How did you overcome the lack of energy to execute?
This is a vent as well as a question. I'm a software engineer with a career of almost 10 years and still in my 20s. More often than not I feel frustrated in work, I've been feeling like that for my past 3 jobs.
I come to Indie Hackers and consume tons of material on enterpreneurship for inspiration and some wishful thinking. But I've never managed to execute on any of my ideas due to the lack of energy to work on them outside of my work hours.
How did you overcome this lack of energy? What are your stories on being a part-time founder?
Start working on your side project just half an hour per day, everyday. You can find the energy to do that, right?
This is how I started, and it's literally the only way I can manage to get anything done. As a father of 4 kids with a full-time job and a house to maintain, it's impossible to get hours of uninterrupted time. I work on my project 4-5 days a week, 15-60 minutes at a time. I also take time to relax. It's VERY slow, but it's still progress. Much better than nothing if you ask me!
Potentially unpopular opinion but here goes...
Your kids won’t always be this young and need this much “care and feeding”. Also they won’t be asking “will you play with me?” in their teens. Don’t miss out on this unrepeatable era. Trust me on this one.
You’re in your 20’s, you still have decades ahead of you. I’m not saying to give up and wait your turn, I’m saying pace yourself and lay the groundwork. Do small projects and build your skills, learn and hang out with your customers, and your peers (and kids!). Don’t burn yourself out. Trust me on this one too.
Life has its seasons, this may be your winter of discontent but spring is on its way.
For context, I’m 52 with an 8 & 5 yo and I’m just getting started, launched last year, still working most of the time.
Same situation for me (only one kid though). I find 10pm - 12am is the best time, depending on how tired I am.
How do you decide what to work on? Do you plan ahead or decide on the spot?
I keep track of my development process in Notion. I know exactly what I need to get done to reach MVP stage, so I focus on that. I rarely work on a single thing at a time though. Right now I have 3 features at various stages of development. I just work on whatever excites me most at the moment I sit down to work. It helps me prevent burnout.
that's how I work if that helps. Getting there, slowly but surely.
I like this approach. Instead of setting your goal to 8 straight hours or something, you can start small. But doing it every day is the important part.
If you want to know more around this topic, I can strongly recommend "Atomic Habbits" by James Clear.
Thanks for the advice, that's spot on.
Sometimes I work a bit on it, but find it frustrating to have achieved so little. When in reality, my current problem is the way I look at that progress.
Imagine that after 60 years you are laying on your deathbed. You hear that beep sound from a machine that keeps your heart running and you start to realize this is it, last day you'll ever live.
You are going to start thinking about your life and you are going to regret a lot of things.
Now, try to think about what kind of things you are going to regret. Do you think you'll regret not making a million dollars? I don't think so. But you'll regret not trying to execute on that little idea you always had. That thought will follow you till your last breath.
Don't let this happen to you. Start tomorrow :)
I have hade exactly the same problem.
The only thing that helped me is to plan it out.
1.) What I want achieve
2.) MVP - what is the core and the minimum of the minimum
3.) Break it apart into 30min. to 1h work blocks
4.) Plan this blocks the same way how you make an appointment with the doctor - It can't be moved.
I was previously working every night instead of watching TV. But my current solution is getting up 1h earlier (6am - before the family awakens), check my plan and work for 1h on my projects before the whole day starts. This way I have the motivation and feedback that something is moving forward even when the steps are very small.
You just have to do something. Anything. There are no excuses: just create something & put it out there. Then do it again.
I started writing a comment to this and it got super long, so I created a new post instead:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/5f9a0c96f2
I like to think that if it's "the right idea" (for you), then it will give you energy. I work full-time and also sit on a board of management for a not-for-profit charity, but still have the energy and drive to work on my side-project with any remaining time I have.
I'd suggest reducing the consumption of material on entrepreneurship for inspiration for a period of time. It's too easy to spend hours fantasising your future through other people's lives and ideas.
Spend more time deep-thinking. Think about what you know about life (forget the software engineering part). Take yourself away with a pen and notebook and start writing.
Spend hours thinking about you, your life and the lives of others (and the problems that you could solve) and you might start to have ideas that speak to you and energise you. Use your software engineering to the solve the problem.
May I suggest that you take it easy and not work on any of your ideas? It sounds crazy, but once you really want to work on something, the energy will find you, and until then, it just means the ideas aren't interesting enough to explore.
In today's day and age, it seems like everyone and their mom is doing a startup, and it's partially true, but it doesn't mean you have to make it your goal, not until you really want it to be your goal.
Much like the only way to lose weight is to eat less and work more, the only way to create is by making more and talking less. If you are feeling out of energy, I'd suggest to do the opposite - take time off. After your work, spend hours, days, months ... doing absolutely nothing. Get really bored, get so bored that you start crawling on walls. Then do something with that energy.
This comment was deleted 5 years ago
This may or may not work for you, but try to become a morning person and work on your side project before your job. The basic idea is this:
Becoming a morning person may not be appealing at first, and you will probably need to adjust your nighttime routine to go to sleep earlier, but I think most people can do it.
If you want some ideas, check out "The Miracle Morning" https://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Morning-Not-So-Obvious-Guaranteed-Transform/dp/0979019710 ... there's a lot of fluff in there, but also a lot of inspiration and good ideas. The basic idea is that 1) anyone can be a morning person, 2) you can make your mornings super productive, 3) the way to do so is by creating a morning routine or habits that jumpstarts you into action. The author provides a bunch of habit sequences but you don't have to follow them all. My routine is pretty simple:
I do intermittent fasting until 11am which has the benefit of not having to worry about breakfast.
Start with just 30 minutes of side project work in the early morning and try to make it a habit. Wake up earlier and spend more time on your side project if this is working for you.
Good luck!
The morning person thing is very good advice. I'm already one, but I dedicate that time to work instead.
After a bit of thinking I've decided to try and find a work that gives me a bit more freedom regarding time so I can take advantage of the time I'm most productive.
Thanks!
Take a vacation. Leave your room, your house, your city. I've never realized how burntout I used to be before being forced to go on a vacation by my family. Routines can become highly monotonous, and whenever I feel the lack of energy to execute, it's time to leave work alone for a few days and escape.
I think a lot of it is about finding meaning in what you do. I stopped a lot of my work and projects this summer because I realized they weren't making as big of an impact in others' lives as much as I wanted it to, so I created thegoodstartup.com to showcase the companies that were making a difference in the world. Even now when I work on the blog before our launch, sometimes I procrastinate, but I reason with myself as to why. I think about my friends who are working hard and creating companies that are saving lives or saving the planet even when they have little money in their bank accounts, and that motivates me. If my friends are doing this and the companies I write about are doing this, then what's my excuse to not do my bare minimum?
This comment was deleted 5 years ago
Aw thank you!! I will get back to you as soon as I can!
You may want to try to work on your projects first thing in the morning by waking up a bit earlier. Giving your best ours to your projects will make you feel way better.
It's very difficult, especially if you have a family. The earlier you start, the better, your time will only become more limited as you grow older.
I think the suggestions to start small are spot-on: the project that takes the longest is one that you never start. People underestimate how far you can get with small, but regular steps.
I recommend reading atomic habit from james clear.
one of his ideas in the book is the environment is more powerful than your willpower.
That means if you are always annoyed and pissed of because of something (e.g. shitty job) fix those things first and your motivation will come, instead of staying at your job and hope you get magically motivated somehow.
Personally I found that to be very true, having a lot of stress in a job or a living arrangement drains all the energy out of me.
Read Make Time.
https://www.amazon.com/Make-Time-Focus-Matters-Every-ebook/dp/B078QSCM3V
100% talk to people who would use your product.
Where are they? I don't know.
BUT... I know that when I found them, and random other people in this world said "yeah I would 100% use that!
It gave me immense dedication...
Knowing there were customers out there ready to use.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
If it's a lack of energy, do all the good stuff like people say (health), but I'd start cutting stuff out of your life. Sit down and make note of where your energy is going and purposely redirect the parts you can to where you want it to be.
Being frustrated in a job can also be drain on energy - are you in the right role (need a bigger challenge)? Right company (better team/environment)? Are you working too many hours?
If this is instead a lack of motivation, one of the best ways I find to get motivated is commitment from a customer and a deadline you can't miss. Commitment can be gained through a vision alone, no code/grand efforts necessary. Just start testing ideas out and get feedback ASAP. That's where the adventure starts.
Tim ferris's fear setting https://tim.blog/2017/05/15/fear-setting/ was a big help. Read it around the time it came out, it was a bit before my 17th birthday and it helped me a lot.
What don't you want to happen in 1 month, 1 year, Your entire life ?
I think if your problems are purely physiological as opposed to psychological then it may possibly help working on your projects early in the morning
Are you happy at your current job?
In the past, I've always found that the enjoyment of my full-time job would have a big impact on my motivation.
Throughout times when I was working alongside a passionate team that shared similar values, it would always encourage me to pursue my venture outside of hours.
On the other hand, working within teams where I'd grind throughout the course of the day would only strip away any motivation. The frustration would emotionally exhaust me by the time I got home to start working on my product.
My advice would be to find a job you enjoy in a field that's relevant to your own projects.
My take: stop consuming information on entrepreneurship and get bored.
Instead of: open browser, read, listen to podcasts.
Do: rest, then stare at a screen, doing nothing.
You don't get energy by looking at websites, you drain it.
Rest or go for a long bike ride, those generate energy for me.
A little more on the boredom part:
http://vitabenes.com/boredom-the-cure
Ask yourself if you desperately need all of the money you're earning at your (I suspect) full-time job, if not, try to switch to a part-time job.
I never had the energy to work on my ideas when I got home. By switching from a 40 hour to a 32 hour work week I not only got 8 consecutive hours a week to work on my ideas, I also literally bought that time, so I had the feeling I couldn't waste it on watching YouTube or Netflix, and I'd actually get things done.
I had some pretty serious mental blocks that just meant I couldn't get started on projects. It was very frustrating but fortunately I've figured out how to get moving.
The best tool that I found for is from cognitive behavioral therapy. Maybe it will be helpful for you.
You can take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the center...
On one side you write the costs to getting started now
On the other side you write the benefits to getting started now
Then just fill in everything you can think of under each column.
I know it sounds a bit silly... rationally you know it's important to DO something... but I find that the act of writing this stuff down is somehow really theraputic + kicks you into gear.
The other thing I believe is that -- action does not come from motivation -- motivation comes from action... so you really need to get going. That's one reason why I find this writing exercise to be helpful... because it's a very small way to get going.
But yeah. For some reason working on your own projects can be a lot more difficult mentally than working on someone elses'
Hope this helps.
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
What do you do to avoid psychological addictions?
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
Thanks for the response!
Wow! This is good advice. Mirrors my experience.
This comment was deleted 5 years ago