First of all, don't reduce sleep. After a while of less than 7.5-8 hrs a night, your brains gets old, literally. It works slower, it learns slower and has problems actually storing stuff. Newer research has also uncovered mild forms of brain damage when you are sleep deprived over time. One reason parents with small kids often tend to be a bit... off, myself included ;)
Second tip to get more time, skip TV, Netflix etc on the days you want to accomplish something. Even try to restrain yourself from social media and random surfing.
Third, make yourself publicly committed to a goal, 100daysofcode.com/ is one popular variant where you publicly announce on Twitter that you are starting, and then you do minimum 1 hrs of code per day, with daily updates on progress on Twitter. (As a side note, they also have similar projects for fitness, health etc., and regular exercise is proven to make you a more focused and productive knowledge worker)
Keep public/shared Trello boards of all your stuff to do. Share the dev stuff with your dev-friends, your non-dev stuff with your friends or family that are stakeholders in those activities. This also helps to grab yourself by the neck as you feel some pressure to make progress on stuff you've said you'll do.
That said, and with the exception on having time (kids remember?), I am struggling with similar issues myself. I have tons of motivation, but as I'm always tired, I have a hard time keeping focus.
Cheers!
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First of all, don't reduce sleep. After a while of less than 7.5-8 hrs a night, your brains gets old, literally. It works slower, it learns slower and has problems actually storing stuff. Newer research has also uncovered mild forms of brain damage when you are sleep deprived over time. One reason parents with small kids often tend to be a bit... off, myself included ;)
Second tip to get more time, skip TV, Netflix etc on the days you want to accomplish something. Even try to restrain yourself from social media and random surfing.
Third, make yourself publicly committed to a goal, 100daysofcode.com/ is one popular variant where you publicly announce on Twitter that you are starting, and then you do minimum 1 hrs of code per day, with daily updates on progress on Twitter. (As a side note, they also have similar projects for fitness, health etc., and regular exercise is proven to make you a more focused and productive knowledge worker)
Keep public/shared Trello boards of all your stuff to do. Share the dev stuff with your dev-friends, your non-dev stuff with your friends or family that are stakeholders in those activities. This also helps to grab yourself by the neck as you feel some pressure to make progress on stuff you've said you'll do.
That said, and with the exception on having time (kids remember?), I am struggling with similar issues myself. I have tons of motivation, but as I'm always tired, I have a hard time keeping focus.
Cheers!