I know where you're coming from JFletch. I'm lucky enough to have a job where once I've got my 40 in, I can go home. When I am home however, I have that horrible self-loathing voice in the back of my head, criticizing me for not working on personal stuff. In my mind, any second not spent working on art is a second wasted. I got to a really bad spot post-graduation where I was neglecting family/friends/myself, and my weight ballooned up, my gf and I were fighting, and I never took time away from my computer.

Once I got this job I had to sit myself down and get over these feelings of inadequacy. I stopped putting such rigid restrictions on my life. Whatever I could get done that day, I got done, and I had to be ok with it. I work when I'm motivated, I eat when I'm hungry, and I sleep when I'm tired. As a result I'm infinitely happier and healthier. This approach actually made more passionate, as slipsius said, if you really love something, you will make time for it, and that's what happens if you remove all the pressure from your life, at least that's what happened with me. I stopped telling myself I had to do something, and just let it happen, and what happens more often than not is that I find myself on my computer, studying up on new techniques and working on new pieces for my portfolio. If you just let things happen naturally, I believe you will find what is most important to you. I was in your spot a few months ago, just hope this helps in some way.

wow this thread is pretty awesome! interesting to read about the different lifestyles everyone here has.

For me, I do my 8 hours a day at work and that's it. I haven't really done any personal work in almost 3 years or so, ill dabble to learn some technique or satisfy the urge to make a texture set but never really take it further than that. I get enough artistic satisfaction out of what I do at work that I just don't feel the need to do any more at home really, and would rather focus on more social aspects of my life.

I used to sit at home most nights and either just randomly surf the web, or play games for hours on end, and now I barely have a chance to play games because I am busy with a variety of other things and feel much more fulfilled.

I recently moved to Montreal and all my family is back in vancouver so they dont really take up much of my time. I am single and loving it in this city, seeing multiple women and just going out and enjoying the nightlife, there is always something going on in this city.

In the last 6 months or so I really made an effort to improve aspects of my life I felt were lacking, such as my skills with women, or diving into social situations I would normally feel were not my thing. I found this increased my self confidence and made me a lot happier. The downside is lately it seems I have been living for friday nights/the weekend, but like all things, finding the balance is key, which is what I am currently focusing on.

To anyone who thinks they cant be social or have fears about it, thats normal, not everyone is naturally charismatic or outgoing, but you can teach yourself to be. You just have to start going out. literally, year one just go out and get out of the house and away from the computer. join a club of some sort or sports team, go out to the pub/bar with your friends, go toss a Frisbee in the park with some random people, eat healthier and dress better and you will start to feel awesome about yourself.

at 1st it will be painful and you will fuck up.... but the more you do it the easier it becomes. besides, at the end of the day you are not dead, having an awkward social experience doesn't harm you or threaten your life, so just giv'er! if there is one thing most people in this community are decent at is teaching themselves and learning new things.

I work at a call center currently so thats my 8 hours right there I come home watch movie or two with my girl. She has the same days off as me as well. Then I wake up and from 10am-2:30pm I am doing 3d get ready for work at 2:30. So I can only dedicate about 4 and half hours a day to 3d on the days me and my girl have off I can do 3d at night just as long as I spend time with her during the day. I wish I could devote even more time to 3d thats the way I feel. It was been working good for me though. If I had an 8 hour job doing 3d I would still come home and do personal projects.

This is a good thread.

My day starts at around 6 or 6.30. 4 hrs before the actual core hrs at work start. I can get some research if i want, but mainly is so that i can work without any distractions. My day can be pretty hectic, and most of the time i find that the solid 4 hrs of work that i get before the day start is one of the most productive. Whether i am distracted with meetings, or other people need direction or tasks, schedules or what not. So around 70 percent of my work comes during those hrs. The rest is during the day. If i don't get distracted in the day, then i am even more productive.

I work until 5 or 6. If its a build day or week then i stay a little longer. But right off the bat i am putting 10 to 11 hrs of work and leaving early enough to have an evening to do something else.

I don't work on my portfolio. My skills improve on my actual work. If i see some tool or want to try something out. I try to incorporate it into my work. I have found that if you overload your work with the same thing you do all day, into your free time, you will be not do better. If anything your art is a little bit more dull. Relaxing and enjoying some culture, a good book, time with your family is what motivates your work to become better, and i know that a lot of people here that are vets share that same point of view.

I'd rather dive around for an hour, come back and work an hour of inspired work than to sit in front of my computer and work 2 hours of uninspired work.

Getting away from your art is sometimes the best thing you can do.

Figured I'd chime in because I have another take on it that maybe hasn't been expressed in the thread yet.

About a year ago I broke into the game industry at an awesome studio as a contract prop artist which was awesome, but after my contract ended I was more or less in utter financial ruin and wasn't prepared for unemployment in the slightest. So all my student loan debt piled up for three months I was out of work. Luckily my roommate was able to pick up my rent for the time being.

Thankfully due to Polycount I was able to land another temporary gig for a while and that held me over until production started up on the next project. So now I'm on another contract gig which is up in February.

Now to answer the question of the balancing act! I'm still hourly and we've been approved to work 10 hours of OT a week so I've been gobbling that up in an attempt to get a lil' nest egg going to weather the storm of unemployment that's once again on the horizon. I reaaaaally don't want a repeat of last time, it was pretty soul crushing so I'd like to avoid that again if possible. Once I have a decent amount in savings, I can stop volunteering for OT and instead take that time to work on my portfolio. (Assuming they aren't calling for manditory OT by then.)

OT right now is nice for the quick cash but I'm really shooting myself in the foot in the long run. Working on my portfolio is an investment in myself and in a much more stable future. It's a trade off.

I will say that right now I'm having a ton of trouble with getting any personal work done. 50 hours of worky isn't bad at all as I still enjoy it very much, but 10 hours in my crummy car every week on the insane CA freeways is much less enjoyable.

I love making art and I'd love to get back to a place where I can make art for fun and work on some stuff that I TRULY want to make rather than what I'm told to make or what I think will help me get a job. Also I'm hoping that being constantly gripped by the fearof being homeless or starving to death eventually goes away and things stabilize a bit. That would also do wonders for my sanity.

Oh, and I don't really have much of a life, but that's by choice. I turned 28 pretty recently, and I had more than enough exposure to the drinking and partying which got pretty stale. Now I just hang out with a few close friends who are also artists, play some video games and try to relax when I can. That's about it.

Also, as some others have said, the gym is KEY. Being healthy spills over into every aspect of your life and is simply invaluable! IT'S SCIENCE!

Work: 9 till 5. Do my 40 hrs. No crunch or overtime, ever!

personal work: I try to do at least 30mins a day. Usually its speed sketches at lunchtime. I also do freelance work and I have an indie game in development. On average I probably do 2hrs a night.

My girlfriend has an insatiable appetite for reading. So I usually work while shes reading.

But... I do have a strict rule that I stop working at 10pm (if i'm not on a freelance deadline). I find that if I work on something just before I go to bed I can never get to sleep and my mind continues to work on whatever it was i was doing. Especially anything involving working out topology and edge loops. Must be something to do with the problem solving elements of that kind of work. While I was at college I worked till at least 1am every night and it did me no favours at all.

JFletcher I don't think you are depressed or weird but totally normal. I think every artist goes through that and I even think its necessary. There are times that you just have to dig in and eat sleep and breath something in order for it all to come together, its even more rewarding if you love what you're digging into, like you do.

At some point when you want to start branching out and do different things I think you'll find it helps your art in unexpected ways.

"How do you balance work vs personal art vs family vs friends?"

*With a large scale...

Originally Posted by skankerzero

I'd rather dive around for an hour, come back and work an hour of inspired work than to sit in front of my computer and work 2 hours of uninspired work.

Getting away from your art is sometimes the best thing you can do.

This. If you're ever just tired of it, feeling burnt out, just leave it be for a while. Go do something completely unrelated. I'm not sure how the quote goes, something like "If you love it set it free, if it's meant to be, it will come back."

If you follow your excitement then you will always have the perfect balance. You only suffer when you don't do what you want to do.

I try to get in as early as possible and leave early enough to have time left in the day... That said it isnt easy as i have a commute 1.5 hours to work and the same back... (i live in denmark but work in sweden).

usually during the week i spend the evening playing with my daughter and spending time with family, and dedicating weekend nights on my own stuff when everyone is asleep.

I dont do much overtime at work... maybe a month this year it was an hour more every day and 3 saturdays for a few hours. But I try to work focused during the day to get everything done and plan ahead the work properly to avoid overtime...

Originally Posted by Lamont

I do boxing 6 days a week...

Someone's getting serious...What's your amateur record like?

nerf bat ninja save your money invest it in savings account always have emergency money for when your in between jobs. Plan ahead and you can't go wrong.

Earlier in my career (and even while I was still in school), I sacrificed a lot of personal time toward focusing on improvement. Like other people have mentioned, I had the mentality that if I wasn't working, I was wasting my time. If you can imagine how hard it was for me to juggle a dating life with this mentality.... But somehow I managed to not turn into a total recluse.

While there's still a lot I could work toward improving art-wise, I'm not a young single guy any more who is only sacrificing his own time to do personal work. I'd be trading time with family for time to do art and I don't want to do that. So, my typical schedule now is to go to work, do the best art I can while I'm there, then go home and spend time with my wife and daughter. I just try to recharge for the next day.

There's still a lot of personal work that I would love to do, but due to time restrictions it often moves at a snails pace right now. If I really want to do artwork, I usually sacrifice sleep and stay up late to do it, but I'm one of those people that really, really needs sleep to function on a basic human level the next day. So it's not something I can do every night. The last character I worked on at home took forever to finish working a couple hours here and there on it, and after that I vowed to not do anything so time consuming anymore.

My plan for the future is to focus on smaller, more design-oriented tasks. I've come to accept that my schedule is the way it is, now I just need to maximize the limited time I do have so I can learn & grow the most from it.

I have a lot of respect for the range of attitudes expressed in this thread.

My attitude is: spend time, don't waste it - and that applies to every facet of life that's worth your time. Work, play, people, self. Even spending time doing fuckall can be important.

If only I was better at sticking to my own philosophy

These are totally the kind of threads I enjoy be a part of: they exemplify the Polycount community as one of good nature and integrity. But really I usually have nothing to say since I don't have the experience to back it up. Especially in a thread like this where I am clearly a bad example, with hardly any of the variables nor the time-management skills required to balance them.

Jfletcher's situation is also exactly how I feel. A crippling guilt and self-deprecation for a desire to show capability and value to the outside world, but with a terrible difference. While many artists this situation retreat into a workaholic state chasing unending productivity, I retreat into the guilt-giver. Laziness and disconnection with work feels like what i can only describe as a drug addiction. I know I feel horrible actively not doing what so many people tell me to do, but eventually I forget that feeling while lost in content consumption (playing games all day) or the pit of procrastination we all fall into easily.

This is where somebody like Hazardous would tell me to work harder (and many others, I'm not just picking on him) and I will sincerely acknowledge their advice as rational, feeling inspired by the harsh realism, and then continue to do the wrong thing. Generally I suppose this means I don't really want the future I am after yet I can hardly believe in the alternative. Many people here a correctly asserting that your work-life shouldn't take over you, but damn I'm starting to wish that would happen to me. (in the good way, if it was forced I know I'd break down like a child missing playtime.)