One main focus, one semi-focus, and everything else a hobby with whatever time you have left over.
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If you haven’t found a single mission that you want to focus your all your bandwidth on, and you’re wondering how to to distribute your bandwidth so as to pursue multiple interests while avoiding spreading yourself too thin, then here’s the allocation I would recommend:
- one main focus (workload equivalent to a full-time job),
- one semi-focus (workload equivalent to a part-time job), and
- everything else a hobby with whatever time you have left over. (Your remaining bandwidth is about the equivalent of another part-time job, so depending on how many things there are in that “everything else,” you might have a small number of serious hobbies or a large number of light hobbies.)
The rationale:
- You don’t want to spread yourself too thin. You need to be moving at a competitive speed in at least one direction, i.e., your focus.
- The semi-focus is like a staging area for something that you want to eventually merge into your main focus. In order to successfully complete the merge you’re going to have to develop a serious degree of expertise in it, so it has to be more than just a light hobby.
- Hobbies are mainly things that you just do for fun, but they can also serve as candidates to replace your semi-focus once you merge your existing semi-focus into your main focus.
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