Hey Indie Hackers, how do you balance your side projects and your full-time job?
What's your strategy on balancing your indie hacks? Please share your strategy on balancing full-time work with your side passion!
How do you give your project all you got?
I.e. Time, project, and budget management
Are you thinking about quitting your job to focus on an indie hack?
If you've left your job to focus on indie hacks full-time how did you do that?
One thing I've been trying lately is tracking my time with https://144blocks.com/ by @onaracs.. I like it and I think its been helping me out a lot. Nevertheless, I'd love to hear what y'all are doing to find balance in the side project chaos.
The one thing that I picked up from reading a ton of productivity books and blogs and all sorts of other things that has really stuck with me -- There's no such thing as time management. Time is constant, there's only ever going to be 24 hours in a day. Barring some incredible scientific advances, that's always going to be true.
What we actually are dealing with is priority management. When we reframe the problem this way, we start to see how we can handle things better. People constantly think about how little time they have, how they don't have time for their passions, or their side businesses, or even their families. That's crap. You have as much time as everyone else: what are you doing right now, or later today, or this weekend, that is barring you from doing the things you want to do?
Sometimes you're doing a lot of things that don't match your priorities. That can be fixed with better discipline and habits, and helped by apps like the one you mentioned. Sometimes you lack the energy to really put 100% towards what you want to do. That can be fixed with taking better care of your body, and even good ol' caffeine. But you never lack time.
I'm a morning person. So back when I divided my time between side projects and a full-time job, I'd wake up early (4am-5:30am) and spend an hour or two on my side project.
Since going full time with Indie Hackers, I've experimented with other activities in that time slot, like working out, taking cold showers, writing, yoga, walking through the neighborhood while listening to an audiobook, etc.
I’ve heard this before, and it makes sense. Give yourself the start of the day when you have the most potential to do something for yourself in the quietness of the morning. As a 41 year old my chronic late nights in my 20s and 30s have caught up with me and I’m feeling the need to sleep from 10:30-6:30. What time do you go to bed to be able to be ready to start something at 4:00-5:30 each morning?
I am married with no children, working on my day job from 9am to 6pm. I used to work on my project when I get home at night. But my wife noticed that this was occupying our time together.
Now I wake up 6am, work on my project until 8h30 ~ 9h00. Day job from 10am to 7pm. Back to home, no more work.
On weekends I work 4 to 6 hours distributed as I see fit.
This schedule is working well for me.
There are a few things to be weary of if you have a side project and a full-time job (assuming you're not sole founder of that full-time job).
Understand the terms of the PIIA you probably signed.
Don't use any company resources on your side project!
Don't lie about it, but also don't flaunt it. Try to keep it to yourself.
P.S. I wrote about all of this stuff in my recently published book, The Parallel Entrepreneur! https://www.amazon.com/Parallel-Entrepreneur-start-businesses-keeping-ebook/dp/B07CG8SV5V/
I work on my side project during my breaks at the full time job
Currently I get up t 8am to take standup at 8:15am... I work through til 3:30pm when I take my side project standup (distributed team). That leaves me to 11:30pm which is essentially 2 full work days in one day. In reality I usually work 4 hours max during that time while the rest of the team work full time (as it's their day job which I fund with my wages and the small amount of angel funding we secured).
This has always been a huge problem for me. I've gotten burnt out on about 7 or 8 projects already simply because of this "balance".
When it comes down to it, having a side project and a full-time job is a tough gig. Dev + Sales + Marketing + Full-Time job ends up eating all my time and I end up not enjoying the project at the end of the day.
This results in me losing motivation and dropping the project entirely. This has happened to me so many times that I decided to try and solve the problem for myself and anyone like me.
I created http://www.githustle.com so developers can team up with a sales/marketing person willing to help on their projects. They can focus on the marketing, while you focus on the code.
Getting help on the other aspects of your side project not only helps your balance, but is better for the health of the project as a whole. Get someone with complimentary skills helping you out and motivate each other along the way.
I actually used GitHustle to get help with GitHustle (side project inception) and I can tell you first hand that it worked for me. I focus on the site while my new found teammate spreads the word.
Balance achieved.