Curious about what other people do to maintain the energy (and money) to work on side projects after work. What's your side project working schedule like?
Regarding energy, I do what I can when I can, and I don't stress about things taking a long time.
Regarding money, I don't spend any. Between free services, free/promotional tiers of paid services, and open source tools, there's rarely a need to spend anything until your project is generating cold hard cash.
Either that, or it's just mentally exhausting to be productive for a full day. It might not be that the job is bad, but rather that the amount of energy for certain kinds focus and tasks is limited.
In that case, if the desire to do side projects is great enough, I suppose the correct solution would be to try going for a somewhat shorter work week.
I think I have reached a critical point in my career where I have to choose whether I work to live or live to work. I prefer the prior, so I will be going that route.
I'll be resigning on Wednesday.
I'm also a morning person, sometimes I devote my morning time to side projects first. And I leave my actual work to the later part of the day.
But if I need to work on my sides during the evening, one trick I found is making my room extremely bright, making me think that it was still daytime. I also force myself to be away from my bed. As soon as I lay down, there is no way I can get up and be productive.
Morning side-project hacking here too, even though I'm not a morning person. 5am your brain is fresh from sleep, there is no social obligations, no phone calls to answer, and you have a time limit for motivation so often plan your projects better.
I have an hour commute to my real job, so I use that to hack on my side project before and after work.
Setting small goals has always helped me keep up the energy to move it forward. When you're working in really small time chunks, it's important to make sure you have something achievable to accomplish. You're not going to be able to do things like "finish the sign up flow" in one night, but you can do things like "finish the authByPassword() method" and still be moving forward.
As for the money aspect of it, that's simple, just don't spend any. Bootstrapping is all about doing more with less, so don't spend anything until you absolutely have to. When you do finally start writing checks, make sure you're spending on things that will have the highest impact.
(I also wrote a book with more stories and advice, with a whole chapter on negotiating part time work based on my experience and that of others: https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/)
I work from home which gives me about 30-60 mins extra compared to those that commute. Often I’ll work a bit in the morning. Then at night once my 7mo old goes to bed I work for another 1-2 hours before sleeping. I leave all my editor and terminal windows open so I can quickly switch back to my side project as needed during lunch or while other software is building or off the clock.
I always make sure to workout, sleep plenty and eat right which tremendously helps my mental fatigue. Also I quit my high stress job and work for a company with much more relaxed work environment so my daytime work is fun and doesn’t burn me out.
But I agree, it’s not easy balancing life, family, passions, future aspirations. It’s like a wheel you’re trying to keep balanced and round and things will always give and take.
1. If it's to learn more, I would instead suggest focusing on learning on the job. It's more realistic, you can get more resources, etc.. E.g. I've found learning new programming languages much easier at work than in my spare time: https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/09/09/learn-a-new-programm...
2. If you want to create a side business, I've done some combination of working half an hour each morning and increasing my personal time by negotiating a part-time job. An interview with someone who has negotiated shorter workweek at many companies: https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer...
Sheer force of will. After working at a computer all day, sitting at a computer and working late into the night is the last thing I want to do. Thinking of the alternative, which is spending my life working for someone else, is my main motivator. I can't see myself doing that forever, and I know things won't change unless I put in the work. So I do my day job from 9 - 5, hang out with the family from 6 - 9, then work until 2am.
My strategy is just to push myself to get _something_ done, even when I don't want to. So, the other night I wrote an SQL query. It was probably 20 mins of work, but it brought me closer to finishing the project. Other days, I'll end up "feeling it" and putting in several hours on a project. So, small increments plus the occasional big push.
true. my whole side project output yesterday was a shell script that monitors if another process is running and lights an led on the raspi if yes :P
40 min work. But one step closer to the goal
- Working on side projects that have less overlap with work and scratch technical and creative itches that aren't a part of my day job.
- Getting in the habit of sitting down to do some small task every day. Some days that turns into a multi-hour super-productive hack fest, sometimes it's writing a piece of copy and that's it. Now that I'm in that habit, I put in a really productive session about 2x per week on average, but I try to not care about that statistic.
- Setting easily achievable goals every week, and trying to consistently surpass them (examples: add an 'about' section, write a query)
- Getting serious about working out and eating mostly right fixed the afternoon doldrums for me. I normally do weights and cardio in the morning before work and a jog/yoga/swimming after.
An omnipresent underlying sense of anxiety and rage caused by something or other in my past that is useful for work but not useful for building relationships!
Michael Jordan was great at doing this. His hall of fame speech is filled w/ anecdotes about him turning slights into motivation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLzBMGXfK4c
Don't try to do anything meaningful if you have less than 2 hours in a sitting to devote to your project. Block off a 4-hour window every weekend, and take a day off once per month where you put in a full day.
I find trying to work on projects after work just leads to a bunch of time wasted context switching, and 'not unwinding' can be seriously bad for your mental health.
The key to keeping up motivation is some sort of success or reason to think you'll be successful. In the beginning, us entrepreneurs are filled with confidence (or dillusions depending on how you look at it). It's this confidence that keeps you going. But, as reality sets in and no one uses your app, you begin to realize it's not going to work.
I guess thats why they always recommend release soemthing early , so you can get some small measure of success: at least get some positive feedback to validate your idea.
I take the opposite approach. It's NOT good to work on side projects after work. That's reserved for the weekends.
Spend your after noons doing other stuff. Excercise, other hobbies, talking with ppl at a bar, etc.
Buy a PS4 and put it next to your PC. At least to me, playing video games give me some energy and some escape after work. After that, I tackle small 30 minute tasks. Don't take side-projects too seriously!
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadRegarding money, I don't spend any. Between free services, free/promotional tiers of paid services, and open source tools, there's rarely a need to spend anything until your project is generating cold hard cash.
In that case, if the desire to do side projects is great enough, I suppose the correct solution would be to try going for a somewhat shorter work week.
IIRC this was how Scott Adams found time to draw Dilbert when he had a full-time job.
But if I need to work on my sides during the evening, one trick I found is making my room extremely bright, making me think that it was still daytime. I also force myself to be away from my bed. As soon as I lay down, there is no way I can get up and be productive.
Setting small goals has always helped me keep up the energy to move it forward. When you're working in really small time chunks, it's important to make sure you have something achievable to accomplish. You're not going to be able to do things like "finish the sign up flow" in one night, but you can do things like "finish the authByPassword() method" and still be moving forward.
As for the money aspect of it, that's simple, just don't spend any. Bootstrapping is all about doing more with less, so don't spend anything until you absolutely have to. When you do finally start writing checks, make sure you're spending on things that will have the highest impact.
It doesn't work well if you have to get off every half an hour to switch trains. Or if you can't get a seat.
Best so far is 4 day work week - Friday is exclusive for me, weekends for family. Pay-cut is 20% but I gain 50% more time off, time is money too.
(I also wrote a book with more stories and advice, with a whole chapter on negotiating part time work based on my experience and that of others: https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/)
I always make sure to workout, sleep plenty and eat right which tremendously helps my mental fatigue. Also I quit my high stress job and work for a company with much more relaxed work environment so my daytime work is fun and doesn’t burn me out.
But I agree, it’s not easy balancing life, family, passions, future aspirations. It’s like a wheel you’re trying to keep balanced and round and things will always give and take.
1. If it's to learn more, I would instead suggest focusing on learning on the job. It's more realistic, you can get more resources, etc.. E.g. I've found learning new programming languages much easier at work than in my spare time: https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/09/09/learn-a-new-programm...
2. If you want to create a side business, I've done some combination of working half an hour each morning and increasing my personal time by negotiating a part-time job. An interview with someone who has negotiated shorter workweek at many companies: https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer...
Getting out of bed early. Getting something done on a side job. Getting to the gym.
I work on something that's actually fun.
- Working on side projects that have less overlap with work and scratch technical and creative itches that aren't a part of my day job.
- Getting in the habit of sitting down to do some small task every day. Some days that turns into a multi-hour super-productive hack fest, sometimes it's writing a piece of copy and that's it. Now that I'm in that habit, I put in a really productive session about 2x per week on average, but I try to not care about that statistic.
- Setting easily achievable goals every week, and trying to consistently surpass them (examples: add an 'about' section, write a query)
- Getting serious about working out and eating mostly right fixed the afternoon doldrums for me. I normally do weights and cardio in the morning before work and a jog/yoga/swimming after.
my link
https://www.seejodhpur.com/
If I open absolutely any distraction within the first 15 minutes after I get home, my night is shot.
It's funny how much of my time is dictated by momentum alone. In a sad, "Do I actually have free will?" kind of way.
I find trying to work on projects after work just leads to a bunch of time wasted context switching, and 'not unwinding' can be seriously bad for your mental health.
I guess thats why they always recommend release soemthing early , so you can get some small measure of success: at least get some positive feedback to validate your idea.