We all know the saying ‘time is precious’ — there’s only so much of it and, ideally, you would always choose to do the most impactful thing you possibly can with this limited resource.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot towards the end of 2013. You only have so much time. You constantly spend your day slicing it up into various buckets. Work. Sleep. Cleaning. Eating. Running. Drinking.

For most of us, the work and sleep categories take up most of the pie. The remainder is left for vital life functions, being with friends/family and various hobbies.

For the lucky few — work and hobby might collide and they won’t fall into the trap I find myself in. I love developing software, however in the past two years I’ve found I am choosing to spend more of that time developing software in the work bucket and not in the hobby bucket. Hobby time is really just work time.

Instead of working on that website/app/idea you and your friends came up with as you struggled to figure out which restaurant or bar you wanted to go to, you spend it refactoring some logic, or building out a new feature.

In many ways — maybe that’s okay — this was all in the pursuit of doing something you enjoy so it was time well spent. However, in the long run I don’t think it’s net positive in some other life-aspects I consider important. The net benefit to society is limited since your work likely only benefits your employeer. Someone struggling with the same problem or need ends up doing the same thing as you over and over again. In an economic sense this is wasted resources. On the other side of things, you leave no lasting legacy. Sure — that code might stay in production for ten or maybe even twenty years — but more likely it’ll be gone in two or three. However it’s possible that something you create in your hobby time for yourself will be around much longer, or at least as long as you (and others) find it interesting.

This is driving my thought processes lately. I’ve had an amazing 2013, but I’ve spent a lot of time creating and developing things for work. My hobby time was really just extra effort I put in at work. They are great things and actually will benefit a lot of my employers customers, but I can no longer rationalize that effort. Things that need to happen for work will happen for work. But there’s more to life than that.

As I look forward to 2014, I want to start drawing some lines around my chosen pursuits. I want to create for more than just my day job. I want to tinker and play and not worry about sustaining that random library/framework/language I found in production. I want to explore some other concepts/models/ideas and see where they take me.

In 2014, I want to make sure I have sufficient time to create things for me. Who knows, maybe others will find it interesting too… Only time will tell…