Coming up with ideas is a people watching process combined with a life experience process. But ideas aren’t businesses. They aren’t even side hustles. I keep a list of ideas in a note pad and add to them as they come to me. Most have been sitting there forever, likely never to be worked on. However, one idea stood out to me.

Here’s where the my path and yours might diverge. I had already done the startup thing-both bootstrapped and VC-funded. I currently have a job that pays well and I enjoy. So, this idea, I specifically didn’t want it to be a full time job. And I went about building it know the goal was to maybe make a bit of supplemental income, but nothing more.

What that did for me is it took the pressure off of having to find time before and after work to work on it. I worked on it when I truly wanted to. That’s worked well for me, and it’s about to launch (It’s a writers critique group community, if you’re interested - https://perligo.io).

If you aren’t in the same boat as me and are looking to find motivation and time to work on a product you want to end up as your full time job, my suggestion would be to stop trying to work on it after work. People, in my experience, tend to be more focused in the morning before work. Even if you have to get up super early, I’d bet your output is significantly better than anything you do after work.

Good luck!