This is probably a life-long pursuit, but in the short-term:
1. My wife is very supportive of my ambitions while not letting me be consumed by them. The vulnerability and accountability are key here.
2. Regular time doing wholly non-constructive things: video games, reading, guitar, etc. This took some time to acclimate to, but now I can play a game or the like and lose track of time, as well as not feel guilty.
3. Killed my Twitter account, which was sort of the symbol of my personal brand. Not sure what I'm going to do there.
4. Pulled back from open source work for now, as it got too close into the realm of 'being someone' in a particular community.
5. Meditation and prayer is huge. Admitting I have a problem is still hard but there's a huge relief that comes from being honest with yourself.
6. I work at a lifestyle company, which is fairly unheard of on the East Coast. This helps a bunch with being flexible about when and where I work.
I still make time to do side projects and such, but the effort is mainly directed towards learning and fun over developing my personal brand. I'm still strategic about it, as I'd love to do more Clojure in the future, esp. professionally.
2. Regular time doing wholly non-constructive things:
So how did you get started doing that? I have a reeeaaly hard time with that one, to the point that I even see time with the family as non-constructive. It feels like time spent doing anything that is not pushing one of my goals forward is actively stopping forward momentum (including posting comments on the internets) so I end up getting frustrated at having wasted time and get depressed that I haven't done anything. Its a tough cycle.
I know the feeling. I have a few things I'd like to work on myself.
But the bit about your family? Sounds like a red flag to me.
Do things for yourself on a regular basis. Make time to exercise and spend with quality people. Talk about this issue. It's very tough to fix by yourself; you effectively been mentally rooted for now. Understand it will take time to fix, and the process of recovering will feel strange. I'm convinced half of it is showing up and resisting the temptation to do just one more thing.
Optimize for happiness, and trust productivity will flow out of that.
1. My wife is very supportive of my ambitions while not letting me be consumed by them. The vulnerability and accountability are key here.
2. Regular time doing wholly non-constructive things: video games, reading, guitar, etc. This took some time to acclimate to, but now I can play a game or the like and lose track of time, as well as not feel guilty.
3. Killed my Twitter account, which was sort of the symbol of my personal brand. Not sure what I'm going to do there.
4. Pulled back from open source work for now, as it got too close into the realm of 'being someone' in a particular community.
5. Meditation and prayer is huge. Admitting I have a problem is still hard but there's a huge relief that comes from being honest with yourself.
6. I work at a lifestyle company, which is fairly unheard of on the East Coast. This helps a bunch with being flexible about when and where I work.
I still make time to do side projects and such, but the effort is mainly directed towards learning and fun over developing my personal brand. I'm still strategic about it, as I'd love to do more Clojure in the future, esp. professionally.
Hope this helps.