When I start working on a side project, I fall into a really bad habit of getting too absorbed in it. The second I get home from work, I will start coding and testing for hours until I have to force myself to go to bed with only six hours of sleep at best. All the while, my laundry starts to pile up, my kitchen doesn’t get cleaned, and my social contacts get neglected from any meaningful conversation. On top of that, I start thinking that the sooner I can get through this project then the sooner I can return to all the other tasks and aspects of life that I am pushing away.
This cycle begins building an unconscious hatred for my side project. I start to view it as this thing that’s disrupting my ordinary life and taking time away from other things that I care about. So even though I love working on my side projects and they give me joy, I am ignoring the other joy giving things in my life as well.
Obviously, the simple answer to all of this is balance. Finding the right balance that allows me to work on my side project on some days, then get back to other aspects of my life on other days. The hardest thing is finding the mental comfort to let my side project sit for a couple of days and being fine with prolonging the time it will take to finish it. I am not there yet, but I am working on it. Heck, I took the time out to write this blog post at least.