Blogging Roller

Matt Raible writes about how he plans to fulfill his New Years resolution to be happy and he lists a number of goals that will lead him to that. I could have written that list myself: I need to do almost the very same things.

It is interesting to see the conflict that Chris Winters mentioned between work-related goals (e.g. open source development) and personal goals (e.g. wife and kids), laid out point-by-point. Work related goals like "learn more Java" and "getting a new laptop" standing side-by-side with personal goals such as "spend more time with my family" and "get off the computer."

I've always felt very lucky that I can get paid to do what is essentially my hobby: software development. Sometimes, I wonder how I would get by if it was not my hobby. Keeping up with the constant changes, new technologies, and new techniques in software development takes a lot of time. As Rafe Colburn pointed out some time ago, you have to carefully chose how you invest your learning time. Of course, you really need to carefully choose how you invest all of your time.

I wish I had some great insight to share on this topic. I guess all I can come up with is this. Spend your free time doing things that are fulfilling and things that are fun, don't worry so much about trying to sharpen your work skills or build-up your resume. Sometimes the things that are fulfilling and fun will also be things that are work and career related, that is fine. However, if you spend too much time on the work and career side of things even as a hobby, you may regret it later. If you spend too much time with the people that you love, you'll have nothing to regret.