Week 5: The new normal

Hi, all. In today’s post, I will try to describe my new life and what I spend my time on now vs before leaving.

Time distribution

As mentioned earlier, before leaving, I spent way too much time working and too little on everything else… Here is an approximation of the average time spent per day in percentage. aka not a good work-life balance.

After leaving and the adjustment period things have changed and there is much more diversification to my day, and a lot less work… One thing hower is that since I am in 100% control of my own structure the workdays vs weekends are blurred aways, so not making any distintions at the moment (I’m still evaluation if that is a good or bad thing…)

Let me describe each area in greater detail…

Work (45% >> 20%)

Work time is roughly cut down to half, simply prioritizing other things. Right now the “work” is Unity Game Development, which is more school than work at the moment, where I follow an online set of courses. The training plan is as follows

• Complete C# Unity Game Developer 2D (18,5 hours – 87% done as of this writing – You can try the sample games made during the course below (all require mouse/keyboard))
  • Try Game 1 (Car pickup and Delivery Game)
  • Try Game 2 (Snow Boarder Game)
  • Try Game 3 (WW2 Quiz Game)
  • Try Game 4 (Platformer)
• Learn how to create a 2D Tower Defense Game in Unity 2021 (8 hours)
• Unity 2D Dungeon Gunner Roguelike Development Course (51 hours)

While hard (long time since I was in school mode) I have promised myself to stick with learning before I start my own project, which is a hybrid of Diablo and Tower Defense set in a time-travel theme. The goal is to make the game a get it published, with long long-term goals of making a cross-over board game with the same theme… More about the project when we get closer…

Sleep (23% >> 33%)

I slept way too little in the past thinking I could get by with 5-6 hours a day (and now known after a recent lecture on sleep that that self-estimation of enough sleep is an illusion the mind trick you into thinking). So I have a fixed Sleep schedule of 23:00 >> 07:00 every day including weekends with an hour wind down from 22:00 when my devices enter Screen Time mode making them impossible to use. Instead before bed, I do 15 min Meditation and 30 min of reading a book (right now I’m reading the Rama Series)

Me time / Household (30% >> 30%)

I’m maintaining current “Me time” that covers personal time, household chores, cooking/shopping, and that sort of things, so nothing special to report there other than trying to keep down watching TV/Streaming services and spending time on making healthy food over fast food… Generally making the Me timer more qualitative!

Health/Fitness (1% >> 10%)

This is one of the big new ones. Where in the old days did a short run 3 times a week and an occasional walk, I now run every morning, have a walk almost every day, and fitness center multiple times a week. The goal is to cause weight loss I’ve spoken about before, but also to build up a much better base of healthiness with a sustainable way of living as I get older reducing chances of lifestyle diseases.

Mindfullness (0% >> 5%)

While I in the past was fasinated with the practice, I never “did something about it”. Now I do 2x 15 min of Meditations (Morning and Evening) and and ad-hoc during the day in the small moments.
I’m also investing time in understanding the theory behind the practice (as much as that can be done). I also try (and often still fail) to be more “in the moment” and being better at just listening to others instead of being obsessed with feeding the ego (it is so so hungry still 😉)

Social (1% >> 2%)

I’ve never had the need to big social things (being an extrovert), but I’m forcing myself to do more online/in person events/lectures/gatherings to be better at it and to compensate for not having colleages anymore.

So ther you have it, what I’m doing in my new life.
Feel free to leave any questions or comments below;
See you next week 😊