How do you stay focused on working a 9-5 and building your Saas?

After years of trying to "find the time" to work on side projects, I've waved the white flag and have resorted to taking a nice skeleton of a schedule and growing into it. I like my job and I don't want my performance to suffer, I have other things I must fit in like daily workouts, and I realized that if I'm asking myself at 7:00pm if I want to work on a side project the answer is always going to be a resounding "no" (and that doesn't make me a lazy person per sé)

So far, I've been pretty good at keeping my eating schedule on point (2pm/5pm/9:30pm) and I've been adding other little anchors into the day to tie everything together. Once your body starts to expect something it's amazing what you can do.

In the end, you have to be both proud of what you're able to do in a day and feel refreshed enough to replicate that effort day after day after day. For far too long, I'd fit in heroic efforts on a Saturday, 2-3 very small sessions during the week, and constantly be at risk of falling off the next weekend. I now know why Warren Buffett says if he had money to bet, he'd put it not on the person with the most talent but the person with the best habits.

Be ruthlessly consistent. Even 1 hour a day on your project adds up to 30 hours a month, and if some days are 2 or 3 hours then you'll be at 40+ hours a month.

At this pace you'll have enough time to deliver something in just a few months.

Remember it's a marathon, not a sprint - if you pull a bunch of hours in 1 day you end up skipping a bunch of days after to make up for it.

For my personal situation, I realized I could make enough money to pay the bills by working ~25 hours per week at my day job.

I intentionally found a job where the employer was okay with that from the beginning. It's also remote and I can choose when I work those hours. I know that's a privilege, but there's plenty of jobs out there like that.

I spend ~3 hours each morning (my most productive working hours) working on my SaaS project. If I can find enough success with my SaaS to pay my bills, I plan to quit my job.

So my suggestion is to look at your personal situation, your financial situation, and find ways to trim your day so you can spend at least 2 hours/day on your own projects. You'll have to make sacrifices no matter what -- just keep the end-goal in mind!

Two ideas:

1. Find someone or something to hold you accountable.

It can be a partner, a coach, a spouse, a family member or a bot. Doesn't matter. But someone or something you feel you would be letting down if you didn't follow through on your commitments.

2. When you get tired, frustrated or distracted refresh your why.

You need to remember why you're doing this. Write it down. Journal about what life will look like when you're successful. Listen to music that is associated with your why. Refreshing it when you feel it waning will help with focus.

I have given up on SaaS or at least paused it for the moment. It’s too much to take on with all of the other entrepreneur “stuff” you need to do in at little hours I have.

Instead my plan now is to survey a market - the people, problems, attitudes and solutions. The personas. I will then test ideas using various techniques, see if I can sell them a morsel such as an ebook or email subscription.

Develop a schedule and routine you can stick with day after day, week after week. Plan your weekly activities on sundays and know what you need to get accomplished each day and each week. Knowing your self and what times of the day work best for doing what is also key to accomplishing each task every week. For example knowing you can write and focus better in the mornings while your still able to work out in the afternoons. Also meal planning and eliminating time wasted doing other activities such as cleaning, cooking, eating, writing emails, ect. Knowing what parts of the day your able to get work done while also scheduling the tasks you need to get done the day before will help a lot to accomplish everything you need to week after week.

I am on the same boat and unfortunately my job sometimes doesn't necessarily end at 5 although it should. So for a very long time my saas efforts were only mere planning (aka wishful thinking). The covid lockdown came in as a blessing in disguise , I was able to find couple of hours free time easily per day, time saved in commute and unnecessary meetings that tend to happen at work places. This kick started things into motion and I was able to actually do some work on building my saas. The progress has been slow as things are getting busier at work as well but the dream of creating a product on my own some day is what keep me going(regardless of if it will ever make any money or not). Also reading the many success stories of indie hackers here has been a big motivating factor.