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Questions for the Tech Hobbyists
Posted on 5/4/16 at 7:54 pm
Posted on 5/4/16 at 7:54 pm
1) How do you manage your time?
2) Do you have a technical background (degree, job or both)?
3) Do you work a full-time job?
4) How many hours (rough estimate) do you spend a week towards your hobbies?
5) Advice you have to the board to get started and stay motivated?
6) What are some projects you have worked on in your spare time?
I've read a number of threads on here and there's certainly some creative minds that browse this forum. I have a tech background, computer engineering degree and I write software for a living, but I feel increasingly further behind the tech world. Outside of work I do not have any ongoing projects, although I do have a raspberry pi, among other devices, collecting dust. The questions above are meant to be simple to answer, yet provide some insight for those of us that a mixture of direction and drive.
If others have questions to share, please ask them here. I also welcome feedback beyond what can be answered through the questions above.
2) Do you have a technical background (degree, job or both)?
3) Do you work a full-time job?
4) How many hours (rough estimate) do you spend a week towards your hobbies?
5) Advice you have to the board to get started and stay motivated?
6) What are some projects you have worked on in your spare time?
I've read a number of threads on here and there's certainly some creative minds that browse this forum. I have a tech background, computer engineering degree and I write software for a living, but I feel increasingly further behind the tech world. Outside of work I do not have any ongoing projects, although I do have a raspberry pi, among other devices, collecting dust. The questions above are meant to be simple to answer, yet provide some insight for those of us that a mixture of direction and drive.
If others have questions to share, please ask them here. I also welcome feedback beyond what can be answered through the questions above.
1
Posted on 5/5/16 at 12:48 am to RickAstley
I'll respond, but I feel like some of my answers may be extremely unhelpful for someone in your situation.
During the week, I have work, followed by spending time with the wife and kids at 5:30pm-ish until the kids are in bed by 8:30 or so. Then I spend time with just the wife until she goes to sleep around 10pm. After that, I have a few hours to myself before I go to sleep. Sometimes I use that time to do more work. I'm able to stay up late and still work full time because I'm afforded the privilege of working from home 95% of the time. Time management is a big part of my life, so I am grateful for every single day that I can do meaningful work without the commute. It's admittedly a fortunate situation for me, so I doubt this insight into my weekday time management is all too helpful.
I keep my weekends open. Sometimes on Saturday mornings, my wife and mother-in-law go shopping with the kids (farmer's market and whatnot), and my wife graciously allows me to opt out of that crap. Otherwise, my weekends are mostly spent with family, but my kids are reaching the age where they can share in my hobbies. Not so much the 2-year-old, but my daughter (almost 5) will often sit with me to see what I'm working on, so I can devote some significant time to hobbies without abandoning the family.
Nope. None of the above. Every tech-related endeavor I've taken on was to fulfill a need, really starting about 13 years ago with my dad wanting to buy me a PC as a high school graduation gift and my friend convincing me to build my own instead of getting a Dell. It snowballed from there.
To be honest, the reason I enjoy tech as a hobby is because it's not my job. I can't mix work and hobbies. I've always been the polymath type, taking on various projects/hobbies for the enjoyment of learning. When any one of those hobbies becomes an obligation, you won't see me doing it for fun anymore. It's not that I grow to hate it, but it morphs from passion to skill pretty quickly, and I gravitate to something else to do on my own time. If I were a computer/software engineer like you, I'd probably have a Raspberry Pi collecting dust, too.
Yes, and building on my previous point, one of my most prominent hobbies was writing. Now I'm in a career that involves a lot of writing and editing. It's fulfilling work because I'm good at it, but the daily emotional and mental energy I dedicate to the job leaves little left to dedicate to a related hobby. Even though I work in a technical/science-based industry, I can't even bring myself to write fiction anymore. I guess considering how much I write on this board sometimes, I still have an outlet for writing as a hobby.
Sometimes zero or just a few hours, and sometimes 25-30 or more. There are weeks where I go out with the family most of the weekend, see friends/coworkers, or binge-watch something on Netflix. Then I might dive headfirst into a project for large chunks of time and anxiously count the minutes in between.
Do you still enjoy tech projects? I imagine the answer to that is yes, even if that means you enjoy the idea of them more than actually doing them. But if you're in tech space 40 hours a week, how much more of it do you think you want to take on? Maybe your lack of motivation is simply the result of needing to give that part of your brain a rest.
I should mention that tech is not my only hobby. I also oil paint, play the trombone, play video games, and randomly take on DIY projects when the mood strikes. If I'm not motivated to do any of them at any particular moment in time, I don't.
But all that aside, I do have a suggestion: Take on a tech project in which the end result, not the process itself, is your entire motivation. Something that improves your life in some way, or at least gives you long-term enjoyment. Do you have a high-traffic home network? Look into building your own powerful router running pfsense or linux. Is your home network basic? Consider the benefits of setting up something more sophisticated that streamlines how you consume media and perform regular redundant backups. Like video games? Throw some of that engineer's salary at building a gaming PC. Hell, since your first question was about time management, maybe you'd benefit from a little bit of home automation. Use technology to streamline your life.
A lot of "tinkerer" projects produce more of a novelty/just-because result rather than fulfill a need. Some people live for that, but if you're trying to find the motivation to do the same, your underlying problem may simply be apathy towards spending hours on a project you have no personal connection to, that you just pulled from one of the many "25 things some other people did with a raspberry pi" articles online. Make something you want to use; learn something you want to apply. The idea is to get you reading, researching, and learning about something meaningful.
It's how I got started -- exploring how much more I could get for my money by building my own PC. I didn't do it intending to become a tech hobbyist. I had a goal to fulfill, one that required a lot of research, and I just so happened to enjoy the hell out of it. I mean, that's the definition of motivation -- you need both a desire and a reason to get started. That's probably how you got started in the first place.
Yeah, this post ended up way longer than intended (kudos if you're still reading), so I'll keep this answer brief. My primary interest (again, motivated by need) is computer hardware, which extends to a variety of interdependent home electronics. I keep my PC powerful and up to date (and looking nice, too...because why not make art out of it?) I follow the entire industry closely. I learn and use workstation software as the need/desire arises, and I'm a casual gamer (casual in terms of skill level and types of games, but there's nothing else casual about $1,000 worth of video cards rendering 60+ fps at 1440P or 4K).
quote:
1) How do you manage your time?
During the week, I have work, followed by spending time with the wife and kids at 5:30pm-ish until the kids are in bed by 8:30 or so. Then I spend time with just the wife until she goes to sleep around 10pm. After that, I have a few hours to myself before I go to sleep. Sometimes I use that time to do more work. I'm able to stay up late and still work full time because I'm afforded the privilege of working from home 95% of the time. Time management is a big part of my life, so I am grateful for every single day that I can do meaningful work without the commute. It's admittedly a fortunate situation for me, so I doubt this insight into my weekday time management is all too helpful.
I keep my weekends open. Sometimes on Saturday mornings, my wife and mother-in-law go shopping with the kids (farmer's market and whatnot), and my wife graciously allows me to opt out of that crap. Otherwise, my weekends are mostly spent with family, but my kids are reaching the age where they can share in my hobbies. Not so much the 2-year-old, but my daughter (almost 5) will often sit with me to see what I'm working on, so I can devote some significant time to hobbies without abandoning the family.
quote:
2) Do you have a technical background (degree, job or both)?
Nope. None of the above. Every tech-related endeavor I've taken on was to fulfill a need, really starting about 13 years ago with my dad wanting to buy me a PC as a high school graduation gift and my friend convincing me to build my own instead of getting a Dell. It snowballed from there.
To be honest, the reason I enjoy tech as a hobby is because it's not my job. I can't mix work and hobbies. I've always been the polymath type, taking on various projects/hobbies for the enjoyment of learning. When any one of those hobbies becomes an obligation, you won't see me doing it for fun anymore. It's not that I grow to hate it, but it morphs from passion to skill pretty quickly, and I gravitate to something else to do on my own time. If I were a computer/software engineer like you, I'd probably have a Raspberry Pi collecting dust, too.
quote:
3) Do you work a full-time job?
Yes, and building on my previous point, one of my most prominent hobbies was writing. Now I'm in a career that involves a lot of writing and editing. It's fulfilling work because I'm good at it, but the daily emotional and mental energy I dedicate to the job leaves little left to dedicate to a related hobby. Even though I work in a technical/science-based industry, I can't even bring myself to write fiction anymore. I guess considering how much I write on this board sometimes, I still have an outlet for writing as a hobby.
quote:
4) How many hours (rough estimate) do you spend a week towards your hobbies?
Sometimes zero or just a few hours, and sometimes 25-30 or more. There are weeks where I go out with the family most of the weekend, see friends/coworkers, or binge-watch something on Netflix. Then I might dive headfirst into a project for large chunks of time and anxiously count the minutes in between.
quote:
5) Advice you have to the board to get started and stay motivated?
Do you still enjoy tech projects? I imagine the answer to that is yes, even if that means you enjoy the idea of them more than actually doing them. But if you're in tech space 40 hours a week, how much more of it do you think you want to take on? Maybe your lack of motivation is simply the result of needing to give that part of your brain a rest.
I should mention that tech is not my only hobby. I also oil paint, play the trombone, play video games, and randomly take on DIY projects when the mood strikes. If I'm not motivated to do any of them at any particular moment in time, I don't.
But all that aside, I do have a suggestion: Take on a tech project in which the end result, not the process itself, is your entire motivation. Something that improves your life in some way, or at least gives you long-term enjoyment. Do you have a high-traffic home network? Look into building your own powerful router running pfsense or linux. Is your home network basic? Consider the benefits of setting up something more sophisticated that streamlines how you consume media and perform regular redundant backups. Like video games? Throw some of that engineer's salary at building a gaming PC. Hell, since your first question was about time management, maybe you'd benefit from a little bit of home automation. Use technology to streamline your life.
A lot of "tinkerer" projects produce more of a novelty/just-because result rather than fulfill a need. Some people live for that, but if you're trying to find the motivation to do the same, your underlying problem may simply be apathy towards spending hours on a project you have no personal connection to, that you just pulled from one of the many "25 things some other people did with a raspberry pi" articles online. Make something you want to use; learn something you want to apply. The idea is to get you reading, researching, and learning about something meaningful.
It's how I got started -- exploring how much more I could get for my money by building my own PC. I didn't do it intending to become a tech hobbyist. I had a goal to fulfill, one that required a lot of research, and I just so happened to enjoy the hell out of it. I mean, that's the definition of motivation -- you need both a desire and a reason to get started. That's probably how you got started in the first place.
quote:
6) What are some projects you have worked on in your spare time?
Yeah, this post ended up way longer than intended (kudos if you're still reading), so I'll keep this answer brief. My primary interest (again, motivated by need) is computer hardware, which extends to a variety of interdependent home electronics. I keep my PC powerful and up to date (and looking nice, too...because why not make art out of it?) I follow the entire industry closely. I learn and use workstation software as the need/desire arises, and I'm a casual gamer (casual in terms of skill level and types of games, but there's nothing else casual about $1,000 worth of video cards rendering 60+ fps at 1440P or 4K).
This post was edited on 5/5/16 at 2:09 am
Posted on 5/5/16 at 4:28 am to ILikeLSUToo
This post was edited on 5/5/16 at 4:29 am
Posted on 5/5/16 at 9:28 pm to ILikeLSUToo
Thanks for the feedback and you certainly have quality input for the board's consumption. I am overall impressed with how you are able to keep your projects a focal point in your personal life.
Yes, I do get enjoyment from the projects, but struggle with time management in most cases (which leads to motivation expiring towards what I started). And lack of ideas as well, although I'm taking note of them when one does come across in my mind. I do have a good ability to come up with ideas that are too large for one person to tackle.
One thing to glean from your post beyond ideas is that the hobbies must remain an important component to your life. Again, thanks for your response and I appreciate your words of wisdom
quote:
Do you still enjoy tech projects?
Yes, I do get enjoyment from the projects, but struggle with time management in most cases (which leads to motivation expiring towards what I started). And lack of ideas as well, although I'm taking note of them when one does come across in my mind. I do have a good ability to come up with ideas that are too large for one person to tackle.
One thing to glean from your post beyond ideas is that the hobbies must remain an important component to your life. Again, thanks for your response and I appreciate your words of wisdom
Posted on 5/6/16 at 12:06 am to ILikeLSUToo
Wow, that was a great post ILikeLSUToo. Thank you for sharing.
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