[beebs93]

Geezuz Murphy I was almost yelling this at the screen as I read the OP's comments.

There is no single template to improving as a programmer while staying both mentally and physically healthy.

Define your goals and align your life to meet them; do NOT align your life to meet goals defined by others.

[existencebox]

Thank you to both the above and above-above for bringing this up. Too often do I see these "you need to do x to be y" or "If you don't do z you're not really passionate", as you said far better than I could have, live the life you want to live. Do what you want to, don't do what you don't; but whichever choice you make, put your all into it, passions and talents will float to the top. While there is something to doing lots of something being how you get good at it, there needs to be more focus on the doing, and less on the getting good at it. This has the side effect of creating what I see as more positive motivations and interactions between fellow do-ers. (citing weak anecdotes from my days as a TA)

[einhverfr]

I think though is that programming is a tool. You don't need to have side projects to say "oh I have a problem and I think I can quickly hack together a program to address it." And then do it. That's no different really than a chef coming home making himself a sandwich.

Side projects are overrated. Chances are if you have a side project you have a reason for doing it. Maybe there is an open source project that almost meets your needs but is missing that one thing you need.

But I agree that one needs hobbies that are not programming. For example, I study history, play with the kids, do a bunch of other things. I think HeinLein was right, that specialization is for insects and often domain knowledge is as important as programming knowledge. If all you ever do is program, you aren't building the domain knowledge skills you need as well.

[existencebox]

I agree with pretty much everything you've said, I think I'd just stress a different point than you responded to; namely that it's more about "not forcing it," "it" being whatever you chose to spend time on, echoing the "no template is right for everyone" sentiment of the grandparent posts.

That being said, I have some hand wavy opinions about the specialization/not specialization question being "at too high a level of abstraction", and that the focus should be on finding some way to impart "drive" (motivation?) into people, regardless of field and focus. I'd like to think on this more but I am currently late for work, so this'll have to do :(