As someone wisely said somewhere (it may have been here), time is not fungible. I find you only have so many hours of productive work in you per day, and you probably wouldn't have spent that TV-watching time doing something brilliant anyway.
I don't watch TV and I don't have time. Day job just makes me immensely tired. I do read a lot of HN, but only because I am frequently too tired for anything else.
I see my only hope in quitting the day job. How others manage to do significant things outside of the job is beyond me.
No, but there is frequently other stuff to do. There were some weekends where I could do some work (been doing the job for 8 weeks now), but not enough to make real progress. Overall it seems too unlikely to have time on weekends regularly.
Not yet, since I only started the job 8 weeks ago. I guess instead of just quitting, I should ask them if they have any other ideas for me. 3 days a week would be great...
One big lesson I've learned is that if you want something out of the ordinary, no one is spontaneously going to give it to you. You have to explicitly ask for it. And when you do, it's surprising how often you get a positive response.