On one hand, there's definitely a lot of time management concerns at play - being able to find time amongst all of the business of life, work, kids, etc. That is something you'll have to sort through, but keep in mind that it's not always about finding "more" time. There is often pockets of time that aren't being used as efficiently as we might, but there's also cases where you've just optimized all you can, and to do more means taking away from other important things - like time necessary to just recharge and blow off steam to be able to handle another day.

When our schedule's maxed out, there's only one other way to go. It's called the 50% rule because it speaks to how the totality of your time is being spent. If you're able to carve out an hour to spend on boxes, but need to fit your 50% rule in there, well in the absence of other scraps of time, you're going to be cutting your boxes down to half an hour. Or, what's probably more feasible, is doing an hour of boxes 1 day, and then an hour of play the next day (which most will probably find more feasible given the 10-15 minutes necessary for warmups).

In terms of not being able to draw things you're happy with - or, "I'm not sure how I can draw for fun when I'm not happy with the outcome" as you put it - there's a little word you snuck in there. "Fun". How am I supposed to draw for fun, if the act of drawing isn't fun? And if I can't have fun, well how can I follow the 50% rule?

Well, the 50% rule doesn't actually mention fun. It's very specifically absent, because I found that in previous iterations on that content, the word "fun" immediately caused people to derail, because the rule exists there not with the expectation that for half your time, you're going to have a good time. Very much the opposite.

The 50% rule is akin to exposure therapy - it's exposure to the fact that what you draw will not turn out the way you wish it would. Nobody likes drawing things that turn out badly, at least not at first (except for children who don't know better). What the 50% rule does is over time, it gets us back to the mindset of that child who doesn't know better - the child who can attempt to draw whatever comes to mind, do so horribly, and still grin and show it to their parent expecting it to go up on the fridge.

Adults don't do that. Adults get caught in their own heads and stress over the fact that with their 25 whole hours total of drawing experience under their belt, that they're not at a point that is reliably employable and the foundation of a fruitful career. Adults complicate everything, and are exceptionally good at sucking all the fun out of anything.

Unfortunately I don't have any suggestions on getting past the frustration - just an explanation that the frustration is the point. Just as the point of mining is to get through stone to get to more useful materials beyond it, the frustration is the stone we clear away for the 50% rule. But being the adults that we are, this is nothing new. We do it every day in our jobs, in our chores and errands. We do frustrating, unpleasant things all the time. The only difference here is that the world has gone a long way to convince us that drawing isn't supposed to be like everything else. That it's magical, and wonderful, and that if you're not having a good time with it every step of the way, that you're the problem.

In truth, drawing is like anything else. It's a useful skill, and it can be enjoyable to pursue - but you're going to suck at it to begin with, and that beginning's probably going to last a lot longer than you want it to. So, look at the 50% rule as just another job on your list of responsibilities, and don't let it wear the fancy magic hat like it's something special.

Now there's one last thing I wanted to mention - you talk about having trouble visualizing things to put down on paper. Now that's a very short sentence and I'm going to read quite a bit into it - so this may not be relevant at all. That said, not everyone can visualize things in their mind's eye. It's a condition known as aphantasia, and basically refers to those who cannot conjure any mental imagery to accompany the things they attempt to perceive in their minds.

Many people dread that this means they will never be able to draw, while others go in thinking that learning to draw is supposed to address this issue and unlock the ability. I can't speak to whether someone with aphantasia can rid themselves of it or not - but I can tell you it doesn't really matter one way or the other, as I too have aphantasia. I released a video about it a couple years back through Proko's channel, which you can find here. In that video I demonstrate how different references can be combined to create new things, but upon reflection I've noticed that this makes it seem too much like reference becomes a requirement for those with aphantasia, which was not my intent. Rather, the overarching point is that aphantasia does not restrict one's ability to draw - and more importantly, in my experience it actually ends up being harder for those who can visualize things quite well, as they have to deal with these expectations of things they want to draw, and continually fail to measure up to it. Conversely, I never had that problem - I instead dealt with the crushing fear that I'd never be able to come up with anything creative or clever, which fortunately was not the case. It was simply yet another skill I had to learn, to generate ideas.

Right now, you're still very early in a journey that will require you to learn a lot of different skills, with Drawabox only touching on a few (albeit a few important ones). The purpose the 50% rule serves is to push students to prove to themselves that it is perfectly okay to draw badly, because that is what is necessary to ever experiment and explore in the way that will push your boundaries and that will move you closer to your overall goal. When we focus on all the things we lack - I don't know how to draw people correctly, I don't know anatomy, I don't know what a toaster looks like, etc. - we close ourselves off from drawing.

If however we recognize those things as being completely irrelevant to whether or not we should draw - that a person drawn badly is still a person, and that a toaster that looks like a minivan occupies space just as well as one that looks correct - the path that lays ahead becomes a lot less uncertain.