Switching between "school mode" and "startup mode"

The trick for me has been to stay on top of assignments so that they don't get in the way. Ideally you could do all of your school on campus then head home and get to work. Another option is to bring a laptop into class and pretend to take notes while instead coding away.

Condense your school work to a single day in the week or two consecutive days, I juggled my class schedule so all the courses I wanted to attend or had to attend were in a single day, I did all my homework assignment for the week the same evening and had the rest of the week free to work on my startup. It was an exhausting day but very rewarding and empowering.

Try to cast everything you learn in the context of your startup. This way your learning is more focused and powerful, it will improve your performance both in school and with your startup as it forces you to tackle the material head-on.

I definitely feel you on the "it takes a day to switch modes" thing. I only really get into the mood on the weekend . My big problem is that many of my assignments are group projects so I can't just get them out of my way at my own leisure. I can only multitask in class so much without losing what the prof is saying so I don't tend to get much other work done in class than taking notes.

I had severe attention issues with all my classes. I'd spend class after class day dreaming about my hacks. But I still went to class, often without a laptop weirdly. I think I realized it was a rare time I could be away from my laptop. Suffice to say I had more db structures and site flows in my notebook than class notes. It didn't make for pretty grades but heck.

I really don't want to advocate my ways but it works pretty well for me: I don't go to class. All of my classes have notes online, I just attend the review sessions before exams. If you're interested in the topics covered you already know the basics, and if you're good at it (strong correlation to interest) you should be able to teach yourself the lessons via Wikipedia and the notes.

The reason I don't advocate this is because it's a pretty good way to get low B's, but makes A's very difficult. I feel that one of two things make this ok: 1) you're going straight into a startup out of college, where GPA doesn't matter 2) you already had a big-name internship, and potential employers won't even care about GPA (except Google, but that's a whole other debate)

I've found the second to be true from personal experience. It's a very dangerous path, but the free time payoff is huge.

I guess there is a huge advantage to finishing your general education requirements early...

Same problem occurs after you get a day job, but to a lesser extent. The nice thing about employment is that once you go home at night, your time is yours (or should be), so you don't have any homework or studying that you should be doing. You're still limited to 2-3 hours/day of decent worktime, and that's still not enough to really start a company, but at least you can concentrate decently on it.

I'd recommend that you finish college, get a job at a software company for 1-2 years, and then do the startup. A job will let you see the sorts of problems that people are willing to pay for (they're usually more difficult than you imagine in college), and get you in the habit of writing code all day. And it'll show you what the alternative is, for the rest of your life, if you don't make the startup fly. You might even pick up some technical skills.

If you're really really passionate about computers - enough that you just can't concentrate on class - then I'd suggest dropping out, going to work for someone now, and starting a company a couple years down the line. I have a couple friends that took that route and their careers don't seem to have suffered for it at all; in fact, they seem to be doing better than others their age (namely me ;-)) because they didn't waste 4 years on something they weren't really into. But since you phrase it as "nearly impossible to work on my startup on days that I've been in class" instead of "nearly impossible to work in class on days that I've been working on my startup", I doubt this applies to you.

Do try some smaller open-source projects though, stuff you can do in a weekend. Or work on someone else's open-source codebase. That stuff looks really good on a resume, and you'll pick up some really useful skills.

THAT is your problem.

You want to be an entrepreneur? You will have to switch modes 4,397 times per day (on good days). "Switching modes" should take seconds, not days.

Figure out how to do this and get back to work.

While it probably makes more sense to secure a degree than make sure you immediately take a job after college, the pressure of a job being the default thing to do (and perhaps the weight of your loans) make it likely that you'll always have to deal with being divided.

That said, I don't have a solution. I've had more time to hack since graduation but it's always a few hours here and there.

At the end of the day I can't wait till I graduate so I can throw myself into my startup 24x7. The one thing I've learned though is that during school you normally spend more time worrying about what's coming up next than actually working on it. So by pushing everything to the last minute I don't have a choice but to work efficiently to get things done.

It is very frustrating to not be working on my startup all the time - funny I never feel the same way about not putting 100% into school. I guess I know what I want to do when I graduate in two months ;)

I personally juggle school, a full-time co-op, a rock band currently recording an EP, a consulting company, two startups (one is on its way out), and a few hobbies.

How do I do it?

1. I love everything I do.

2. Multi-tasking is good. When we're in the recording studio just mixing, I'm coding or answering customer emails. Same goes for boring classes.

3. I sleep 3-5 hours a night, though I'm no stranger 5 hours in a particular week.

4. I exercise and workout to keep me on my toes.

5. I try to stay single as much as possible ;)