why start a company when you can start a co-operative?
How to start a company with no free time
11–20 of 184 posts
Re: How to start a company with no free time
#12After having a baby I struggled to switch from marathon coding sessions to trying to punch out code in hour, half hour or even 10 minute increments. The best advice is what she said - plan and divide tasks ruthlessly. There's always bits of time to work on your task list on your phone or flesh out a bit of meta-code in your to-do list, and now I'm able to do the brunt of the "thinking" work in the shower or wherever, so when I finally sit in front of the computer I am mostly punching out the code that is nearly complete in my head.
It has also made me a more efficient programmer by saving time rewriting because I do most of my mistakes before I start writing anything down.
Re: How to start a company with no free time
#13For those with babies on the way like the author and reading material to get through for business, I found that a text to speech app like @voice with a good sounding voice like the AT&T voices, plus a Bluetooth earpiece helps a lot. Baby needs a bottle? Earpiece on, start listening. Baby needs a walk in the buggy? Same. Baby wakes in the middle of the night and needs to be in your arms for a while to get back to slee…
In a similar vein, I have become quite the expert at using conversational style apps (including the voice to text transcription on iOS), since I can't type while doing baby chores, but I can surely dictate.
Re: How to start a company with no free time
#14Thanks everyone for the awesome feedback :-) By the way you can find out more about what we're building at https://winnie.com.
Re: How to start a company with no free time
#15After having a baby I struggled to switch from marathon coding sessions to trying to punch out code in hour, half hour or even 10 minute increments. The best advice is what she said - plan and divide tasks ruthlessly. There's always bits of time to work on your task list on your phone or flesh out a bit of meta-code in your to-do list, and now I'm able to do the brunt of the "thinking" work in the shower or wherever,…
This happened to me too after I had my kids. More planning, less coding, and I'm pretty sure my productivity has actually gone up.
Re: How to start a company with no free time
#16I have a related question for the author or anyone: How do you keep your energy up to code in the evenings on your own project, after a full day of coding at the office?
Perhaps you shouldn't, your time might be better spent on something completely unrelated to your day job.
Re: How to start a company with no free time
#17Thanks everyone for the awesome feedback :-) By the way you can find out more about what we're building at https://winnie.com .
Can confirm, Winnie is really cool.
Re: How to start a company with no free time
#18I find my productivity gets hung up sometimes between the 'doing' and the 'learning', this is particularly painful when I consider the 'learning' to be non-useful later.
A common case for me is 'use this library/package to complete the task to do this thing', I want to write the code that uses the package, the package API is opaque, it speaks in a language that makes sense if you have been playing with a dozen different similar packages, it isn't going to be useful for any other project there is something about this project that makes this package a requirement.
I've come to recognize that I have to give myself permission to read all the docs on the package, and then read large chunks of the discussion amongst enthusiasts of this type of package, then read the original docs again, and contextualize what they say into what I need to do in order to get the package to do what I want. If I don't give myself permission I perceive all of that time as wasted just trying to get the package to do what it does and I need it to do so that I can forget it and move on.
So painful.
Re: How to start a company with no free time
#19For those with babies on the way like the author and reading material to get through for business, I found that a text to speech app like @voice with a good sounding voice like the AT&T voices, plus a Bluetooth earpiece helps a lot. Baby needs a bottle? Earpiece on, start listening. Baby needs a walk in the buggy? Same. Baby wakes in the middle of the night and needs to be in your arms for a while to get back to slee…
When my oldest was a baby I used to read the C++ annotated reference to him to send him to sleep.
Re: How to start a company with no free time
#20After having a baby I struggled to switch from marathon coding sessions to trying to punch out code in hour, half hour or even 10 minute increments. The best advice is what she said - plan and divide tasks ruthlessly. There's always bits of time to work on your task list on your phone or flesh out a bit of meta-code in your to-do list, and now I'm able to do the brunt of the "thinking" work in the shower or wherever,…
> There's always bits of time to work on your task list on your phone or flesh out a bit of meta-code in your to-do list, and now I'm able to do the brunt of the "thinking" work in the shower or
I want to move to this model of working but nothing seems to stick. Do you follow any specific routines or use tools to manage yourself?
I have tried a lot of tools but nothing sticks.