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

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 time, but I'm also in the process of starting a side project I hope to grow into a business.

Recently I've finally managed to get a bit of momentum behind that. The key was to book a week of holiday from work, with the intention of building an MVP during that time. I didn't quite get to something I feel I could sell in that time, but I did make enough progress that I feel like its worth continuing.

The other thing that's working to my advantage is having moved house to be closer to our families. That means I now have 10 hours of train journeys a week over the two days I need to be in the office rather than working from home. Its not an ideal situation to work in, the internet connection is intermittent while traveling through the countryside, and sometimes I'll lose 30-40 minutes waiting for their to be a seat, but it does have the advantage of being a block of time that I can dedicate to it. You can get a surprising amount done in two hours when you focus on it. I'd go so far as to say if you can't make time outside of work, move two hours away from the office, and buy yourself an annual train ticket. Maybe I'll turn it into some sort of coworking movement, bringing together commute hackers.

The other key thing has been to try and notice when I'm wasting time, and to back out fast. There's no leeway for yakk shaving away four hours when that's half the time you have to work on something this week. I will say I have mixed success on that front, having recently lost a week to the decision I should stop using Bootstrap. Eventually I killed that branch, and got back to focusing on what matters, but it was super painful.

Finally, and the critical thing for me at least, is having a side project you truly care about. If you just feel like you should be working on a side project for appearance sake you'll never find the motivation to stick at it. My Github profile can attest to that, with a steady stream of things I spent a few hours on and then got bored of.

I'd love to hear from anyone in a similar situation, and maybe start a mailing list of people who want to support each other. If that's something that interests you, my email address is in my profile.

Use your paycheck to directly pay a braindead coder with zero creativity or ambition who does nothing more than meet requirements, like you're fucking dictating to them. for added oomph they can be in a low-income country, but people with no creativity or initiative or ability to translate requirements into code aren't worth much anywhere.

So rather than code anything yourself, just give htem requirements that read like a to-do list for yourself, after you've already doen all the theoretical leg-work:

#1.1 to-do: when this form is submitted, pop up this confirmation form:

#1.1.1 Confirmation asking if user wants to leave page? #1.1.1.1 if user clicks yes, redirect them to the link clicked #1.1.1.2 if user clicks no, keep them on page.

#1.1.2 Form submission: when user submits form, run valdation

#1.1.2.1 if the name is not betwene 2 and 30 characters show an error "Name must be between 2 and 30 characters"

#1.1.2.2 if the email address is not in the format (one or more characters or numbers) @-sign (one or more characters or numbers) and contain at least one period after hte @-sign, then error message reads "Please input a valid email address."

and so on and so forth. stuff that makes your eye water regarding how incredibly, uselessly boring it is, like you're an executive and can't even tell your business manager to accept a bid, you must fucking dictate the letter itself.

However, as incredibly annoying as this process is, it takes you approximately half an hour to do a day's worth of work with it. You can review progress every day in half an hour over breakfast.

So, there is your answer regarding how to build a side project while you're working full-time: manage dirt-cheap disposible developers on Odesk or Elance who get off on adding absolutely zero benefit whatsoever of any kind to a project, besides doing exactly what they are told in painstaking detail.

This is being made from a throwaway because I haven't heard this idea expressed and people might not realize that this is the answer. As for my tone/style, I think it's completely wrong for any developer to agree to be in such a role, and the REAL correct solution would be to manage a creative, contributing developer who gets equity in the result and has more free time than you. But what do I know.

The better question might be to ask what are you doing instead and why. It may be that those things are more important to you, or it may be that you are avoiding other issues.

For me, the challenge in understanding my own choices, is understanding the root of those choices. It can help if you have a neutral third party to talk to about why you choose to do X rather than Y, but barring that there are other techniques you can use.

One is to make an appointment to spend 1 hr a week on some project. When I do this I start with a fresh notebook and pick a time either before I go, or after I get home, from the office to spend on this project. Then when the time comes the first hour is dedicated to writing down in the notebook the goal of what I'm trying to do, why I'm trying to do it, and the things that will have to be true before I can achieve that goal. After an hour I close the notebook and go about my life. The only rule is that during that hour I work on the project and nothing else, and if unavoidedly interrupted I make up the time lost that same day.

The things that make that possible are; It is only an hour, same as watching a TV show or reading through the front page, the notebook retains my mental state between sessions so I don't start out wondering what the heck I was doing last week and what needed to be done.

I found that for me what I really hated was spending an hour coming up to speed on a project and then only having a few minutes to work on it. Very unproductive and very demotivating. But with a process to stop and restart a project in hand, it takes away the restart lag and so I can be productive nearly right away (perhaps 10 minutes reviewing my closing notes from the previous session). Also if my check list is good then I have a good idea of how close I am to the goal.

Time is a finite resource, and learning to budget it will serve you well throughout your career.

Dedicate time to doing. I took at least one day that was me time, where I went to Starbucks after work and spent a few hours every week cranking out code. The disconnection from your home life, whether that be your significant other, or the mountain of TODOs around the house helped me to focus massively.

Don't beat yourself up over it taking a long time to get something together. Its going to take a lot longer to get a side project off the ground whilst working. I found that the first few weeks were the hardest, mainly because you'll be looking at a project that looks like nothing. As it evolves over time, it'll start to look like something and as such this in itself is motivation to find the time to work on it.

Stupid as it sounds. I also didn't buy a domain. You might think that 'oh I have an idea I'll buy a domain and go do it' but the inverse was true for me. The amount of domains I have that I have done nothing with is testament to that. The risk of someone else buying the domain I wanted was motivation, anyway, domains don't matter in the general grand scheme of things. If your product isn't shipped, domains aren't worth shit.

Focus on small wins. Create a Trello board with a few columns. TODO, DOING, DONE. Keep the tasks small, and when you have them done, move them over. Whilst not directly an answer on "where to find the time" it will help to keep you motivated to have a big column of "DONE" with stuff in it. Especially when you are going to have nothing visual at the start.

I have an extremely understanding partner, but I also set aside time when I put the laptop down. Stupid as it sounds, actually working on a laptop rather than a desktop worked for me as when everyone else was watching tv, I could code, and you can take your work with you so when you have some free time you can work.

I know I'm coming late here, I really hope I'm not too late for you to read this.

I have two children - a four month old and a 5 year old. I tried working around the time they were up and I always felt guilty. I also work full time, loose an hour a day commuting (or there abouts), etc. The point I'm making is that I'm lucky to find a few hours free each day as it is.

Here's what I'm doing now and it's working well. Mentally, I'm in a good space, not feeling burnt out, feel like I'm seeing the kids enough, etc.

* I get up early. I have found going to bed early gives much better sleep. I am naturally an evening person so this was hard but getting up early (around 6am) I've found makes the days feel longer. This negates an anxious behaviour of mine feeling "there isn't enough time to do anything". Sometimes when I get up early I'll do an hour or so of work, othertimes I'll head in to my day job early so I can get out early.

* Learn about the pomodoro technique; it's invaluable and you can get a lot done. Break your work into Pomodoro slots (I use 25 minutes) and plan before you start. This way when you have a spare block or so you can just do that.

* Try to find 2-3 hours a day uninterrupted to work.

* Never forget you need time to yourself to unwind and relax. Make this a priority.

* Don't neglect your family. You will be far happier and productive when they're happy, at least that's what I've found.

* Never, ever work on weekends. You need time to yourself and do things you want to do.

* Get a good nights sleep

* Eat healthy. Make sure you get your 5 / 2 a day.

* Exercise during lunch. I go for a walk every day and love it.

Good luck! You'll get there with perseverance.