Tips for managing a side-project with a full-time job

I want to always allocate extra time to my side projects, and try to strike a balance between the permanent job and the side-project. I believe that I and other people have a challenge on it!

As I have a full-time job (around 9 hours a day) and am struggling with having a side-project time allocation, below are few tips that worked for me (of course it can be improved!), and I would like to share them with you.

1-2 dedicated hours early before starting your full-time job can give you an outcome to the side project.

Take advantage of the early time, as it is often quiet in the full-time work environment, if you work on your side-projects in the early times, you can focus more and avoid distractions coming from many sources.

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 starts again. Basically to align between both of them.

This is a trick that you can use when there is a deadline of a task or activity related to a full-time job and you finish it in advance early but not announce that until before the deadline of activity directly, in case there are no other activities available to work on then you can use the rest of time to do side-projects.

Having a calm place on the full-time job can work well. Otherwise, I am using my pods with noise cancellation.

For me, I prefer to work in a quiet place where I can focus, especially while sitting in offices in the presence of co-workers talking to each other or having calls, or while working at home and having more than one person at home.

Currently, I work through my laptop, this means I can move between meeting rooms or find a quiet place where I can work outside or inside the house, in offices, if I have to sit somewhere full of sounds, I use my headphones with noise cancellation feature enabled.

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).

This is a very important point and several factors play an important role, not only in finding a good manager.

Personally, I dealt with several managers, and I saw both good and bad. I always prefer the leader who gives a chance to his/her team to be self-managed and a manager who trusts the individuals to finish the work and help them to face any obstacles.

This means to make sure the manager cares about work outcomes and work progress is on track to meet the agreed objectives instead of reporting what I am doing and knowing where I am! It can depend on the organization's HR policy and decision makers' mindset there.

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.

I always remind myself that I am human in the end, it means there are ups and downs, some days will be productive and others will be the opposite of that.

I prefer to always focus on one to three activities to complete (based on the effort that can be taken) instead of having a lot of things to do and working on side-projects in addition to that! where the daily plan looks messy.

Sometimes, I postpone some personal activities if it's not urgent to work on side-projects instead and it's useful.

Turn off the notifications while working on the side projects

The notification has become a big source of distraction for me on either a phone or desktop device, the good thing is that there is a way to put them off through focus/silent mode and can be customized for urgent calls/notifications only based on the operating system I use.

Turning off the notification helps me focus and look for unimportant things later once I finish activities on side-projects.

Use the Pomodoro technique to focus on the activities

Pomodoro technique is a time management approach that helps and encourages you to work and focus only on the work pon a specific time. It works by breaking the work duration into 25 minutes chunks separated by five minutes breaks. I used it and felt there was big progress on activities I have, so try it if you didn't!

Listen to background music to get involved in the activities

While focusing on side-project-related work, I listen to background music especially Lofi hip-hop / chillhop playlists, and it has a huge library of songs where you can find them on YouTube and Soundcloud.

Plan the activities on your side project

Having a simple plan of activities required to complete your side-project is very useful, and if there is any big activity that has a big effort to complete, break them down into small chunks of other activities or tasks, and don’t forget to set an expected deadline for these activities as soon as you can :)

For me, I am using Trello as a Kanban board for putting activities on columns (Not Started, In Progress, Completed), it's a very good productive app that I used through my phone and desktop also.

Use break times (depending on how the working day is going).

You can take advantage of the break time in a full-time job to be used in the side work, and try to move and walk even if at very short intervals to break the routine of sitting in the office chair for long time.

What have I learned from balancing between a full-time job and side-projects?

These are some points I learned from working on side-projects while I have a full-time job:

• There is no perfection, I am satisfied with gaining continuous improvements rather than being frustrated because I didn't get what I wanted to do perfectly.

• There are ups and downs during the day, and lots of daily challenges, but I believe these challenges make me stronger than before and an opportunity to learn how to face them and gain skills as well.

• If there is time lost in the full-time job, especially if I have an HR policy requiring me to be at work for a fixed number of hours and finished my actual work before the number of required hours, then I use the remaining time in side projects and some activities that strengthen my skills (using the compensation method).

• Learning how to be focused through useful available tools and techniques like turning off the notifications and any other distractions sources, Pomodoro, and listening to the background music, by the time it becomes a daily habit.

Hope these tips are useful for persons who have a full-time job and want to work on a side-project at the same time, and the floor is open for you for additional useful tips :)