

For years I balanced a productive creative life outside of full-time non-programming jobs. But I was surprised to find myself unable to keep doing this after getting hired as a programmer seven months ago. And many programmer-friends report the same difficulty I am now experiencing — they basically can't make themselves write code outside of work. Getting up early and working for several hours in the morning seems to be a promising solution, but I'd be interested in hearing about other people's experiences.



My work day is around eight or nine hours. Although I have plenty of alert waking time before and after work and on weekends, I suddenly find myself unable to use it the way I am accustomed to doing. Specifically, I seem to have vastly more trouble concentrating in the way I need to do to write code, when not at work.

Have you found that your ability to write code for yourself, in your spare time, dries up when you are programming full time for a living? How do you deal with that? or is it just an inevitable cost of coding for a living?