Any indiehacker who have a full-time job too?
Just curious if there are many indie hackers here who also hold a full-time job like me?
I am trying to work on a side project while working full-time as well. But many distractions, high workload, and burnout can cause delay for me to work on my side project at night.
I recently back to working on it at night. Just wondering how other indiehackers with full-time job manage their time and prevent burn out?
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full-time job + wife & 3 kids.
I only work when they're sleeping (5 - 10 hours / week)
maintain balance.
Put relationships first, then self-care (exercise), then whatever puts food on the table, then work.
Nice! Must be tough to do that. That's also one of the reasons that drive me to work more on my side project! Hopefully, I can make some side income doing the thing I love before having a family and thus more responsibility.
I do!
Pace yourself - I work a pretty demanding job and do the nights and weekends bit, I try to be strategic with my time and give myself a break.
I probably spend 4 nights a week on it, and a couple early mornings here and there. It's can be very tough so I'd say set certain nights of week as work nights, and others as 'you' nights to just relax and hang with friends/family/a significant other.
Also, be goal oriented. Set a goal for the night - it's easy to just keep working and realize it's 1am and you need to be at the office for 9. Setting a goal gives you a "I'm done" point to then go to sleep and get back to it the next day.
Oh and coffee, but not too much otherwise you won't fall asleep.
The coffee doesn't work on me somehow but sweet drink (Sugar rush) do. I avoid that as well.
Agree with the settings goals part but I will say is the opposite for me. I tend to set too "big" a goal that I either can't sleep at night without completing or feel tired waking up the next day.
I read Atomic Habits and is trying to put into practice and ensure that I do a really small thing every day. When I feel like it, I will do more, but no longer settings proper goals anymore. Felt that it help me sleep better at night =)
Yup. Full-time web developer at an agency and working on my side projects after it. It can be tough going, but someday I hope it'll pay off :)
Same here! About a year ago, I switch to become a product manager and start to code lesser now in my day job. So some days, I feel really refreshing to be code and some days are just pure tired! Hope that we both get our pay off soon! =)
Yep, I'm a full time dev at www.dealerinspire.com and work on www.helpflow.in in my free time. I find that working on the side project once during the week and once on the weekend is a good balance. Sometimes I'll do more or less depending on life, scheduling, and how I feel.
Hey, fellow dev! Yes, I begin to intentionally work lesser now so that I don't get into burn out state again. The past weeks I been working like 2 night on a weekday and usually spend my Sunday on it as well.
People like you (and the ones responding to this thread) motivate me! I am a full time college student and part time freelancer, but I work on thegoodstartup.com as one of the higher priorities in my life right now. Keep doing what you like whenever you can, that's what makes it fun!
fulltime job as a physician trying to pay off massive loans.
it's tiring trying to do anything after a busy 12 hour shift gone wrong...
Must be really tough. I can understand. I work as a technical product manager at a start-up. We have almost half a million users now. Whenever there is a production issue, it drains off all my energy by just tackling that with the team.
On a normal day, I try to put some work every day into my side project now. Will monitor and see how it goes.
Hey Zac !
I also work too a full time job as a sales advisor in H&M nothing to do with tech at all...and the schedules are a mess...
I do not know how your journey looks like but for example this is what it worked for me.
I used to get tired sitting in front of the laptop , so I decided to walk to work 10 kilometers total, and ditch the car.
This is very important for a persons mentality, you know, fresh air...and exercise is really good.
I would not recommend you coffee at all if you code at night.
Something that is good to do is to try to have a schedule for it, push yourself to have it as a routine after a month or so, it becomes automated.
You mentioned burnout.
This simple saying helped me a lot.
"If there's a will there's a way."
Don't hesitate to ask.
Hey! I work as a technical product manager in a startup. So is actually all tech for me, day and night.
The good thing is, I begin to code lesser now during my day job and doing more on product management as we grow. So now, it starts to feel good to code at night without worrying about all the soft skills and prioritization.
I figured that my burnout comes from the goals/tasks that I set. Maybe it was too big or maybe it's not realistic for 1-4 hours a night. I actively avoid that now and only set goals for the weekend when I know that I have a full day to work on it.
It feels good, at least for this 2 week. So I am curious hows other IH with a fulltime job do it. Do you set a goal or have a list of TODOS for your side project every day?
I guess the best thing to do is set up micro-goals instead of how long you have to work that night.
Like for example, this is how I do:
We say I have to curate 3, 6, or even 9 color palettes. I do not set up time like, by this time it has to get finished.
What I do instead is, markup the skeleton on HTML first so they just get the style when I am ready to curate them, this takes 10 minutes.
The day after, I start curating them, for me, it takes from 15 to 30 minutes to curate a palette. So I say, ok today I curate 3, tomorrow I can do 3 more, and so on. It has been days that I have set up a goal of curating.
If I have to do some SEO, content marketing, or so on not related to code, like, list colorsandfonts.com in directories so I say, ok, today, before I go to bed I have to list it in 4 places.
It might feel little, but day by day is a lot...
Yes, I think micro-goals is certainly the best thing.
I don't usually set long hour so it helped me actually. When I am stuck or go into deep work state for too long, I look at the hours and know that I should have stopped.
Great site btw, didn't know about this. Would certainly save me some time in designing
Sup !
Yeah, do that, if you feel pressed, is better to stop than do things quick and wrong.
Thanks mate, I launched on April on PH, is a young site...
Working full-time and nights are spent working on Flowist.io!
It's definitely hard finding time where you also have energy.
Couple things I've learned:
I'd love to hear your tips as well!
Hey, nice landing page on Flowist!
Agree, having a fulltime job definitely take away a lot of energy!
I kind of work when I feel like now as well. I feel that this has worked really well so far rather than settings goals every day.
I don't really set a goal now but I do set a time limit before I start working base on how I am feeling that night. I document everything that is yet to be completed and continue the next day if I feel like.
Yes, I always enjoy building something that will help others no matter how big or small it is. That's also the reason why I actively want to keep working on my own side project.
Something that has been working really well for me lately is to do something small every day. There are days where I don't feel like coding a lot, so I just spend time doing some other tasks like designing or making very minor changes on the side project.
That's great to hear! I defintely feel you on the setting big goals. Sometimes it takes a couple of late nights to realize that the goals we set are not inline the scale of what we're building. I.e. MVP product needs minimum viable improvements (what I call my goals each night). So instead of "complete this feature" it becomes "write out the work needed to complete this feature, start, and decompose again all the discovered work"
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Awesome! Hope to build a product that is just there and able to earn some side income too. £500,000 is really good for an indie hacker (one/small team) too!
Do you still having a full-time job now or just working for yourself?
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Yes, definitely a sensible thing to do. I am great that there are indiehackers forum to meet different people like me who share the same goal =)
Hope that we all can reach FIRE someday and still building things we love!
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Financial independent, Retire early (FIRE) movement. Is usually refer to heavy saving and investment to accumulated enough passive income and retired early.
I feel that the goal is the same, create side projects and make side income off it. Once we are able to overtake the current job ARR, we can possibly look at retiring. Then just spent time on doing things we love. Which for indiehacker, continue building product we love.
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