Ask HN: How much time per week do you spend on side projects? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How much time per week do you spend on side projects?

58 pointssharemywin72 comments

To everybody posting about not working on a side project because of children, I would ask you to reconsider that if you're truly passionate about something and want to develop it. I've been working on a side project for a few years now. I also have kids and spend a lot of time with them. I've discovered that it's actually very beneficial to spend an extended time working on a project, and by extended time, I don't mean hours every day. I mean stretching the project out over years. For one thing, it gives you the freedom to reconsider solutions and approaches. Work is usually focused on delivering as quickly as possible. It's very refreshing to have the time to consider a problem thoroughly and let it play in your subconscious freely. Also, your kids need time to themselves too so there's no need to feel guilty. But to answer the question, I spend probably 0-15 hours per week, usually working at night after the kids have gone to bed.

It took me a long time to realize that letting a hobby project last years is not a bad thing. I've even gone on spurts where I will put it down for several months and pick it back up later. Good code documentation and external documentation is a must.

Seconded. It took me two years to build my current side project, and that's ok. I am no longer 20, I don't have to rush to do everything in an instant.

I also noticed that because of the slower pace I often avoid solving problems that can be bypassed altogether. When working at a frantic pace I'd often notice that I solved a problem that didn't really need solving.

Someone once said 90% of problems go away if ignored. In the 19th century British foreign policy coined a phrase for this approach: "masterly inactivity".

Yea, around my house the only acceptable time to work on programming side projects is weeknights in the few hours I get after the kiddo falls asleep. I have no plans to release any of these projects, though, mostly because my current employer forbids publishing side projects, so I'm in no rush to get anything done.

Non-programming side projects are fine, though and tend to get done on the weekend! Currently my interest is metalworking but I also like to do woodworking. This stuff is ok with a kid around because she likes to help and get involved. She's 4, so she knows the names of all the tools and can bring them to me. She likes using the shop-vac too. See, this counts as family time, whereas me concentrating and staring at a screen for hours unfortunately counts as "ignoring family" time. :-/

I replaced programming with woodworking. I find it a lot more enjoyable after 8 hours of building software and 1 - 2 hours of administrative work to transition to building "hardware". My side projects are all furniture my wife or other family members ask for.

This is happening to me at the moment, currently upcycling an old timber door into a bench

I find woodworking a lot more satisfying than coding. You can point to something solid and say, "I made that", and your family don't have to be technophiles to enjoy and appreciate it

My code has a much bigger immediate impact. But I always assume that 10 years from now it will all have been rewritten or projects replaced/cancelled. However, my wood projects that I've given to family will be passed down to the next generations (hopefully).

I'm interested in woodworking but also afraid I'm going to maim myself.

Maiming one's self in woodworking only happens through incredible stupidity or carelessness. If you keep focused on what you're doing and make sure that you're following basic safety rules, you'll probably be fine. Accidents do happen of course, but as with programming, there are safeguards that can prevent them (for instance, the guards and backstops on a table saw prevent your work piece from getting rocketed back into your torso).

Table saw is going to be, by a huge margin, the most dangerous tool in most amateur woodworker shops. You need to exercise great care and respect around power tools, but the table saw requires particular care. All tools, power and non-power can be used safely, but you need to learn and internalize shop safety practices. My dad taught wood shop in school so I got a good boost by being immersed with shop safety from a very young age, but anyone can learn the right habits.

Start with hand tools while you're learning the basics. Get good eye and ear protection--don't skimp. Learn how to sand. Ease your way into power tools as you find you need them. I wouldn't start out in woodworking by filling my garage with $10K worth of power tools right off the bat.

I bought a home last year and I think the cardinal rule of power tools is that you only really should buy one when you have some project in mind for which you are going to use it immediately.

I agree, my table saw still scares the living shit out of me. When I had some tension in a board I was ripping down clamp up on the blade and start to buck, I couldn't reach down for the switch, so I jumped away and yanked the cord from the wall. It was a very tense 4-5 seconds.

Afterward I calmed down, i flipped the board around started ripping from the other side to meet in the middle and everything was better.

None. After my first cup of coffee in the morning when I have artificial enthusiasm I always tell myself I will start when I get home, but after 9 hours of making somebody else rich, I am just out of energy, and not interested enough in software to push through.

Sounds like me...only I procrastinate and spend all the time I would working on a side project --thinking up ideas, or 'researching' what others are doing so I can copy/make better/build it and make$$.. Seems I never get past that 'market research' phase .... spend too much time on hackernews/reddit/indiehackers.

Have I posted this while i was sleeping? It sounds exactly like me. I guess I am bitten by analysis paralysis bug. With hundreds of new frameworks coming out each day, one day you think to solve a problem with shiny new tool, next day there is a new one. I spend @ couple of hours each day "thinking" about items to build, unfortunately not been able to draw a line in sand and start it.

If I could program while exercising I would be incredibly productive. I normally go for a run after work, during which my brain gets a "second wind" and becomes super active in a way similar to how I feel in the morning.

Once I'm done though, that feeling is incredibly fleeting. That's when I normally just get dinner started.

I know what you're saying; your employer owns the most productive part of your day. The fix that worked for me is get up at 3am so I own the most productive first three hours of the day. Everyone's asleep then, so there are no interruptions. After the day job it's family time and exercise, then I'd be exhausted enough to be asleep by 9pm.

Doesn't sound sustainable unless you have the 4h sleep gene.

I'm a developer to the core, and I've been coding since the late 70s. But I also read a lot, and I've always fancied being a writer and cranking out some middlebrow tech flavoured stuff like Neal Stephenson or Douglas Adams. So I've also read a lot of "how to be a writer" stuff. One comment from an established author stuck with me. When asked "how do you know you're a writer?", the reply was "because you can't not write". When I read that I realised I'm a coder at heart, because I can't not code. The ideas that come to me are software ideas, and they find their expression as code. It's an itch that needs to be scratched. It all comes down to how badly you need to scratch the itch. And I know that if I don't scratch it I'll go mad.

Interesting. I guess I'm not a "true coder" by that definition. I'm probably more of a pragmatist than I'd like to admit. I like the results of coding but not for its own sake. If someone has written a hashtable implementation I'll thank them but won't roll my own.

Took me a while to realise this. I kept kicking myself thinking I "should" be more interested in crypto, functional programming etc.

I think I don't like software quite that much, but enough to where if I did have spare mental energy, I probably would use it. That's an interesting perspective though, and one I see in many Type A coders. I just don't have it in me I don't think.

Wake up 2hours earlier. Ge a coffee, work 2 hours on your code, then go to work. It works.

This may actually be something I try. I don't need that much sleep, but I think it may hurt for awhile. I'll think on it.

I have a wife and 3 young kids, so I have no side projects. I wouldn't miss these years for anything

+1 before I had kids I spent maybe 5-10 hours a week on random side projects and freelancing, since I had twins they are my full-time job and my full-time job became kind of side project

My side project is something my young son is interested in, and he loves following along and making suggestions as I work on it. I don't feel like I'm missing anything.

2 - 6 hours a week but that's going to go up as I turn it into a real business. Eventually I will quit my full time job but for some amount of time it will be like having two jobs.

I pretty much make my wife mad at me every Saturday by locking myself in the office while she watches our daughter.

But I hope that if I can make something of it then it will help my daughter and our family long term more than my current job can.

I also try to dedicate at least as much time (usually double) bonding with my daughter (she is a year and a half). They are only this young once.

About 5 hours a week on https://getelapse.com, chunked into 20 minute slots like lunch breaks or downtime at home between family stuff. The only way I'm able to make forward progress is by being super strict about CI+CD.

It's actually doing a good job of forcing me to code really well, because if you've only got 20 minutes to get a thing done, you can't have much cognitive overhead or switching costs.

Sound like you are dog-fooding your product:

   https://getelapse.com: "An elegantly simple tool to help you focus on the tasks you need to get done."

Sure am! :)

2-3 hours a week on Chavah Messianic Radio[0], a non-commercial Pandora-like radio station for my religious community.

It's been going for several years now, and enjoys a nice user base. It started out in Silverlight, then KnockoutJS, and now AngularJS [1].

[0]: https://messianicradio.com

[1]: http://github.com/judahgabriel/chavah

Depends highly on family scheduling.

On weeks where I have a free Saturday (no kids or girlfriend) I can get in a solid 8-12 hours depending on motivation and other chores.

On weeks where I don't get that Saturday it can range from 2-6 hours if I'm lucky.

My current side project is something that if I had a company I could task out 2-4 devs, full-time, for probably 3-6 months just to get to beta state.

It actually really sucks, and is more depressing than I generally admit.

Between 7 and 14 hours a week. It depends if I can dedicate one full day on the weekend to it. That happens rarely. Otherwise I stick to one hour every morning before work to do the most important thing. My side project is my website where I attempt to teach about web developement (JavaScript, React) https://www.robinwieruch.de

Before my side project became my main gig, I worked on it a couple of hours each evening. I told my girlfriend I was committing to the project and moved my computer desk and PC down to the tv room so we still spent time together while she was watching TV in the evenings.

We didn't have kids at the time, but I imagine the same thing still working now as kids are in bed by 7pm (on a good night!).

None right now. Work demands are exciting team capacity so I'm often needed for overtime work. Any spare time is spent with family.

I average about 14 hours per week on my animation platform. It took a few years to have a release: http://www.superanimo.com

The difference for me was when I got a nights and weekends membership to a coworking space. Since I'm paying for it I force myself to go at least 3 times a week.

I spend just 4 hours a week on my side projects.

Right now

1) building a newsletter about stories & life lessons by real mystics. www.realmystics.com (2 hours a week)

2) Building a platform for finding meditation workshops & art therapy classes in the city (2 hours a week) www.lightup.life

I would say around 5/6hours a week. Most of it on the weekend. I am building https://iheartreading.co/. I have been working on it for a little bit than a year, with a big break last year (5/6 months without doing anything).

I try to spend maybe 15 min every day checking where I am at, and several hours per weekend, when possible, working on features etc.

Trying to work on it in the evening after my work day is challenging, as I have not a lot of energy/motivation.

I usually spend one day every week. For the last few months, I have been doing a lot of side projects related to the use of machine learning in sports analytics and cyber security. I usually have an idea and spend the next few days trying to write code for the idea. I have had a lot of success with my side projects on Fsecurify.com and Crickytics.com. I initially got a lot of good response from people and that gave me motivation to keep doing these side projects.

Some weeks a few hours, but usually none, honestly. I have lots of things I'd like to do and most of them I don't already spend 40 hours a week doing.

Side projects hours are directly proportional to how happy, satisfied, and content I am with my say job.

At my previous job it tended to be 15+ per week easily. But now it tends to be 0-2 hours per week. It's not a bad problem to have; to enjoy and feel satisfied with everything at the day job.

I still wouldn't mind being more side project engaged sometimes though. It's always a struggle.

I'm the same way. My current work project is in fact more interesting and ambitious than any of my side projects (distributed rules engine fed with realtime sensor data to take autonomous action to optimize workplace convenience for office workers), so I haven't spent meaningful amounts of time on a side project in months.

I do still work on dev talks to give to user groups, it engages a different side of my brain than the programming side projects do.

For my side project, https://www.rabbitmqhosting.com, I usually spend about 1 hour per day(average 5hrs per week).

As a developer I usually find the marketing side of things to be a bit tricky to do. So as a workaround I usually carry out marketing during my 40minute commute to my day job.

I have a bunch of side projects. I spend about 5-10 hours per week on them, but usually just one project at a time. For example, one week I might spend 5 hours working on a Hamilton costume. The next week I might spend 8 hours working on my MUD, and the following week a few hours on my arcade cabinet.

None of my projects are really monetizable...

Usually about 12 hours. I try to get 2 to 3 hours in on weekdays as soon as I get home from the office. I take weekends off unless I'm feeling particularly motivated/inspired, but with the MLB, NASCAR, F1, and Indycar seasons in full swing right now, my weekend schedule is pretty packed...

40+ haha.

Im a Freelance Javascript developer currently having a very easy/boring job.. No kids, no wife, just a dog :)

So including weekends I easy hit more then 40 hours!

TradeJS

https://github.com/DutchKevv/TradeJS

Very slick GUI: nice work!

Thanks! :D

Still working on it hard. My plan is to have a stable v0.0.1 by end of next week

2 - 3 hours in the morning, 3 - 4 at night. Most nights.

I take Saturdays off for the most part, Sundays I work for 4 - 5 hours.

So like anywhere between a few and another full-time job. Admittedly it isn't a side project, more of a side-venture I am trying to make my full-time job.

12.5 - 30 hours depending on how motivated I am. I have a 3 hour commute (round trip) with 2.5 hours of that on a train so it is perfect time to work. At night it all depends on my motivation

50% of my time is dedicated to my side project (20-40 hours).

Over the last 2 years I cut consulting hours down to 20, and increased my hourly rate so I could work 50% of the time for 75% of the money.

None. 40-50 hours a week coding at my day job is more than I need.

Lately an hour or two per week. The only free time I get during the week is on weekends and I usually prefer other things over my side projects.

Between 6-9 hours per week. I'm able to work about 3 hours at night, after an 8 hour work day. Usually 2-3 nights per week.

I try to get in 20-30 hours a week just now.

(Have dropped most other activities because I am pushing to try launch in couple of months).

I think at that stage it becomes your main project!

Still have a main job 40 hours a week. (But yes working on making it main!)

about 20 hours per week, says RescueTime. I also work 10+ hours a day, 5 days a week at a full-time job.

How do you find time for family?

Not everybody has a family.

True, but it seems to be a pattern in all the articles.

Probably around 10 hours a week. Usually this is all on Sunday. I'm dead to the world on Sundays.

It severely depends on the mood (even in long term). From 3-5 during bad weeks to 20+ for good ones.

10 hours a week based on how busy I am.

You really need to pre-plan what you will do to get the most out of the time.

around 10 hours per week working on a social word game for polish market: https://goo.gl/MQkme0

Some hours... 3-6, max 10 if it's really interesting...

now that I have kids it very hard to find time anymore.

About 10 hours on a good week. Zero on a bad week.

Not enough for my own satisfaction.

20+ hours a week.

3-6

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