You've worked a long hard day at the office, and you're finally free. It's tempting to go home, stuff some food in your mouth, and do nothing for the rest of the night, but after work is prime time to get started on your side project, learn a new skill or language, or do something else that you have a passion for. So how do you resist the urge to fall down on the couch after work every day? How do you find the motivation to stay productive after leaving work?

It's difficult enough to leave a long day of work and take care of your household chores and other responsibilities, but how do you stay motivated to be productive at your side projects? Sure, it helps to work on things that you're passionate about, or don't have the opportunity to work on during the day, but how do you commit and make sure you stay committed, even on those days where you feel like you really don't feel like it?

This thread at Hacker News inspired us to ask you the question, and find out what techniques you use to make sure you make headway on your pet projects once you've made the decision to get started. Do you get up early and work on your side gig in the early morning, or do you lock yourself in the basement until you've made progress? Maybe you're like our editor-in-chief, Adam Pash, who promises to give his project 10 minutes each day, no more (unless he wants to), no less. However you do it, share some of your tips for staying personally productive after the workday is over in the comments below.

Photo by StockLite (Shutterstock).

Need more motivation to keep up with your exercise program? How about some actually valuable rewards, like gift cards, shopping discounts, or charitable contributions? Earndit connects to popular fitness trackers like RunKeeper and Fitbit to reward you for your workouts.

Connect Earndit to a fitness tracking service or device and start earning points towards those rewards. Currently, Nike+, Fitbit, Foursquare (for checking into your gym), MapMyFitness, EveryTrail, Garmin, and BodyMedia FIT are supported. You'll earn points depending on the activity: 10 points per mile of exercise on foot (running/jogging or walking), 15 points per gym check-in per day, 3 points per mile biking, and so on.

Those points are redeemable towards charitable giving (e.g., 3 months of schooling for a girl in Kenya for 250 points) or gift cards and discounts (e.g., $10 towards Sleevecandy collector t-shirts for 100 points or a 50% discount on PacificHealth Labs sports nutrition products for 250 points). The gift cards/discounts encourage you to buy from Earndit's partners, but if you'd buy those items anyway, these tangible rewards are valuable.

Like other sites that encourage exercise, Earnedit also offers competitive challenges with prizes to keep you going. The current Rise Bar challenge, for example, is a sweepstakes for a $50 gift card for those in the challenge who reach 100 points or $100 for 360 points.

You're trying to stay active anyway, right? So why not get some discounts or contribute to a good cause while you're at it.

Earndit

There's the job you go to during the day and the projects you come home to when you're finished. If you've got more your want to accomplish after a long day of work but are finding yourself lacking the productivity to get going on a regular basis, it can help to spend your work in the middle and pick it up right where you left off the next day. Kah Keng Tay, an engineer over at Quora, uses this technique to easily pick up his side projects:

I leave all my editors, browser windows, etc. exactly the way they are so I can pick up and resume where I left off. This means I usually never shut down my computer, preferring to put it to sleep or standby where possible.

When you leave your work in the middle, you get the added benefit of knowing exactly where you need to start back up again. If you end your work day by finishing a task, it'll often be difficult to start again because you have to figure out what to tackle next. Stopping in the middle of your work gives you one less reason to procrastinate when you start again. This is a trick you can use in nearly any kind of work, but if you're on a computer it's very simple to just leave things as they are. If you can't do that because you're sharing a machine or use the same one for your daytime job, consider making a separate user account for your side projects so it can be left in a state of suspended animation and resumed again when you're ready.

This is just one of a few tips Kah Keng offers. Hit up the full response on Quora for more. Got any side project productivity tips of your own? Share 'em in the comments!

How can I increase my productivity on my side projects at the end of the day when I'm tired from work? | Quora

Photo by Alex Staroseltsev (Shutterstock).

To-do lists are just a nagging reminder of all the things you need to do, so actually inspiring yourself to do them isn't always easy. Michael Pantalon, Ph. D, writing for Psychology Today, suggests that you're more likely to accomplish these tasks by including why you should do them as well.

We know what we have to do, as well as, when and where we have to do it, but, for some reason, we don't think about why we want to or need to do it. That's probably because we are under the spell of the "have-to's" and forget we always have a choice.

Creating a "why do" list, as he calls it, can help you remember why you actually want to do something and avoid thinking that you have to do it. When creating your lists, just make a sublist under each item filled with all the reasons this is something you really want to do. Don't include items for the sake of including them, but instead focus on the things that make you excited about this task. It may be hard to inspire yourself to do the boring chore of laundry, but you can always find reasons. For example, you may have an exciting job interview coming up and you want to look your best, so it's important to take care of cleaning your best clothes in advance. The item wouldn't be on your list if there wasn't some kind of motivation, so tap into why a task is important to you in the first place. If you can't figure out why, it might not deserve to be on the list at all.

For more tips on actually finishing off the tasks on your list, read our guide on making your to-do list do-able.

Influence Yourself With a "Why-Do" List | Psychology Today

Photo by JohnKwan (Shutterstock).