How do you balance your time between learning about business and improving as a software developer?
There's this constant dread to stay behind in the Software Development Industry with all those things that you 'must' learn when working as a software developer.
Llike when you started learning backend with something like Python, got a job and now are doing Fullstack development with simple vanilla JS and someone in the team decides to use React and now you need to learn it and all the best practices just to be able to keep growing and being a valuable team member.
At the same time you have an idea for a new product and you commit to it and work on it nights and weekends with what you already know and you realize that if you want to be successful you must also learn about sales, marketing, customer research, product planning, pitching, etc.
There's just so much to learn and improve as an Indie Hacker but also so much to learn as a software developer trying to make a long career out of it.
Do you have any tips to make this possible and not overwhelming? How do you organice your days so that you can improve your job activities, learn new things to grow as a software developer and learn about the necessary non-code things that you need to do to keep your side project growing?
For me personally, Most days of the week I work on my own projects and I leave one day a week(usually sunday) to learn new technologies or business/marketing topics. The way I do it is I choose a topic that potentially improve my skills as an entrepreneur/engineer such as mobile app development or a specific marketing channel and then get ready about 40 hours worth of material on that topic(easiest way to do that is to just buy an online course or a book). That way every sunday I usually finish about 15-25% of the material I had ready. Focusing on one topic every one-two months make it easy for me to keep up and get a good grasp of a specific technology instead of just 'knowing about it'.
For people who are employed you can use the same principle but you probably just need to leave a couple of hours after work on designated days/on your day off. It's best that you have a study-plan where you have a specific day you study and have your material already ready.
My advice would be to stick to the things that will profit you in the long run .Stick to the basics of Web Development(HTML5,CSS3/SCSS,Javascript). Learn React.JS for a framework/library due to the high demand and pay. For the server side learn MySql and pick one from PHP/Laravel,Ruby on Rails or Node.JS.Forget about trendy things like Deno.JS or the latest framework. And definitely don't listen to the "Ruby and PHP are dead" crowd.Levels.io built some extremely profitable web applications with just HTML,CSS(some parts of SCSS),Vanilla Javascript( used some JQuery) and PHP.
https://levels.io/how-i-build-my-minimum-viable-products/
I used to take Wednesday’s for self improvement day. I purchased a subscription to pluralsight and learned all sorts of new things.
Unfortunately, I just don’t have time for learning development anymore. I recently had to come to the hard truth, that I need to give up software development if I really want to take the business to the next level.
Great question and something I've had in my mind as well. I think the most important thing is having a schedule and sticking to it. I too am balancing my full time job, developing a side project, and learning all the extra skills needed to be an indie hacker like marketing, sales, SEO, etc.
What I do is I work my full time job and develop my side project every day. I've positioned that side project to already be learning new technologies so it is killing two birds with one stone (learning something new + working on your business) . On the weekends when I don't have to work on my job, I will devote that time instead to learning the extra indie hacker skills by usually reading books or doing online research.
I haven't launched yet, so I'm sure that the Lean Startup / Agile methodologies will only add another component to this routine, but for now its a very comfortable work load for me.
Personally, it's a trade-off between the means to your end vs the end itself. I.e. the way to get to your goal (learning) vs the goal itself. 🙂 Launching and developing an idea is often the end/goal I seek, so I try to learn things only in so far as it gets me closer to the goal. This does mean that you might skip details (e.g. the difference between CSS-in-JS library A vs B) but that's ok in my opinion! Add new skills to your arsenal when you need to. Or if you see a new tool being recommended by others, try it out as part of achieving your next goal. That way, it feels less like a catch up game