Ask HN: How do you find time for pet projects?

It's not that hard, it's just a matter of saving some time on weekends for instance.

If you don't have a lot of hours to put into them, just reduce the scope and do something you can complete in a few evenings / nights. Then if you're happy with it, you can iterate and get a real product out of it.

I elaborated more on the subject on my blog a few months back if you're interested: http://marcgg.com/2012/01/09/start-working-on-your-side-proj...

You have asked the question that I ask myself everyday. I even went so far as to start my own business. The answer to this question for me is as follows. I try to have time in the evenings after my child is in bed. I generally will see if my wife needs anything or would like to spend time with me. If not then I will go to my office and program/tinker for a while. This is a variable process and sometimes I cannot get to my office. It is all about balance. You cant neglect your family.

Also on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Productivity/How-can-you-increase-your-...

Might find some helpful answers here.

Turn some sports/relaxing/whatever time into project time.

A project doesn't have to be stressful or unenjoyable for you to make progress or learn something.

Everyone here is saying "it's not hard", but it really depends on your circumstances. I am newly married and have a < 1-year-old baby on top of a 1.5+ hour commute each way to/from work. Working on personal projects would take away from time I have to spend with my family.

I bring my laptop with me in hopes of working on the bus during my commute, but the bus is often far too packed for me to even have the arm room to pull my laptop out of my bag. Because of this, I sometimes just jot notes in a notebook, but that doesn't get me very far when the majority of what I need to do is get down to actual implementation.

I don't really have any fantastic advice other than saying it's a huge juggling act, and you need to find the right balance that works for both you and your family.

Reduce from a zillion to one, first!

Then make time: go on a part-time job (some places offer 4 days weeks), either freelancing or as an employee.

Lastly, over time it will help to work on pet products rather than pet projects.

No wife; no kids; no television; five hours of sleep per night. Easy.

Mornings. The only way to have some uninterrupted free time for pet projects is to get up and go work at Starbucks for an hour before work. The bonus is, it's usually when I do my best stuff!

You prioritise! its as simple as that, like exercising or walking the dog... if its a priority you will do it.

Married, two children. I find myself wishing the days lasted 36 hours instead of 24. :P

I have a full time job as well and do not have the time for pet projects. After work I get home and have some family time until it's bed time. Then my wife watches some TV while I work for about 1 hour tops.

As you know, 1 hour is NOTHING when developing. I take at least 45 minutes to get into a groove and ultimately I do nothing of substance.

I envy single people in that regard, they can work until their eyes drop out of their head. Don't waste your time! You hear me single people! Don't waste your time!

A "zillion" is probably too many. Focus on one, ship that, then move on to the next one if anything. Focus is really important (especially since you want to start your own startup one day based on these projects).

Also, keep in mind that context switching is expensive -- switching from one project to another requires a change in your mindset and maybe even the technologies/syntax you're working with. It's very easy to burn out just switching between projects.

Here's a schedule that I follow: - Wake up at 5:30am. Hit the gym, eat breakfast, go to work. - Work from 10am - 6pm. - Be back home by 7pm, eat dinner. - Work on pet projects from 7:30 - 10:30pm. Go to sleep so I can wake up early again.

I've realized that consistency is really important. 3 hours may not seem a lot every day but if I do this everyday for 2-3 weeks, that adds up to a lot of time spent towards one project.

I'm currently an intern. I get into the office at around 9am and I get home at 8PM. For the last 3 weeks, I've been working on a mobile web app(onevoteamericamobile.appspot.com) and I finished it over the weekend. Every night, I would get home at around 8PM, eat dinner and then program until 12PM. I wake up around 7AM and take a train to work. During my commute, I would research various technologies and come up with ideas for my pet projects. Its all in the planning my friend.

Your only option is to work hard. Any spare time I had went into my side projects. I stayed up late, got 3-4 hours of sleep a night. It sucks for a while but your body gets used to it.

All of this panned out for me and now my side project has turned into a main project and career. It sounds a lot worse than it is but in reality I enjoyed what I was doing so it wasn't really like "work" to me.

In the Navy we knew that about 10% of the people did about 50% of the work. If you needed something done quickly, you would assign it to the busiest person. Having kids and a full time job forces me to be really efficient and effective when I'm able to devote time to my project (Gramicon.com).

It also forces me to approach spending/building decisions differently. I might solve a problem with my site's code in 5 hours where an educated and experienced programmer or designer could do the same in 5 minutes. Thanks to elance and github, the ability to have others asynchronously work on your project has never been greater.

I think that people who have said it depends on your circumstances (ie: demands on your time) are completely right, but it also depends on your passion for your project. If you want to do the work and make your project a success you will find a way to do so, otherwise it doesn't really matter how much free time you have because it won't get done.

Throw away your television. About 95% of the time I spend on my projects is time I used to spend watching TV.

I also have a full time job as developer. I don't have kids, but I live with my GF which is almost as being married when it comes to having time for each other.

Fortunately for me, my girlfriend works as a nurse and has lots of afternoon/night shifts, which is great for me so I can dedicate myself to some pet projects.

However it's not easy, it's very complicated to explain to her that "I don't want to go out because I'm working on this bug...".

So you have to balance your life a little more, instead of taking 2 months to complete your project, maybe it will take 3 months. And that's fine for me. Some times can be a good thing to get away of your project and come back a week later with a fresh mind, it makes you actually want to work.

With that said, after 6 months with lots of interruptions including holidays I was able to complete my app http://codebugapp.com/ , I just released last week.

There is no "find time". There is only "make time".

Quit your job and go part-time freelance if your significant other has health insurance. You'll probably make more than you did working full-time. Use the rest of your time for projects/startups.

My employer is kind enough to let me work on open source projects on paid company time if they are loosely connected to work. However, I tend to actually use more of my own time at home (mostly on weekends) than I do at the office.

You need to keep the technical architecture of the pet projects as simple as possible.

From what I can see (myself included), there's more tendency to make pet projects more technically complicated than needed (usually because they're thought of as an opportunity for technical experiment & also less responsibility if things break), and these complexity will make project context switching much, much more painful, which will lead to less time of meaningful developing.

As others have said, if you have a zillion projects, you don't get time to focus on your projects. First, finish the one..

But, when you say a zillion projects, you automatically reminded me of how I use to be. My mind is like a buzzing bee, always having ideas. So I've got some more advice for you:

Look at what you HAVE to launch for pet project #1. The smaller details and functionalities can be added later on in v2 or whatever. I always had issues not being able to complete projects, because I was keep on coming up with "cool new additions that I insisted I needed to add". Don't, it will only delay you more and more, and you'll never launch.

Focus.

Relax.

Build v1.

Write down your ideas if you spontaneously come up with a new one for later, and brainstorm before you start working on v2 again. Then, repeat above steps. Or, start a v1 of another project. But working on multiple things at the same time isn't productive.

Different people like different approaches, but this one worked for me after getting very frustrated with myself.

I work on one project at a time. Every night my wife goes to bed at 10. I go to bed at 11. That is my time during the week. On the weekends my son sleeps from 11->1 or 2. So I get a couple of hours in there too (sometimes).

I go to the gym during lunchtime. Unfortunately that is easier or harder depending on where you work.

I think one of the best pieces of advice that is being repeated here is to have just one project at a time. I think this is golden, if you are pressed for time then more than one will kill you.

Try to carve out a few hours during your real job to work on it. Build a little momentum, and then when you get home you'll be more inclined to reach for the laptop instead of the remote.

Back before quitting my job to work on one my projects full-time, I used to wake up an hour early and getting work done in the morning. I'm not a morning person by any stretch, but I found I was a lot more productive right when I first woke up than coming home after 8+ hours coding at work. As a secondary benefit, I found that starting off my day by creating something of value that I cared about energized me and tended to put me in a better mood for the rest of the day.

Hah, wait until you have a baby! You'll love the free time you have currently.

Now, seriously, I don't have large blocks of free time anymore. So I had to change tactics. In the morning, I wake up first, so I start boiling water for the coffe, turn on the PC and check emails/facebook on my phone. My wife wakes up, we eat, dress up our baby, and she leaves with him. Every other day I have 20 minutes of free time, that I use to code or play games. Then I read books on my commute, when she's breastfeeding I read documentation, new technologies, my rss, and late at night while she is taking a bath, I have 30 minutes of coding or gaming.

And that's it. The New Reality. 30, 50 minutes, interwoven with 5 minutes throught the day. But no worries... the life of a husband and a father is what I want. It's a matter of priorities.