(upbeat music) All right, let's move on here. What do we got for our next question? - Hi, this is kind of random, but we actually have another question from Grant who also just moved to DC, but he has a question about specifically establishing KPIs for his career goals. - This is a tech guy, isn't it?

- He works with Google ads. - Yeah, I know the tech guys when I hear them. - We'll take a listen. - Hi, Cal, my name is Grant. I work as a embedded software engineer. I'm also very interested in DIY electronics in the maker community. In college, it was easy for me to sit down and work on personal projects that involved coding, simple PCB and circuit design, et cetera.

Now, even though I do have mental energy when I end my workday, I find it difficult to sit down and do more coding. You briefly mentioned coding as a hobby in your book "Digital Minimalism", but you then go on to describe more traditional offline hobbies to get your mind off of social media and the internet.

I've tried some of these things first thing in the morning, but I find it to be a little bit unsustainable, and more than that, this is supposed to be a hobby to take my mind off of things after work so that I don't end up just binging Netflix. Is this hobby destined to fall out of my life just because I happen to also do something similar full time or is there a way I can find a happy medium for both personal and professional coding?

Thanks. - Well, Grant, that's a good question. It hits home. That's actually a specifically a hobby I'm interested in as well. I would like to do more DIY electronics projects and I've actually had a hard time just like you getting this up and running. The time just isn't there right now.

I'm finding I don't quite have the time. I'm not getting the right momentum going. I've had computer programming hobbies before. So a couple of years ago, I used to build computer games for my older boys and I kind of got in a groove on that, computer game programming, even though I was working on computers all day.

So I've had a hard time getting this up and running. I was working on computers all day. So I feel you. Because I'm struggling to get the exact same hobby going and not haven't been that successful at it. I have four things to suggest that might make this helpful.

Underscoring everything I'm gonna say here, however, is don't sweat it. Like ultimately hobbies are hobbies, right? Like it's not the end of the world that you have this working tomorrow that you have your own channel on tested.com by next week. It's a hobby, nothing bad is gonna happen. If in the end it's you're busy or you're exhausted or it's not quite clicking and nothing happens, you're fine.

There's no bonus points for having hobbies. It's just, you wanna do things that are interesting. You wanna live deep. You wanna avoid the shallow distractions. Okay, so let's not sweat. Like we have to get this hobby up and going right away. But here's four things that would help. One is project choice.

I think that really matters. For me, when I struggle with a new hobby, it's I don't have the right project that has gripped me. And so nothing happens, nothing happens, nothing happens. And the right project grips me and I find myself fighting to make time to work on it.

I definitely had this experience with the computer game programming projects I would be doing. It had to be the right level of difficulty. If it was too hard, nothing would happen. If it was too easy, I'd be bored. But if it was the right level of difficulty, I'd have to force myself to get started.

But then I would begin to make some progress. And then I would find myself putting aside time just to work on it. Like looking forward to like, okay, you're putting the kids to bed tonight, then I'm gonna go work on the program. So it was all about having the right product, the right project.

Like the last game I did, for example, was I wanted to do a ray casting 3D engine. I was using Python and using the PyGames library for some simple low performance graphics, right? And I wanted to make a game where my boys could in 2D create a maze. And then you could jump into that maze in 3D and actually try to navigate it.

So I had to build a 3D engine so you could actually build the maze. I was like, let me just do a Wolfenstein 3D style ray casting engine, where you literally are casting rays from the virtual camera location and seeing where it hits walls and how far away that wall is.

So we can figure out how high to draw that particular piece of the wall. There's a lot of geometry, basically. Slow, slow, slow until I got that first screen of something is drawing that kind of looks 3D. And then I couldn't not work on it. So project selection, don't underestimate that.

That's my issue right now with Maker electronics. I don't have the right project with the right equipment where like I know how to do it and I can see progress right away. I just don't have the right project yet, but I think it's gonna roll quick when I do.

Two, community. Get connected if possible to a community of people who are working on this, that changes a lot. There are, I'm sure there's robust Maker communities in the Washington DC area. You get involved with some other people that have some equipment, you make it social as well. That makes all the difference in the world.

Start one up and I'll come to it, okay? How about that? You get it going and I will come to it and we'll build some DIY electronics. Work less would be my third recommendation. So yeah, do less work at work. Give yourself some more surplus energy. I know that's a bold thing to say in the abstract, but here on this podcast, we know how to get that done.

I mean, we know how to actually apply time management theories that actually are incredibly effective. Go back, go to the YouTube channel, watch the core ideas video from the core ideas playlist on time management. And I will walk you through the principles of how I organize my time. If you're doing those types of things, you can claw back a bunch of time.

And still, as far as your bosses are concerned, be an incredibly productive person that they can count on. Don't be worried about doing that. Don't be ashamed about doing that. If you get more productive, that is your benefit. You know, if right now you're producing work that everyone's happy with, and you find a way to do that in two less hours a day, that is not a problem.

That is a benefit you should cash in on. So consider working less. Take some products off your plate and get much more organized about the work you have. Free up more energy, more time, so that you have that energy and time to actually work on the project. And finally, do the physical first.

The number one hobby you need to do, and by hobby, I mean activity outside of work, is make sure you have a lot of physical activity. You're outside, you're moving, you're exercising, you're training for something, just like I was talking about earlier in the show that I'm doing in my own life right now for "The Last Caller".

Do that too, because that's a separation between your work and your non-work life, and it's gonna get your energy back up much higher than if you're just coming home from work and sitting on the couch and saying, "I guess I should bring out another screen." All right, so those would be the four things I would suggest, but all of this is built on the underlying foundation of don't over-sweat this.

If you're really busy right now, if you're really tired right now, if you're really mentally struggling with whatever, pandemic, et cetera, it's okay. It's okay, we'll take our time. I'm taking my time, you're taking your time. We'll give ourselves a few months, but then I wanna be in a really cool maker lab that you ran building cool electronics.

(upbeat music)