Ask HN: How do you find time to code/build your business in the evening?

In the evening, wind down the day, have a beer and plan out how you're going to use two hours in the morning tomorrow most effectively. Set one clear goal. Then...

1) Go to sleep

2) Wake up early (I recommend 6am)

3) Do the work you thought up last night

I find myself remarkably productive in this cycle. If you've planned well, you'll whiz through the tasks. Focus on "doing one thing" each day and you'll be racing through iteration cycles. I find that I'm usually so productive like this that I can comfortably keep the weekend purely for recreation guilt-free, rather than continuing to iterate on my down time and burning out.

This is how I built http://goodgecko.com

It's taken about 3 months* of doing exactly the above, now has paying customers and is an extremely satisfying "side project"!

UPDATE:

*I should elaborate - 3 months since the very barebones MVP. The MVP took about 2 months and featured basic surveys and a one-page sales site. The current product features web, mobile, popup and kiosk surveys and has a fully-realized sales site. The sales site itself took about a month to make...

Then: 1) I never sacrifice dinner with my family and I try to "be home" from 5-9. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally.

2) Always prioritize your most difficult work first. If you start with "check HackerNews", time will disappear. Finish a use case first then reward yourself. Pick a new feature to ship each night and the progress will fuel you.

3) I've never liked working super early in the morning, so I take quick power naps in the evening (30min to 1hr.) to refresh and work from 10-1. Solid, uninterrupted 3 hrs.

4) Passive work (like catching up on HN, other sites) can be done with MacBook in lap on the couch if you want to unwind with some Tivo.

5) Don't be afraid to invest appropriately. I'm actually taking vacation next week to complete my punch list: finish coding, meet with an advisor, attend a trade show and prepare product for beta.

A good summary of other things that can be done to improve and simplify your life is at zenhabits: http://zenhabits.net/brief-guide/

That's something my Dad (a writer himself) told me when I wanted to write a book when I was young. And it's true for business as well! When I wrote just a little bit regularly (a page or two a day) I got a _lot_ done in a month, but then I started just writing in batches, marathon sessions here and there, and nothing really got done plus I lost wind pretty quickly.

Now I'm working a day job and writing code for another startup idea and regularity helps me, this time I plan to stick with the consistency, rather than degrade into spurts, so that I finish this (unlike the book).

For me I just finished my mvp for http://democratic.ly in 3 weeks. I worked on it after 4pm on weekdays and during the weekend. If I was organized or had more programming skills it could have been much less time to MVP. But from the start I had a very clear goal.

My other tip is to listen to your body's signals. If you're sputtering out, grab a snack and walk around a bit. Speaking of which, it's about time for me to do that right now!

I usually make sure I have what I want to do in the evening sketched out in a notebook at lunchtime - which is when I do research etc.

The thing that makes this possible is pretty much having a "regular" day job that is within walking distance of where I live - 20 minute walk away. With a commute I'd be too tired to do anything at night (I know, I have tried). I usually get home at 6pm - same time as my son gets home from school.

The other thing I have found is that staying up past midnight is a bad idea - I even have an alarm set on my watch to remind me to start shutting down at 23:50.

I tend to sleep most soundly when I've just fixed some horrible bug or implemented some sweet feature!

Note that includes plenty time with 11 year old son and my wife - who has a much more high-pressure job than I have (I do all of the cooking).

The biggest problem I have is finding large enough blocks of time (> 30 mins) to concentrate on the task in hand. The only two blocks that I've managed to secure are early in the mornings before the kids get up and on my commute to work. I use the return journey of my commute to plan what I'm going to do the next day. Although this strategy only provides me with a few hours a day, I find that this is sufficient to give my project some sort of momentum.

I tend to avoid evening development as the quality of the work I produce isn't optimal and it would eat into the time that I want to spend with my very supportive wife and children.

For a while I was working late nights and making good progress but since having our 2nd kid it has been very difficult to get back into it. Being depressed over the day job and money definitely doesn't help.

It's interesting that so many people recommend the mornings. I can see the logic but from a practical point-of-view, I don't think it will work. My kids are v. good and sleep from ~7pm to 7am but they're awake earlier in the mornings and just happy to stay in bed. If I get up at 5 or 6am then I'm going risk waking not only my wife but also rousing the 2 children too. Maybe I'll give it a try next week but I'm sceptical.

One thing to bear in mind... when working in the evenings I've found progress is roughly: 1 week of evenings == 1 full-time day. Things take an extraordinarily long time to complete.

My current job is still technical, but I'm not working as a coder. As such, I have a lot of energy to put into a project. In fact, working on the project is one of the things I look forward to when I get home.

Something to keep in mind when looking at a job. How much of your personal capacity will be left when the day is over?

It works well for me because I'm awake and thinking about tech problems anyway thanks to the morning, and an hour with no distractions is enough to make small gains.

I choose small pieces of work to do that can fit in about an hour. My wife does writing/school in the evenings, so we often sit together and work. If I don't have the mental attention to write code, I work on other things.

Funny enough, I've been very productive while taking my oldest kid to karate. I've built a surprising amount of my application at the dojo :)

I start my day job early (at the office around 7) so that I can get back home and spend more time with the family until bedtime.

I've also learned to accept that my progress might be slow some weeks because I've made the decision to put my family first.

But neither necessarily coincides with your peak creative period.

The muse comes on her schedule and sleep is just something in the way.

When she's absent, you're just tacking more time onto a long day.

My point is, focus on everything else and somehow, the time will manifest itself. Whether it happens because you're avoiding something else, or just because you're not used to doing nothing (like I used to do, and still do, a lot) in your downtime. Just be sure you aren't avoiding the family. :)

2) I'm lucky enough to have a high paying job, enough so that I can afford to have house cleaners, and I also pay my brother to do our laundry every few weeks (this is a win-win, since he gets spending money). Sometimes I feel bad for not doing these things myself, BUT in reality it's working and that's what counts. To be honest, if I made less, I might consider going for funding instead of working, but since I make good money, I consider that to be my investment in my business. That being said, I still have household chores to do, but you just have to get realistic about how much you can really do, whether that means getting help, or just NOT doing chores (sad, but true)

3) Since I know have much more limited time than other people, I really really REALLY need to find ways to keep the product lean and focused. Everyone says they try to do this, but you know, necessity is the mother of invention.

4) Finally, sometimes I'll be in bed, it's midnight and I need to wake up early for work. I'll start thinking about the product and get so excited I have to get up and work on it for an hour or so. And of course, since I'm pumped, I'm much more productive. This is horrible for my sleep, but I think it's a fair trade for starting a startup, in addition to living a full life with family and work.

5) Assuming you have a supportive spouse, he can take the kids for an outing to the zoo, or whatever, on Saturday mornings and you can get a good 6 hours in. We find it to be a win-win, since they get to spend quality time then.

Turns out that I basically needed an assistant. Since I was building features for my cofounders, we decided that we should pair program (except they don't know how to program). So they act as the "feature manager" and come up to my apt for 2 hours a nights a week and we work together.

A few key points: the feature managers MUST have their thoughts detailed out. In order for me to crank out code, I need to know exactly what to do. I think there's a cognitive cost when you have to shift from implementation to design mode (and even testing mode). You'll be amazed how much it helps to push those responsibilities out of your brain (and yet still get fast feedback).

Doing this, we've gotten probably 4 months worth of work done in the last month, without me increasing hours. Seeing how efficiently I can implement features made my cofounders realize that it's worthwhile to pay me even 1/4 time, so that I can reduce hours elsewhere. Been a real game changer for our company.

I also try to tackle the larger/tougher parts of my side-projects on weekends instead. To make my weekends more productive, I try to finish the interruptive boring work such as laundry etc on a weeknight when I don't feel like coding. That way, I don't have to worry about it over the weekend.