How do you make/find time to spend the time you want to in order to help with the family, run your part-time (or full-time) business into the evening (etc.), and still be able to have some downtime each day? How do you get focused?
In the evening, wind down the day, have a beer and plan out how you're going to use two hours in the morning tomorrow most effectively. Set one clear goal. Then...
1) Go to sleep
2) Wake up early (I recommend 6am)
3) Do the work you thought up last night
I find myself remarkably productive in this cycle. If you've planned well, you'll whiz through the tasks. Focus on "doing one thing" each day and you'll be racing through iteration cycles. I find that I'm usually so productive like this that I can comfortably keep the weekend purely for recreation guilt-free, rather than continuing to iterate on my down time and burning out.
This is how I built http://goodgecko.com
It's taken about 3 months* of doing exactly the above, now has paying customers and is an extremely satisfying "side project"!
UPDATE:
*I should elaborate - 3 months since the very barebones MVP. The MVP took about 2 months and featured basic surveys and a one-page sales site. The current product features web, mobile, popup and kiosk surveys and has a fully-realized sales site. The sales site itself took about a month to make...
that said, I think it's normal to feel a little drag now and again - whether it's on a side project or your day job. just take a break and come back to it after a few days.
also, my daily commute is only about 20 mins each way, so I guess I have some fortunate circumstances.
do one thing. no more. no less. there should be quick 30 minute days where you don't get burned out. save the hard parts for sunday.
also that thing about 'don't pretend to work'... don't sit at your computer with the IDE open, but just dicking around on gmail or the web... either work or don't. don't fool yourself.
It really helps motivate me to skip that extra hour of sleep when my eyes first crack open, if I've got something interesting to go work or play with. And slowly but surely, stuff actually gets done. :)
Both myself and my other technical partner switched to mornings and would never go back, this after having been a night person for 15 years.
Not quite to the MVP phase yet though unfortunately...but getting there!
Another huge benefit that the morning has over working in the evening is that you can drink coffee to get you going...if you're into that sort of thing.
I hear that.
I used to be a night person too, beavering away until the wee hours. Then I'd sleep until noon and feel awful the whole day. Never going back to that. I realised that the only reason I worked for such long hours is because I had no structure to my work.
Now, I get up early, get stuff done that I planned the night before, and by the time I've finished, most "normal" people are starting their day and I feel super awake. It's a great way to be.
The downside is that I can never stay up past midnight. I just zonk right out. Sucks if you're the type who likes to go partying, but thankfully that's not me :)
But I should try doing this in a more structured way, as you suggest (planning first) -- maybe that will allow me accomplish more, removing the need to think about it during the day.
Thanks.
ROFL..
get some originality dude... u "may" ve gotten an awesome product... but do try to stick to a bit of ethics and not copy other websites designs..
P.S.the pricing page is an exact copy of basecamp!
Then: 1) I never sacrifice dinner with my family and I try to "be home" from 5-9. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally.
2) Always prioritize your most difficult work first. If you start with "check HackerNews", time will disappear. Finish a use case first then reward yourself. Pick a new feature to ship each night and the progress will fuel you.
3) I've never liked working super early in the morning, so I take quick power naps in the evening (30min to 1hr.) to refresh and work from 10-1. Solid, uninterrupted 3 hrs.
4) Passive work (like catching up on HN, other sites) can be done with MacBook in lap on the couch if you want to unwind with some Tivo.
5) Don't be afraid to invest appropriately. I'm actually taking vacation next week to complete my punch list: finish coding, meet with an advisor, attend a trade show and prepare product for beta.
Turns out that I basically needed an assistant. Since I was building features for my cofounders, we decided that we should pair program (except they don't know how to program). So they act as the "feature manager" and come up to my apt for 2 hours a nights a week and we work together.
A few key points: the feature managers MUST have their thoughts detailed out. In order for me to crank out code, I need to know exactly what to do. I think there's a cognitive cost when you have to shift from implementation to design mode (and even testing mode). You'll be amazed how much it helps to push those responsibilities out of your brain (and yet still get fast feedback).
Doing this, we've gotten probably 4 months worth of work done in the last month, without me increasing hours. Seeing how efficiently I can implement features made my cofounders realize that it's worthwhile to pay me even 1/4 time, so that I can reduce hours elsewhere. Been a real game changer for our company.
I usually make sure I have what I want to do in the evening sketched out in a notebook at lunchtime - which is when I do research etc.
The thing that makes this possible is pretty much having a "regular" day job that is within walking distance of where I live - 20 minute walk away. With a commute I'd be too tired to do anything at night (I know, I have tried). I usually get home at 6pm - same time as my son gets home from school.
The other thing I have found is that staying up past midnight is a bad idea - I even have an alarm set on my watch to remind me to start shutting down at 23:50.
I tend to sleep most soundly when I've just fixed some horrible bug or implemented some sweet feature!
Note that includes plenty time with 11 year old son and my wife - who has a much more high-pressure job than I have (I do all of the cooking).
For a while I was working late nights and making good progress but since having our 2nd kid it has been very difficult to get back into it. Being depressed over the day job and money definitely doesn't help.
It's interesting that so many people recommend the mornings. I can see the logic but from a practical point-of-view, I don't think it will work. My kids are v. good and sleep from ~7pm to 7am but they're awake earlier in the mornings and just happy to stay in bed. If I get up at 5 or 6am then I'm going risk waking not only my wife but also rousing the 2 children too. Maybe I'll give it a try next week but I'm sceptical.
One thing to bear in mind... when working in the evenings I've found progress is roughly: 1 week of evenings == 1 full-time day. Things take an extraordinarily long time to complete.
That's something my Dad (a writer himself) told me when I wanted to write a book when I was young. And it's true for business as well! When I wrote just a little bit regularly (a page or two a day) I got a _lot_ done in a month, but then I started just writing in batches, marathon sessions here and there, and nothing really got done plus I lost wind pretty quickly.
Now I'm working a day job and writing code for another startup idea and regularity helps me, this time I plan to stick with the consistency, rather than degrade into spurts, so that I finish this (unlike the book).
A good summary of other things that can be done to improve and simplify your life is at zenhabits: http://zenhabits.net/brief-guide/
Now I'm 27 with a 9-5.30 job and a partner, friends, family. I like to go swimming, I like eating out and cooking meals in, all that gets in the way of marathon hacking sessions. Carving out dedicated time in the weekly time-budget is a good way to manage the balance.
2) I'm lucky enough to have a high paying job, enough so that I can afford to have house cleaners, and I also pay my brother to do our laundry every few weeks (this is a win-win, since he gets spending money). Sometimes I feel bad for not doing these things myself, BUT in reality it's working and that's what counts. To be honest, if I made less, I might consider going for funding instead of working, but since I make good money, I consider that to be my investment in my business. That being said, I still have household chores to do, but you just have to get realistic about how much you can really do, whether that means getting help, or just NOT doing chores (sad, but true)
3) Since I know have much more limited time than other people, I really really REALLY need to find ways to keep the product lean and focused. Everyone says they try to do this, but you know, necessity is the mother of invention.
4) Finally, sometimes I'll be in bed, it's midnight and I need to wake up early for work. I'll start thinking about the product and get so excited I have to get up and work on it for an hour or so. And of course, since I'm pumped, I'm much more productive. This is horrible for my sleep, but I think it's a fair trade for starting a startup, in addition to living a full life with family and work.
5) Assuming you have a supportive spouse, he can take the kids for an outing to the zoo, or whatever, on Saturday mornings and you can get a good 6 hours in. We find it to be a win-win, since they get to spend quality time then.
My point is, focus on everything else and somehow, the time will manifest itself. Whether it happens because you're avoiding something else, or just because you're not used to doing nothing (like I used to do, and still do, a lot) in your downtime. Just be sure you aren't avoiding the family. :)
I choose small pieces of work to do that can fit in about an hour. My wife does writing/school in the evenings, so we often sit together and work. If I don't have the mental attention to write code, I work on other things.
Funny enough, I've been very productive while taking my oldest kid to karate. I've built a surprising amount of my application at the dojo :)
I start my day job early (at the office around 7) so that I can get back home and spend more time with the family until bedtime.
I've also learned to accept that my progress might be slow some weeks because I've made the decision to put my family first.
The biggest problem I have is finding large enough blocks of time (> 30 mins) to concentrate on the task in hand. The only two blocks that I've managed to secure are early in the mornings before the kids get up and on my commute to work. I use the return journey of my commute to plan what I'm going to do the next day. Although this strategy only provides me with a few hours a day, I find that this is sufficient to give my project some sort of momentum.
I tend to avoid evening development as the quality of the work I produce isn't optimal and it would eat into the time that I want to spend with my very supportive wife and children.
I also try to tackle the larger/tougher parts of my side-projects on weekends instead. To make my weekends more productive, I try to finish the interruptive boring work such as laundry etc on a weeknight when I don't feel like coding. That way, I don't have to worry about it over the weekend.
My current job is still technical, but I'm not working as a coder. As such, I have a lot of energy to put into a project. In fact, working on the project is one of the things I look forward to when I get home.
Something to keep in mind when looking at a job. How much of your personal capacity will be left when the day is over?
This is how we built our current startup: votetocracy.com. When I try to work at night - I have a hundred things floating in my head that distract me.
Another tip that has worked for me: Multi-tasking is bogus.
I have actually tested this with my own work life. I spent a week multi-tasking. Where I decided on several multi-step projects that I wanted to complete over the week and went about them by pushing he first tasks forward one by one on each project on Monday. Then I kept pushing forward the next task on each project. At the end of the week I had several things up in the air. Mostly because I was waiting on others - or others were waiting on me because I was busy doing another task on an another project.
The second trail was with a one project a week approach. The result: It got done early. Those that I had to work on the project with didn't have to wait for me. I didn't have to wait for them.
THe one project approach isn't always possible due to client demands and such. But I do recommend picking at least one project among a few people and as much as possible - limit the noise of other small interruptions and stay focused.
For me I just finished my mvp for http://democratic.ly in 3 weeks. I worked on it after 4pm on weekdays and during the weekend. If I was organized or had more programming skills it could have been much less time to MVP. But from the start I had a very clear goal.
My other tip is to listen to your body's signals. If you're sputtering out, grab a snack and walk around a bit. Speaking of which, it's about time for me to do that right now!
It works well for me because I'm awake and thinking about tech problems anyway thanks to the morning, and an hour with no distractions is enough to make small gains.
But neither necessarily coincides with your peak creative period.
The muse comes on her schedule and sleep is just something in the way.
When she's absent, you're just tacking more time onto a long day.
Don't build in the evening (unless you're single, then have at it). After a long day of work, working more is the last thing I want to do. The wife and kids need some attention.
Go to bed early (10pm-ish) with the fam then get up early. I get up at 5am every morning. Your mind is fresh and invigorated. I find in the early hours of the morning I'm very productive, I think clearer and my wife isn't bugging me to come to bed every 15 minutes.
This is how I handle freelance and personal projects on top of the full-time job. It gives me an extra 3 hours a day without wearing me out.
Also don't underestimate how much time you can scratch on the job. I carry a A4-size book around and jot down ideas, think through problems etc when we're waiting for other people to get to a meeting or some other hold up. It all adds up and saves being bored.
I can't do the early morning thing. I sleep till the last minute before getting ready for my day job.
(you have to love your day job to have energy for evening work)
Nothing happens at 6am for me, so saying "everyone should do X" is about as pointless as any other 1 rule for all or generalization.