Ask HN: Do you give up on side projects once you have a family?

I did no side projects when they were babies/toddlers. I did side projects that related to hobbies we did together when they were kids. I stopped again when they hit early teenage years and the parenting got harder again. And now I'm back to side project as they are in later teenage years and mostly independent.

So it comes and goes. Family definitely gets the priority, but family evolves and your free time evolves with it.

The way I prioritize my time (work / family / hobbies / ...) I don't do any serious side projects.

However, when I became a father I started valuing my time much higher (watching less YouTube and reducing other time sinks).

So it made me more productive but also heavily reduced the time available.

Mostly, yes. There’s only so much time. I maintain a backlog of what to explore after my kids are grown.