You Don't Have to Ditch the Day Job

Heh-- not sure my business is sustainable yet-- but we're gettin' there.

I get that. It is incredibly difficult when you look at it like that. I have personally felt that pain of, "So, who I do I take time from, my wife or my kids?"

However, in the case you mention, it is only 4 or 5 months of nights and weekends. What is that, 30 actual days max? Would you trade 30 days of the thousands and thousands in your life to be able to make something you are proud of and potentially allow you to spend all of your time doing what you love? I know I would.

Obviously, thinking like that can lead to a workaholic, Cats in the Cradle (google it, young'ns) type existence, but with measured use of it and diligence at maintaining boundaries, I think it is possible.

I remember when I had a friend ask to me run in a 5K. Before that, I wouldn't run unless being chased, and even then... However, I realized as much as a pain as it might be, even being slow 5K is about 30 minutes. No matter how painful, annoying, embarrassing, it is, that's half an hour. 2% of 1 day. I decided right then that I could do anything for 30 minutes - and did. This is the same sort of thing.

You can do anything for 4 or 5 months and see what happens. This IS your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

</pollyanna boosterism>

That's where it's nice to have had some previous experience working in startups. You get to realize that nearly all your time is wasted. I worked on 2 major and a few minor projects at my last employer; neither of them has any customers, nor any users other than my ex-boss. At the employer before that, I had about 4 different projects; none of them amounted to anything, because the company went bankrupt 6 months after I left. A coworker at my last employer had previously worked at Thompson Financial - he finished 4 products, all of which were canceled after he delivered them ("insufficient sales & marketing resources") and never sold.

If I hadn't done some volunteer/open-source projects that have a decent userbase, I would've given up the field. It can get kinda depressing at times.

Instead of thinking about it as a potential waste of your life, I find it's more helpful to think of it as your life. After all, your basic needs are (presumably) taken care of. You don't need to hunt for food; you don't need to build your own shelter. If you weren't working on the startup, you'd either be working on someone else's waste of a life, or you'd be wasting your life using someone else's product. It's sorta liberating to not care whether it works out or not and just do it because it's something to do. (I haven't quite achieved that zen state yet, but I do find I'm a lot more productive when I don't worry about the outcome.)