I wish I had any.
Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?
11–20 of 54 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?
#12I'm going to go on a bit of a curve here, and say take a walk -- the motion helps me think better and I think there have been studies to that effect.
Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?
#13I work from home, and free-time is not something I have, but it's an illusion that plagues me, like an evil force begging me to step away from work and play with the dog, take a nap, or read hckrnews.
Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?
#14I go for half-hour walks once or twice per day, or read HN or something. My /etc/hosts file is littered with filled-in rabbit holes like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc., but HN gets a pass for now.
Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?
#15I work as a freelancer from home, so my answer might be less interesting to people at an office, but I've found that at home I'm mostly just doing the things I wanted to do at the office when I worked in one, but felt uncomfortable doing there. These include:
Taking short (15 - 30 mins max) naps if and when I need them, which pretty dramatically helps me creatively problem solve.
Going for a long-ish walk outside. This is by far the absolute best thing I've added to my days. I feel more energized after, I mentally and emotionally am much happier, and physically it made me slightly fitter. Plus it helps relieve some of the problems I know I'm developing sitting all day.
Podcasts. This one I only do when I'm taking a break, I can't focus and get into a flow listening to other people talk about interesting topics. Awesome for those walks though.
Chat with other developers and friends on slack or some other messenger. Usually at some point during the day I'll have a 15 minute flurry of messages with a developer friend about some side project or something we think is cool.
And finally, this one is half work half fun, but I'll research something I think is cool or would be useful. Might be a service, framework, product, methodology, anything at all. I probably spend an hour or so of my work day, every other day, on researching something that's not an absolute necessity to the work, but might benefit it. In some cases it's paid off big time. Mostly though it just keeps me happy, interested, and hopefully a little sharper.
Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?
#16Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?
#17I try to take walks. I also check up on stuff that I enjoy as a hobby, such as Youtube channel subscriptions for car videos and other interesting topics.
It gives my brain a bit of a break to think about other things for a little while.
Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?
#18When I was working, I settled into a rhythm of being in the office for about 4 hours a day, with almost no free time. No YouTube, no social media, not even checking personal e-mail accounts. I think I would check HN, but I would save the articles to read later and not read them in the office.
It also helps to write down the major things you want to do before you get in the office. When you get there, just start doing it rather than slowly warming up. Also I find that test-driven development helps get rid of this "warm-up" procrastination.
Not everyone can do this, but programmers can sometimes work themselves into that position (e.g. work for a place long enough that people don't question your hours.)
Though I would usually take a break for tea (with no computer) and occasionally a nap... I think those are productive uses of time.
Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?
#19I work as a freelancer from home, so my answer might be less interesting to people at an office, but I've found that at home I'm mostly just doing the things I wanted to do at the office when I worked in one, but felt uncomfortable doing there. These include: Taking short (15 - 30 mins max) naps if and when I need them, which pretty dramatically helps me creatively problem solve. Going for a long-ish walk outside. Th…
> Going for a long-ish walk outside.
Do you have a real objective on those walks (ie getting groceries, lunch) ?
I like walking with non-gym clothes but only when I'm actually doing something in the way...
Re: Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office?
#20Why would you have free time in the office? Or to put it another way, why would you be in the office during your free time?