> If you live in a city and want to live somewhere affordable, you're often looking at 1hr+ of commute each way. You have to get up a little early to prep for the day. Some jobs don't count a lunch break towards your 8hr day, or expect you to stay later, so you end up working more like 9hrs. If you factor in ~30-60mins chores that you do after work such as cooking/cleaning its easy to take up ~10-12hrs doing _work type_ stuff.
I thought the same thing, until I focused on tightening up my schedule and making active choices to minimize wasted time.
If you want to live somewhere that requires 2 hours (!!) of commuting each day, take long lunch breaks away from the office, have relaxed mornings with hours between alarm going off and leaving the house, that's fine.
However, you have to recognize where you're making personal choices. You don't have to choose a job and house combination that requires an hour long commute each way. You don't have to leave the office for lunch every day. You don't have to have leisurely mornings. It's perfectly fine if you choose to do those things, but you're not being completely honest with yourself if you start portraying those personal choices as completely out of your control.
> And do you really want to spend all those 4hrs being productive?
It's not about being productive all day every day. You can spend those 4 hours watching TV if you want, or you can spend those 4 hours going to dinner with friends, or going to the gym. It's your choice.
> If you follow the pomodoro technique and use 5min for leisure every 30 mins, you end up with only ~40mins of "leisure" in that type of day.
The Pomodoro technique is for work time. You shouldn't be Pomodoring you personal time after work.
> What if you want to do things like spend an hour working out at the gym / looking after physical health?
Make a priority and make it happen.
If you spend 1 hour at the gym 3 times per week, that's less than 3% of your waking hours. Surely you can find 3% slack in your schedule somewhere?
> It quickly drains away at any time you would have to spend on your own personal projects, interests, hobbies.
The idea of "side projects" has become a major problem for many new grads growing up the internet era. For some reason, many of them feel obligated to be working on side projects when they're not working. They basically end up with two jobs, a day job and tending to their side projects, and then they wonder where all of their time has gone.
The solution is simple: Don't do side projects if you would prefer to spend your time on something else.
It's all about making active choices in how you spend your time. Once you go down the spiral of assuming everything is an obligation in your life, your schedule starts to feel out of your control. Start being honest about the choices you're making and what you want to do with your time and it becomes much easier to take control again.