Adulting: The Constant Struggle of Prioritisation

Being an adult isn't as much fun as I thought it would be when I was younger. Although you can technically do what you want, the issue is that you have more things to do than you used to, and now you need to prioritise between the boring things, and the ones you want to do, and most likely you'll be too tired for any of them!

I've always been a person who keeps busy, even in my downtime. While at university, I spent a lot of my spare time investing in my skills by playing around with my Linux desktop setup, practicing competitive programming, or maybe just playing games. This hasn't always been for the best, which has definitely led to burnout, so this year I've been (trying to) practice better self care and rest myself more.

For the last few years, I've been working on this website as my primary side project, but since getting involved in the IndieWeb community I've been working on even more side projects. I've been enjoying fleshing out my technical skills in ways that I didn't used to do in my job (but now do, given the change of role) as well as having the awesome output of building tools that myself and others can actually use.

I've also been thoroughly enjoying playing Apex Legends and have a number of TV series that I keep up on. I attend a tonne of local tech meetups, and often blog about them afterwards for posterity. And I want to spend time with my partner Anna Dodson and our cat Morph, or see my friends.

But then there's the other side of the coin - the "chores" or "toil". The stuff I wish I could automate away because then I'd have time for the other things I care about. Not only is there lots of life admin, like bills, organising events (which although I enjoy, it also eats into time spent doing other things), and doing things like tidying/cleaning, but there's also cooking. We've been enjoying cooking much more since we started using Gousto, but sometimes it really eats into the precious time we have in an evening.

Annoyingly these chores are things that I know I need to do, but I find it so much easier to just ignore it (and let it inevitably build up) than to tackle it there and then, especially as it'll get in the way of my own things! It's something I've got better at, but that's not saying much because I used to be incredibly apathetic - I used to be incredibly lax doing washing because I had so many tech T-shirts that it could be many weeks before I was running low!

I wonder if anyone has any good coping strategies for it? I.e. timeboxing the work, doing one task a day, etc. Get in touch via the links below if you have thoughts!

Aside: This article was prompted by spending our first Saturday off in 6 weeks of conferences, meetups, Hacktoberfest and busy work commitments not relaxing, but instead getting back on top of the chores. We often ask ourselves how other, much busier, people can manage with their lifestyles, as well as getting time in to go to the gym, or pick up new hobbies.