Board 8 > How do you balance a social life with work and hobbies?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Topic title says it all. I'm trying to learn how to balance work, sleep, hobbies like video games and Survivor and GameFAQs, and getting out and about and being social. The problem is time management. How can someone manage to do so much with so little time? How can I build relationships while still taking the time to enjoy the things I love? I'd appreciate any advice, thank you!
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I designate specific days to particular hobbies. I'm also gifted with the chance to read at work for my current job, which helps because it knocks one of those hobbies off the list without drawing from free time.

Anyway, I'm also notorious for dropping particular interests and then picking them back up further down the line. For example, I've not touched a video game in nearly five months, nor was I on GameFAQs. Instead, I doubled down on my writing and TV-viewing.

This isn't the best route for most people, though, it seems. So I'd recommend doing what I mentioned at the start of this message. Tuesdays can be gaming days, maybe. Thursdays are for yoga. I don't know. You do you. But divvying it up on a weekly schedule can be productive. Fridays, hang out with some friends.
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Above all else, you need to be disciplined. I don't think this is a character trait that people can just "learn" - it's pretty innate and kinda rare. I struggle with it all the time.
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keep pushing forward, knowing that once you hit rank 10 in a link you never have to deal with it again
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eliminate hobbies, procrastinate on work, maintain social life
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You will probably have to give up on some of your hobbies as you get older and take on more responsibilities.

Not everything of course, all work and no play etc, but you may have to scale back.
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Jeff Zero posted...

This isn't the best route for most people, though, it seems. So I'd recommend doing what I mentioned at the start of this message. Tuesdays can be gaming days, maybe. Thursdays are for yoga. I don't know. You do you. But divvying it up on a weekly schedule can be productive. Fridays, hang out with some friends.

Hi Jeff! Haven't seen you in a while :note:

Thanks for the tip. Yoga's just an hour a week at work 'cuz they offer classes. Words cannot express how unequivocally bad I am at yoga, so I keep it to just that. That said, mentioning that does give me a little more perspective. It makes me realize that I can balance work with yoga because yoga is my lunch break at work one day a week. It doesn't have a significant negative impact upon my social life to engage.

At the same time, I think I should do something more structured. Tonight's a Survivor night and Wednesdays are dedicated to watching Survivor (two episodes tonight omgz) and the after-show craziness online.

I usually am not on GameFAQs very much at home these days. Just while listening to podcasts. Most of my GameFAQs is at work on this account while I wait on paper to scan. Part of why is Persona 5, which is taking up a good enough chunk of my life that it's making me question things like this. As Bridgecar touched on, part of it is managing a social life in the game while doing everything else it has to offer. I'm trying to apply this to my real life, which is... very introspective thinking for me.

CaptainOfCrush posted...

Above all else, you need to be disciplined. I don't think this is a character trait that people can just "learn" - it's pretty innate and kinda rare. I struggle with it all the time.

Good to know I'm not the only one. I am far more disciplined than I used to be, but that's not saying much. Yoga's helped.

Thanks for the advice, guys - it's appreciated :)
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prioritize, and cull the lower priorities.
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Prioritizing is one thing, but identifying the minimum you need to invest into an activity to get what you need out of it is really important. That lets you do a lot of different things in the same amount of time without cutting too much.

For example, you can go out for dinner/drinks with friends at 8 and come home around 11 and sleep, which leaves you only doing 1 major thing. Instead, you can do 3 hobbies of 1 hour each (yoga, troll b8, games), meet friends at 11 for an hour, and make it back to sleep by midnight. You're only cutting 2 extra hours of going out, and 1 extra hour of sleep, but you're quadrupling the number of activities you did that night.
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by not having one
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Get friends who share your hobbies and do them together. Two birds with one stone!
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You can't have one activity eat up most of your time, but otherwise it's really easy to balance.

9 hours for sleep (which includes night/morning preparations)

That leaves you, with a full-time job, with these hours left per day(work transportation included)

Work days: 6 hours
Days off: 15 hours

Now assuming 30 minutes of transportation, you have 60 hours per week of non-work or sleep to play with.

That's a lot.

Figure it out! LOL!

I don't

being social is overrated
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Even if you spend 2 hours a day socializing (which is freaking WAY too much for me) you still have 46 hours in a week to PLAY VIDEO GAMES!!!

DeepsPraw posted...

by not having one

You think that's going to help?

foolm0r0n posted...

you can go out for dinner/drinks with friends at 8 and come home around 11 and sleep, which leaves you only doing 1 major thing. Instead, you can do 3 hobbies of 1 hour each (yoga, troll b8, games), meet friends at 11 for an hour, and make it back to sleep by midnight. You're only cutting 2 extra hours of going out, and 1 extra hour of sleep, but you're quadrupling the number of activities you did that night.

I'm the type that gets tired after two hours due to sensory defensive issues. I thoroughly enjoy a single social setting until that point, though. Tonight, the plan is to go to my supervisor's going away party for an hour and a half, then go home and Survivor the rest of the night. If there's time, I can play some Persona. I just need to be more regimented with this as you said - I need to plan this more regularly, with hobbies (including the three you listed) and . Thanks for the tip.
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3DSRage posted...

Even if you spend 2 hours a day socializing (which is freaking WAY too much for me) you still have 46 hours in a week to PLAY VIDEO GAMES!!!

As I said above, two hours at one social setting is too much for me. And by that, I mean parties or bars or places with lots of activity. Having one friend and playing Goldeneye on the N64 with him is different. That I can do until 2 am when I pass out.

~30 minutes each way is accurate for me. As for 46 hours... I'm 50 hours into Persona 5 so far. In two weeks. Pretty good, if you ask me!

MZero11 posted...

Get friends who share your hobbies and do them together. Two birds with one stone!

I need more reliable friends, I think. A few I haven't seen in a while. One has a suspended driver's license, but I am always the one reaching out to him and asking him to meet up for pizza, have Pokémon battles, etc. I put in more effort than he does, but him and I have very similar interests. We just live a ways apart and... he's not very good at social life management, either.

I need to find ways I can meet these people. Conventions are always an option. There are a couple places I know that I need to get back to also... kind of out of the way though, but I'll try to manage.

Thanks for the advice everyone :)
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I guess more specifically for me, I used to watch every Red Sox game. And then marriage and kids and household and I had little downtime. So I wouldn't watch entire games - along with what foolmo suggests, I figured out how I could feel like I was watching Red Sox games without sitting through 2-4 hours of them. Many nights I wouldn't watch - reading a recap and watching highlights sufficed.

But I also liked watching other sports, and had to cull those out. I liked posting on board 8 but it wasn't rewarding compared to other activities - board 8 involves a lot of "making the same posts in the same topics with the same guys". When you have tons of free time, that's OK. When you have an hour free time, it feels like a waste.

I also don't enjoy switching contexts much, so a 4 activity night for me wouldn't be great. I'd probably say do an hour of yoga and then 3 hours of gaming most nights, then survivor and social activities every week. but that's certainly different for every person.
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honestly I just don't

got invited to a thing on thursday for example and I'm just not going to go.
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Yeah I just don't really do social things at all.

I guess one of my hobbies is playing competitive Smash Bros, and so going to tournaments for that has some inherent social aspect to it. Other than that I basically do nothing though.
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I don't have a social life and I still can't manage my time well.

Such is life.
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I merged my social life with my hobbies
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th3l3fty posted...

I merged my social life with my hobbies

This is what I was going for. I don't really care for going out to eat or drinks. Most of my socializing is like playing/watching sports or video games, traveling together, karaoke, etc. so when I socialize I'm usually partaking in a hobby as well, except for special occasions.
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Do it like a Persona MC


Sleep is usually the big thing that takes a hit for me, probably not the healthiest thing though.
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Have a social life that is only b8, it works wonders.
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Another thing you can do is go super all out one night. Like for example last weekend I went to a club for 5 hours straight. This is basically an investment in your future social satisfaction, because for the next few weeks and months and even years, when you can think back to that one day and remember how awesome it was, which is free and takes no time. After a while, you'll have enough of these outstanding moments that on bad days you can sustain your psyche pretty well and still feel balanced.

The trick is that you don't exactly know when these big memorable events can happen, so you have to be opportunistic and open to throwing away other plans. But the long-term return on going all out like this is really worth it.
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I don't bother with social life
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Pretty much everyone I regularly socialize with (outside of here, I guess) I met via rhythm games, which makes combining my social life and hobbies pretty easy
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i don't bother with social life, work, or hobbies
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this largely depends on how much work you have, including transportation. i currently have a 7-8 hour day which freed up a lot of time that a 12 hour day otherwise left me fairly stuck with.

so first priority is work, cut from 24h on that.
second is sleep, cut... however many hours you need for that.
and everything else is filler.
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I have about 7-8 hours of work as well, including bussing in and out (I can play on my 3DS on the bus). I also work in an area where hanging out after work is completely doable. It's easier to rendezvous with my friends near here than it is near home. I also have potential bonds with individuals at the places I frequent (pizza place, café, food truck, list goes on) that may evolve into friendships should they be willing. The customer-business thing is obviously quite a problem that could make things awkward. Even if one of those is a potential love interest...

I just need more friends than the handful I have. I need to start by forcing myself into attending social events that allow me to forge such friendships. Meetup is useful for that, as is being near a college campus. I don't care if they're seven years younger than me, as long as they're cut from the same cloth, I'm fine.

Thanks for all the pointers, guys.
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KujikawaRising posted...

I don't care if they're seven years younger than me

bruh
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Eh? I'm 29. What's wrong with that?
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srlsy though, I can see why that was taken the wrong way. Sorry if I appeared to be a creepo!
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Prioritize the hobbies. Eliminate the ones you don't really like that much, and post-pone some others.

For example, I was going to buy a NES Mini but I ended up giving up once I realized what hobbies I'd have to sacrifice to play its games.
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