The one and probably only good thing since this pandemic has been my ability to juggle my day job with my indie project www.bitcompare.net
My productivity at work is the same or better, however, I'm finally able to juggle both without the fear of someone looking over my shoulder.
There are days where I just want to throw my hands up and quit so that I can finally go full time, but unfortunately I'm not yet in the position to do that.
How are you guys juggling day jobs with indie hacking? Any tips you can share?
Totally agree with you on hard it can be to juggle a full-time job and also work on launching side business. It is so easy to get overwhelmed and not make progress for weeks at a time (I have been there many times myself).
I actually just switched to a part-time role at my current company (I worked 30 hr/wk spread over three days). It has been a huge boost to get 4 consecutive days to dedicate to my projects and also my personal life.
Before I went part-time, I tried many different strategies to juggle work and indie hacking, the ones that worked best for me are:
Budget an hour or two in the morning, before work, to dedicate to your side projects. This allowed me to use my brain while it was fresh and not exhausted.
Pomodoro technique (25 minute work sessions), this helped motivate me to work on my side projects after work, as 25 minutes sounds very doable. I really like Flow (MacOS) app to manage this.
Spent time planning out your work for your side projects. It makes it easier to hit the ground running when you have your next few tasks planned out already.
Some really great tips. Thanks!
I've been wanting to try this Flow app out for a while.
+1 working before work - that's how I did it for two years until my side project made more than my day-job.
I also struggled to work on a side project while on a full-time job, but honestly I never figured it out, my head was always at work and I couldn't manage to switch to work on my side project, so I just quit. I kept only a small side gig that takes me just couple hours a month. Luckily my expenses are low and I have savings so I can sustain myself for long time even without regular income.