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I don't have a business, but I have been working on a side project for almost 5 years after hours, I commit about 20 hours a week to it. At the beginning I tried what I called 'super days' that sound a lot like yours. What I found is that while I was 'working' those 5-6 hours at night I was not very productive mostly due to mental exhaustion. Then on 'off days' I was way too exhausted to do anything, and I never fully recovered. For my project (creative in nature) this caused crippling Creative Productivity Anxiety and depression.

About 1.5 years into the project I broke my foot (long story) which meant I had to change things, then I had a kid about a year later, which caused me to change again. Both of those were really good developments

What I found is that a far better schedule for me was to spread things out. Now I still put in about 20 hours a week, but it is in the form of 1.5 hours at night on week nights and 6 hours on Saturday and 6 hours on Sunday. The Saturday and Sunday time is generally split three ways (morning before family wakes up, kid's nap time, evening after kid goes to sleep) I feel like I get more work done because I have the mental ability to actually work for each of those pieces of time.

Schedule may look different for you, hobbies, family, etc. But I would definitely suggest with exploring smaller pieces of Second Work, especially on week days.

With kids, I've adopted a similar way of working on my projects. During the week I really only have ~1.5 hours a day of focused time that I can spend on my projects. I've found a great system that help a lot with that:

1. Plan specifics and next-steps while watching the kids. This is not to say you should ignore them or anything. An hour of dedicated play with the kids is usually followed by an hour of them playing with each other or doing something independent quietly (super important skills for them to learn IMO). When they are watching Sesame Street or playing with each other I have a note-taking app and Google Docs on my phone. I can plan next steps, write content, manage the project's social media, etc. from basically anywhere while still keeping an eye on the kids. I also make and maintain a TODO list broken down into bite-sized tasks in the note taking app (the default notes app that comes with Android). Using a phone in this way is more rewarding than surfing Reddit/HN anyways, and it will fundamentally change your relationship with your phone for the better.

2. Since most planning is already done (see step 1), when I have dedicated time to work on the project I already have a list of bite-sized tasks I can accomplish. Doing even one tiny task a day adds up way more quickly than you would believe. e.g. I do furniture, so on one day I photograph a completed chair, another day I cut fabric for cushions, etc. Maintained over the long-term, this adds up to a ton of progress without burnout. My guiding philosophy for this is "consistency + effort = improvement".

This system also works great for people with long commutes (assuming you're not driving)!

> them playing with each other or doing something independent quietly (super important skills for them to learn IMO)

+100 for this. Our kids just don't. Maybe 5 min, and then "mom! dad!". And we drop everything and go relieve them of their duty to entertain themselves. I feel like this is a failing on our part as parents. And it makes everything worse for everyone.

I'm curious if you have any practical measures you've followed to get past this.

Every time they do this, assign a bug to them.

Everyone will have different experiences with this, but I wonder how old your kids are? We didn't really experience a lot of the self-entertainment until our kids were 5 and 3 - at that point they began being able to cooperate and play well enough with each other that they could get engrossed (either in parallel or together) and allow us to focus primarily on non-kid-stuff.

6 and 3 now. And yeah it is getting better though we still have a way to go.

Not sure it's the right thing(tm) to do but I generally make it "worse" for both of them if they ask me to solve their fights. E.g. if they fight and shout "Mom! Dad!" I'll tell them "Great that you're not playing any more, here are some chores that need doing".

IME, once they learn to read (and assuming you can instill or kindle [pun not consciously intended, but left] a love of reading), that problem will more than solve itself.

All kids are different. Within a reason, there is no "failing" as each combination is unique and there is no way to compare or run A/B test to say that one particular way is "failure" and one is "success"

How is the side project going after 5 years? How many more years do you see it taking?

You sound like someone who wants to do a lot of different, separate things, and probably puts pressure on themselves: even when working hard on your business you’re asking “why haven’t I completed that music yet!” Etc

It may help to think of your life as “epochs” or “seasons”. Sometimes you’re in a work period, or in a startup epoch. Another time you’re in a travelling season. It’s easier to split your interests over time than to parallelise in the present. The season idea can be greatly reassuring - “oh, I’m not doing enough music now, but that’s because I’m in a work period. Focus on work, do that, that’s enough. Spare time - rest, recuperate, so I can do better work tomorrow.”

This is actually a really interesting concept.

I think there are certainly some benefits of focusing on one thing or epoch, but I do wonder if most of my energy going toward one thing would make me no longer enjoy that particular thing. Regardless, I like the concept and how it perhaps pertains to people's continuous change/growth.

I recently got serious about writing fiction (still mainly for myself, though) and I did notice that I tended to be quite burned out after work, especially toward the end of the week. I was irritated that The Man was getting my best hours, which mostly seemed to happen in the morning.

So, I got one of those wake-up lamps and started getting up very early (4-5). I get plenty of time to wake up and then concentrate on my own thing with zero distractions before I head to work at 9-ish.

I have never been a morning person but this arrangement has made me feel more personally fulfilled and happier at work too because I'm not worried about getting home and then having to write, or saving my mental energy for my own purposes.

The only problem is I tend to get sleepy around 9 or so, but I can stay up when I want to and if anything it means I drink less and get more sleep.

What time do you go to bed typically if you're waking up at 4-5?

830-930 ish.

I'm not a hard-working, sleep-deprived entrepreneur. I just have a hobby that requires clarity, presence, and focus for me to be happy with the results, and I've found that the morning is the best time for that state of mind.

Your story seems similar to a number of other people I know or have met. Here are my thoughts (hope you find them useful/valuable in some way):

(1) Get your diet and sleep taken care of. Nothing fancy. Just find something in both areas (diet and sleep) that improves your energy levels and is easy to maintain.

(2) You are working long hours at your current job. Try taking short ~2-5 min. breaks every ~20-30 minutes and attempt a longer break (~10-15 mins.) about every two hours. Your breaks can be as simple as staring at your screen or at your desk and daydreaming. The point is to get your mind off the current task for just a little bit and then step back into your workflow. Ironically, I have found that taking those short ~2-5 min. breaks has often been diffcult because I feel like I can just keep going and my energy levels won't be affected. Rid yourself of that feeling if it comes up. The short breaks have given me a lot more energy daily, weekly, etc.

(3) Find someone to bounce ideas off of for whatever business you are working on. Doesn't need to be a co-founder or a mentor or whatever. Just find someone to talk with about the project you are excited about working on.

(4) Make finding your first customer a top priority. There will be a wealth of benefits (tangible and intangible) for you when you get that first sale; when someone gives you real money in exchange for something you built. If you've already made some sales, then plan and execute on furthering sales and getting more traction (self-evident). I can't stress enough, though, the importance of getting your first customer if you haven't already.

(5) Filter everything for what is relevant, so as to optimize time spent and energy expended. One of the best pieces of advice that was given to me came from my undergrad thesis advisor. I was 21, and up until that point in life typically read all or most of the books I ever started reading. It felt unnatural and awkward to not complete a book, because not doing so seemed like I would miss something important or that I was doing an intellectual disservice to the author.

Together with my advisor, I had selected ~35 books that would form the basis of my research. I still remember sitting excitedly in his office with the books stacked beside his desk, as I looked forward to diving into the research. He told me (paraphrasing), "Look, there is absolutely no need to read all of the material in any of these books. Flip through them to find the portions relevant to your project and disregard the rest."

That was a freeing moment for me, and one which eventually led to a heightened ability to nearly always sift for only what is relevant (regardless of domain, function, project, deliverable, task, etc.).

> The inane invention assignment clauses

This damn clause is the bane of my existence. It is the main thing stopping me from pursuing a side project because even if the project succeeds, I won’t own the rights to it anyway.

I’ll probably ask my employer to approve some side projects as independent work and have them excluded from their ownership, but I feel like even asking that question paints me as someone who isn’t dedicated to my full time job. I’ve been at my current company for less than a year so I’ll probably wait a bit longer before submitting the request.

I just put a line through it and my initials and signed it and handed it to my boss, he flipped through and signed and that was the end of it.

I don't have any commercial projects outside of work but the idea that an employer can claim ownership of something that comes out of my head into my machine in my time is bonkers.

If you want to own the other 8 awake hours of my life after the first 8 you have to double my pay.

I've done that on my last 3 employment contracts and no-one has ever even commented.

Yep, there is no reason to ever accept this clause. On the off-chance a company objects to you removing it, you don't want to work for them anyway.

If they pushed back on it I'd ask for a raise in salary due to the opportunity cost of not been able to do things on the side.

A broad exclusive license to and ownership of every line of code I write shouldn't be free after all.

Don't do it all by yourself. It's better to own 10% of something big then 100% of nothing.

>But I have music I want to work on, novels, etc. Places I want to see.

I'd like to do all of those (and have made some movies and music beyond software work), but one has to ask: does the world really need (or could use) more music, novels, and SaaS?

And why would it need mine? Do I have a 1 in 10 million unique take on those things and unique talent? Or am I piling to the rest of the noise?

At some point I think for most the motivation is not some primal urge / can't do without (else they'd be doing it already as their first focus), but just "it would be fancy to write a book/make a movie/release an album".

> And why would it need mine? Do I have a 1 in 10 million unique take on those things and unique talent? Or am I piling to the rest of the noise?

The results may not be super profound, but the process of creation is self-actualizing and good for the mind.

That's the hobby part though. We were discussing the "wanna leave my job / do that other stuff" part.

And while I can understand music, is novels and movies something people routinely non-professionally as a hobby for "self-actualization"? Those are more wannabe lifestyles.