[magicalhippo]

I have it similarly. For me, if I can't "play around" or explore something new in a while, my motivation and focus drops to zero.

On the other hand, most days I'm just too mentally exhausted to work on programming when I get home. So I rarely get to scratch that itch on my own time.

To get around that, every now and then I take some time while working on some issue to do something new, like play around with programming language constructs and exploring the limits of the language.

It's not always easy to do though, with deadlines and whatnot. So can be a real struggle at times.