Work Life Balance
Hey all
3 months on from my last post on Indie Hackers.
Build of my new side project has been going well, over the last couple of weeks I've been doubling down on extending my test suite and getting my application deployed in to a staging environment for my first Saas client to start testing with a view to getting them live in late April/beginning of May.
Towards the backend of last year, I took voluntary redundancy from my FTE role, about that time I started talking to target customers and took the decision to pivot an existing project I'd been working on and align it the needs of these customers.
I used my time in between jobs wisely and managed to come out of the other side with a decent working prototype that I could demo to my first customer.
In February I started another FTE role, and have been really struggling to stay motivated with such limited time to work on the project.
Part of me feels like walking away from this project at the moment, but I realise that would be self sabotaging given I've invested too much time and energy to not make this work?
How do you guys stay motivated whilst working full time?
Thanks all there are some really positive comments on this thread.
I think ultimately for me to feel balanced - I need the following things in my life:
Fitting in all the above was fairly straight forward whilst I wasn't working, its amazing what you can achieve in 8 hours particularly building stuff in Django.
Last week I was in a bit of a depressive cycle and allowed thing to get on top of me.
Work was challenging, I was struggling with bits of the side project I'm building.
The reality is, that my side project is just that, its not revenue generating at the moment and until its able to match what I'm earning I should accept that its a medium to long term project and as such it moves at its own pace.
There will be times where I have more time available to dedicate to it, whilst at others my focus will be in other aspects of life.
The main thing is consistency, 30 mins here, an hour there as long as things move forward and I'm building the right thing.
How to balance? Maybe you already have an answer before you post this.
managing a side project is for sure tough, but you've come this far! Kudos to you
wow, nice move to get some stuff done in between jobs. That was a bold move! glad you got a lot accomplished.
Congratulations on the progress with your side project despite the challenges of juggling a full-time job!
Setting small, achievable goals and carving out dedicated time slots for your project can help maintain momentum.
Realize the power of celebrating even the smallest victories along the way.
Keep pushing forward!
I think it's not only your problem, but anyone with a full-time job and side projects will find it hard to make both work well. I find myself a little bit motivated by inspirational quotes about the future and success, and I also keep the expected outcome within my reach so that I always remember what I decided to do. I've also built an app to help me with this.
It's definitely a challenge staying motivated with a side project on top of a full-time job.
I always try to imagine myself in 10,20,30 years, looking back on this period and asking "Did I give it my all?". Knowing I put in the effort, regardless of the outcome, brings a sense of accomplishment you just can't get from giving up.
Plus, who knows where this project could take you? ☺️
Yes, totally.
I guess there is a level of impatience as well in terms of wanting to get the project launched.
The work will never go away if its succesful, so maybe its more a good test of being consistent and using time as a constraint to only build what is neccesary.