How do you balance work vs personal art vs family vs friends?
polycounter lvl 17
I'm curious how fellow game industry folks (or those aspiring to be) balance their lives. Bit of a broad question; how do you balance your time between work, personal art time, family, friends, and whatever other major aspects of your life on average? During crunch? etc.
Replies
As much as I'm passionate about art, what I do is a job and I'll be damned if that job is going to keep me from having personal time, time with my girlfriend, and time to just simply do things that aren't work.
So far I've managed to avoid places that have a lot of crunch time (read: have terrible planning and schedules), and I have absolutely no intention of working somewhere that requires me to be there any more than my 40 usual hours unless I choose to do it. The game industry seems to be full of starry-eyed individuals who think they've reached the promised land, but they're also working 60-, 70-, 80-hour weeks every week and not taking days off. That's bullshit.
I also have been lucky enough to have little to no crunch the past few years. When I applied at the place I currently work I asked them about their work schedules during the interview process. Family time is hugely important to me and I won't work somewhere that crunches all the time anymore.
This.
Admittedly, it's tough to go to work, come home, do more work, sleep, repeat. Thankfully the "family/friends" thing is a little simpler for me, I'm not a terribly social person so the only one I really hang out with is my wife. And when I'm not at my tech support job, she's always present. She sews, writes, and does a variety of other "creative" sorts of things herself. Her desk is only a few feet away from mine. She'll sit with me while I'm painting sometimes, I might help her out with a pattern or initial design of something, etc. I guess my routine in a nutshell is: Wake up, go to work, come home, find something to pursue/experience/learn with my other half.
I really think this is the tough part, working something soul draining and unrelated - followed by coming home and having to work on something I'm supposed to put my everything in to. When the time comes that I manage to make art my method of paying my bills, I imagine things like my sleeping schedule will be a little more...consistent.
But there's plenty of time for that I suppose.
i`m a pretty social person but i isolate myself too much for my own good as weird as that may sound :P
I'm in a similar boat. Slog through work, struggle through art -- my productivity goes up and down, some weeks i'm squeezing in 20 hours or more of art, some it's less than 5. I do what I can when I can and try to keep motivated and focused.
Using your time WELL is very important, too -- doing a handful of gesture drawings or specific anatomy studies to correct recent mistakes doesn't take much time, and has a great impact on your skillset.
During school and in the initial stages of working I would spend a better part of the day at home working on pet projects and portfolio stuff. I managed to quit that and spend more time with my wife and 3 sons. Now I Don't generally touch the computer until after everybody's in bed, but then i'm up til 2-3am or so, then i get up at 7 and go back to work.
Short answer: when something has to get cut the first thing is sleep for me.
occasionally we've had to do 50 hour weeks here at the office and I grumble about it but I realize that's the minimum hours at a lot of studios.
Once I get a industry job I would guess my personal work time will go down but Ill be doing art at work so Ill still be learning and improving!
hoping to change the work thing soon and maybe do like 8 hours day, or get more than a day here and there off.
How to balance: pick something, and do it
Also, managing two French student's with poor English is great!
When uni start's again (3rd year) I'll be drastically dropping my time spent there. I'm not being in 10k of debt for nothing. Already started my research and development to keep ontop of the workload.
I'm very lucky in that I have a wife that is equally passionate about games / game art and working on games - This helps!
I also guess it depends on how making art resonates with you as a person.
I've crunched for 14 - 16 hours a day for weeks, and other times I leave after 8 hours - fulfilled.
If theres work to be done, and I enjoy it, its cool for me to get into it and the hours just fly away.
However, crunching due to some poor decisions made by managers, especially if I hate what im working on or who im working with, falls into the category of 'I probably won't do it unless there is some juicy incentive to do so' which would help me reach further goals.
Typically to relax or give my brain a break, I'll head out into the garden and get my hands dirty doing some gardening (surprisingly therapuetic to tend plants, especially ones that bear something you can eat) or some baking. Play with the cat & dog etc, drive out to see some new park, place, thing or take photos etc, hook up with friends / family.
The main thing for me is, if I really love doing something, its difficult for me to stop or to put down.
I can't simply turn it off at the end of an 8 hour day and do something else.
The day that art becomes like this for me, is the day its become a job and that will be the day I won't do this anymore.
Generally the balance for me would be something like most of the day doing a mix of personal / professional art or other game-making related activities, roughly 12 hours or so on average I guess. Maybe a couple hours playing games, watching a show, cooking / baking, chilling out with animals. Friends / family typically on weekends where the art time is usually down to about half so around 6 hours or so on average.
Every now and then, maybe every year, i try to get away from technology alltogether. Read books, pencil and paper only drawing etc, no phone, no computer prefferably out in the country where i cant hear the sound of cars etc.
Its a great life, wouldnt change it
For real though, great post Haz. I tend to surround myself with like-minded people who have similar interests and can relate to the obsession of doing game art all the time.
"Sell the Kids."
"Find someone else."
"I'm never coming home..."
Oh sorry, virtual flashback there for a sec....
I work part time now self employed and would never consider going back in to a studio unless it was a short contract
I am still petty much a workaholic at times, but try and limit the impact of that where possible.
prefer to spend time with the family but its hard sometimes when my 2 year old is shouting that she wants to 'paint the man too' ie in zbrush
my standard reply is no 'I paint the man' to which she obviously replies 'I paint the man too'
Work isn't jr high and I'm not getting paid to socialize and make friends, I can still have fun but work is job number one. We've had some layoffs and while the life of the office is great to have around and make everyone smile, their productivity often sucks and they are the first to go when you crunch the numbers...
Getting off in the early afternoon gives me time for family then I normally slip away and get some personal work done after dinner but I don't do that every night. Or I get up early and get some personal work done before heading into work. If you are a person who preforms at peak performance when an immediate deadline is crushing down on you, having to go to work looming over your head can be a good motivator, or you might just be inclined to stay in the zone and blow off work lol... so either way it takes a bit of structure.
One thing I love about this industry is the flexibility in work hours. At H.I. we have core hours 10am-3pm. You can't show up any later than 10am, and you can't leave any earlier than 3pm.
Going in and getting off early normally means I beat traffic and have time for family and fun stuff.
On the flip side I've done the reverse too, stay up till midnight sleep till 9-10am go right to work stay until 6-7pm and head home, grab some dinner do some personal work and go to bed. This gave me a bigger block of personal time and also avoided traffic. But it's mostly a young single guys schedule who doesn't care about going outside and is fine with going from one screen to another.
Ultimately that schedule wore me out and with the hours I keep now, I feel like I have more energy, more time and more balance. Of course other things factor into that too:
Having a 5 year old daughter who is a blast to play with really helps creativity.
Eating better helps save money and makes cooking food fun instead of a drag.
Getting better quality sleep and sticking to a good sleep schedule does a lot to keep energy levels up.
Getting out and being active again really helps creativity and energy levels.
So overall health and balance directly play into my ability to be creative and do personal projects.
Some people might view my life as old and settled and they are right, but I had a lot of fun through my late teens and all through my 20's and I wouldn't trade any of those experiences for anything. But I also focused like a laser beam on what I wanted and I didn't get too distracted. So how I lived worked for where I was at the time and helped me quite a bit.
But honestly I don't think I could keep that up forever and I wasn't going to be some 50 yr old guy dropping his kid off at kindergarten and be complimented on how active a grandparent I was... It takes a lot of energy to be a parent and how I was living left me no time or energy so something had to change and I'm glad it did, because I really like how things turned out.
I try and do personal work at least a couple of times a week and I usually can find an evening or two and some time at the weekend to crank something out. I try to get 1-2 pieces of personal art done every week. Anything less than that and I start to feel a little guilty that I've been slacking off. It's been like that for the last 10 years, really.
I have a young son, so of course he is the main focus of my life when I'm at home now. Playing with him is super fun and I find it fascinating to watch him develop. It feels like he reaches some new 'achievement' every day! So even though that means I have less time for making art than I used to, I try to be more focused when I do have free time and I find that knowing that I have these small windows of opportunity means that I'm more motivated to get stuff done when I can.
I've also come to the realization that giving yourself time to think creatively is as important as actually making art. I cycle or walk to work and find that I often come up with ideas and develop them during my commute. As a result, I have a backlog of ideas for new pieces that could keep me going for months or years! Having a decent amount of time each day where I'm not distracted by work, family, internet, TV etc. is really essential for keeping the ideas flowing. It's something that becomes increasingly difficult as our lives get busier and there are more and more things vying for our attention.
I'm pretty happy with my work/life balance right now, but if someone could pass a law allowing me to work 4 10 hour days per week rather than 8 hours Monday to Friday, that would be awesome! That extra day at home each week would be amazing and it's still 40 hours right? ;p.
I try to do my 8 hours and then go home. I get a lift to work with some guys from my studio, so this is a lot easier - when the guy who is driving goes home, you go home or you have to pay to get the train home.
Outside of work, I tend to spend a lot of time (during the summer) riding my BMX. It's something I'm really into, its something not a lot of people do. For me, its one of the few things in my life that really takes you away from everything. The worry of the bills coming through your door, the stress of the impending deadlines at work ... as soon as my feet are on the pedals and not the floor, its all gone. All I'm thinking about is riding my bike. And that's pretty amazing.
It keeps you honest. Sure you have to have a bit of ego to hit those 8ft airs at the skatepark, but the slams hurt like shit. I think it promotes a healthy life balance. It keeps me healthy, it keeps me on my toes, it promotes a certain level of confidence in my own abilities in life and it keeps my ego in check when I hit the deck trying something I knew I wasn't close to being able to do.
Beyond that, I try to spend as much time as I can outside of work, away from the PC. If I have game design to do for my personal stuff, I do it pen on paper at the library, or in the park in a notepad. If I want to do some sketching or drawing - in the park in a notepad or in a life drawing class.
If I get onto something that I want to do - mountains will get out of my way. That's the deal - I think I'm on something of a similar level to Hazardous I just don't have as much opportunity to take the idea of "holy shit this is amazing" and put 200% into it.
Maybe thats what I'm missing right now,
That is depressing.
If people want to do something, I usually will go out with them if my animation for the week is coming along nicely. If not, I say no. But I need a social life too, so I make sure I still have time to "play".
I've learned something very important over the past few months.... Anyone that says they are too busy to do art, or whatever, is almost ALWAYS full of shit. "Busy" is something people make up. Those people with 2, 3, or even 4 jobs. They never tell people they are busy. They tell people they are exhausted. It's completely different. I use to tell myself and others all the time I was busy. I didnt have time to animate, or I didnt have time to join a gym. But in the past few months, I now work out 5 days a week for an hour, and I am doing an online class. My social life really hasnt changed much, either.
If you really want to do something, you make time for it. If you really don't want to do it, you make excuses.
Brilliant man.
Otherwise, I find that I spend my time constructively without thinking about it. As slipsius said, if you want to do something, you make time for it. If I have a project, I will sometimes end up spending all my time after work on it. Other times, when I don't have a project, I will just relax and do other things. It's on and off solely depending on whether there's something I want to work on.
Lately I've been putting in a lot of hours to making items for the Dota2 workshop. I think I'm balancing well or badly depending on how you look at it. 8 hours at work from 11-7 then doing dota stuff at home from 10pm - 4am. I get a couple hours to relax and do chores in-between then I get back to working on stuff. It helps a lot that at work I am always making props and environment stuff. What I make at home is completely different and a lot more enjoyable.
I make time to go out and see my friends and family on the weekends and just focus on making art on weeknights. Leaving the weekend completely open works well for me.
Ehhh trying to force this type a personality style behavior onto everyone is a good way to sound like an asshole and help nobody.
Not everybody has the mental or emotional makeup to go nose to the grindstone 24/7 -- and plenty of people who don't will still become great artists. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and you don't need to talk down to people who don't skin cats the same way you do.
I don't think you need to work 80 hours a week to become good at something. I firmly believe everyone learns at a different level, and gets better at a different speed. But if you don't put ANY time into it, then chances are, deep down, you don't actually want it. You just think it would be a cool idea. Making time for something doesn't mean every waking minute... It just means you actually make a conscious effort to get better at it. Not just when you're bored.
But the implication that someone who doesnt force themselves to draw even when other stuff in their life gets in the way is somehow inferior or just 'doesnt want it enough' is ridiculous. I know BADASS artists who don't always have the drive to keep drawing, or just felt too frustrated to keep drawing their way through art school, or just don't find much time to work on personal projects at home, because they're burned out from work and dont want to deal with it.
How many people complain they're too busy to learn new things and then spend hours watching sports? Or surfing the web? Or whatever?
If you decide, REALLY decide, that something is important to you the time will find you.
Thread ended with Swizzles post for me. I love my job and look forward to going in every day, but it's still work and I'm still human.
6-9 is family time. Gail, Gabby and I chill and hang out. 9PM both the girls go to bed and I'm left to my own devices until about 1AM. So, 10ish-1AM time to play games, art, etc.
Thats pretty much my weekly schedule of things. And I visit polycount during all of those things.
When I have a limited window of time to spend on something I tend to NOT start off that time by hitting the web, checking news, maybe playing a game and then finally after I'm all limbered up I finally get around to doing something, I actually unplug and focus.
I don't have any family in the area and no kids so that isn't something I need to balance, but I do come home to my boyfriend everyday. He's also a bit of a workaholic and a gamer so we try to balance it out and it's been working out great so far. As for friends, they are all aware that I'm pretty illusive and don't get out much, but as long as I'm not behind on anything (like in between gigs, portfolio and studying would be 15+ hours a day, which BTW Polycount Google Hangouts was awesome) I try to make an effort to see people when I can.
I've yet to be in a studio where I had serious crunch, but because I'm always keeping myself busy, I am often exhausted. It's difficult for me to sit still without zoning out and brainstorming (in fact I carry notecards with me everywhere I go should something come up). It's hard to just shut off and sit still through a movie and I sure as hell have no idea what all these TV shows people talk about are. Unless I can watch a show in the background while doing art I can't commit to it. I just wish Superman could spin around the Earth a few hundred times and slow down an Earth day to say, 32 hours per day cause then I could get more shit done.
My father worked waaay to much growing up so have sparse few memories with him. Don't want to echo that.
Work at work to avoid slipping deadlines, have an occasional beer with friends, get outside and enjoy nice weather.
You also might want to seek help. Just having someone to talk to (in person) can do wonders for your outlook.
I dont want to play up what you've done as 'the thing to do' but its undeniable that you're obsession has propelled you into the top tier of game characters artists worldwide in such a short time (in my eyes).
You're a brilliant artist man.
Whether you believe it or not, your work easily stands out, even amongst the best of the best.
That same obsession has allowed you at just 22 years of age to set a strong foundation for a career in digital arts for as long as you want to be in it.
I very much doubt there are many 22 year olds that have achieved that.
IMO youve reached the point where you can afford to dial back the intensity with which you work a WHOLE LOT! - making more time to do other stuff, and still be very easily employable.
I'd love to chat to you more about this man
Often I'll go into work and put in my 8 hours...sometimes more depending on deadlines and whatnot..but I usually leave unsatisfied due to a few reasons which I won't go into...so I get home and immediate hit personal work hard. Sometimes I'll work for another 8 hours or more...then go to sleep and repeat the process. Sometimes I'll get to the point where I see weekends as nothing more than a 48 hour window of opportunity to get more portfolio/personal work done.
Problem is, I have friends, family, and an awesome girlfriend and I neglect them too often.
Personally, I'm really trying to fight the urge and regain more of my personal life since I kinda threw it out the door after realizing I wasn't fit to get a game dev job out of college. During the times where I put half of my time to art and the other half to having fun...I end up being more productive overall, and generally felt better.
I know a lot of people think its really cool to just give up your life and pound out art all the time...but there most certainly needs to be a balance, or you'll literally drive yourself mad.
Man, I feel like this a lot. I have a very hard time relaxing and enjoying myself when I'm not working because I'm usually counting down the minutes until I can get back to work. Its been the topic of arguments with my family/gf very often this past year or 2.
I dont. Infact my parents say that I have made a cellar out of my room because I am there all the time doing work when I am awake.
Its really hard for me to leave the room and attend gatherings. The only time I get out is when I am going to my crappy odd job.
I personally like people that know when to NOT say something
I don't mind working on work related stuff at home. I just have a problem with studios that are attendance focused, because most studios are just not as comfortable as my own 4 walls. So I usually leave the studio when everyone else does.
Since I'm in China, most other friends and family are overseas, so they don't take up too much time. I spend more time here with sightseeing, weekend trips or eating out or sleeping (don't laugh, I need sleep and I love the productivity boost when you come to the office fully and completely rested and awake!)
Joking aside, I spent almost a year out of this industry just working on my personal self.
I stopped working on art for the most part, and didn't even touch a computer during that time. Some of the best times of my life.
I don't think my art suffered at all, I think it got better when I finally picked it up again.
Imo, now is always a good time to do something different. You can always come back and take what you liked about your old balance, and mix it in with your new balance.
I'm pretty stoked where I've been and gotten to in my life considering where I was when I first got my first job.
I was a pretty miserable person for a long time, but am pretty happy nowadays, and I think it shows in my work.
As for balance; I still have a ways to go, but I don't let any one aspect of my life dominate another, and if it does, I accept it as a temporary thing that needs to be balanced either now or later.
don't sleep and take one day off where you do nothing once a month. Try not to die and eat and drink water.
I also think that you shouldn't regret anything. If you've missed out on friends and parties, so be it! If you've partied and hung out with friends, it has eventually gotten you to where you are right now so there is no point in complaining about what you could have done better. I have no regrets.
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.
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.