[shadowmint]

That's true... but there's also the flip side to the coin.

Finishing things is good; but if you have a project you want to finish, you'll never finish it if you halfheartedly look at it once a week for an hour.

If you spend more than certain amount of time not looking at something or not working on it, you forget how it works and it takes all of that available time you have to get into 'the zone' where you're actually making progress on the task.

So, I guess if you have an amazing forfulling job that is exactly what you're interested in, and you spend your days working on your interesting projects... sure.

I'll be over here with my cup of 10pm coffee and a pile of rust code; blissfully hacking (and reading hacker news while head compiles :).

[krosaen]

I think it depends on how you feel when doing extracurricular work - if you're energized and excited, awesome. If you eventually find yourself drained and/or beating yourself up, take it easy on yourself and rest up.

[talmir]

If hacking away makes you happy, go for it :) I can only relate my own experiences. I do tend to code for hours on end on whatever catches my interest. The point was trying to make is to relax once in a while :) (Never expected this to reach nr.1 on hacker new, even if it is only for a couple of minutes)