Welcome!

[Hanne]

As a student, living on my own, I often find it difficult to make time for personal projects. There's always a batch of laundry to do, food to buy or otherwise cleaning.

How do you take the time to expand your horizon and work on personal projects? Any tips? I think more people than me are struggling with making time in my schedule for personal development.

[Monime]

I take 1 hour a day for personal research. That's part of my schedule no matter what. I usually add stuff to favorites if read stuff online and taking notes of stuff I want to read or find out more about. It's part of my day, the same as cleaning or buying food. It takes a while to get used to a certain schedule, but it's rewarding

All the best

[leahcreates]

It's difficult, because to a certain extent, you have to MAKE the time. But what do you do if (like me), between a full-time job, school, and freelancing, there just ISN'T time?

There's unfortunately no magic answer - there's no way to create more time in a day. We all only get 24 hours in a day. If there are things you can cut out - watching TV, hanging out with friends - do that. However, I assume that you've trimmed back as much as you can, if you're asking this question.

I think the key is prioritizing. Thinking of a project you want to do and scheduling it in. This probably means that other things have to be back-burnered. BUT, you're a priority, too, and you're entitled to spend time on things you find enjoyable.

[crinkle]

I just don't do any laundry

My personal projects are always on the backburner. Between working full-time, freelancing ~25 hours a week and being a (good?) parent, I run out of time for my personal projects. I take advantage of late night hours when I'm home alone (doesn't happen very often) and weekends before the rest of the household gets up as much as I can. I'm also fortunate that my bread and butter job involves a lot of R&D, so I come across loads of inspiration, ideas, things I can implement, ways of doing things better, etc. that I can use in my own work, and just keep a running resource of things to refer to when I have a minute to sit down.

If I wasn't working in the industry (I'm a front-end developer by day), I'd struggle a lot more with finding time to work on these sorts of things. I feel very fortunate that what I do at work complements what I do the rest of the time.

[EvoDy]

I work full time, school 4 days a week...feels like I hardly get to see my son. What I've done is come to work early to accomplish the most amount of personal work done. Homework, project work, etc. On my lunch break I fit in reading an assignment, working on a website or getting homework done while eating with one hand. I try to get work done when I'm home but sometimes it's just impossible.

It's not easy being a single parent, work full time, school full time and your own company on the side....but this is the life I chose to live.

[Monime]

Hi you all,

Don't get me wrong, I have a full time job also, 9-??? (when it's done), I freelance, I drive I hour from home to work and same back, bla bla bla, shop, take time for friends, go to a gym or just jogging, oooh and see my boyfriend almost daily. I stopped complaining about time some time ago, when I made a list of staff I spend too much time on, that isn't relevant to me and I cut it out. On the other hand I sleep 4-5 hours a night (at most) and dink lot of coffee, but I really need to do all this stuff, otherwise it wouldn’t be me anymore, I would feel that I'm falling apart, slowly. Sometimes I'm f...king tired, but that's why Sundays and Holydays were invented for. If you really want (need) to do something, you do it. I worked through most of my Uni time and back then I used to have problems managing my time, but once you start being used to work on a tight schedule and make time for a billion other things and still have time for the thing you like, you make the time.

Good luck

[Monime]

I work full time, school 4 days a week...feels like I hardly get to see my son. What I've done is come to work early to accomplish the most amount of personal work done. Homework, project work, etc. On my lunch break I fit in reading an assignment, working on a website or getting homework done while eating with one hand. I try to get work done when I'm home but sometimes it's just impossible.

It's not easy being a single parent, work full time, school full time and your own company on the side....but this is the life I chose to live.

Congratulation! I really admire you