All right. So we have another question here. This is also from Patrick. Patrick says, how do you structure your time if you love what you do? I wonder if this is the same Patrick as before. It probably is, actually. Here's a little bit of an elaboration. Patrick says he's a PhD student and that he enjoys my work.

Thank you, Patrick. He really loves what he's doing, but some of his leisure activities are related to his work. So Patrick says he's researching AI, but is also interested in the epistemology of knowledge discovery from data. So he's reading philosophy and trying to write some epistemological short papers. He's also taking some MOOCs, massively online courses, to improve his science writing skills.

He's doing that in his free time after he does schedule shutdown complete. He also reviews academic papers and tries to eat healthy foods and reads a lot. And he's trying to figure out-- here's what he says. As you can see, some of these leisure activities are also work-related, although not that closely.

I emphasize that I enjoy doing these activities. Do you think this is a sustainable approach or do I need to focus more on another bucket of my life? All right. So basically, Patrick, you have a cool job and you have a lot of things you're interested in. And there's a lot of overlap between the things you're interested in and your job.

And I think that's all great. And I'm not going to advocate for significantly reducing this energy and just leaving more time free in your schedule. You're doing nothing because you're being energized by this. I think what I would moderate here is commitment activities. I'm going to draw a clear distinction.

Here are things I have to do as part of a long-term commitment versus here is something I'm going to do right now because it's interesting. But it would be no problem if I didn't do it. I'm interested in it. I'm taking this online course at my own pace because I want to be a better science writer.

I'm reading this book because I'm interested in the topic. I have a hobby AI project I'm monkeying around with because it seems like it's interesting. I think it's fine to have a bunch of stuff like that that you're using to fill up your leisure time because it's not going to cause stress if it's not commitments.

It's not going to cause stress if you know that you can put the breakdown as needed. If something in work comes up that's urgent, you can not take that course for two weeks. If there's a family emergency, it's not a big deal if you stop reading the book. So make that distinction.

Keep the stuff that you are committed to, what you're doing in work, the academic projects you're working on, the mentoring, the stuff that you have to come back to and you have no options. Keep that reasonable. Control that. Keep that footprint small. And then if you want to explore whatever in the time that remains, that's great.

I think that is good. So just make that clear distinction. Filling your time with things that you can pause as needed is, I think, completely fine if you find that energizing. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)