Blog post: Balance
Tags: procrastination, discipline, life
Published: 2019-04-30 14:59:11

---
title: Blog post: Balance
published: true
description: a piece on work and life balance and learning rust
tags: procrastination, discipline, life
---
I am falling behind on my blogging. The reason is that I struggle with [work-life balance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work%E2%80%93life_balance).

In addition my life is a balance between family and personal time. Personal time can be broken down to (in no particular order):

- Procrastination (TV, Gaming and Twitter)
- Reading books (non-tech)
- Running to keep fit
- Hobby - which is working with open source software

My hobby can be broken down to:

- Acquiring tech information by reading articles/newsletters, books, listening to podcasts and watching videos and streams (all often feels like [procrastination](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/procrastination))
- Blogging about tech
- Learning and improving coding by making PRs to existing open source projects or by doing coding challenges
- Coding on existing projects (mostly [yak shaving](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving))
- Developing new projects for learning new stuff

The above points are ordered by difficulty/[time drain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_sink).

Juggling all of the above introduce even more challenges:

1 Remembering what point you got to, when time is split into small parts
2 Remembering points from articles/videos/podcasts
3 Remembering useful resources

The problem here is the magnitude and you end up with tonnes of links/bookmarks, that you would like to process.

I try to break stuff down to [bite-sized](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bite-sized) parts, so they can be squeezed into a busy week trying to balance everything above and you can do something in a sensible timeframe.

I have attempted with notes in varies tools and formats, but it is hard to organize and keep everything organized.

What I have found works best for me (in significant order):

1 Work with the acquired information, code something, adopt a tool into your toolbox/toolchain etc. Do it consistently, meaning repeat it until it seems natural and you almost cannot remember what you did earlier
2 Write [TILs](http://jonasbn.github.io/til/) / Notes to capture links in a form that is easily accessible, like problem description, solution outline and deeper explanation
3 Blog about it to set a larger context and reflection. I have often thought about doing either podcasts or [live-streaming](https://dev.to/jonasbn/blog-post-watching-live-coding--strangely-intriguing-2kgp), but I have not had the time to set up something, which would deliver a product of satisfactory quality

We all work differently, I am a very visual person, so I often prefer diagrams to walls of text or at least that long pieces of text are accompanied by graphics. I also seem to learn best by doing and I often remember things _more easily_ if I write them down - but what works for me, might not work for you.

As I mentioned in the beginning I run to keep fit, I have used to do it a lot more and I learned **a lot** from it and I was able to get to a level where I could finish a marathon.

Everything boils down to discipline. The discipline to practice and put in the sufficient effort to reach your goal. Running worked for me since I was able to simply tie a pair of running shoes and run whenever I felt like it. Which brings me to the next point: motivation - and I was highly motivated. I prepared for a year to reach my goal of finishing a marathon.

Now I have to find a similar simple way of working with my _hobby_, which balances with my work and life.

1 Set up a goal
2 Make a plan to reach the goal
3 Execute the plan

I have tried to learn to program Rust (see: "[TIL: Setting Up a Rust Development Environment](https://dev.to/jonasbn/til-setting-up-a-rust-development-environment-2f95)" and "[Blog post: A Little Hacktoberfest Fairytale](https://dev.to/jonasbn/blog-post-a-little-hacktoberfest-fairytale-3k96)") and there is so much more I want to accomplish and learn.

Learning Rust is however not as easy as running, so I have decided to include some of the different practices I have listed above, since I am interesting in learning and internalizing what I learn.

1 I need to acquire some information on Rust via articles, books, podcasts and video tutorials
2 I need to do a lot of coding challenges to practice Rust programming to get a sense of the language, it's extensions and idioms
3 I need to write up TILs on different aspects of Rust and it's toolchain
4 I need to define 1 or 2 larger projects I can either develop myself, alternatively I can make PRs for existing projects that spark my interest

and finally I want to blog about it - wish me luck, send me pointers and links to articles, stuff to read, hear and see.