need to be honest about how much time we waste on things that don't help us.

The definition of helpful here means a lot of different things, like learning something new, spending time with friends and family, or taking a break when we need to.

By being intentional about our time and making conscious choices about how we spend it, we can create space for both professional growth and personal fulfillment.

Strategies for Creating Time

All people are different, so it isn't easy to give tips that apply to everyone. However, over the years, I have found some practical strategies to create more time for learning new skills.

For example, you can use your commute time wisely if you are not working full-time remotely. Listen to podcasts, read technical books on your e-reader, or catch up with tech news using your smartphone. This way, what you usually consider dead time can become valuable learning time.

You can also use your lunch break to learn something new a few times per week. It's incredible how much you can do if you take your laptop, find a quiet spot, and spend 30-45 minutes coding or reading.

You can also create a morning or evening routine if you don't want to sacrifice your lunchtime. Try waking up 30 minutes earlier to read, code, or learn before starting your workday, or dedicate 30 minutes before bed to reading a book.

Weekends also offer opportunities. While resting and spending time with family are essential, consider setting aside a couple of hours for focused learning or practice.

The key is to reduce time wasters. Pay attention to how much time you spend playing video games, watching TV, or using social media. In moderation, such activities are fine, but excessive use can take up time that could be used more effectively.

Often, lack of time is used as an excuse for our laziness. But the truth is, we all have time – we're just not always great at optimizing it.

The Importance of Focus

Creating time for learning and personal development is the base, but it's also essential to use that time effectively.

Maintaining the focus when trying to learn or work on personal projects outside our regular job hours is a big challenge.

I've found that deciding beforehand what I want to accomplish in a given time slot is extremely helpful. It's like setting an agenda before a meeting. You don't need to be strict, but having a clear idea of what you want to achieve can make a big difference.

A popular technique that has worked wonders for me is the Pomodoro:

Choose a task you want to work on.
Set a timer for 25 minutes.
Work on the task with complete focus until the timer rings.
Take a short break.

The key to the Pomodoro Technique is maintaining absolute focus during those 25-minute blocks: no checking emails, social media, or distractions.

There are many Pomodoro apps available. I prefer simple countdown timers, but you can experiment and find what works best for you.

Finding the Right Balance

Balancing our professional growth with our personal lives is a challenge that is crucial for long-term success and happiness.

If you don't want to touch a computer outside your working hours, you have chosen the wrong career path. To most people who work in tech, making software is both a job and a hobby. This makes it easy to find time to practice and get better.

But you shouldn't go too far the other way, either. Putting aside personal and family matters to advance your career can cause stress and burnout and harm your health.

There are two things I found critical. First, set clear boundaries between the time you dedicate to work, learning, and personal activities, and stick to them.

Second, you need to learn to be flexible and adapt. Work will sometimes need more time, and personal life will other times

Ultimately, the goal is to create a lifestyle where your career enhances your life rather than consumes it.

Interesting reading

Some good articles I read this week:

The Polymathic Engineer

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