[dkokelley]

A (the left-brain/logical approach):

There are 168 hours in a week. If you work 40 of them (+ 10 hours for inconvenient lunch breaks and commuting) and sleep 56 of them, you have 62 hours left. There you go. Figure out where those 62 hours are and spend them wisely. Organize your schedule so you have enough hours when and where you need them.

B (the right-brain/emotional approach):

Yes, you have ~62 hours from the above example, but you probably want a social life, need to eat and exercise, and it would certainly lead to burnout if you spent every free moment cramming side projects where you can. Instead of (or in addition to) managing time, manage your mental energy. Find a pace and rhythm that work for you to make regular progress on projects you deem worthwhile.

It's very important that you know yourself for this to work. Here's what has worked for me:

* Go to the gym on lunch breaks during the week. I reclaim that pesky break in the day, stay healthy, and generally feel refreshed and energized after a visit.

* It's cliched, but I don't have a cable subscription. (I spend my time on HN instead, so I suppose it's a wash)

* Absolutely make time for guilt-free relaxing. For me relaxing is going on a hike or camping trip, grabbing dinner with friends, or playing an instrument.

* Spend time reading. There is a lot of good material on time management or lifestyle design. What's important is that you read and learn to isolate the signal of what matters to you from the noise (and there is a lot of noise).

* Live by this mantra, "If it matters to you, then you'll find a way. If it doesn't you'll find an excuse."

[rl3]

>Absolutely make time for guilt-free relaxing.

This. If you engage in a guilt-laden form, it's not really relaxation, and thus has little utility—rendering it a waste of time.

[mk4p]

What might constitute a guilt-laden form?

[rl3]

Engaging in a leisure activity while feeling guilt for doing so.

It's probably safe to say there's a large overlap with procrastination.

[toomuchtodo]

WaitButWhy has a great piece on this idea: http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.ht...

[dmragone]

To me, this means asking the following: when you do something, do you feel guilty after? Do you hate yourself for playing 5 hours of video games every night when you know you could be productive? That's a guilt-laden activity.

[rl3]

For some, the video games might not even be games they particularly enjoy—just grindy/addictive games that have a superior numbing effect or sense of progress.

[pc86]

I've never been the most productive person, but I find myself hitting a wall once I use about 15-20 of those 62 hours on a side project. For my schedule and life, that's the point where it starts impacting things like sleeping a full 8-9 hours and eating healthy meals at regular times.

YMMV and I've known people who regularly put in 35-40 hours of side project work on top of a 40+ hour job, but they've certainly been few and far between in my experience.

[Chris2048]

I find my lunch hour to short to both eat and then go to gym, and shower. Hell, I usually take at least 15m to shower. PLus I need time between workouts and showering, or else I'll still be sweating after I showered (take about 20m to stop :-/) as such I always schedule stuff like that after work, or weekends.

The TV thing is a must tho. I don't have a TV at all, the gogglebox is licensed to sit down and watch. You even end up watching re-runs, ads etc. so it's less efficient than YouTube, even factoring in all the shit on YouTube..

If you don't relax enough though, you just end up crashing, in an unscheduled manner... I'll not though, I don't consider reading that relaxing - It still requires a lot of thinking, for technical reads anyway, plus the actual process of words-to-brain-concepts translation is surprisingly exhausting as well...

On the last bullet, My brains seems to care more about unimportant distractions than important things. I Do have to watch my time...

[akulbe]

LOVE the mantra. It rings so true.