How do you manage to allocate time for your side project?
Im working as full time frontend developer, I also work on my SaaS product, but after my 9-5 job my brain is exhausted, so I feel that I am not very productive except on the weekends.
Im working as full time frontend developer, I also work on my SaaS product, but after my 9-5 job my brain is exhausted, so I feel that I am not very productive except on the weekends.
The key is to get as much done as you can before work. Here are some advice.
Talk to your boss. Give him whatever reason why it is really inconvenient to come at 9 and ask if you can do 11-7 (the later the better).
If you tend to take showers in the morning before work, start taking showers before you go to sleep and have whatever cloths you are going to wear ready. Basically do anything you can do the night before to save time in the morning.
If your lease is ending soon and you have to drive over 25 min to get to work. Consider moving closer.
Find another job that is closer or have flexible hours so you can come late.
Sleep really early, wake up really early. This is the best advice because you can do it now at no cost. If you get home from work at 5pm; eat/shower/prep and go to sleep at 8-9pm. Wake up at 4am and work for 4-5 hours.
Hope this helps and good luck =)
Your goal should not be spending 40+ hours a week on your side project. It should be to spend 0.5 - 3 productive hours on it most days. Set aside some time most days when you can put in a solid hour of work on your side project and do it. Most people can make the time for an extra hour (even if they're exhausted) each day for something that's important to them. On weekends set aside 2+ hours if you can. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Waking up earlier and if you are commuter consider to use train so you can also code during commuting. On Weekend you can find 12h and still having afternoon and evening free.
It is hard and the burn out will come because it is not really sustainable time schedule in long run. This is my personal experience.
Maybe you can ask your employer to reduce to part-time so it becomes more sustainable. Going to 32h/w will make a big difference.
You can consider to go for freelancing reducing the hours/week and work on sode project on spare time.
The lack of obligations for family, kids and mortage.., or the fact of being student or freelancer or having savings for few years to substain yourself is a big untold competitive advantage for bootstrappers.
Having a minimal income from investment or few years of savings and reducing your expenses meantime ( see the popularity of Thailand on this regards) will allow you to make a leap of faith on bootstraping.
I have a full-time job (around 9 hours a day) and struggling with having a side-project time allocation, but a few tips worked for me and of course can be improved:
1-2 dedicated hours early before starting your full-time job can give you add an outcome to the side project.
Using break times (depending on how the working day is going).
Finish the full-time job activities early before the deadline and use the rest of the time on a side-project until the next full-time job activity start again. Basically to align between both of them.
Having a calm place on the full-time job work can work well. Otherwise, I am using my pods with noise cancellation.
Having a manager who cares about the outcomes of your full-time job more than attendance works great (avoid micro-managers as possible as you can).
Since I have other activities during the day (personal ones), I may postpone them for 1 or 2 days and focus on a side-project.
My experience is that there are a few main factors. First don't burn yourself out, recovering may end your project completely (I have committed this error more than once) - so limit your time if you are exhausted. Second factor is I would not let more than a day or two go by without at least thinking about it for a short period so you don't lose momentum. It's ok to make most of your progress on the weekend (think architecture and hard problems), try to accomplish less brain intensive tasks during the week like documentation, tests, and planning what what to work on during the weekend so you can jump in and make progress when you have the mental bandwidth.
Consistently making progress is the most important piece to the puzzle.
@AdamSmallcomb thanks for your advice !
Save money from your job. It will buy you freedom.
I'm working from home nowadays and I decided to get up just slightly earlier (between 7 and 7.20) and skip the YouTube videos I'd normally watch while having breakfast. I stopped missing them after a while. Instead, I code. I feel like I can be more productive in the mornings as opposed to after work.
Get up 1 hour earlier and spend that time programming.
1 hour of highly focussed programming time for 5 days can mean a lot.
9:30-4:30 day job
5-8:30 family and kids
9-10/11 rest + sport
11-1/2am night job
It's been said, but +1 to getting up earlier. I've really found that the best of both worlds. By brain is fully used yet, and I still get evenings with the family.
At least 20 hours per week.