If you don't mind me asking, roughly how much do you spend (time) on this every week? How much of that is split between development, operations and product or business development?
Since I have a full-time job too, my time on this project is pretty limited, usually no more than 2 hours per day.
That's why I tried to automate and save time as much as I could using Kubernetes operators, well supported open source projects, and most importantly, tools I already feel comfortable with.
I don't have hard rules in terms of how I distribute my time, but recently it may have looked like this:
- 60% of the time I'm trying to understand the problem I'm solving (talking to customers, researching, evaluating features).
- 20% working on features, and issues.
- 20% promoting: writing blog posts, documentation, reaching out on Twitter, HN, Indie Hackers. Helping out customers integrate their website / understand how something works.
Of course, there's tons of other smaller things here and there, but those are the big "buckets" of my time.
Once I know what to work on next, I tend to prioritize as follows:
1) At the start of each week I pick 1-3 topics to work on next (for example writing a new blog post, working on a new feature, or even just writing documentation which I am going to next).
2) Each day when I'm working on my project I pick the most impactful thing I could work on, and start with that. I allow myself to explore a topic in depth, sometimes without a clear goal or deadline. After all it's supposed to be fun if I want to stick to it for the long term.
3) I try to respond to customer emails as soon as I can, and understand why they're giving my product a try. That's my gauge for what to work on the following week.
It's interesting to see how you split your time and how much thought goes into all this. A followup question, if you could;
> and most importantly, tools I already feel comfortable with
What do you do in situations where X tool would be 'better' than Y tool, but you're comfortable with Y tool? Do you do a comparison of the time/effort it takes to learn AND use X tool vs. Y?