How do you motivate yourself to work in the evening?

First question: is there absolutely no circumstance in which you can opt instead to wake up extremely early and get some work done then?

If working late in the evening is your absolute only option, one thing I would advise is to develop a "ritual" of sorts for getting your mind ready to do work. For example, when I do the following specific tasks…

• Walk into my home office
• Put my phone and laptop on do-not-disturb mode
• Set a work timer for the length of time I intend to work
• Write down a) the specific project I want work on and b) the specific set of action steps that will be required for me to beginning this session of work

…I almost always then feel fired up and ready to go, no matter the time and no matter my prior energy levels.

I'm a night owl and usually have a ton of energy at night. In particular, I like two things about working at night:

1. It's eerily quiet and nothing is really going on, so there are few distractions.
2. There's a deadline. I need to go to bed. I tend to work hard and focus when I have a looming deadline.

If you're tired at night, perhaps you're more of a morning person. The good thing about being a morning person is that you can get both of these advantages early in the morning when you wake up. So I'd recommend working in the AM, instead of at night.

I'm not sure how you can work this out with your partner, since your kids might be up by the time you get up. But if you're tired at night and still trying to work for two hours, consider going to bed two hours earlier and then waking up two hours earlier for some alone time. It'll be super quiet and distraction-free, and you'll have the deadline of knowing that soon your family will be awake.

looking at my bank account.

But, to be honest, I have a goal and I am heading towards it.

I find working on the sofa in front of the TV helps. It's a mind hack - you think you're chilling, but you're still getting work done. I only put things on the TV that I've seen a million times before, so it doesn't require any attention.

Also, try and work on things you find motivating. I used to work at a design agency building Django apps all day. The last thing I wanted to do with my evenings was to build a Django app! So use a different technology that you're excited to work with.

There needs to be a limit to how late you're working. Otherwise you'll be much less productive the next day. Set a limit of a couple of hours.

Hey @brabus2 - agree with pretty much all the comments here. I'm in the same position really, so I'll add on something I don't think others have said.

Think about joining a community to help support you when you have low energy levels. I get inspired by what others are doing, and also a bit competitive - that really drives me on.

I don't think it matters what community as you'll find people to work with but for me I've found the Wannabe Entrepreneur Co-Working space very useful - especially the virtual room where we can work with others: https://wannabe-entrepreneur.com/

I would make it super simple.
Write down your specific goal for those two hours.
Time it.
Maybe join a silent co-working session with others if you think external pressure helps.

Use a nighlight app like Flux to relax your eyes but don't put it on the darker settings because those will make you sleep.

However, I think it's more important that you work on fixing your schedule so that you're not doing that particular task during those hours bc you can't fight your body without hurting yourself over time!

Hope this helps!

If you’re a morning person, you can always wake up early and spend your best hours on your project.

For me, exercising before dinner helps a lot. Feels like a good reset that bisects the day, gets some endorphins going, and leaves me feeling more energized and excited to use the evening hours productively. I also like to do the normal workday without music and then put some lowfi on at night to make my side project feel more like a reward than just another kind of dev work.

Dude, I have a crazy 9 year old and a 6 year old. I feel ya. By the time I get them to bed it's all I can do to watch an episode or two with my wife before passing out on the couch. More often than not I fall asleep with my laptop on my lap. BEST ADVICE I can give from doing this for years is that I am more creative at night and more logical in the morning.

My tips:

Evening routine:

• explore fun new technologies, UI designs, or other things that might inspire you
• play with more visual parts of your app, generate website copy (don't post it), explore branding ideas, or something you feel takes your creativity
• do something that sets you up for success in the morning like make a todo list - it'll clear your mind and help you sleep
• get to bed to get at least 6.5-7hrs of sleep (everyone is different here)

Morning routine:

• get up at least an hour before the kids do. Get some focus time when you're at your optimal mental state and the house is quiet
• DO NOT doomscroll, read the news, twitter, whatever. Forget everyone else for as long as you can. Your brain has just cleared it's short term memory (if you got enough sleep) and you can't pollute your thoughts with anything that doesn't move you forward. Keep your mind clean. Let the world find you, don't go looking for it.
• make some coffee / tea

Power tips:

• As Hemingway reportedly did, when you power down for the night, leave yourself a very easy error to fix, function to complete, obvious thing to do. It will give you an easy place to jump into and get you in the flow faster. Nothing is more intimidating than a blinking cursor.
• As someone else posted, do something to move the ball forward a little every day. Nothing is more motivating than momentum.
• When we tell others about our progress before it's complete we get a little identity satisfaction that subtracts from our motivation. Feel unsatisfied, it's good for you as long as you're making progress.
• Get some good noise cancelling headphones (Airpods Max are amazing)
• Don't feel guilty about working a couple of nights a week instead of spending it with your wife. This one is hard for me. Long-term goals over short-term, I tell myself.

Best of luck - you're not alone!
( this is my first IndieHacker post! )

What works for me is really getting my earbuds in and putting on some cool house/electronic music. Mostly just instrumentals/beats in the music such that i don't have to listen to lyrics and wonder what's being said, haha. It's simple but works for me 99% of the time.

Hey. I don't know if my answer is relevant but do you have some of the health basics covered? Such as 1) Eating clean 100% 2) Standing up every 30 minutes and moving/stretching for 1-2 minutes 3) 5-10k steps a day 4) Working out 20-30 minutes a day (can be stretching if you prefer something with no effort and easy to do). For me, if I don't do everything I just mentioned I feel terrible and have low energy

For me it helps to plan my side project tasks in very small pieces (like 5-10min tasks), so If I have some spare time during the day I can get some of them done quickly, and then in the evening I'm more motivated to continue working.

It sounds like a cliché, but my current motivation comes from a long term goal which I can only reach if I work in the evening. I look at this goal. regularly and it motivates me to push through.

• set a motivating goal or vision. Don't bother with it being SMART. Just something which will make you REALLY happy.
• revisit this goal at least once a week
• if you are not motivated to work, look at the goal. Visualize and "feel" how life will be, if you reach the goal

And last but not least, I tried to get up at 6 in the morning and getting one hour of personal work done before attempting the main job. In this hour I try to do one major thing which brings me closer to my goal. This morning progress ironically helps me to stay motivated in the evening, because there is visible progress.

Hey @brabus2. That’s something I did for one-year straight to work on the evening. I hadn’t kids by that time, but I can tell you it’s hard. You feel tired all the time. It’s not something I recommend, at least not when like me you need 9 hours of sleep time!

Instead, here are three things I did:

• have you considered working on lunch time? When you have another job it’s a good moment where you can easily find 1h of working time (sometimes a bit more) every business day. Just find a lace quiet and let’s code.
• or have you considered working on Saturday/Sunday morning? You have kids now, so it’s a good moment to spend with the family. An alternative would be to work when your kids are snapping. I did it for about 3 months and by miracle my kid was asleep for 4h straight…
• or if you really only have evenings, try not to push yourself too much. Working every two evenings is still something! If you loose sights of what matters, you’ll start to feel angry and it could be detrimental to your family/friends.

I don't. If I force myself to work in the evenings I'm too switched on when I go to bed and it takes me forever to get to sleep. So, I force myself to disconnect in the evenings; this way I'm more likely to get a good night's sleep and have a productive day the following day.