Switching priorities — learning more than working

If there’s one thing that always helped me finish my work a lot faster while still keeping the same level of quality was automation. Whenever I can automate something, I do it. That, combined with managing my time and working days before I need to deliver something, like an article, helps me be ahead of “schedule” and have more time at my disposal.

However, one thing I started doing lately is learning web development, and while I have a lot of fun doing that, it requires quite a lot of time. I try my best to code and learn for around 3 hours a day and while that may not sound like a lot for some people, having to also write and publish two articles on a daily basis, plus having to design things and work on a secondary project in Blender, is quite a lot.

Because I have to spend so much time working, and because everything I do requires creativity, which, after a while, can be pretty exhausting, I decided, lately, that I should decrease the amount of work I do and focus more on studying.

That allowed me to focus a lot more on coding and learning new things, while working less.

That doesn’t mean that I’m not making as much progress. I’m making almost as much progress as before. The only difference is that now I’m trying to manage my time even better, and finish everything I have to do as soon as possible so I can focus on learning.

The benefits are quite obvious and simple — I’m acquiring a lot of new skills that will be helpful in the future. If I keep coding for around 3 hours a day, I may be able to get a job as a web developer (at least front-end developer) in the future. That, combined with writing, designing and 3D modelling may help me get more exposure and, who knows, have additional skills that may be useful at my future job.

Everyone praises learning and tells you how much your life will change if you spend more time learning new things. But, since we all have only around 16 hours at our disposal every day, to work, to spend time with our friends and family and to take care of other responsibilities, it’s kinda hard to also invest a lot of time into learning.

So, instead of trying to balance everything, you could try to find ways to do the exact opposite — instead of trying to spend equal amounts of time on both learning and working, you should find ways to work better and more efficiently in order to reduce the amount of time you need to invest into working so you can have more time to study.

This method isn’t the best out there, and it surely won’t always align with your mood or energy. But it is something you can do to see the benefits of learning new things a lot better, instead of relying on other people to tell you how amazing that is.

So, start automating some of your tasks, start working ahead of time and try to find better and more efficient ways to work. Once you’ll start working less, while having the same high quality results, try to invest more time into learning. Read, watch tutorials, educative YouTube videos and so on. Then, decide for yourself whether it is worth investing more time into learning, or whether it’s a lot better to just work as much as you possibly can.