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Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

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Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#61

Post by hobo_mark »

I work 50+ hours a week already but I still manage to put in three to four hours of side-work every day (on weekdays that's usually 9pm to 1am), in my experience so far:

- The less correlated your side-project is to your day job, the better. Brain craves novelty, even after I am completely worn out by day work, by the time I've cycled back home I am ready to go again, but at something completely different.

- Move, I commute by bike and I have seen it make a big difference when you're sitting at a screen 14 hours per day.

- Make it a routine, at home I have two backpacks always ready, one for work and one for cowork, after dinner I just grab the second one and leave with barely having to think about whether I am staying in or going for another half day of work.

- Have a dedicated space, I am lucky to have a 24/7 co-working space literally around the corner from where I live or I would not be able to do this, it really helps your brain to physically switch context depending on what you do.

- It goes without saying, but you ought to really love what you are doing in order to forgo almost everything else...

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#62

Post by ajhurliman »

In bursts!

I try to do something meaningful for my side project about once a week. If it's side-project night, I put my phone on airplane-mode and tell the lady-friend I'm booked up so I can concentrate for a solid ~5 hours without interruptions.

Obviously you can't do this super often while balancing the rest of life, but it's reasonable to get it in about once a week.

The tricky part is to let ideas for it simmer on the back-burner of your mind, but not to let the flame go out completely. It's nice to walk into your session with a full agenda and a general grasp of how you're going to implement it with caveats in mind, which you can fill in during the downtime of the week. However, it's also easy to completely forget about your project.

You can counter that part by getting friends involved!

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#63

Post by drinchev »

I couldn't do it. I live with my girlfriend and at the time when I had 40hr/week job it was just terrible to work on a side project.

I was feeling tired and/or guilty in the same time. Then I decided to find a part-time job and finally became a freelancer. Much better on that matter.

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#64

Post by jakobegger »

I worked on my first app next to a 40hr/week job. It wasn't really hard, since I liked my side project. My schedule from Mo-Fri looked like something like this:

7AM: Get up, shower, cook breakfast

8AM: Take the bus to work

5PM: Come home, buy groceries, cook dinner, etc.

7PM: Work on side project

1AM: Go to bed

This worked well since I lived alone during the week (on the weekends I travelled to my home town and stayed with my girlfriend)

I got plenty of stuff done in that year.

The most surprising thing was that I wasn't really more productive when I quit my day job.

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#66

Post by SimpleMinds »

ereyes01 wrote: post #51
kintamanimatt wrote: post #23

I'm going to assume you don't have a whole bunch of children, an underwater mortgage, or massive amounts of debt to service — or some other very compelling reason the following advice isn't going to be practical for you. But if you can swing it, it's vastly more fun and productive than some of the other suggestions: Start freelancing, quit your job, and move to a cheaper country where you can survive on something lik…

This concept of moving to a different country and living on less hours of work sounds too good to be true. I've heard it proposed before, but I've never known of anyone who has pulled it off. Are there any good examples to read about? I've met really smart English-speaking developers from other countries (namely Brazil), and I didn't get the impression that they can laze around and work 22 hour weeks to put food on t…

I've done something like this. After quitting office work I followed up with working remotely. I'm not sure if I could pull this without spending some time (1+ year) in office where I was able to build connections that allowed me to find remote projects without too much hassle.

As another comment was suggesting, key is to find work for client who is based in "rich" country (for me right now that's US, some of the Europe) and is ok with you working remotely.

If I wanted to work in current location, I'd have to take significant salary cut + start pulling those mentioned 40h/week

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#67

Post by kbart »

hunvreus wrote: post #11

Same as for working out or cooking, you can always find time. I cut alcohol years ago and tend to go to bed at reasonable hours: the feeling of waking up at 5:30, getting a good workout and two to three hours of work before you even start to get ready for the office is pretty empowering. It feels like you already had a day worth of productivity in. So, to recap: 1. Don't drink (or drink in moderation). It leads to la…

"Getting up early" advice definitely doesn't work for all people. I, for example, am more productive at evenings/nights and my brain doesn't work at until 9-10am despite of how much did I sleep a night before. The better advice would be "adjust the routine to your natural rhythm".

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#68

Post by fedora007 »

hn9780470248775 wrote: post #17

Another question: How do you develop a side project when your employer insists that it owns all intellectual property you produce? Edit: As far as I know this is a very standard clause in tech company employment contracts, and is perhaps the legal default even in the absence of such a clause. For example, see "Employed to invent" under http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/pre-invention-assignm... . California is an…

Work for a friend. In my experience, they can pretty much write their own contract in that situation.

If that isn't an option, at least be head-hunted. Then you can negotiate much of the contract.

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#69

Post by peteretep »

hunvreus wrote: post #11

Same as for working out or cooking, you can always find time. I cut alcohol years ago and tend to go to bed at reasonable hours: the feeling of waking up at 5:30, getting a good workout and two to three hours of work before you even start to get ready for the office is pretty empowering. It feels like you already had a day worth of productivity in. So, to recap: 1. Don't drink (or drink in moderation). It leads to la…

    > Don't drink (or drink in moderation)
This was the key ingredient when I had two jobs and was doing an MSc.

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#70

Post by kbart »

jon-wood wrote: post #55

Most of the responses here seem to be from the perspective of people in their twenties without any major commitments other than work, so for the sake of balance I'll throw my two cents in. I'm in my thirties, married with a two year old son, and working 40-50 hour weeks for a startup, and spend all day Saturdays looking after our son so my wife has time to work on her PhD. Between that lot there's not a lot of spare…

"a mailing list of people who want to support each other"

What a great idea! I have lots of ideas, even start working on them from time to time, but then always got distracted in one way or another and leave these projects unfinished. Some support and the feeling of responsibility should really help. If you are serious about it, please add me too (my email can be found on profile page).

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