I've sort of been fighting with this myself - a few years ago I started working full time and spending more time with friends.
When I get downtime it's pretty much just turned in to playing games or watching TV - I barely have time when I feel motivated enough to start learning something new anymore. I taught myself almost everything I know about programming in downtime during my teenage and college years, but that sort of highly motivated downtime hasn't carried over so well now that so much of my time is occupied automatically.
I think you're right and having actual downtime when you're doing something relaxing is a very good thing, but I can't shake the feeling I should be accomplishing more.
I guess I'm just sort of disappointed that all my most motivated times seem to have sunk into other activities and now I don't get them to learn on my own. I don't know what to do about it.
EDIT: You know, I don't know anyone else who feels obliged to spend their free time in some sort of "productive" way except developers.
Maybe I should just ignore this whole thing and accept that development has for the most part went from a hobby to a job for me and that's okay. Spending time with friends and gaming in my free time are probably more relaxing and improve my overall happiness more than forced productivity would. Optimizing happiness is probably a better idea than optimizing productivity.
Eugh, I don't know, I keep bouncing back and forth on this one in my head.
Some of my best ideas have come to me after hours of twaddling away with no particular goal in mind in SimCity.
We as devs tend to seek optimal solutions as if they were a simple numeric quantity, where more/higher=better. We know this is not how things are, but the mental model is seductive in in its simplicity.
What I have learned over the years is that it is the constant change between different forms of attention and focus that drive me to be my best. Which means time, real time, away from what I do for work. And when I return to work after doing so, I appreciate it all the more.
You might be interested in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book, Flow, if you have not yet read it. Although it has nothing to do with game playing per se, it helped clarify many aspects of my thinking when it came to why I felt I was 'wasting' time while gaming, and why I was wrong in that assessment.
Additional reply because I'm out of the edit window. I wanted to address this one line:
>I guess I'm just sort of disappointed that all my most motivated times seem to have sunk into other activities and now I don't get them to learn on my own. I don't know what to do about it.
What you do is realize that you need to cut back on some of the other activities, even if the are what you are 'supposed' to be doing, and give yourself the time and space you need.
This may mean spending less time with friends. That is OK. Everyone needs alone time to some degree. I personally need a lot of it, and I love my family and friends. Getting my alone time is what allows me to be at my best for when I am with them, and there is nothing wrong with that.
When I get downtime it's pretty much just turned in to playing games or watching TV - I barely have time when I feel motivated enough to start learning something new anymore. I taught myself almost everything I know about programming in downtime during my teenage and college years, but that sort of highly motivated downtime hasn't carried over so well now that so much of my time is occupied automatically.
I think you're right and having actual downtime when you're doing something relaxing is a very good thing, but I can't shake the feeling I should be accomplishing more.
I guess I'm just sort of disappointed that all my most motivated times seem to have sunk into other activities and now I don't get them to learn on my own. I don't know what to do about it.
EDIT: You know, I don't know anyone else who feels obliged to spend their free time in some sort of "productive" way except developers.
Maybe I should just ignore this whole thing and accept that development has for the most part went from a hobby to a job for me and that's okay. Spending time with friends and gaming in my free time are probably more relaxing and improve my overall happiness more than forced productivity would. Optimizing happiness is probably a better idea than optimizing productivity.
Eugh, I don't know, I keep bouncing back and forth on this one in my head.